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Oh but they came in the middle of the night and there was nothing for it. I was all tangled up in the sheets and half-blinded by their lights and I couldn’t reach my axe. I don’t have to tell you, Nessa, what a different story it would’ve been had I gotten to my axe. You remember that time old Colm from down the valley broke our thresher and wouldn’t admit to it? Didn’t I put the fright about him, cutting down his door in a couple of blows? Didn’t that shrill woman of his squeal and squeal, the one who’s always hanging around the stockyard protesting against the alters? As if the animal cares if it’s a pig or a bull or an ox, so long as it’s getting a trough full of slop and fattening nicely.

Well they dragged me out of the bed and I can only say how glad I am you were with Rory that night. I know he’s not growing so well out there in the glade, but the luck comes and goes for us all. Tell him I saw the pictures you drew and the greenshoots need meridian work. A needle on the dígail line just below the navel and another in the armpit. Tell him he’s a good man and that if soon you’ll have only one husband left, I’m glad enough it’s him.

It was two of the magistrate’s yes-men, Toal and Teige. They were blight-stunted and by the midnight light their faces looked as crippled as their blackened bodies. Warped, horrible things. “You’ve done it this time”, Toal said, and they held me up and socked me. Big, gleeful blows on the ribs and blood-blotches rose up instantly. I’d Given that morning and my skin was transparent as can be.

They marched me down to the gathering-house, muttering between themselves all the way in that inscrutable dialect of theirs. Inside they lashed me to the center-pole. “Your trial is at noon”, Toal said, and off they sauntered. You and I have been in the gathering-house so much over the years it’s almost a second home, but spending all night there in the dark, half-sitting, half-standing, is a different story. The place feels small with fifty people crammed inside, but empty the darkness is vast, and the slightest noise hints at unseen terrors. It must have been youth group the day before. They’d left all the toys scattered around the floor, and their half-seen forms watched me all night, revealing themselves harmless only with the advent of a sleepless dawn.

Through the slats of the roof the sun cast slowly-shifting lines along the floor, and my legs burned and wrists chafed against the rope. I cursed a while, as only I can, but I knew not a soul could hear.

The magistrate came in just before noon, rubbing her eyes, right about when the post-Giving hunger started to twist my stomach into knots. Through the main double-door, muffled conversations had started up as the summoned crowd gathered expectantly. Our neighbours, Nessa. Braying and stamping for blood.

“Niamh,” I croaked, “I haven’t a clue what I’m accused of.”

In the filtered light she was so translucent that her meridian lines were barely visible. Say what you will about our magistrate, but she’s always Given the most. It can’t be healthy. Thick, grey muscles, clearly visible through her skin, worked themselves over as she kept two paces away.

“’Magistrate’, not Niamh,” she said. “This will be a formal proceeding.”

“But what have I done?”

She just looked at me with dim, deep-set eyes, then motioned at the doors. Toal and Teige sidled over to them and lifted the bar. Noise blossomed. In filed our town, or rather, all those of voting age who couldn’t beg off. Well I’ll tell you what, Nessa, I don’t recognise half of them anymore. They’re all marked with meridians, sure, but what family are they from? Name their mothers and fathers, I’ll bet you can’t. And half of them unclothed, in that fashion the magistrate is so proud of.

Oh but they surrounded me and the rumble quieted and ugly hatred marked so many faces. The magistrate began to speak, but just as she began the opening prayer there was a rending shriek. A woman pushed through the crowd, a rough pelt wrapped around her shoulders and snot pouring from her nose. It was Róise, daughter of Eoin, Leary, and Norah. You and her used to visit a lot, right after those husbands of hers skipped town. Well she could barely stand, and leaning on her daughter’s shoulder she spat at me. “He took my boys!” she shrieked, and her mouth stayed open but what came out was unintelligible, a horrible keening. The magistrate tried to calm her down but finally had to ask Teige to take her outside. He touched her arm uncertainly, then, after she shoved him off, he grabbed her with some force. As they left the gathering-house her wailing could still be heard and the crowd shifted like altered cattle when the pressure drops before a storm.

The magistrate finished the prayer. In that big hall her frail voice could barely be heard, and the crowd pressed in to better hear. The gist of her words was this: I was accused by Róise of killing her two twin boys, who had last been seen three days ago, down the river by my fenceline casting stones. When they never returned home and the search party turned up naught, she prayed for them down at the weir-tree and received a vision. She saw me cut their throats.

The magistrate seemed to relish this lurid account, and dwelt on all the gory details. “Cut their throats,” she repeated softly, shaking her head. Clearly she sought to stir up the crowd, and by the shallowness of their breathing it was working. Old Niel was near hyperventilating, sitting on that stool of his.

