Eifelheim

The servants then cleared the tables from the center of the hall to accommodate the dancing. Dietrich marked how Krenken and Hochwalders slowly separated, like oil and water after being shaken. Some, like Volkmar Bauer, avoided the creatures and favored them with stares at once angry and fearful.

Master Peter played a dance, and the Hochwalders paired off: Volkmar and Klaus with their wives, Eugen with Kunigund, and they stepped through the measures while the other guests watched from the fireside.

Manfred turned to the noble Krenken who stood by him: Grosswald, the Kratzer and Shepherd, who was maier of the pilgrims. “There is a story told of a Vigil-Night dance at Schloss Althornberg,” he said, gesturing broadly with a wine-filled Krautstrunk, whose knurled surface provided a surer grip to the drinker than did smooth glass. “In the revelry, some dancers wore hollowed-out bread loaves as clogs. Well, desecration of bread brings down naturally the Divine wrath, so thunder-weather broke out. A serving wench tried to stop the dance, but Althornberg regarded the thunder as God’s applause and he ordered the dancers to continue, whereat a bolt of lightning set the castle ablaze. The serving wench alone survived — and is sometimes seen to this day on the roads around Steinbis.”

Dietrich countered with the story of the Convent of Titisee. “None were admitted save beautiful heiresses, who lived high on their treasure. One dark and stormy night, there fell a knock on their door during a drunken feast, and the sisters sent their newest novice to answer. Peeping out, she saw a weary old man, white of hair, who prayed lodging for the night. Not being yet corrupted, she begged Lady Abbess to give him hospitality, but the woman only drank a toast to his health and sent him away. That night, the rain flooded the valley and all in the convent were lost, save the young novice, who was rescued by a boat rowed by the old pilgrim. And that is the origin of the Titisee.”

“Makes it so?” asked Shepherd.

“Doch,” Manfred added gravely. “The story may be twice tested. First, one may peer into the depths of the lake and spy the towers of the drowned convent. The other is to dive deep into the waters. For if you dive ‘deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ you will hear the chimes of the convent bells. But none who have done so have returned — for the Titisee is bottomless.”

Later, Hans drew him aside and said, “If none have ever returned from the bottomless lake, how does one know if the bells can be heard?” But Dietrich only laughed.

“A fable is to teach a lesson,” he admonished the Krenk, “not to record a history. But mark that punishment was meted for withholding charity from a stranger, and not for some pagan superstition over bread-loaves.”

Little Irmgard had crept from the nursery, as children were wont to do when their elders feasted; but Chlotilde, her nurse, having discovered the escape, came after her and the child ran shrieking into the room, weaving among the tall forest of legs, until, glancing behind for her pursuer, she collided with Shepherd.

The leader of the pilgrims, who had earned her name because she spent much time gathering them and chivvying them about, gazed down upon the small thing that had nearly bowled her over, and a hush fell across the room. The dancers froze in their motions. Kunigund, seeing what her sister had done, said, “Oh” in a very small voice, for everyone knew of the strangers’ choleric nature.

Irmgard looked up, and then up, and her mouth dropped open. She had seen the creatures already from a distance, but this was her first close encounter. “Why…,” she said in delight, “it’s a giant grasshopper! Can you jump?”

Shepherd cocked her head slightly as her head-harness repeated the words; then, with a slight flex of the knees she leapt toward the rafters of the hall — to Irmgard’s delighted claps. At the top of her leap, Shepherd rasped her shins together, much as a man might click his heels. Before she had touched the flagstones, a second Krenk leapt also and soon several were doing so, to an arrhythmic scritching of arms and clacking of mandibles.

So, thought Dietrich, this is what passes for dance among their kind. Yet the leapers made no effort to move in concert, nor did the scratching and clacking follow a tempus.

But Irmgard’s question and Shepherd’s response had broken the quiet tension in the room. The Hochwalders began to smile as they watched the Krenk leap about, for Irmgard, too, had joined in the leaping with childish glee. Even Volkmar’s scowl softened.

Master Peter, hunting on his lute for a tune proper to the display, settled on a French motetus from The Mirror of Narcissus. It had no effect on the krenkish chaos, but did entice Eugen and Kunigund to resume the intricate and patterned dance. Peter sang, Dame, je sui cilz qui vueil endurer, and his apprentices joined in. The tambourine player took the triplum and sang the lover’s plea — lie with me or I die; while the violist took the tenor and sang the lover’s pain.

“Does it please?” Dietrich asked Hans over the private voice-canal they sometimes used with each other. “Dance is one more bond between us.”

“One more barrier. This peculiar ability of yours shows only how different we are.”

“Our peculiar ability?”

“I have no word for it. To accomplish one thing by doing many different things together. Each man sings now different words to different tunes, yet they blend in ways strange but pleasing to our ears. When you and your brother sang to welcome us on your Kermis, the pilgrims could speak of nothing else for days.”

“You do not know harmony or counterpoint?” But even as he spoke, Dietrich realized that they could not. They were a folk who knew only rhythm, for they did not breathe in the same ma

Hans indicated the krenkish leapers. “Geese without a goosehound! When the village honored the new cottages, one man hit a skin, another blew through a tube, a third squeezed air from a bladder, a fourth scraped strings with a stick. Yet all combined into a sound to which the dancers stamped their wooden shoes and slapped their leather hose -without being directed.”

“No one directs your folk now,” Dietrich said, indicating the leapers.

“And they do not leap in… ‘in concert,’ the Heinzelmä

How literally Hans meant the proverb did not become clear until the sun warmed the snow on the Epiphny of the Lord. Dietrich was wakened by Wanda, Lorenz’s wife, who dragged him down Church Hill to a hummock of snow just off the high road behind the smithy. There, a small crowd of villagers had already gathered in silence, shivering and blowing into their hands and trading uncertain glances. Lorenz said, “The alchemist is dead.”

And indeed, Arnold lay on his side in a hollow dug into the snow, folded up on himself like those ancient corpses sometimes found in timeless barrows. His nakedness startled Dietrich, as the Krenken disliked the cold even when bundled in fur. In his hand, he clutched a sheet of parchment on which were scratched krenkish word-signs.

“Wanda saw the foot protruding from the snow-bank,” Lorenz said, “and we dug him out with our bare hands.” He held out his palms, red and raw, as if Dietrich might doubt his word and ask for proof. Wanda wiped her dripping nose and looked away from the body. Gregor said, “He was gone when I awoke.”

Seppl’ Bauer smirked. “One demon less to vex us.”