THE HILLS ARE ALIVE.
_______________________ by Ned McCann.

Titmus ran to the safety of the pine wood as if his life depended on it. It did. Behind him, the animal, if it was an animal, ploughed the ground to a pulp. It sowed the crisp mountain air with the white hot vapour spuming from its’ dripping nostrils.. and leapt towards him. Scrabbling his fingers deep into the brown pine needles, he felt a sear of pain as razor honed hoofs slashed his back; and more pain as the creature’s horns daggered his shoulders and tossed him over to face it.
The last thing Titmus saw were fire red points flashing in coal black eyes, and an opalescent globule weeping from the rearing plough share of a phallus. The last thing he felt was a slashing, tearing blackness as the phallus and horns ripped him apart in the entering.
*
Titmus shot awake to the ruby eye of his bed side clock clicking four twenty eight, and a bed sodden in terror sweat. Later, standing in the shower, he sluiced the stench of fear from his body and remembered the first time he had the dream. Afterwards, his Mother comforting him with Bovril, toast, and crooning. And the soft talcum smell of her breasts as she soothed him, and the uncle lying beside her, back to fitful sleep.
After his shower, Titmus was undecided. It was nearly five A.M. hardly worthwhile going back to bed. He dressed for the city and made breakfast. By the time he’d crunched through his fruit and flakes it was six. Having nothing else to do until his bus left the corner at eight, he lay down on the living room couch and practised meditation.
He awoke to the sound of the letter box’s click; and adjusting his glasses was dismayed to see the hands on the mantle clock quivering on nine. If he hurried he
could just make the nine twenty.
Stooping in the hallway, he stuffed a scattering of letters into his briefcase, fumbled the deadlock, and made the corner as the nine twenty winked goodbye, before pulling away from the stop.
*
It was ten before Titmus pulled open the scabrous door of J.J Delahunty and son. Stock, Station and Shipping Agents.
“Banker’s hours?” J.J Delahunty Jr said loudly.
There were dutiful titters as Titmus hung his hat and brief case on the horns of a long dead Santa Gertrudis bull, curving like bow waves from the mahogany panelled walls of the clerk’s room.
Titmus sat down at his desk. He tackled shipping manifests and the current price of fat lambs without raising his head, until the office clock wheezed noon.
*
Titmus nibbled date and lettuce on wholemeal. Sipping his carob flavoured soya shake, he lifted his face to the warmth of the sun reflecting from the sandstone of his favourite lunch time spot beside the chancel door of the cathedral. Reaching into his brief case, he remembered irritably that in his rush he hadn’t bought a paper that morning. However, there was the mail. He pulled out the letters. Better than nothing.
Titmus sighed for the trees which had gone to make up the bills and never to be repeated offers, until he came to an envelope coloured the milky blue of a deadman’s eye. The letter was headed Callas, Callas& Tontine, Solicitors. Their Chambers were in the city, and it was suggested that if Titmus cared to call on Mr Tontine, three days hence, at ten of the clock, he could very well hear informations to his advantage.
*
Mr Tontine looked exactly the type of person to have used the phrase ‘ten of the clock’. Titmus was reminded of a praying mantis, as the solicitor rubbed his fingers together and sucked on what could have been some still trembling piece of creature snagged in a gap of his mandibular teeth. The old man peered myopically through a pair of bottle bottom pinc nez at the only document on his scarred desk, as if the parchment contained the meaning of life.
At last he looked up. “Mr emmm,” he said, and looked down again.
“Titmus,” Titmus provided.
“Groen feldt,” Tontine amended. Pronouncing the G in the European fashion, as if he were clearing something from his throat. He lifted a silver tea bell and his hand’s natural palsy gave it a genteel tinkle.
“Your Mother’s maiden name was Titmus. Your Father’s Groenfeldt. The Baron Groenfeldt.” Tontine’s eyes twinkled with all the warmth of ashes in a long cold grate. “Baron Greenfield, as we would say in English.”
Titmus turned his head as a woman of indeterminate age entered the mote filled room. The hem of her dress swished gently across the ox blood carpet as she carried in a brass tray containing a cardboard cask of sherry, two fluted glasses, and a Doulton plate of arrowroot biscuits, which she placed on Tontine’s desk.
