William Wu - Invader

Feeling trapped, Jane said nothing. When Ygerna looked up and asked her another unintelligible question, Jane nodded and smiled appreciatively. Over Ygerna’s shoulder, Wayne caught Jane’s eye and smiled with amusement.

When Ygerna had finished, she quietly lifted the pot and carried it outside. She dumped the remaining mud onto the ground and set down the pot to catch rainwater. Then, catching the drizzle on her hands, she wiped them off.

Ishihara and Ygerna’s husband continued to chop and split wood rhythmically.

Ygerna called out to her husband, who stopped swinging his ax and turned to look at her. They spoke briefly, then he nodded and brought his ax back to the hut. Leaving it inside the doorway, he walked back toward his flock of sheep. The dog that had remained at the hut trotted after him.

“I guess they decided we’re okay,” said Wayne, looking out the doorway.

Ygerna walked back inside the hut and knelt by the fire again.

Ishihara paused and turned to speak to Wayne and Jane. “I have made a small amount of rudimentary progress communicating with Emrys.”

“Is that his name?” Jane asked. “Hers is Ygerna. That’s all I’ve learned.”

“Yes, he is named Emrys. He knows a few Latin words and phrases after all. When I first spoke to him, he kept that a secret, but he has opened up now. His limited Latin facilitated our communication. I now know a few words and phrases in his own language.”

“Do you know what he’s doing now?” Wayne nodded toward Emrys as he hiked up the slope toward his flock of sheep. “Where’s he going?”

“I believe Ygerna told him to bring back a sheep to slaughter for dinner,” said Ishihara. “We must wait and see what he does to know if I understood their conversation correctly.”

Jane looked up the hill sharply. “Then we’ve made a change in their lives-a big one. Every one of their sheep must be valuable to them.”

“Your apparent status as a lady has made the sacrifice worthwhile, I believe,” said Ishihara.

“Hold it,” said Wayne. “We can’t possibly eat a whole sheep, even the whole bunch of us.”

“His family can eat the rest, or sell it,” said Jane. “But maybe we should move on tomorrow morning. We could be much too disruptive to this family.”

“We still have no money to buy food elsewhere,” said Ishihara.

“I don’t think we’re going to do any real damage,” said Wayne. “This kind of thing isn’t likely to change history. Come on, Jane-one sheep?”

“We should be careful, at least,” said Jane. “As Hunter keeps saying, no one knows where the threshold of change lies. What if some descendants of Emrys and Ygerna are important at some point in English history? Or even on the world stage someday, even centuries later? And what if we disrupt their immediate family in some way that alters their health or survival?”

“You have a point,” said Ishihara. “However, if we can return the value of their sacrifice, we lower the likelihood of changing their lives because of the sheep.”

“What do you mean?” Wayne asked.

“I will cut as much wood as I can without revealing that I am not human. This will save Emrys from the chore. If we can help in other ways, I suggest we do so.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“You were right,” said Jane. “Look.”

Up on the hill, the dog Emrys had taken with him had cut one sheep out of the flock. Emrys had already started back and the dog was herding the single sheep back down the slope with him. Emrys’s son and the other dog had moved behind him and prevented the rest of the flock from following.

A metallic squeak sounded in the hut. Jane turned and saw Ygerna open the small metal door in the chimney over the fire. Using a cloth to protect her hands, Ygerna pulled out a loaf of bread in a pan. She set it down on the hearth and closed the oven door.

When Emrys arrived with the sheep, he took it behind the hut. Jane felt relieved. Butchering sheep would be normal for him, but she did not want to watch. Ishihara continued to cut and split logs.

Jane sat patiently, glad to be out of the drizzle and relieved that they would be fed and, she felt certain, given shelter for the night. On the other hand, the realization that she was trapped with Wayne and Ishihara for at least several more days finally sank in. Even when Hunter arrived, she might not be able to get away immediately. Surviving in this time without money to spend would require genuine effort.

Ygerna kneaded more bread dough and put it in the bread pan. While it rose she went outside and around to the back. Her children trailed after her, but Wayne and Jane stayed inside the hut.

After a few minutes Ygerna came back inside, carrying a large cut of mutton. She knelt again at the hearth and began cutting it into smaller pieces with a large knife. Outside the hut again, she filled a large cookpot with water from a cistern and carried it back to the fire. She hung the pot over the fire and dropped the chunks of mutton into the water. In a few minutes, the water began to boil.

“Smells horrible,” Wayne whispered.

“The meat can’t be bad,” said Jane quietly. “It’s really fresh. Maybe mutton always smells like that. I’ve never had any.”

With effort, Emrys carried a large, bulging cloth bag to a tree and threw a rope over a low-hanging branch. From the size of the burden and the blood soaking the bag, Jane saw that it held the sheep carcass. He hoisted the bag into the air, high enough to keep the dogs away from it.

Jane understood that the cool temperature would preserve it for a while. It still looked like too much meat for his family alone to eat before it spoiled. Obviously, he had the same problem every time he slaughtered a sheep, so he would have some normal routine to avoid wasting the meat. She wondered what it would be.

The drizzle continued through the afternoon. As the day cooled, the wind came up and the drizzle turned to rain. Emrys called for his son to bring the flock back to a small pen behind the hut. Then the boy joined the family inside. Ishihara went on chopping wood.

Emrys started to close the door of the hut against the rain. With a questioning glance at Jane, he paused to point to Ishihara.

“Ishihara, come in,” Jane said in English. “If you were human, you’d be exhausted by now.”

“Of course.” Ishihara brought his ax, stopping to wipe the mud from his feet on a patch of grass before he came inside the hut. Then he dried the ax blade on a rag that hung on a hook next to the other ax.

Just as Emrys closed the door, Jane saw that Ishihara had stacked more new firewood than Emrys had cut and split before they arrived.

Once Emrys had closed the door, the fire warmed the hut quickly. Ygerna ladled chunks of boiled mutton onto wooden plates that already held pieces of bread. She took one first to Jane, then served her supposed servants. Emrys received his dinner next, followed by Ygerna and the children.

By now Jane was very hungry. She did not really like the mutton, but she knew that Emrys and Ygerna had sacrificed a sheep for their benefit, so she ate it all. The bread, chewy and dense, tasted better than it looked. After everyone had eaten, Ygerna served some sort of herbal tea in wooden cups.

Jane and Wayne did not speak. However, Ishihara pointed to objects around the hut and asked the children to tell him what they were called. Sometimes Emrys and Ygerna, laughing, helped them.

“Ishihara seems to be learning to speak with them quickly,” said Jane. “I guess his knowledge of Latin helps, but I wonder how thoroughly he can pick up their native language.”

“He does very well,” said Wayne. “He learned rudimentary Chinese quickly because he can apply linguistic principles from the languages he knows to a new language.”