“And so our Róise has called this council and charged Keel with murder,” she finished. “If anyone wishes to speak on the charge, I open the floor.”

“I’ve not done a thing,” I protested. Instinctively I went to stand, but the rope around my waist tipped me back and down. “Three days ago I was with Ailish, she’ll tell you.” I searched the pressing faces but I was so low to the ground I could see only the front row.

“I’ll remind you,” the magistrate said, “that the accused is not permitted to speak at council.” Toal and Tiege moved to stand tightly beside me, pressing their legs into my bruised ribs.

The magistrate gestured at the crowd, palms open.

“I’ll speak,” the voice was gruff and sneering. “Keel is a sick and violent man. We all know it.”

Wouldn’t you believe it, it was that liar Colm.

“Just last week he set upon me and my wife with his axe. Come round, I’ll show you the splintered door. There’s not a doubt in my mind he killed those boys.”

“Tell the truth!” I spat, “You’d broken—”

A kick from Toal cut me off. On Colm rambled, enjoying his spotlight.

Where was Ailish? Where were any of my wives? Finally I spotted Ailish and Caitlìn a row back among the leering faces. You know how Ailish has been lately, and didn’t she look cold. She’ll never forgive me for taking on another wife. You were always more understanding that way. But she can’t deny she’s found a soft spot for Caitlìn anyway. There she was with her big arm thrown around the poor girl’s neck, rubbing the soft skin of her shoulder with a blank expression. Caitlìn looked terrified, her legs pressed close together and her arms shaking, crossed tightly to her chest. Who could blame her? The conditions she lived in before we took her in, well. Her father didn’t even Give. Never has. He still lived in a home built of bricks.

With the sting of Toal’s boot still in my mind I pleaded with my eyes for Ailish to come to my defence. But she just looked right back at me, expressionless, like she was watching a dog begging, and not a man. Like how I remember it, anyway, from back before we Gave away all the dogs.

The magistrate asked again if anyone would speak in my defence. The silence tittered. All those beady eyes looked down on me with malice. The baker’s youngest wife, there in the front row. Last week I fixed her bedroom wall after it came into blight. And I taught more than one of the hot-blooded young men looming around me how to play the meridians. See what loyalty gets you now.

“I suppose that settles it then. Guilty, by the rules of this gathering. And death the only appropriate penalty.”

There were smiles in the crowd, Nessa. Big grins. They didn’t even try to hide it.

“Hold on, Niamh.”

From the crowd emerged a tall woman, her face lined and pock-marked. She was wearing an elaborate outfit of layered shawls and coloured beads, a startling sight in contrast to all the unclothed bodies surrounding her.

“Am I forgetting something? Do we not require a consensus on sentencing any more?”

It was Saoirse. You remember her, right? I don’t know the last time she came into town. Not since the election of the magistrate all those years ago. After a loss like that, I’m not surprised she’s been keeping to herself in that little flowered hut. Still, she was always a kind one.

The magistrate, for her part, looked peeved. “Have you come to speak in the murderer’s favour, then? You always did prefer the losing side”.

“The crime has nothing to do with it. Involuntary Giving is immoral.”

“I don’t accept that,” the magistrate replied, “but it’s beside the point. This is a practical matter. Those two boys were just seven years old. A whole lifetime of Giving, cut short. Whose house shall we let wither and die without their nutrients? Yours? Or we could let the sweetgrapes fail like they did two summers ago, and go back to rationing.”

At this the crowd muttered. There were too many graves that summer. I well remember the smell of freshly turned dirt being worked over by the Giving vines.

Saoirse held up a hand to quell the noise, and looked a little shaken when it had no effect. “There was a time,” she said, “when this town understood mutual aid.”

Raising her voice, she continued. “I don’t like Keel one bit. But if you kill him, it hurts us all. Don’t forget he’s the best meridian-worker we’ve got. We’ll end up Giving two, three times a week instead of one, just to make up for lost efficiency.”

“We’ll manage,” shouted Colm, that pig head of his smiling ghoulishly.

“Will you take on my wives then, Colm?” I shouted. “Your kids are skeleton enough already.”

You know me, Nessa, sometimes I can’t help myself. It took both Toal and Tiege to hold Colm back, and he nearly got to me, the rat.

“Yes, what of his wives?” Saoirse asked. She peered through the crowd. “Is that you, Caitlìn? Come out here.”

When Caitlìn failed to move, Saoirse repeated herself. “Come on, it’s alright.”

