Wakenhyrst

by Michelle Paver

‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’

Maud pictured the two sets of rules as a pair of gigantic thorny walls leaning over her. She knew exactly what St Matthew meant when he said: ‘Narrow is the way, and few there be that find it.’

She helped Cole in the garden and he taught her how to put four seeds in every hole: One for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow.

She knew Chatterpie didn’t love her, and that was as it should be because he was wild. But she also knew that for three days she had mattered to him – because she had fed him and kept him safe. Now all that was over, and once again she was on her own. Only this time it was worse – because he’d been so close, and now he was gone.

Put not your faith in men, she thought. That out there is all you can trust: that hedge and that wet grass. Those dripping trees. As if it were happening to someone else, she observed the pieces of her past – Maman, Father, herself – rearranging to make a different pattern. She saw her childhood peel off and float away like a piece of waterweed in the Lode.

As she lay in bed it occurred to her that between religion and superstition there was no difference, since both were based on unreason. To kill a man to redeem the sins of others was as irrational as tapping a hole in one’s eggshell to stop a witch using it as a boat.