Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

Ribek was different, not timid either, but open and easy. And he liked to talk. He was, simply, more companionable. So Maja perched happily on a folded bedroll behind him, with her arms around his waist to steady herself, and listened to his account of life at Northbeck. He still didn’t seem to find it at all strange that she was so interested.

Looking back much later on their adventure, she decided that it was because of this closeness that the nature of her fantasy life began to change. So far it had all been about building up a picture of a place where she could belong in the same way he did, Northbeck mill, imagining the people who lived there, and her dealings with them, and the animals and neighbors and customers who brought their grain to be ground. Being married to Ribek had so far simply been a way of making this happen. He was there, of course. He set the broken wing of the owlet she found in the woods (it never learned to fly and rode around on Maja’s shoulder instead). He helped her rescue a child from the millstream. (Whose child? Theirs, of course, but she didn’t think about how they’d come by it. Like Ribek, it was simply there for the fantasy, but less real than him, or the millstream, or the yellow cat.)

Now though, the balance started to shift as the picture solidified. She found herself more and more reluctant to fiddle around with details once she’d decided on them. In real life, once something’s happened it doesn’t unhappen. There was no magic in her imagined world, apart from Ribek’s ability to hear what the millstream was saying, so no absurdities. Following this logic she found herself in a double bind. She couldn’t go on being the in-between sort of Maja-now/Maja-grown-up she had hitherto been. Maja-now had no place in her imagined Northbeck, where Maja-grown-up belonged. How grown-up? She decided she’d married Ribek when she was sixteen—he wouldn’t want her before that. She remembered the jewel seller at Mord, but he also liked farmers to send their prettiest daughters with the grain, though of course he only flirted with them. Or did he?…Anyway, they now had two children, the toddler who’d fallen in the millstream and the older boy she’d already arranged for because he could hear what the millstream was saying, so she’d be about twenty-two and Ribek a bit over fifty, but just as lively as he was now—having a much younger wife was really good for him—and they were still deeply…

Her imagination refused to make it happen. It wasn’t interested. No, more than that. She really didn’t want to think about falling in love, and kissing and cuddling and lying together naked and their children growing inside her body and so on. All that must have happened for her picture of living at Northbeck to become as real as she’d made it, but she couldn’t make it happen. It was as though some magician had deliberately put a ward round it, to prevent her seeing inside. In the end she gave up. Ribek was a lovely man, so of course Maja-grown-up loved him. That would have to do.

She didn’t notice when Maja-now started loving him too.

Steadily the climate changed again as they journeyed on south. They were already resting out the heat of each noon. Soon there were different crops in the fields, with different trees by the roadside, different shrubs and weeds in the patches of wilderness. For a while a huge river ran beside the road, with crocodiles basking on its mud banks and buffalo wallowing in its shallows. Long-tailed monkeys begged or thieved for scraps in the coppices by the highway. Trained dogs kept them clear of the way stations.

And still Jex did not speak.

The moon had waxed to full, dwindled to a sliver and waxed almost to full again when the clerk at a way station glanced up from their way-leaves and said, “Journey’s end, friends. Tarshu road’s closed. Another half day to Samdan, and then you’re stuck.”

“How long for, do you know?” said Ribek.

“They’ve been evacuating folk out of Tarshu this last month,” the man said. “And there’s still a few dribbling through. But nothing’s happened yet, far as I’ve heard. When it does, mind, it’s going to be big. Good idea to be some place else.”

“We’ve got to get to Tarshu somehow or other,” said Saranja impatiently.

“Well, madam, you’re just going to have to enjoy the bright lights of Samdan for a while. Though it’ll be packed solid with Tarshu folk waiting to get back in.”

“How much further on to Tarshu after that?”

“Two days when the road’s clear, but it’s going to be jammed solid a good while after they start letting folk back, so you’d best allow three.”

Across country they took six. Strange hawks quartered the sky by day, so between dawn and dusk they lay up in evacuated farms, then traveled on by moonlight. Benayu pulled himself together now that they were so near, and the danger so real. He dared use very little magic. All he could risk was puttting a screen round himself each sunset and transforming himself into a pigeon, so as to scout out a route for that night’s journey.

At first he kept them as far as possible in or near shadow, but on the second night, as they were making their way along a shallow, part-wooded valley, Maja sensed a faint magical force approaching rapidly from some distance ahead. From the feel of it she recognized it as having something in common with the hawks that she had tracked all day. It seemed to be coming not directly toward them but as if to cross their path a little way ahead. She whispered her news to the others and they turned aside into the shade of a coppice to let it pass.

Soon Benayu could pick it up too, and they felt it cross the further ridge in a broad line and, still invisible despite the moonlight, sweep down into the valley. On it came in absolute silence until it was near enough for the others to make out, first as a few moving blobs of darkness, then as a whole line which in a few heartbeats more became about forty wild dogs of some kind, spaced several paces apart so as to cover a broad swath of grassland as they raced along, noses down, whimpering faintly with the excitement of the chase.

The near end of the line passed about a hundred paces from the coppice. One of them checked, raised its muzzle and sniffed the air. A couple of others joined it. Saranja seized Maja, ready to heave her into the saddle. It was no use, they both knew. Once they were spotted this near Tarshu the Watchers would be on them in an instant. And then, as suddenly as they’d halted, the dogs gave up and moved on. They began to breathe again.

“Not good,” said Ribek. “They could still cross our scent anywhere and be after us.”

“Either we’ve got to find somehow to hide our scent, or we’ve got to choose ways where they won’t be looking for us,” said Saranja.

“As well as keeping out of the open?” said Benayu. “It can’t be done. It’s difficult enough as it is.”

“I don’t think we need worry so much about that,” said Ribek. “Night hunters like owls fly low. However good your eyesight is, you can’t see far at night, even in bright moonlight, but if you want to watch any kind of area you’ve got to fly high. That’s why the Watchers are using dogs. Best they can do.”

“I’ll think,” said Benayu.

They moved on in silence, expecting any minute to hear the sound of baying coming from somewhere back on their trail, but the night stayed silent until the stars began to pale.

Next night Benayu led them on a slow and twisting course over broken foothills, though there was far better going on the plain below. At one point they waded for a while up a stream, until they came out on a wide upland dotted with abandoned sheep. Here he used Sponge to round up a dozen sleepy and bewildered beasts and for a couple of hours drive them behind the travelers, blotting out the human scent trail. Then it was broken ground again for a weary while. Once they heard distant baying and guessed that somewhere the dogs had found quarry. Almost at once Maja sensed something magical joining the pursuit. The feeling ended abruptly and the dogs fell silent. At last they reached an empty farmstead with food for the humans in the larder, mostly mildewed or stale, and fodder in the storage bins. And sleep.