“Thank you, Miss Grey,” Tontine said. The woman left as silently as she had come. The solicitor removed his pinc nez, breathed on them, and wiped them clean, with a gull white handkerchief taken from his breast pocket.
Tontine gave a first frost of Winter smile. “It’s not yet eleven, and only Thursday. “ He reached towards the tray. “But do have some Amontillado.”
The old man filled two glasses gave one to Titmus, raised his, and after murmuring through a spray of Arrowroot biscuit, sipped the glass empty through his long, yellow teeth.
“Mr Titmus,” Tontine began. He gave a puzzled look at his empty glass, refilled it, and clicked his tongue in correction. “or , as I should say, Baron Groenfeldt.” He bowed his head reverentially. “It is my sad duty to inform you that your dear Father passed over three months ago.”
The Solicitor shuffled out from behind his desk and clutched the new Baron Groenfeldt’s shoulder with a blue veined claw in a reasonable facsimile of comfort and sympathy. The Groenfeldt shuddered as if he had felt the touch of death.
Tontine filled up the glasses again and again, until the morning drifted into a golden haze of Amontillado. And while he poured, acting under instruction from Herren Nullhen, Voight und Stroheim,-the Groenfeldt family solicitors- he acquainted the former Mr Titmus of his illustrious genealogy -even unto the tenth century- his inherent responsibilities, and the full extent of his good fortune down to the last verst and pfennig.
*
One week later, the Baron Groenfeldt alighted at Groenfeldt Junction. He was met by the Station Master, who doffed his tall hat in welcome, and ushered forward a blond child dressed in a smock. Her hair looped around her ears in sticky bun ringlets, and she offered to the Baron a bunch of vilde florren . Although they were plastic, the Baron was touched at the thought.
Outside the station, Baron Groenfeldt was met by Herr Stroheim, senior partner in the law firm, Nullenne, Voight und Stroheim. Herr Stroheim fussed a rug over the Baron’s knees as he settled him into a stretch Duesenberg for the short journey to Groenfeldt Hof.
The Baron breathed deeply of the exhilarating air as Herr Stroheim pointed out landmarks and advised further on the complexities of his inheritance.
Although the European spring was well advanced, the Baron noticed the crops seemed tardy in the growing. Most of the fields had clods of dry earth showing through the sparse green, reminding him of someone with a severe case of alopecia. The orchard trees here, unlike those he had noticed on the journey, were merely dotted with withering blooms. The land, he decided had been overworked and undernourished. Blood and bone would fix it, he decided. And a bit of compost wouldn’t go wrong either.
“I beg your pardon, mien Baron.” Herr Stroheim, stopping in the middle of his discourse, leaned attentively forward cupping his ear.
“Blood and bone,” the Baron repeated. “I was reading in Shirley Stackhouse’s gardening column that blood and bone is very good fertiliser. The fields look as if they need something.”
“The Baron is knowledgeable in agriculture?”
“Well... not agriculture as such,” the Baron admitted. “More horticulture. But it’s the same. Isn’t it? Fields are just big gardens. Make note of it, Stroheim.”
Stroheim took a small notebook from his waistcoat pocket, licked the end of a silver filigree pencil, and noted ‘Blood and Bone.’
They swept through the magnificent gateway of Groenfeldt Hof. “Get the peasants to dig it well in,” the Baron advised. “They’ll soon get the hang of it.” He inclined his head to the forelock tugging gate keeper. “By the time I’m finished, Stroheim,” he vowed. “This desert will be a land of plenty!”
*
The Jubilee Mass in honour of his homecoming was celebrated by the Dioscean Bishop in the Baron’s private Chapel. A Te Deum, composed especially by the Baron’s Cappel Meister, included references to his long line of illustrious ancestors, interred under the time worn flagstones.
After the ceremony, as he shared a small cask of Cherry brandy with Stroheim and the Bishop, the Baron glanced down at a lead embossed flagstone. “All my ancestors are buried here?” he asked.
“All of them,” the Bishop replied. “If I’m not mistaken, “ he focused
his quizzing glass, “where you now sit is on Alaric, who died in four hundred and fifteen A.D. “
“Four hundred and eighteen, your Grace,” Strohiem corrected.
