On his way back from the latest song hunt, Poliphilos decided to take the scenic route through the countryside.
The late autumn afternoon light painted the fields in warm hues. Birds chirped and butterflies danced among the flowers. In the distance, a church bell rang out a wedding, while the air carried the sweet scent of apple pie from somewhere unseen.
Poliphilos was humming an old childhood hymn of his:
“Poliphilos took a spade and gave the soil a dig. And when he saw what he had done, his vines began to jig.”
“Now THOSE were some fine vines!”, he mused by himself.
Satisfied with his demonic loot, Poliphilos continued to compose “World Renewed” in his head and didn’t notice how the landscape around him had begun to change.
The birds had stopped singing, replaced by the occasional crow staring silently from the branches. Scarecrows started to appear in the fields, their presence eerie in the growing stillness.
Suddenly, Poliphilos found himself in the center of a village.
The houses had seen better days, but it was the signs that caught his attention:
“Adulz sin!”, “Kids rule!”, “Stay pure!” and “Godz watching.”
He snapped out of his reverie.
“Well, whaddya know? I’m here again!” he thought to himself. “How did I miss the clues?”
There was no time to ponder as he saw the first figures emerging from behind the buildings.
Children.
Ragged.
The oldest no more than eighteen, most much younger.
“Kids,” Poliphilos started, “You’re still here? We’ve been through this already!”
“Yes, but they want more,” the oldest one said.
“That may be, but I’m no use to you. I made a deal.”
“We’ll see.”
Curious, he allowed the children to lead him to the clearing and even volunteered to be tied to the crossbar. They waited as the evening deepened.
And indeed, a few hours later a form began to rise from the field, bulking up to the sky. Greenish, with football-sized red eyes. As it made its final approach, two meters before the strike, it froze, stopped by an invisible wall.
The children jumped up, never having seen anything like it.
The creature tried again, with the same result.
“Kids, like I told you…”
“Shut up!” the oldest one snapped.
For the better part of an hour, the creature tried to attack Poliphilos in various ways, but he knew it was futile. The children grew restless.
“Call her! SHE who walks behind the rows! She’ll fix this!”
“Oh!” Poliphilos thought. “There’s another one?”
And there sure was. It was as if from a Shakespearean play.
Slowly it emerged from behind the apple trees.
REALLY scrawny, dressed all in black and with its long gray hair pointing every possible direction it wasn’t a pretty sight.
“Must be Scottish,” Poliphilos mused.
For a week, he endured their attempts, but even without his deal, these two creatures weren’t particularly high-achieving.
Both were quite underdeveloped, Class 3 creatures at best. The asag had absolutely no idea what it was doing, and the annis? Her mind was in chaos, her skin just beginning to show its first blue tones.
Negotiating with either was useless. Also, Poliphilos felt sorry for the kids, having planned to run their show with these two idiots.
“Good luck with that…”
So, Poliphilos did what he’d done twice before—once on Perdido Beach, and then in Chicago. He broke the chains, stepped down, banished the creatures, called the local police, and while waiting, addressed the children:
“Kids, this has to stop. Hate the system all you want, but you’re better off there than out here on your own.”
As he drove away, watching the sirens approach, Poliphilos thought all this would make a nice song for the coming Halloween.
“Messenger!” he called, and in a swoosh, the messenger appeared in the passenger seat.
“Note this down: ‘He who walks behind the rows, who makes you make the calls…’”
“I’m sure His Highness wouldn’t mind me borrowing His title for mine,” Poliphilos thought.
“He still owes me one, too.”
So, that’s how Poliphilos found “He who walks behind the rows”.
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