Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“Want to know what it’s all about?” said Tahl, as he hobbled up the lane beside Tilja. “Alnor’s going to go and look for Faheel to get him to renew the magic in the mountains and the forest. I’m going with him.”

“Faheel! But that was centuries ago! He can’t still be alive!”

“The millstream says so. I told you at the Gathering, didn’t I? We can hear what it’s saying, just like your sister can hear what the cedars are saying.”

“But . . . how are you going to get through the forest?”

“On a raft, at snowmelt, when the river’s in spate. You remember the story, the Emperor’s soldier who got through on a very fast horse? He’d passed out, but he made it. Alnor thinks we may pass out too. That’s why we’re here. We’ve got to have a woman to steer the raft, or it’ll run aground on a bend, or something. He tried to persuade my aunts, but none of them . . .”

“And Meena’s going on a long journey.”

“I don’t know about long. Whoever it is has only got to get us through the forest, then they can come back. Look, Alnor’s going to try it whatever happens, and I’m going with him because somebody’s got to, but it’ll be a lot less of a risk with a steers-woman. I suppose Meena would do, if we can’t find anyone else. What about your mother? Or your aunt who was at the Gathering? It’d be best if it’s someone who can hear what the trees are saying, so they can tell her the way back. . . .”

He chattered on about Alnor’s plan, but Tilja listened only enough to mutter something in the right places. Meena was going on a journey. A long journey. Much further than through the forest and back. That didn’t count as long.

And Tilja was going with her, going away, unimaginably far away. Away from Woodbourne. Not waiting through the dreary years until she could, with luck, find a man on some other farm who wanted to marry her, and go and live with him, and make that her home, and dream of Woodbourne like Aunt Grayne did. Going now.

Yes. Oh yes!

Only her parents would never let her.

Her thoughts were broken by Brando’s warning bay at the footstep of a stranger.

Ma didn’t seem surprised to see them. She looked at Tahl as if there were something unusually interesting about him, though normally she was shy of strangers and barely met their glances. Tahl gave her stare for stare.

“Your father’s up splitting logs in the spare ground,” she said. “Anja, you run up and fetch him. You can take Tiddykin down for Meena, Tilja. If Alnor wants a horse too, you’ll have to take Calico.”

“Alnor’s all right,” said Tahl. “It’s me who isn’t. Mind if I take my boots off?”

By the time Tilja had Tiddykin saddled and bridled and came in to look for Tahl he was sitting in Ma’s chair with his feet in a steaming basin of steeped herbs, and chatting away to her and actually getting answers more than two or three words long. He turned and grinned at Tilja.

“You’ll be all right on your own,” he said. “Alnor will hang on to a stirrup. That’s what he usually does. He doesn’t like riding. Horses aren’t much use round us. Too steep.”

When Tilja led Tiddykin into the yard, with Meena in the saddle and Alnor walking steadily beside her, they met Da, Anja and Dusty coming down from the spare ground with a loaded log sled.

Tilja helped Meena onto the mounting block and down, then took Alnor’s arm and guided him through the farm door, helped him and Meena off with their cloaks and led him to a chair. Then she went and took Tiddykin’s tack off, rubbed her down and gave her a feed. She turned to find Anja waiting for her at the stable door.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“You’ve got to come, Til.”

“I’m coming.”

“No, not there. Up to the forest. They want you. Please!”

“Want me? Who?”

“The cedars. They’ve got something to tell you. Please, Til! I’ll tell Ma.”

She scampered off. Watching from the kitchen door, Tilja saw her tug at Ma’s apron and start to whisper. Ma bent to listen, straightened and looked for a while almost blankly at Tilja, with her mouth slightly open—that gone-into-a-dream look she’d worn sometimes since the night of the first snows. She shook herself, sighed and looked away.

“All right,” she said. “Don’t be long.”

By now it was getting on toward dusk on a mild, sunless day, with the clouds moving all in one mass, blown by a steady wind. Anja led the way in under the trees to a place where three cedars growing together made a patch of dark green gloom. She stopped.

“Listen,” she said.

Tilja did her best. She strained to hear, to listen with her whole soul, but all she could make out was the hiss of the wind through the cedar needles and a faint, pulsing hoot where moving air swirled into a hollow trunk. Almost weeping with disappointed yearning, she shook her head.

“But they’re talking to you!” said Anja, astonished.

It was too much to bear. Tilja grabbed at her wrist.

“If they’re so clever, why don’t they know I can’t hear them?” she snarled. “All right, what are they saying? Or aren’t you allowed to tell me?”

“Let go! I can’t hear them either when you’re doing that. Please let go.”

Reluctantly Tilja loosened her grip.

“What are they saying?”

Anja drew a breath, waited, and spent it all on the first slow syllable. Another breath for the next, and the next, and the next.

“Go. Tilja, go. You go too. Find Faheel. Make us strong again.”

Faheel

4

The River

Tiddykin went dead lame the day before they left. “There’s nothing for it,” said Da. “No chance of find-ing a decent horse at any price, this time of year. Meena will have to make do with Calico. I’ll fix the horse seat to fit her better, and take a look at her harness. Tilja can give me a hand.”

Together they went over the worn old gear, buckle by buckle, strap by strap, stitch by stitch, cleaning, oiling, replacing, making good. They worked for a while in silence, but then, without looking up from what he was doing, Da said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, “I’d give my right arm for this not to be happening. All my married life I’ve had to accept this stuff. I don’t understand it, I don’t feel it in my bones, it means nothing to me, but I’m forced to believe in it. It isn’t just your mother and Meena saying it’s so—Anja too, now. It’s because it works. Time and again. You found that when you lost the hand ax. Even when it seems pure nonsense—how can Faheel still be alive, for pity’s sake? But the cedars say you’ve got to go and look for him, so you have to go, and I have to accept it. Accept it, though it means I may never see you again.”

Tilja sat blindly picking at a stretch of frayed stitching on the girth. Her thoughts, if you could call them thoughts, were a muddle of astonishment and grief. Why had he never once said anything like this before, never let her glimpse, even, what his feelings for her might be? No, they were secret, those feelings, like the unicorns, yes, private unicorns, deep in the pathless forest inside himself. But to Tilja they mattered more than anything else.

Since that evening when Tilja and Anja had come back from the forest and told the others what the cedars had said, he hadn’t spoken a word about her going, apart from the practicalities of it. His only response, on hearing the news, had been to look across the room at Ma, who had silently put on her cloak and boots and gone out into the dusk. When she had come back they had turned to look at her where she stood in the doorway, but she had simply nodded once to him, telling him that what Anja had said was true, and gone back to the stove. From that point on they all had taken it for granted that Tilja was going with Meena, not just to see Alnor and Tahl safe through the forest, but to join them in their search for Faheel.