Ailish pushed her gently forwards, whispering in her ear. Caitlìn stopped just over the threshold of the encircling crowd, too terrified to go any further. She looked so pale and pretty there, Nessa, pulled up into herself, her arms still tightly crossed. Those beautiful meridian lines in pink and purple snaking up her thighs and stomach. Some of my best work.

“Don’t shake, little bird,” Saoirse said, walking over to her. “Tell us. Would you get on alright without Keel?”

Caitlìn was frozen, her mouth pressed into a worried line. She blinked twice and then looked down, shaking her head. Good girl.

“You condemn one,” Saoirse said, looking pointedly at the magistrate, “You condemn all.”

“You said it yourself, we were founded on mutual aid,” said the magistrate, recovering herself. “Any of us here would be happy to take on—”

Sensing a chance to escape, Caitlìn had made to re-enter the fold of the crowd, but found it difficult to pass. Trailing off mid-sentence, the magistrate frowned and tilted her head to the side. She was staring at that pale body as if it were a puzzle to work over.

“A moment,” she said, and she put a hand on Caitlìn’s shoulder, spun her back towards me, and walked her out into the middle of the circle. With the unexpected force Caitlìn stumbled and nearly fell.

“Unfold your arms,” the magistrate commanded.

In response Caitlìn pulled them even tighter to her chest, refusing to meet the magistrate’s eye. Toal and Tiege stepped forward. The magistrate whispered in Saoirse’s ear, and a flicker of pain crossed her face.

“It’s alright,” Saoirse said, “Unfold your arms.”

Caitlìn shook her head, glancing down at me with her pale blue eyes and then quickly away.

“Open them,” Saoirse repeated, harshly.

And so Caitlìn did, and up the inside of each arm ran blue and black bruises like muddled leaves. She stood there sobbing, big full-body heaves, until Ailish pushed through the crowd and led her gently from the circle.

“I’m not so sure,” the magistrate said, dragging the moment out, “that they are better off with Keel than without.”

No-one else spoke up. Even Saoirse refused to meet me in the eyes. See how quickly her principles vanished. How she had no issues letting the magistrate parade Caitlìn around as a prop. No-one said much of anything after that. Cowards, the lot of them, who’ve forgotten the old ways.

Now I sit tied to a pole in an emptied gathering-house, writing this last letter to you. Who would’ve thought it possible in this village? Sentenced to death. All these people who I once called friends have no idea what they’ve condemned me to. I’m not sure you do, either, executions now being so rare. Well, I work with a lot of travellers, passing through, and they bring stories enough for anyone. There was a fellow once came from Claree, years ago now. He told me all about the execution there.

Here’s what’s going to happen: I’ll be taken out to the Giving plot and tied down in the loam by my hands and feet. Like an animal. Then they’ll set the vines on me. But it’s not like Giving, not at all. They don’t sip a little from the crook of the elbow or the knee, all controlled. You’ve never seen how the vines can really move. They’ll snare me, they’ll snake up into my mouth and nostrils and choke me. The thin ones will run up my prick or puncture my skin to get into my veins. They’ll take it all. Everything. And that will be the end of Keel.

All over a goddamn lie. I never murdered those boys.

Oh but I did hurt them, Nessa. I suppose I needn’t deny it, now. They were nasty boys. You and I could always see a mean streak in Róise. She laughed too hard at others’ misfortune. Her boys were the same, down by the river. Casting stones and watching them skip along the mucky water wasn’t enough. They had to start aiming at the fence. Sharp stones, too, like razors, and they sliced into the flesh of it. I felt each of the cuts twinge along my meridians, on my chest and my feet. Was I supposed to scold them? Drag them to their mother by the ear?

You know that pain has always blinded me. I’m not too proud to admit that I’m a flawed man. So I surprised those boys and grabbed them by the necks and hauled them to the station-stone, out in the woods. I laid them out on the stone and took out my fish-knife and I cut them right back. Only the slightest of cuts, but I know meridians well, and I put the knife in all the right places. No lasting damage, but they’d remember the lesson forever. There I left them, long after they could no longer speak. As to what happened afterwards, I can hardly be blamed. As far as I’m concerned they received equal retribution. Maybe they were taken by an animal or lost themselves in those woods and never came back.

I hurt them. But I never murdered those boys.

Oh and I’ll miss you, Nessa. We had our troubles but you always stood by me. Not like Ailish and Caitlìn, who didn’t so much as glance backwards when they left the gathering-house. Me, their husband, half-sitting, half-standing there, a condemned man, and not a glance. Just like this place now, isn’t it?

I know how you love your candles in the garden, burning all evening on the worry-stones. I know I haven’t always been a good man. But, Nessa, will you light one tonight for me?