“Whatever,” said the Bishop.
The Baron moved his chair.
“And where you now sit ,” Stroheim advised, “is on Muttar, his half brother.”
The Baron stood up and wandered carefully around the Vestry. “My own Mother,” he said,”was cremated and her ashes interred in a niche at Northern Suburbs Memorial Rose Garden.”
The Bishop carefully placed his glass on a vestment chest. Stroheim examined a simpering Cherub on the Vestry’s ornate ceiling.
“That,” the Bishop pursed his mouth in disapproval.”is not how we dispose of our dead. Your ancestors grew from this land.” He rapped his crozier on the flagstones. “ And when they died, returned to the land. Giving nourishment, in payment for that which they had taken.”
“Except for your dear Father.” Stroheim swivelled his gaze from the cherub.
“What did my Father die of?” The Baron asked, as he filled their glasses yet again. “No one ever told me.” He looked around the floor. “And where is he buried?”
“You wont find him here, mein Baron. Stroheim glanced hopefully at the Bishop.
“Your late Father,” the Bishop explained,”died at sea.”
“At sea?’ The Baron smacked his lips on the Cherry Brandy.
“His yacht , the Graf Spee Zwei sank in the Baltic with all hands,” Stroheim added.
“No survivors?” the Baron asked.
“None,” Stroheim confirmed.
“Buried at sea,” the Bishop tutted. “ A dreadful break with precedent. “And that’s what becomes of it ! ” He pointed a twig thin finger to the Gothic arch of the Vestry window. Through the time muted colours of the mullions, the Baron could see part of his vast estate. It was bounded on the north by a haze of blue black mountains. A crescent of shroud green pine forest, scarred with the ugly brown of dead and dying foliage, curved from east to west, and beneath him, a patchwork of Teutonic order hemmed in fields of struggling crops.
The Baron pointed to a herd of snow white cattle picking at the sparse pasture. “They’re a strange looking beast,” he said, “Gertrudis?”
Stroheim looked to where he was pointing. “ Oh no, mein Baron. A much older and purer breed. They are descended from the sacrificial cattle sacred to the Druidic peoples who used to, and in fact , still do fief your lands.”
The Baron frowned at the corrugations of the creature’s ribs, and resolved to replace the brutes with Fresians or something. There would be a book about in the library. So much to do, he sighed. So little time.
*
After a buffet lunch, where the Baron mingled and met with the Mayor and other dignitaries, it was suggested he may care to be taken around his Domain. The Baron waved away the guides and advisors milling around the Duesenberg.
“I’ll walk,” he told them. “Why don’t you all go back to the Castle and get hoed in to some of those casks of Amontillado I brought?” He raised his hand against their protests. “I should like to meet with my people alone,” he said.
The Baron spent what was left of his day in exploration of his fiefdom. He acknowledged the tugged forelocks of the ragged peasants and the curtsies of their thin wives with a courtly nod. He listened to their litany of complaints of a murrain amongst cattle, grain withering on the stalk,and grapes souring on the vine. Patting the scrofulas of their pale faced children, he assured them that something would be done, and that better times were coming. They kissed his hand in gratitude. Even the very trees seemed to press forward their roots and branches for a touch of him; and the ground beneath his feet to tremble in anticipation of the coming fertility.
*
On the outskirts of the Village, the Baron stopped to admire the harmonious curve of thatch on the gable end of a cottage roof. From the cottage garden, tall hollyhocks, foxglove and lavender waved to him over the hedge. Amongst them, a bent and gnarled old woman tended a heap of compost. The Baron introduced himself, and for the first time since arriving in his homeland, felt discomfort. Maybe it was the way the old one peered into his face. He watched her rheumy eyes flicker, as she seemed to search each and every radial of his irises.
“You are indeed a Groenfeldt,” she said at last, and invited him into her cottage.
The Baron followed her, ducking his head under the drying fronds of herbs looped from the exposed roof beams.
“Will you sit and take some wine, mein Baron?” she asked. It is Parsnip. I make it myself.”
The Baron thanked her, and settled himself.
