Loafs of bread, rolls of varying sizes and lengths took up most of the shelving space, all left out in the open on the shelves.There wasn’t anything particularly for snacking and Alexander didn't exactly find the idea of eating a loaf of dry bread on its own very appealing. He understood why the shop was this way, it was a local village bakers so he had no doubt most of their customers bought food for their home, something to prepare later and not something to have with them on the go. The very idea of ‘snacking’ even seemed too modern for this village. He spotted on a wooden rack some freshly made sausage rolls, larger than what he’d expect to see but just the thing to tide him over. Reaching for a paper bag from the side, he picked up a roll and placed it in the bag before carrying it over to the counter.

“Excellent choice, mister.” The woman replied, writing down his purchase on a paper pad with a pencil. “That will be… 50 pence please.” She replied, pausing for a moment whilst she confirmed the correct price. Alexander was remarkably surprised by how cheap it was. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open, realising he didn't have any change or cash on him. Even if he did have cash he wasn't sure if his money was even any good here. They seemed so primitive in some respects but in others they knew that they were far behind on the times.

"You don't happen to accept card, do you?" He asked despite already knowing what the answer would be. He felt almost embarrassed that he couldn’t even buy something so cheap.

"Afraid not, mister." The girl shook her head before peering around through the wide archway behind here: looking through both sides to check if someone else was listening. "You seem like a kind gentleman, I'm sure my father wouldn't mind if I paid for it out of my own pocket." She said, literally pulling out a 50 pence coin from her pocket. It looked old, the silver coloured metal had dulled and started to turn brown.

"Thanks. I know it’s not much but if I come back through in a couple of days I'll pay you back." Alexander said as he picked up the brown paper bag from the counter.

"I appreciate that offer, mister." She replied, bending down under the counter. Alexander heard a thud as she dropped the coin in a box behind the counter, clashing with the other coins. Alexander stopped on the spot, about to turn and leave the shop he realised this would be a good opportunity to learn more about the town.

"Can you help me with a question?" Alexander asked before she stood back up in front of the counter.

"I'll try my best to answer, mister." She said, eager to help.

"Do you know why no one in this village has a left leg?"

“I don’t really know I’m afraid, mister. My father always says the town’s cursed."

"Is that some fairytale?" Alexander asked jokingly but the expression on the girls face turned serious.

"It's not a fairytale, mister!" She snapped as loudly as she could with her timid voice. "But I don't believe him that it's a curse, you understand. I see it as a sort of blessing in a way." Her mood appeared to pick up, she looked down to her feet and Alexander could only assume that she was looking at her own leg. A rhythmic tapping on the floor behind the counter confirmed this. She was smiling at the little tune she played.

"Why do you think that?" Alexander asked, snapping her out of her little moment to herself, her eyes meeting his again.

"Well, we know that no one in this town is what you'd describe as normal but here we're all the same. No one pays any attention to our ailment because we all share something in common." She folded her arms across her chest and huffed. "I hear such horrible things about the big cities, people with the smallest differences being teased for those things." She said shaking her head, as if dismissing the very idea of the things she’d heard.

"But you still have differences from one another, just like anyone else, just like the differences that people are discriminated for in the big cities." Alexander proposed, unable to sympathise with how she was feeling.

"That's true, mister, but I think it brings us together in a way that just doesn't happen in other parts of the world." She continued with glee before smacking herself on the forehead in annoyance. "Oh shoot, I didn't answer your question did I!"

"It's alright, I was just curious if there was an answer more than anything else." Alexander replied as he turned around to leave the shop, a little disappointed that he couldn’t learn more about the village before he was leaving again.

"I know someone who might be able to answer." The girl called for him as he reached the door almost like she knew what he was thinking about. "The priest at the church is a wise man, he knows a lot about this town's history. You could say it's his job to know. He'd know why this town started the way it did."

Alexander stopped and turned to face her again. "Not really a religious person to be honest.”

"Regardless, he's a wise man, mister. He taught us all there is to know about our town and why we are this way. He can explain the story better than I." She insisted. The girls spoke highly of the priest, in a respectful way, and Alexander couldn’t ignore that kind of devotion. If it meant answers to his questions it did him no harm to try at least.

“Thanks for your help, and for the food.” He said holding up the bag of food before pushing open the door. The bell rang above his head.

“I’m glad I could be of assistance, mister-” He heard from the shop just before the door shut behind him. Rolling up the top of the brown paper bag, Alexander placed his food in his briefcase realising he’d be making a detour to the church before leaving so it would be best to save it for later. The church directly opposite the entrance from the train station. It towered above him, the most important landmark in the village. Made on huge, grey stones, cobbled together to make a building. A large wooden door lead inside as Alexander pushed it open. Alexander hadn't been to a church for a very long time, and he couldn't be sure he'd ever been for a religious service of any kind. Nor him or his family were religious and to be frank the overwhelming height of the ceiling made Alexander feel insignificantly small. The pews were empty but at the far end of the room sat looking through pages was a man in a dark robe.

"Excuse me, are you the priest?" Alexander asked as he walked through the centre of the tall room. The man looked up from his papers, a noticeable frown that turned to a smile when he saw Alexander. He couldn't be completely sure but Alexander thought that the man was looking at his legs, though perhaps he was making that assumption based on how else he'd been greeted in his time in the village. The priest walked away from the pedestal at the centre of the room and sat at one of the pews on the front row.

"Come, sit with me." He said, patting the empty space next to him.

"I don't know if I'll be here for long-" Alexander began to protest before being interrupted.

