THE BURNING FIELD

Janie Cobweb first saw the light of day in December 2007, when i was writing a blog for another well known blogging site called MYSPACE, due to popular demand i found myself writing a whole series of related blogs, almost 30 in number and since then i have reworked them and issued them as a paper back book available to purchase on lulu.com.

What follows here are faithful renditions of the original blogs and not those published.







The Village Burning (chapter 2)



THE VILLAGE BURNING

There probably comes a time in every man 's life when he wishes he'd done something else.
Artie Archer felt like that as he was led unceremoniously onto the burning field. Even though the flames had not as yet been kindled he fancied he could feel them singeing his skin and converting his hair to stinking dust.
"I don't understand why you're doing this to me," he muttered to Billy of the Big Belly. "After all, I've tried to make a goodness out of my life and live according to the highest ideals of a writer, and here you are charging off with me to the burning field with the express intention of converting my lovely red blood into ashes!"
"You shouldn't have done it, lad," replied Billy of the Big Belly out of the corner of his mouth, trying to look as if he wasn't saying anything because having apparently friendly discussions with the condemned would do him very little good if his role in the ceremony was ever to be debated in a Court of Law.
"I've done nothing!" exclaimed Artie, ringing his hands and sweating. "All I've done is write innocent fairy stories to entertain the children with! It's not as if I've been occupied programming violent Playstation games like some spend their lives doing!"
"You wrote that little thing about the fairy with the broken wings, and it melted my Alicia into a puddle, so don't you go coming the innocent with me!" snarled Billy, suddenly changing moods. "When a favourite lady suddenly becomes a puddle and, mark these words, and trickles down the guttering and into a drain, a fellow can't help thinking he's got a burning grudge!"
"But your Alicia was an ice-maiden!" protested Artie, shocked that he should be blamed for something as innocuous as a lump of ice melting on a summer's day. "You always knew she would melt! You told me loads of times how it would break your heart when you no longer found yourself waking up cold and freezing damp in the morning after she'd spent a night in your bed!"
"She was reading your rubbish when it happened, so you're to blame!" Billy was adamant and Artie could see there was nothing he might say that would change things.
"Here we are!" scowled Billy.
Artie looked around him. A fair-sized crowd had gathered, men and women and children, all of them baying for blood. He knew there was a huge appetite for burnings in the community. The smallest children were brought up to look forward to their first one, and old gaffers and their hag-like wives told many a tale of memorable burnings from the past. It was a custom for everyone to gather round in eager anticipation, and cheer themselves hoarse as the first flames were kindled, and proceed to go crazy as the tongues of fire licked against quivering flesh.
"Now you just stand here so I can tie you to the stake all good and proper," snarled Billy. "It's most important that I tie you real tightly or you might get away when the flames get really hot, licking against your tender flesh and scorching it!"
"It doesn't seem fair to me," muttered Artie. "All I ever did was try to write good things and lead the children down a righteous path so they could grow into bold citizens."
"That's not what Daisy-Rose says," muttered Billy.
"Daisy-Rose who?" asked Artie, straining his memory and failing to find any kind of Daisy-Rose anywhere in it.
"Daisy-Rose the Butcher's cat," replied Billy with a strange look in his eyes. "I loved that cat, I did! It came round my house almost every day, sniffing in my underpants drawer and purring at me every time I stroked it! And then it read that story of yours, the one about a princess who could detect a pea through a dozen thick feather mattresses and changed beyond all recognition right there and then, and before you could say Jack Robinson there it was, lying on the road ready for the coalman to run over it with his lorry, and sure as sure that coalman did: he couldn't help it! Wept about it, he did, wept long and loud and couldn't be more sorry that he'd killed poor old Daisy-Rose!"
"Cats can't read!" admonished Artie. "They don't even pretend they can read! They just play with balls of string, chase mice and bring half-dead sparrows into the house as presents! They don't have anything to do with reading! And anyway that butcher's cat was half dead five years ago! It was so old it should have been dead back then let alone sniffing at your boxers last week!"
"Right! I'll hear no more of this Nancy-boy talk!" snarled Billy of the Big Belly. "It's time this village was treated to a good burning! Why, if you were to have your way we wouldn't have one, and then there'd be a rebellion! There'd be callings for someone else to be burned and that someone else'd probably be me!"
"Better you than me," observed Artie.
"None of that kind of rebellious talk!" shouted Billy. "We can't have back-chat of that general sort, that we can't! It's treason, plain and simple! You're to be burnt and that's that! It'll be fun for the children. Just think of them before you go off talking like you just did like some simple-minded traitor!"
"Who'll write their stories once I'm burned?" asked Artie. "Who'll provide little tales to entertain them during cold winter nights?
"They'll have none of stuff like stories!" shouted Billy. "Instead they'll have fighting on them there Playstation devices, and shootings and hangings and murderings! They'll have what they really want and not the mamby-pamby witterings you call stories!"
"Oh. Then you'd better burn me," muttered Artie. "I couldn't possibly live in the kind of world that doesn't allow stories."
So Billy tied him to the stake. He was most careful to make sure he used only the strongest flex from the Electrical shop, and he bound it round and round Artie until he looked more like a ball of wire than a writer.
"How does that feel?" he asked.
"Tight," replied Artie.
"Just as it should be!" nodded Billy of the Big Belly. "Right then! Where's the matches?"
"In my pocket," replied Artie. "My back pocket," he added helpfully.
"Damned daft place to keep them!" roared Billy, and he struggled to force his hand through the rolls of cable that he'd only just tied as tight as he could round his victim, searching for a back pocket.
"I wasn't thinking they'd be needed for a burning," snarled Artie. "I bought them to light pink candles on my niece's birthday cake, not to set light to a bonfire, with me in the middle of it!"
Eventually Billy reached into Artie's back pocket and slowly he withdrew a box of matches.
They were red-topped matches, which was good so far as Billy was concerned, and they were damp matches, which was equally bad from his perspective.
"They're wet!" he shouted. "The matches are wet!" and to prove his point he struck one on the box and it didn't as much as spark.
"Of course they are," muttered Artie. "I just weed myself. I had to. There weren't any regular toilet facilities when you tied me up and anyway a man who's about to be burned might tend to wee himself."
"You're a disgrace!" snarled Billy of the Big Belly. "You're the kind of lowly person who deserves to be burned!" Then he turned to the crowd who, by this time had become a multitude and bellowed "Anyone got any matches? This fool has wet his!"
First one then a second and then a third person produced a box of matches and waved them in the air.
"Cost you a tenner," said the first person.
"I'll take a fiver," volunteered the second.
"You can have mine for a pound," grated the third, a swarthy man with a boil that needed lancing on his neck. So Billy smiled at him, produced a pound coin and took the third man's matches.
Then he struck one of them held the glowing sliver of wood aloft.
The crowed started cheering and roaring.
All of them to a man and a woman roared encouragement.
Everyone in that field except for Janie Cobweb aged five, and she took one step forwards until her little head was right up to Billy of the Big Belly. Then she fixed him with her innocent, pure eyes, her skin like newly-woven satin, and she said in a loud clear voice,
"What you waiting for you daft pillock! Get that timber burning before it's night and I'm sent off to bed!"
And the entire crowd roared again, and Billy of the Big Belly struck another match.