“I knew your late Father well,” the Crone said, pouring a pale golden fluid into two rough blown goblets. “Many’s the time he sat where you now sit, warming himself at my...” here she hesitated, seeming to search, as some old people do, for an everyday word momentarily eluding them. “...hearth.” She had found it.
The mantle clock ticked softly, and the Baron could almost feel his Father’s lap, warm beneath him.
“And your Grandfather, and his father before him,” she added, handing him his glass.
How old is she? The Baron wondered.
“We cannot drink to their health, but we can drink to their memory.” She raised her glass. “To the blood of the Groenfeldts.”
The Baron smiled at the quaintness of her toast, and drank with her.
“The old woman filled their glasses again, but this time, instead of drinking, poured a libation on the packed earth of the kitchen floor. “To the good Earth,” she said.” From whence we all came. And to where we will all return.”
The Baron, deciding to humour her, did the same. “Tell me,” he asked. “How come your land appears so fertile, while that around is barren?”
The old woman explained of the delicate balance of Nature. Of the hierarchy of Driads who took care of all growing thing. Of the Guardians of the Earth, their likes and dislikes, until the sun was setting, and the room grew dim. Despite the dim, the old woman noticed the Baron’s empty glass. She hovered the bottle towards it. The Baron, head reeling from the potent brew attempted to stay her hand.
“Ach, no, mein Baron.” She poured against his feeble protests. “An empty glass is like the Earth. Until it is filled, there is thirst.”
He sipped, and determined this would be the last. City born and bred, he understood only a fraction of what the old woman had told him, and believed even less. Blood and Bone, he decided, was definitely the way to go.
“Tell me, if you would,” the Baron asked. “How do you earn your living?”
The old woman pointed to the sweet smelling things hanging from the roof beams. She stood up and grunted as she pulled some fronds down with the aid of a sheep herder’s crook. Laying the purple curves of the plant on a stone press, she wound down the grinding wheel until the essential oils ran through the runnels. Scooping out the fragrant essence, she rubbed it into the backs of the Baron’s hands and fore arms. Spreading his hands before the flames of her hearth, he breathed deeply the incense of her anointing. While he did, the old woman splashed wine into a simmering pot of golden mushrooms, stirring the magic with a stick of wild honeycomb. On the window sill behind her, the contents of her jars and bottles seemed to writhe, twinkle and wink. The old woman looked up, and winked back.
*
The Baron decided to conclude his tour for the day. Although the bowl of soup, the old woman had pressed upon him, seemed to have ehilerated his mind, his limbs were becoming heavy, lethargic. Besides the shadows were lengthening, frost gathering in their darkness. He sped a faint path asping across the contours of an emerald green field, where some of his cattle huddled and gazed at him through a shrouding veil of shaggy white hair. The path led to a pine forest, and on the hill above he could see his castle and its’ twinkling windows lighting the way of his coming.
The ground beneath his feet felt strangely warm and cloying. It was the low end of the field, tending to marsh and he sank to his ankles in its’ moss. The whole field seemed to be composed of moss. Billowing and heaving, as if beneath it some animal was stirring, breathing. It fascinated him, rippling and changing its’ colour at each whip of the wind. He knelt down and ran his fingers over it. Cupped his hands in the warmth of it. And feeling the throb of its’ life force, pressed his face to it. Breathing of it, he ran his tongue across it until he knew it. And grasping a hand full of it, faced the dying sun, and ate of it. The land was now truly part of him, and he knew that he, Groenfeldt, was part of it.
Behind him, his prize, stud Bull whetted its’ horns on the sap bleeding trunk of a fallen pine tree. Pawing the ground with its’ needle sharp hooves, it ploughed it to a pulp. Sensing danger, the Baron turned as the brute sowed the crisp mountain air with the white hot vapour spuming from its’ dripping nostrils.
The Baron ran for the wood as if his life depended on it. He tripped and as he lay scrabbling his fingers in the brown pine needles, felt searing pain as the creature’s hooves tore into his back. And more pain as its’ razored horns turned him over to face it. The last things he saw were fire red points flashing in hellish black eyes, and the opalescent globule weeping from a rearing plough share of its’ phallus. The last thing he felt was a slashing, tearing blackness as it ripped him apart in the entering... and trample ploughed his blood and bone into the starving earth.
THE END.
Ned McCann.
3247 words,