Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Ten
The groundskeeper’s son, whose name Felecia still did not know came over to the nest of old trees Felecia had found to call home that third morning carrying a few folded items tied up in twine. The boy was thin and sullen, he never looked up but always down at his own feet. He was wearing the exact same clothes then as he always seemed to wear, grey muddy canvas overalls over a brown baggy, long sleeved sweater. A pale green fisher’s hat pushed down over his eyes and ears, hiding most of his face. He dropped the bundle on the dry leaves Felecia had just finished sleeping on and dropped a pair of old boots that were just as much mud as leather down on top of it all.
“Pa said you needed field clothes; he’s making me give you these. They don’t fit me anymore; they were my brothers. I wore them when I was your age.”
The boy didn’t wait for a response and didn’t seem to want one but Felecia learned long ago to observe the polite discourse of the day or reap Nana’s whirlwind otherwise. “Thank you, these look very warm.”
“Don’t thank me!” The boy shouted for a moment and then stopped and deliberately turned back to Felecia as he tried to calm himself. “Thank my Pa. It was his choice. I would have kept them so as to remember my brother by.”
Later that day as Felecia joined the groundskeeper while he checked and set traps, she thanked him for the new and better suited clothes and only got a shrug in response. The groundskeeper wasn’t an anomaly among the villagers, they seemed a universally dour and angry bunch, unaccustomed to complements and niceties and seemingly offput by them.
Four more days would pass before the groundskeeper showed up on the sabbath day with a thick bundle of yearling branches and heaped and dried thatch besides. The late summer rain came early and hard that year and it had left Felecia without so much as a square foot of space in her little encampment that was dry outside the direct radius of a constantly sputtering fire. He showed her how to build a proper lean too with a roof and also how to set up a proper stone ring, sunk into the earth, to help keep her meager, smokey fires doing at night.
“Thank you for this. I thought I would never be dry ever again.” The groundskeeper grunted and nodded, the closest thing to acceptance of a compliment any of the villagers seemed to accept but Felecia didn’t feel that was enough given her suddenly warm and dry surroundings. “Please, if you don’t mind, can I have your name, something to call you, besides groundskeeper.”
The groundskeeper stopped and turned around, much like he had before, “We all have names out here beyond the mansion, more and also less than our titles. Call me Phillip, at least for now that’ll do.”
“Thank you, Phillip, so much. My name…”
Phillip cut Felecia off then, sounding suddenly distant and also dismissive, “Is Felecia Conway of the Innsmouth Conways, youngest of her lineage, formally residing in Rotary house, estate to the family name.”
Felecia tried to shrug off the inane formality, “Well, surely not anymore…”
Phillip was quick to cut her off once more, “Always that and yes. Dressed down and worked hard but still, the latest lady of Rotary house.”
Felecia found herself suddenly unsteady and unsure once again as she stared at the green bows above her busy keeping the rain at bay. “I’m one of you now, one of the villagers. I’ll surely inherit nothing when Nana passes.”
Phillip was quick to dismiss those words and shake his head. “The old witch’s final wish is one thing, her decrees ignored once she’s so much ash offered up to the wind. Everyone here in the village will see you for what you are when that time comes, no matter what.”
Felecia looked down at the fresh blisters on her hands and the meager surroundings of her newly water tight surroundings before she thought to respond to Phillip’s words. “Then why teach me to trap and hunt and build huts? If I can never be one of you then am I merely to wait in leisure for my grandmother’s demise?”
Phillip stood steady and kept his eyes wide open, clear and wet, and most of all earnest as he spoke to the girl standing before him. “No, not to wait at all. You can choose to accept and lead everyone here together someday, but that will take a lot of learning and surely more time spent out here with us all.”