Diana Jones: The Spellcoats

“What are we supposed to have done now ?” Hern demanded.

UNCLE KESTREL CAME home among the last. He came to our house first, leading Gull. We were frightened when we looked at them. None of us could behave as if we were glad, though Robin tried. Uncle Kestrel had turned into a real old man. His head nodded and his hands shook, and his face was covered with scraggly white bristle. Gull was inches taller. I knew it must be Gull because of his fair hair and the rugcoat I had woven for him last autumn, though that was shiny with grease and almost in rags, but I would not have known him otherwise.

“Be easy on him,” Uncle Kestrel said when Robin threw her arms round Gull. Gull hardly moved. “He’s had a bad time. It was the Heathens in the Black Mountains did it. We were all in the siege there, and the slaughter.”

Gull did not show he had heard. His face was empty. Robin led him to a seat, where he sat and stared. Duck, Hern and I stood in a row looking at him. Only Robin remembered to ask Uncle Kestrel to come in. She bustled about for cake and drinks, and dug the three of us in our backs to make us help her. Duck fetched the cups. I pulled myself together and got out our best plum preserves, but my face kept turning to Gull, sitting staring, and then to Uncle Kestrel, so old. Hern just stood there staring at Gull as hard as Gull stared into space.

Uncle Kestrel is a very direct person. “Well,” he said as soon as he was sitting down, “your father’s dead, I’m afraid. Out on the plains, a long way from here.”

We were all expecting that. None of us, not even Robin, cried. We just went pale and slow, and sat down without wanting to eat to hear what Uncle Kestrel had to tell.

Uncle Kestrel was glad of the good food. He beamed at Robin and ate a great deal. Whatever war had done to Gull, Uncle Kestrel came out of it completely natural. In the most natural way he broke off a big lump of cake, put it in Gull’s hand, and closed Gull’s fingers round it. “Here you are. Eat it, boy.” Gull obediently ate the cake without looking at it – without looking at anything. “You’ll find you have to do that,” Uncle Kestrel explained to us. “He’ll drink the same way. Now, to the sad news.”

He told us how Father had died of wounds in the middle of winter, a long way off. I think, from the way he said it, that my father had dragged himself along pretending to be well for Gull’s sake, because Gull had needed looking after even then. The fighting had been terrible. Our people were not used to it, and few of them had real weapons. The Heathen had good weapons, spears, and bows that could send an iron bolt through two men at once. “Besides being trained from their cradles to fight like devils,” Uncle Kestrel said. “And they have enchanters in their midst, who conquer us with spells. They can draw the strength from you like sucking an egg.”

Hern stared. “Piffle.”

“You haven’t seen them, lad,” said Uncle Kestrel. “I have. You know them by their long coats. They’ve set their spells on the very River himself, knowing him to be our strength and our lifeblood. Take a look outside, if you don’t believe me. Have you ever known him that colour and smelling like he does?”

“No,” Hern admitted.

“So, by fair means and foul,” Uncle Kestrel said, “the Heathen have beaten us. They’ve brought their women and their children, and they mean to stay. The land is full of them. Our King is in hiding, bless him.”

“What will we all do?” Duck asked in an awed whisper.

“Run away to the mountains, I suppose,” said Uncle Kestrel. He looked worn out at the idea. “I’ve run from them for months now. But you five might stay if you wished, I think. This is a funny thing—” He glanced at Gull and began to whisper. I do not think Gull was listening, but it was so hard to tell. “The Heathen look almost like you do – the fair hair. He’s had a deal to bear – Gull – from our side saying he was a Heathen changeling and bringing bad luck, and from the time the Heathen took him, thinking he was one of them.” We all stared at Gull. “Be easy on him,” said Uncle Kestrel. “As you see, they gave him back – this was in the Black Mountains – but he was not himself after that. Our men said he carried the Heathen’s spells, and they might have killed him but for your father.”

“How awful!” Robin said in a very high voice, like a sneeze or an explosion.

“True,” said Uncle Kestrel. “But we had our good times.” Then for quite a while he sat and told us jokes about people we did not know and things we did not understand, to do with the fighting. I am sure he meant to cheer us up. “That’s what kept me sane, seeing the jokes,” he said. “Now I suppose I’d better be off to see Zara.” He got up and limped away. He did not behave much as if he was looking forward to seeing my aunt. Nor would I, in his shoes.

Robin cleared the cups away. She kept looking at Gull, and Gull just sat. “I don’t know what to do with him,” she whispered to me.

I went away outside, in spite of the smell from the River. I was hoping to be able to cry. But Hern was sitting in the boat, on the mud below the Riverbank, and he was crying.

“Just think of Gull like that!” he said to me. “He’d be better dead. I wish I’d gone after the army.”

“What good would it have done?” I said.

“Don’t you see!” Hern jumped up, so that the boat squelched about. “Gull had nobody to talk to. That’s why he got like that. Why was I such a coward?”

“You swore to the Undying,” I reminded him.

“Oh that!” said Hern. He was very fierce and contemptuous. The boat kept squelching. “ And I swore to fight the Heathen. I could swear to a million things, and it wouldn’t do any good. I just wish—”

“Stand still,” I said. It suddenly seemed to me that it was not only Hern’s angry movements that were making the squelching round the boat. Hern knew too. He stood bolt upright with his face all tear-stained, staring at me. We felt the small shiver run along the banks of the River. The mud clucked quietly, and a little soft lapping ran through the low green water. There were yards of bare mud on both sides of the River, but in a way that I do not know how to describe, it looked different to us. The trees on the other bank were stirring and lifting and expecting something.

“The floods are coming down,” said Hern.

If you are born by the River, you know its ways. “Yes,” I said, “and they’re going to be huge this time.”

Before we could say more, the back door crashed open and Gull came out. He came out stumbling, feeling both sides of the door and not seeming to know quite where he was.

“The River,” he said. “I felt the River.” He stumbled over to the bank. I put out both hands to catch him because it looked as if he were going to walk right over the edge. But he stopped on the bank and swayed about a little. “I can hear it,” he said. “I’ve dreamt about it. The floods are coming.” He began to cry, like Robin sometimes does, without making a sound. Tears rolled down his face.

I looked at Hern, and Hern looked at me, and we did not know what to do. Robin settled it by racing out of the back door and grabbing Gull in both arms. She hauled him away inside, saying, “I’m going to put him to bed. It’s frightening.”

“The floods are coming down,” I said.

“I know,” Robin called over her shoulder. “I can feel them. I’ll send Duck out.” She pushed Gull through the door and slammed it.

Hern and I pulled the boat up. It was horribly hard work because it was stuck a long way down in the mud. Luckily Hern is far stronger than he looks. We got it up over the edge of the bank in the end. By that time the sick green water was racing in swelling snatches, some of them so high that they slopped into the grooves the boat had left.