Eifelheim

“Ja, doch.”

“But… But this is wonderful! Never have we met a folk able to assume the form of another! Was your lord a being of… No, not fire, but of that essence which gives impetus to matter.”

“Spirit,” Dietrich guessed. “In Greek, we say energia, which means that principle which ‘works within’ or animates.”

The Krenk considered that. “We have a… relationship… between spirit and material things. We say that ‘spirit equals material by the speed of light by the speed of light.’”

“An interesting invocation,” said Dietrich, “though occult in meaning.”

But the Krenk had turned away to interrupt his fellows with untranslated exclamations. A furious debate arose among them, which ended when the alchemist do

“Amen!” said Joachim. But the Kratzer snapped his side-lips. “Enfleshment? The atoms of the flesh would not fit. Can Hochwalder impregnate Krenk? Wa-bwa-wa.”

Arnold flung his arm. “A being of pure energia might know the art of inhabiting a foreign body.” He took a seat at the table. “Tell me, will he come soon?”

“This is the season of Advent,” Dietrich said, “when we await his birth at Christ Mass.”

The alchemist trembled. “And when and where does he enflesh himself?”

“In Bethlehem of Judea.” The remainder of the evening passed in catechetical instruction, which the alchemist noted diligently on the wonderful writing slate all Krenken carried in their scrips. Arnold asked Joachim to translate the Mass into German so that the Heinzelmä

Vigil-Night came and, with it, those villagers who otherwise seldom saw the inside of the church. With them, came Arnold Krenk. Some, upon spying this peculiar new catechumen, slipped quietly outside, including Theresia. When the Mass of the Catechumens ended, and Brother Joachim, holding high the book of Gospels, led Arnold Krenk forth for instruction, a few crept back in for the Mass of the Faithful. But Theresia was not among them.

Afterward, Dietrich threw on a coat and, gripping a torch, picked his way to the foot of the hill, where Theresia’s cottage stood. He banged on the door, but she did not answer, pretending to be asleep, and so he doubled his efforts. The noice brought Lorenz from his smithy to stare at him bleary-eyed and to cast an appraising glance at the stars before returning to his slumbers.

Finally, Theresia opened the upper half of her door. “Will you allow no sleep?” she asked.

“You ran from Mass.”

“While demons are present, there can be no true Mass, so I have not broken the Christ Mass law. You have, father, because you have not prayed a proper Mass.”

This was too subtle for Theresia. “Who told you so?”

“Volkmar.”

The entire Bauer family had also departed the church. “And is Bauer then a theologian? Will you come to the Sunrise Mass?” Never had he need to ask the question. In the past, his daughter had attended all three Christ Masses.

“Will they be there?”

The customs and ceremonies of the village interested the Kratzer, so also many of the stranded pilgrims. Some of them surely would attend with their fotografia and mikrofonai. “They may.”

She shook her head. “Then, I must not.” She started to close the door.”

Dietrich put his hand up to stop it. “Wait. If ‘in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman,’ how in Christ can I bar anyone from the table?”

“Because,” she answered quite simply, “these demons are neither man nor woman, neither Jew nor Greek.”

“You are a disputatious woman!”

Theresia closed the upper door. “You should rest for the sunrise mass,” he heard her say.

Returning to the parsonage, he expressed his frustrations to Joachim and wondered if he might bar the Krenken from some Masses so Theresia and the others would attend. “The simple answer is that you ca

But as he lay down to nap until the Sunrise Mass, Dietrich thought, But will Theresia’s name be writ among them?

As often happens, fear showed itself in avoidance and hostility. Theresia threw snowballs at the Krenken whenever she encountered them in the open, having learned of their particular sensitivity to cold. “Of course the cold bothers them,” she told Dietrich after he had chastised her. “They are accustomed to the fires of Hell.” One time, her icy missiles struck a krenkish child. After this, some of the Krenken, knowing that the mere sight of them would drive her wild, would in acts of petty revenge brave the cold merely to show themselves at her cottage window. Baron Grosswald applied the krenkish discipline to these transgressors — not for love of Theresia Gresch, but to maintain the precarious peace — and warmth — he had eked from Herr Manfred’s disposition.

Even Joachim was moved to express his disappointment. “Had you asked me who in this village would sit before the Lord,” he said one afternoon while he mended a tear in his habit, “I would have named the herb woman. Lorenz told me she was mute when she arrived with you.”

Dietrich, who was sweeping the floor, paused over sudden memories. “And so for two years more.” He cast a glance at the crucifix on the wall, where Jesus also twisted in torment. Why, O Lord, have you afflicted her so? Job at least was a wealthy man and so may have merited affliction, but Theresia was only a child when you took everything from her. “Her father was a Herr in the Elsass,” he said, “and the Armleder burned their manor down, killed her father and brothers, and raped her mother.”

Joachim crossed himself. “God’s peace upon them.”

“All for the crime of being wealthy,” Dietrich added pointedly. “I do not know if her father was a cruel lord or a kind one, whether he held vast sallands or only a poor knight’s patch. Such distinctions meant nothing to that army. Madness had laid hold of them. They held the type wicked, not the person.”

“How came she to escape? Tell me the mob did not…!” Joachim had gone white and his lips and fingers trembled.

“There was a man among them,” Dietrich remembered, “who had opened his eyes and was desperate to escape their company. Yet he had been, even so, a leader, and could not slip away unremarked. So he asked for the girl as if he would bed her. The uprising had collapsed by then. They were dead men walking, and so without the law, for what greater penalty can be heaped upon them? The others thought he had only taken the child to some private place. By morn, he was many leagues distant.” Dietrich rubbed his arms. “It was through this wicked man that the girl came to me, and I brought her here where the madness had never touched and she could know a little peace.”

“God bless that man,” Joachim said, crossing himself.

Dietrich turned on him. “God bless him?” he shouted. “He slew men and urged others to slaughter. God’s blessing was far from him.”

“No,” the monk insisted quietly. “It was always there beside him. He had only to accept it.”