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“I seem to recall that you could not be bothered when –“
“Mind yourself, Meyer Lyon.”
“—when Ixworth Buxlowe arrived.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I cannot even say his name without tying my tongue in a knot.”
“If you had come to know him, instead of pretending he did not exist, you could have become familiar
enough to call him Ixy, or perhaps Buxo.”
“You are quite lucky I do not have a sharp object,” she informed him archly.
Meyer barked a laugh, patted her arm in a brotherly fashion, and left her with the line of other women at the
end of the rope.
Eugenia realized that once again, she had discovered no inroads or insights into the elusive Nehemiah
Trimble.
***
The celebration lasted late into the evening. Food and drink were consumed in startling amounts, children
ran wild, and the townsfolk engaged in contests that Dréoteth refused to participate in.
There was a watermelon seed-spitting contest that he found repulsive, a potato sack race, bobbing for apples
and a pie-eating contest where the contestants ended up wearing more food than they ate. Half the time he was
disgusted, wondering why he walked amongst these heathens like he was one of them. The other half he spent
bemused and troubled.
At midnight, old farmer Thornton invited all the kids into the back of his wagon. Hay bales lined the
wooden sides, used as seats and leaning posts.
Even from a distance Dréoteth could tell that one of the adults riding along was telling the children a scary
story. Their faces were rapt, eyes wide, tension tightening the slim structure of their bodies. Some sat huddled
together, clearly enjoying the thrill. He smelled their anxiety like he smelled the smoke from the bonfires. His
senses were razor sharp, as any good predators should be.
He followed the wagon with his eyes while it made a circuit of the clearing and wound up staring across the
distance at Eugenia Bailey.
Sitting next to Thea on a bale of hay, she locked gazes with him. None of the other women ever held his
eyes so boldly. They always glanced away if he caught them looking, blushes on their cheeks, pretending like it
never happened at all.
He stared until she grew uncomfortable and finally glanced away. Eugenia Bailey played a dangerous game.
He didn’t know if she baited him on purpose or whether she genuinely didn’t recognize her folly.
Meyer Lyon joined him, providing a timely distraction, and they spoke at length about Tuttle's idea of
opening a School of Higher Learning. The village was far too small for a University, they both agreed, but the
School would be a step in the right direction. It could pave the way for such a venture in generations to come.
Meyer always enjoyed discussing the possibilities with him, going so far to mention interest in a teaching position
even though he owned and worked a rather large farm on the edge of town.
Dréoteth steered the topic away from subtle inquiries of his supposed job as a scribe, a convenient lie to
allow him to mingle in society better. He did know how to read and write the English language, a task that had
taken him some few years to learn, but he did not actively pursue a steady position. It gave him opportunity
however, to get close to ancient tomes and tablets of some renown, which he enjoyed trying to translate when he
could get his hands on them.
He was rarely around long enough for anyone to get suspicious about how he supported himself.
It was conversations like these that put doubt into Dréoteth's mind. Doubt about killing them. The longer he
lived in their midst, the more he found himself morbidly attracted to human interaction. Some of them had
intriguing ideas about the earth and the stars, things he had never given much thought to before now.
Meyer Lyon's intelligence was nothing to trifle with, either, and he took care to give nothing unusual away.
The citizens of Malmsbury started to stagger home in waves when a fine mist crept over the treetops,
threatening to blanket the landscape and obliterate the low hanging moon. Dréoteth separated from Meyer with
a final goodbye and a surprising promise to visit him tomorrow.