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theonecalledwanderThe children who had quit the square at my approach have re-grouped down a side lane. They’re mostly white, though some are Bel’s lovely shade of rich, dark brown or somewhere in between. They’re doing a dance in two concentric circles, rotating slowly in opposite directions. I can hear their song more clearly now that I’m off the road.
I can’t understand the words, which tells me that neither do they, but I’m sure the lyrics aren’t just nonsense and it only heightens my sense that something is wrong.
A child’s sing-song may be frightfully morbid on any world. Beatings, burnings, whippings, beheadings, and all manner of mutilation make appearances in children’s rhymes and stories. Disease and poison are topics of endless fascination to people who are too young to have forgotten the world is a place of endless wonder and terror of which they can only keep the tiniest corner in view at a time.
Children will quite gleefully sing about death and danger and dismemberment, but this song is not gleeful. It’s funereal. They’re singing a dirge, I would bet money on it.
It takes a lot to frighten me, but this chills me to my very core.
I still have most of Bel’s loaf in my hand, so I wander over towards them, hoping that an offer of food might win enough confidence for me to ask where they learned that song.
The slow dance ends abruptly at my approach, but the children do not run. I tear the bread in two, ready to break it into more pieces.
“Anybody want to help me finish this?” I say, but it seems their parents have warned them about strangers bearing food, as they’re already scattering.
I can’t understand the words, which tells me that neither do they, but I’m sure the lyrics aren’t just nonsense and it only heightens my sense that something is wrong.
A child’s sing-song may be frightfully morbid on any world. Beatings, burnings, whippings, beheadings, and all manner of mutilation make appearances in children’s rhymes and stories. Disease and poison are topics of endless fascination to people who are too young to have forgotten the world is a place of endless wonder and terror of which they can only keep the tiniest corner in view at a time.
Children will quite gleefully sing about death and danger and dismemberment, but this song is not gleeful. It’s funereal. They’re singing a dirge, I would bet money on it.
It takes a lot to frighten me, but this chills me to my very core.
I still have most of Bel’s loaf in my hand, so I wander over towards them, hoping that an offer of food might win enough confidence for me to ask where they learned that song.
The slow dance ends abruptly at my approach, but the children do not run. I tear the bread in two, ready to break it into more pieces.
“Anybody want to help me finish this?” I say, but it seems their parents have warned them about strangers bearing food, as they’re already scattering.