‘Don’t reckon he wants to eat us,’ Snelling said. ‘He wouldn’t go to all this trouble . . . yet he did eat that one fellow.’
‘Didn’t really eat him.’ Edgar scratched a jowl. ‘Chewed on him and spit him out is all.’
‘That was because he tried to run off,’ said Snelling. ‘It were Griaule’s way of telling the rest of us to stay put.’
The idea that anyone could undergo this trial and not expend a great deal of energy in trying to comprehend it was alien to George. In his opinion, it did not speak highly of the two men’s intellect. He asked how they had wound up in this desolate place to begin with. Had they, like him, been transported by a magical agency?
‘You’d have to talk to Peony,’ Snelling said. ‘She were fooling around with something, but she wouldn’t show me what it was. Then the walls of our house vanished and there we were, with nothing but nature around us. Peony let out a screech and flung the thing in her hand away. I suppose I should have searched for it.’ He hunched his shoulders and made a rueful face. ‘It was hard to swallow, you know, that she were the one responsible. But I’m sure now it was her doing.’
‘Even if you had found it, it wouldn’t have done you much good,’ said George.
Edgar’s eyes darted to the side and George followed his gaze. An immensely fat woman with gray tangles of hair framing a lumpish, sunburned face and wearing a tent-sized piece of canvas for a dress, rushed at him, swinging a tree branch. The branch struck him on the neck and shoulder. Twigs scratched his face; sprays of leaves impaired his vision – a confusing blow yet not that concussive. He staggered to the side, but did not fall. Snelling threw himself on him, riding him piggyback, and as husband and wife sought to wrestle him to the ground, Edgar poked him with his stick, more annoyance than threat, his moony face bobbing now and then into sight. George managed to shove the woman away and, when she came at him again, he planted a foot in the pit of her stomach, sending her waddling backwards across the clearing, her arms making circular motions as if attempting to fly out of danger. She made a cawing noise and toppled into a bush – her dress rode up around her hips, leaving the raddled flesh of her legs protruding from the leaves. Snelling clung to him, biting and clawing, until George grabbed him by the hair and punched him in the mouth. Edgar dropped his stick, retreated to the edge of the clearing, and stood wringing his hands, his expression shifting from pained to vacant, and finally lapsing into the feckless grin that George took to be the natural resolution of his features.
He wiped blood from his chin, where a twig had nicked him. Snelling lay on his side, breathing through his mouth, blood crimsoning his teeth. His wife struggled to sit up, teetered for a moment, flirting with the perpendicular before falling back again.
‘Sandra!’ Snelling’s cry sounded forlorn, almost wistful, not like a shout of warning, or even one of sympathy.
‘Are you mad?’ George kicked dirt on him and scooped up his shirt, along with the mangos it held. ‘Risking your lives for a few mangos! Fucking idiots!’
A noise behind him – he spun about, ready to defend himself. Standing at the margin of the clearing was a gangly young girl in deplorable condition, twelve or thirteen years old. Ginger hair hung across her face in thick snarls and her faded blue rag of a dress did little to hide her immature breasts. In addition to a freckling of inflamed insect bites, the skin of her torso and legs was striped with welts, some of them fresh, evidence of harsh usage. Her lips trembled and she tottered forward. ‘Help me,’ she said in a frail voice. She stumbled and might have fallen had George not caught her. She was so slight, when he put an arm about her, he inadvertently lifted her off the ground.
Snelling collapsed onto his back, breath shuddering, but his wife, displaying renewed vigor, shrilled, ‘Take your hands off my daughter!’
Edgar, displaying unexpected ferocity, charged George with arms outstretched and fingers hooked, as if intending to scratch out his eyes. George stepped to the side and, using the mangos knotted in his shirt, clubbed him in the face. Edgar dropped like a stone, blood spurting from his nose, and began to sob. Between the sobs, George heard Peony speaking almost inaudibly, saying, ‘She’s not my mother . . . she’s not my mother.’
‘Liar!’ Mrs Snelling shrieked. ‘Ingrate!’
‘She may be your daughter, but you most certainly are not her mother,’ George said. ‘No real mother would allow her child to endure such abuse.’
‘Bastard! If we were in Morningshade, I’d have you beaten.’
