Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard Page B

myself.’ And so, having put Bose’s doubts to rest, or not, he fell back into a ratiocinatory silence from which he would not easily be dislodged.
    As they approached the road, Shadrach commented disapprovingly, ‘Look at those sheep. They’re in among the corn. They’ll bloat and die from eating it.’
    ‘You seem very knowledgeable on the matter, Mr Shadrach,’ said Corde.
    ‘I come from a farming family,’ said the tall, thin, ascetic and thoroughly unbucolic Shadrach. ‘We kept sheep on the top moor, and Heaven help anyone who let them get into the cornfields down by the river.’
    They were now only a few dozen yards from the couple by the road, and conjectures could be made without recourse to a telescope. If they were hideous monsters with a penchant for spleen, they carried it well; Cabal’s guess of ‘yokels’ seemed far closer to the truth. They were young people: he a shepherd in a blue smock and red vest, brown-booted and gaitered, a wooden flagon hanging from his belt, his hair a coarse, wiry brown, his sideburns hedgelike; she equally rustic, though apparently wearing her best red dress and white embroidered blouse. A young lamb lay in her lap, crunching sour apples.Judging from Shadrach’s angry intake of breath, this was also something sheep should avoid. They were sitting by the edge of the road between the trees, chatting and giggling, and altogether unaware of anything else outside their sphere.
    ‘Excuse me,’ said Cabal, ‘how do we get to Hlanith from here?’ He did not ask if this was the right road for, on closer acquaintance, it clearly wasn’t much of a road at all, just a narrow avenue between two rows of unkempt trees. Perhaps once it had led to a great house or estate, but now it was overgrown and even pitted deeply enough in places to create small shadowed pools, one of which the girl was cooling her bare feet in.
    The shepherd boy looked up at them with dull surprise, the natural stupidity in his rubicund face plainly enhanced by drink. Behind him, the girl leaned over to look at the newcomers. Her action was coy, but her expression was knowing, and Cabal disliked her for that just as much as he disliked her beau for his bovine inanity.
    The boy scrambled to his feet, belatedly alive to his dereliction of duty. ‘Jus’ a moment, yer ’onours, jus’ a moment.’ He ran off to drive the more adventurous sheep from the corn, leaving Cabal’s party in an awkward silence with the girl. She, for her part, did not rise, but remained seated on the green swathe, idly playing with a strand of her russet hair and smiling slightly at them. Corde smiled back, to Shadrach’s disgust, Cabal’s incomprehension and Bose’s blithe ignorance.
    ‘I wonder, my dear,’ ventured Corde, eliciting a quiet snort from Shadrach, ‘if you could direct us to Hlanith. It can’t be far from here.’
    She did not speak, but replied by pointing at the end of theavenue to the south and gesturing vaguely eastwards. Then she went back to toying with her hair and smiling at him.
    ‘Thank you,’ said Corde, low and slowly, and there was a definite air of twiddling a thin moustache, if he had been wearing one.
    ‘Thank you, miss,’ said Shadrach, in a tone of subdued outrage. ‘Come
along
, gentlemen.’ And he led off to the south, followed by Cabal, Bose and, in a desultory fashion, Corde.
    As they walked away, the shepherd came back, his hands cupped around some interesting insect he had found. He watched them go with a dull lack of understanding or even remembrance. Then their presence slipped from his mind altogether and he sat down by the girl again to show her this new treasure. Corde watched all this over his shoulder and laughed. ‘As pretty as a picture,’ he said to the others.
    Shadrach would have none of it. ‘A particularly vulgar picture. The product of a coarse and depraved artist.’ But that made Corde laugh all the more.
    The girl, for all her dubious taste in suitors, was at