Jarvit

Jarvit Ch4 p1

Chapter Four

The piercing shriek of the running pigs made Jarvit wince. Yelling he drove them out of the dark interior of the single roomed smoky building. A windowless hovel of low turf walls, topped by a woven twig thatch formed the home of Quilp Spellbinder. Keeping the animals out of the building was a task Jarvit had set himself since his arrival. The mess and smell that the five pigs and other animals made inside turned Jarvit’s stomach. The squelchy mud of the floor had rotted away Jarvit’s worn shoes within a week. The lack of a door to the hut and the free ranging animals kept Jarvit busy.  He had started by beating the pigs with a stick to keep them out. This had amused Quilp so much one day that he had laughed and said:

‘Don’t you think they have a right to be inside considering this is the farmer and his family who used to live here before I did?’

‘You mean you turned them into pigs?’ Jarvit said in horror, stopping his arm in mid air. Quilp’s grime encrusted head nodded. Jarvit stared at the pigs in disbelief.

‘The chickens are others I’ve had to deal with. So you see what I can do if you cross me. I think you would make a fine calf, ripe for sacrifice. Heh, heh! May as well get me water and tidy the bedding seeing as you’re so house proud snivelling.’ Quilp had sneered before turning back to his bench of jars, powders and odious liquids. After that Jarvit treated the pigs with a little more kindness. But they were, now, still pigs.

Barefooted Jarvit walked to the river for fresh water. Mud and muck oozing up between his toes. At the rear of the building a small stream came rippling in through the shimmering transparent pink dome that covered Quilp’s property. It took a sharp bend and rippled back out again. Jarvit could understand why it would not want to be inside the barrier for very long. The wavering mesh walls kept wholesome life out and its occupants in. Outside he had been unable to see the cage of spells.

When he had been pulled from D’Braggatio’s carriage he had wondered what they were doing in the middle of nowhere. He could not understand why they had stopped among the trees.

‘Heh, heh!’ the old man wheezed as he appeared in front of Jarvit. ‘That surprised you didn’t it boy.’ Jarvit stepped back in horror at the sight. A stooping, wrinkled old man with wild dirty white hair, wearing only a long ragged skirt, who stepped out of thin air at him was not what he had expected.

‘Can’t see through my spell barrier can you boy? No, heh, heh! Well you shall see through it from the other side but you won’t be able to get through it. We shall have plenty of time to get to know each other.’ With that Jarvit had been hauled through the outwardly invisible barrier and into a circle of squalor. He was greeted by the sight of chickens wandering around in a sea of mud. There was hardly any grass under the covering of spells. The grunting of the pigs came from the hut that was set on a small rise in the ground. Outside the barrier Jarvit could see the lane, grass and trees, but inside was only mud and filth. The old man unbound him and left him gazing around as he wandered into the building. Jarvit hoped that this was not where he was to live, but soon discovered it was. Quilp seemed not to pay him much attention and so he began trying to improve the state of the place where he lay down to sleep. Quilp laughed at his efforts but made no move to stop him. Jarvit washed the few scraps of blankets that he had rescued from the mess. He  scraped the worst of the mud out of the hut and cleared the surface of the floor so that he could sleep in a dry area.

Jarvit did not dare to ask for food but in searching the barren hut had found oats in a jar set beside the constant fire. He ate porridge made with water every day. Using the one available pot and swinging it out over the fire on a metal bracket set for that purpose. The mysterious jar never emptied and the old man ate nothing that Jarvit could see. The central fire puzzled him, burning in its ring of stones. There was no wood in the compound for it. Quilp never went outside the barrier to collect any and yet it burned, night and day. It hew up acrid thin black fumes on occasion that made Jarvit’s eyes water. Then it would issue thick choking smoke that set Jarvit coughing. But Quilp seemed unaffected by the fire and laughed at Jarvit’s discomfort. The small stone lamps set around the walls followed the same pattern, endless small flames that smoked when the fire did and which died down, when Quilp slept, to a soft glow.