Hellen strained against the plough, carving a furrow from the hard, dry ground. Reflexively, he tried to goad his oxen, but they were not there. He was pushing the plough by himself.
Not that he was complaining. Since he received his Gift, his farm’s productivity had tripled. He was growing more grain, his fowl were laying more, larger eggs, and the last hog he had slaughtered had produced the most delicious ham. Pushing the plow without the help of oxen was hard work, but it was well within his capabilities now.
His wife, Tamor, did not understand. She was frightened by what he had become, and stayed in the house most of the time while he worked. Hellen got the impression that she was feeling inadequate against his new-found energy and vigour.
He finished the final furrow of this particular field. Tomorrow, he would open a new field. But for now he needed to get the seed sown. Leaving the plough where it was – he would be able to haul it to the new field tomorrow – he returned to the barn to fetch the sack of seed. It was almost as large as he was. He hefted it easily onto his back and returned to the newly-ploughed field.
Standing at the end of the first furrow, he put the sack on the ground, opened the top and withdrew a handful of the tiny grains. He threw them into the air and watched as they were caught up by the mysterious violet line and distributed evenly down the furrow. He stepped to the next furrow and did it again. The violet line was faultless. He didn’t know how, but it seemed to know exactly what he needed to do. Right now, it was planting seed. Tomorrow, the violet line would be hauling stumps out of the ground in preparation for opening a new field. The next day, it would probably be helping him to birth a calf.
Only four hundred and ninety-eight more furrows to go, he thought to himself as he looked out over the vast flatlands that he had turned into fields.
He was somewhere around furrow two hundred and twenty – he wasn’t exactly sure because he had lost count – when he saw it. The ground boiled. A patch of ground about fifty feet away was roiling and bubbling as though there were a pocket of air below, pushing its way to the surface. Hellen had never seen dirt boil before, so after hurling the latest handful of grain into the air for the violet line to distribute, he moved closer.
He stopped about fifteen feet from the patch of boiling ground. Something was climbing up out of the ground in front of him, as though out of a hole. Though the ground still boiled, it certainly was not a hole. It was like a person in form. It had two arms, though they were long and wiry and ended in four-clawed hands. It had two legs, bowed and muscled like an athlete’s. Its head…
It was more like a parody of a head. A terrible, nightmarish parody. Its eyes were large and bloodshot. Its mouth was small and puckered. It had no nose to speak of. And there was a straight and sharp-looking horn growing from the middle of its forehead. Dirt fell from its limbs as it stared at Hellen. For his part, Hellen stared back. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was more like the children’s stories. Demons from under the ground to destroy all of the Upraised. For a moment he wondered if the stories could possibly have been true.
The creature took a step forward, planting one flattened foot in front of the other, leaning most of its weight there. It twisted its mouth oddly. With sudden clarity, Hellen realised that this was the creature’s version of a smile. Hesitantly, Hellen smiled back. He started to raise one hand in greeting.
The creature bowed a little. The horn burst from its head, leaving a gaping and bloody hole, and embedded itself deep into Hellen’s chest.
Hellen coughed and looked down at the foot-long horn protruding from his body. The creature leaped at him and proceeded to tear him to pieces.
Hours later, at sunset, his wife finally emerged from the house to see why he hadn’t come home, and found his remains. She didn’t stop screaming until the morning.
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