"I will be as swift as I can possibly be." The priest insisted, leaving Alexander with very little choice in the matter. He walked to the front of the church and sat next to the priest, resting his briefcase against the next set along. This close, with a clear view of him, he could see the wrinkles on the man's tired face. He wasn't old but he looked aged with experience. His wooden leg was much different than the other people he's seen, it looked as though it had come from the leg of an organ; decorated with markings along it's curved shape. It seemed like it was of much better quality than anyone else’s he’d seen, as if he were more important than others and thus had a better left leg. Some things never change. Alexander realised what he was doing, again, and looked up at the man.

"Sorry, I shouldn't stare."

"It's quite alright my child, you are a visitor and we can't pretend that we are anything close to what you might consider normal." The priest said with a chuckle, finding the humour in it. "And just as I will forgive you for staring you surely will forgive me for the same, as you must understand that to all of us this is what we've known our entire lives." He continued as he gestured a hand around the room. Alexander realised, following his hand as it panned around the room, that it wasn't just the priest or anyone else in the town with wooden legs. Across all the windows of the church and the statues carved into the stone every single figure had a wooden leg. It didn't appear to be as though they'd replaced the legs of traditional biblical figures, there was no sign of Jesus Christ on a cross with a wooden leg, it looked as though the people depicted in the church were all from this village. The windows looked as though they were a record of the villages history and the statues of important people with ornate legs.

"Do you know why everyone in this village is missing their left leg?" Alexander wasted no time in asking the question. It had peaked his interest since he arrived but he’d only heard vague answers and suggestions for reasons but nothing definitive. A warm smile spread across the priests cheeks.

"Just so it happens, I do. I can show you too." He spoke with enthusiasm as he sprung to his feet and walked towards the far end of the room. Alexander followed, though not with nearly as much keenness. The priest stopped in the middle of the aisle, closest to the door, and looked up at one of the windows. "Long ago, our town was plagued with a sickness. Not a sickness of the body or the mind but a sickness of the soul." He gestured to the window, pointing out with an outstretched hand the images that appeared to depict what he was describing. Alexander recognised the setting in the depiction, it was the courtyard outside. The tree in the centre surrounded by all the buildings. They barely looked any different in the window than they did if he were to step outside at this moment. People crowded the courtyard and they all had one thing in common, dark hands in a deep purple that sprouted between the cobbles gripped tightly around their left legs. Alexander couldn’t tell if the hand was following them or leading them.

"The old God had forsaken us, forsaken all of humanity, and a new Daemon took his place. Holding onto us by the left leg." The priest moved past Alexander and gestured to the next window along.

"But!” He began with a hopeful spur in his voice. “A New God brought us salvation!" There was a sense of pride in his voice but Alexander couldn’t help but feel duped. He’d come for answers and instead it seemed as though he received yet more fairy tales. If the reason for all of this turned out to be some kind of divine intervention then he would find it very hard to take seriously. In his right mind he should have been prepared for this, the man was the village priest after all, but he’d thought that he might have had a little better knowledge of the history of the village beyond stories of gods and daemons.

“The New God gave us the will to cast aside the left leg of everyone in our town, a cure to our sickness, and the safety that this cure would pass to our children and their children throughout generations.” Alexander was confused. He thought that this church was a traditional christian church but talk of a new God sounded like something completely different. Something that a more traditional church would probably dismiss as blasphemous. The village was so remote, so far from most of civilisation, Alexander was almost unsurprised that they were quite radical in their beliefs.

“So it’s a good thing that you don’t have a left leg anymore?” Alexander asked, clarifying that he’d understood the story correctly. The priest nodded with a smile.

“It is a sign that I am free of the grip the daemon holds on all humanity.” He placed a hand on his chest with pride, taking one step forward with his left leg as if boasting to Alexander. For once, it felt like Alexander was being asked to specifically look at the mans leg.

“Then why do some people in your village call it a curse?" Alexander asked, unsure how anyone who’d lived here would come to that conclusion if this man was teaching them his so called truth.

“People have decided to call it whatever they like.” The priest continued, sitting down on the end of the pew closest to him. Alexander wasn’t too happy with that answer. It felt like there was more to the story that he wasn’t being told, that people in the village had made their minds up about what this ‘curse’ was and they didn’t seem to align with the story that the priest had decided was the truth.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” The priest asked directly, shaking his head disapprovingly. Alexander thought for a moment, not wanting to offend the man he decided to choose his words carefully.

“I’m sorry but, being honest, no. Though I don’t really believe in any of this.” Alexander replied with a wider gesture to the room. The windows, the statues, the stories, the whole church, the idea alone of a structured and organised belief system in the form of a religion was a little outside of Alexander’s moral compass. “I’m not here to tell you what to believe but I was hoping for something a little more certain than a story. Do you not have any historical documents? Books? Accounts from people who were alive then?” Alexander asked, looking for any evidence that might be able to prove what he was being told. Not that he wanted to be proven it was true more than he wanted to know the priest hadn’t just made the whole thing up.

“Of course, we have records dating back to the abandonment of the old God, record of the events as described. But that won’t satisfy you enough to believe us, will it?”

Alexander shook his head.

“Then I’m afraid you will never be satisfied. No one will be able to tell you what exactly happened as if they were there on that day, we can only tell you what we’ve been told by those who were there hundreds of years ago.“

“In your story, you said all of humanity were forsaken by the old God.”

“Yes. Including you.” The priest stood up and walked uncomfortably close to Alexander. “Can you feel it?” He asked, eyes locked with Alexander.

“I’ve never ‘felt’ God in my life, priest.” Alexander began to explain, feeling like he was repeating himself, before being interrupted.

“No.” He snapped. “Around your leg.” The priest looked down at Alexander’s left leg, his sight unwavering as Alexander quivered slightly at the uncomfortable interaction.