William Nicholson - The Wind on Fire Trilogy - Firesong

‘You may sit and shiver in your shed, sir. I shall be in my bed.’

‘In your bed, eh?’

‘My bed will be such a bed! Up on each side, and down in the middle, and fluffy as a nest! I shall lie in my nest like an egg, and my poor legs will never ache again.’

‘Just lie there, will you, ma’am? And do nothing all the long day?’

‘I might get up and eat a little this and that around noon, and stand on the porch and nod to my neighbours, and wish them good day. Then it’s back to my bed.’

Silman Pillish, stumping along beside the wagon, told Seldom Erth about the school he would set up in the homeland. Seldom Erth showed no signs of wanting to hear this, but nor did he object, and this was permission enough for Pillish.

‘In my school, the lessons will be a service to the children, not a burden. They’ll come to me, you see, and tell me what they wish to learn – for example, a song to sing together – you never forget the songs you learn as a child, don’t you agree?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Seldom Erth.

‘I’ll say, Ah, I can help you there! Then I’ll teach them a song – perhaps “The Hen and her Chicks”.’

He sang a line of the song in an unexpectedly sweet voice.

‘Where have you gone, little chicks, little chicks? Oh! oh! and oh!’

These last exclamations were, it seemed, the lost chicks reappearing from behind Pillish.

‘So you see, they’ll come willingly to school. Yes, our homeland school will be a happy place. They’ll love their teacher too, don’t you think?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Seldom Erth.

Mumpo strode along at the head of the marchers, dreaming no dream of the homeland. The little girls had left him, and he must be alert, watching out for danger; and anyway, he had no dream any more. He glanced back down the line, and let his eyes rest for a moment on Kestrel, who was walking with Sisi. For as long as he could remember he had loved Kestrel. He knew every line of that agile high-boned face, every mood of those restless eyes. But Kestrel did not love him. He accepted this, feeling it to be natural and fitting. Who was he, that Kestrel should love him? But without her, what was left? It was as if a hole had been cut out of the future. So he went on his way in a kind of puzzlement, not grieving, but without any real hope of happiness to come.

Kestrel was unaware that Mumpo had looked back and watched her. She was concerned about Sisi.

‘You should be eating more,’ she told her. ‘We have a long way to go.’

‘There isn’t much food left,’ said Sisi quietly. ‘Let the children have it.’

‘Then you’ll get too weak to walk, and we’ll have to carry you in the wagon. That just makes more work for the horses.’

‘You can leave me behind.’

‘Oh, Sisi. We’d never leave you.’

‘I don’t see why not. I’m not Manth, like you. I’m not any use to anyone. I’m not even – you know.’

‘Not beautiful?’

‘Not beautiful. Not a princess. Nothing.’

‘You think people who aren’t beautiful princesses are nothing?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Everyone admires you, Sisi.’

‘Not everyone.’

Kestrel didn’t pretend not to understand her.

‘Bowman too.’

‘Has he said so to you?’

‘I know what my brother feels. He came and talked to you, didn’t he?’

‘I was sewing. He said I was doing good work.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘Oh, Kess, please! Don’t you start pitying me too.’

It was a flash of the old Sisi. Kestrel took her arm affectionately.

‘I like you better when you’re cross.’

‘No you don’t.’

But she was smiling.

‘Come on, Sisi, admit it. You’re not as good and humble as you make out.’

‘Yes, I am. I’m the simplest, humblest person in the world.’ She smiled as she spoke, making Kestrel smile too. ‘I’m the princess of simplicity. I’m grandly, beautifully, proudly, simple. I’m magnificently humble.’

She started to laugh, and couldn’t go on. Lunki looked round approvingly.

‘There, my pet. It does my heart good to hear you enjoying yourself.’

‘You’re very unkind, Kess,’ said Sisi when she had calmed down. ‘You make me say things.’

‘So you’ll stop starving yourself, will you?’

‘I’ll have what the others have.’

‘Good. That’s all I ask.’

‘But Kess, I truly don’t mind if I live or die. I’m not saying it to show off. Since I’ve been with your people, I’ve started to see everything so differently. It makes me ashamed of how I’ve been. You Manth people, you have such strong family feeling, and you’re so considerate to each other. You’re so serious, and thoughtful, and most of all, good. Such quiet, good people.’

‘I think you’re talking about one person.’

‘Maybe I am.’

‘He has his faults too.’

‘Sometimes I think he’s too sad, and keeps himself too much alone. But I don’t see any faults.’

‘Ask him. He’ll tell you.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t think of it!’

What Sisi didn’t tell her friend was that secretly she believed she could make Bowman happy. But even as this thought was passing through her mind, she remembered that she was no longer beautiful, and so there was no reason why he should choose her.

‘I keep forgetting. Everything’s different now.’

She reached up as she did a hundred times a day, and touched the scars on her cheeks.

By now, everyone had forgotten the fly that had stung Hanno Hath. The marchers were in better cheer than they had been for days. Some even sang as they marched, a song of the road that went back to the earliest days, when the Manth people had been a wandering tribe. Kestrel joined her mother and father, and tried once again to persuade her mother to ride in the wagon, for at least part of the way. But Ira Hath insisted on walking with the rest.

‘We’ll be stopping at sundown. I can last till then.’

Bowman and Mumpo, far ahead, kept watch over the bleak land. Once Bowman looked back, and saw Kestrel walking close by his mother, holding her hand. He saw Sisi too, walking steadily beside the wagon, her scarred face to the cold wind, her lustrous amber eyes gazing ahead at nothing.

Sisi never heard the faint whine in the air behind her. When there came a tingling itch at her throat, she reached up one hand to scratch it, and thought no more about it. For a little while afterwards there was a tender spot at the base of her neck, in the soft hollow between the collar bones.

The cracks were becoming more frequent, and wider. They ran in random zigzag patterns all over the land, as if the ground had been baked too long in some distant summer and had shivered like a badly-glazed plate. At first the cracks were only inches wide, and inches deep; but as the column of the Manth people marched on north, the cracks grew in size, until they were too wide to step over, and they had to find a way between them.

There was no made road, but the path taken by other travellers before them was easy enough to see. Here the tough grasses had been beaten down by the tread of men and beasts, forming a winding route that made its way through the cracked land. After a while the path began to descend, and so entered a natural groove in the plain, which seemed to be the bed of some long-ago dried-up stream. This path, no more than a dozen yards wide at the base, snaked its way here and there between the sudden fissures, descending all the time. The downward gradient was barely noticeable, but little by little the slopes rose up on either side, until they were higher than the travellers’ heads.