Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“I’m coming back,” she said now. “Whatever happens, I’m coming back.”

“If you can.”

“But I was going to have to go one day, wasn’t I? Anja will have the farm, because she can hear the cedars. Like Ma did, instead of Aunt Grayne.”

“One day. But not yet. You’re not ready. And nor am I.”

“Anyway, I’m coming back. And that’s that.”

He grunted, and Tilja realized that though she might have used exactly the same words half an hour ago, on their way out to the tack shed, she wouldn’t have meant them in the way she did now.

There was another long pause while they got on with their work in silence. Then, without having to screw herself up to it, but asking the question easily, naturally, she said, “Do you know about the unicorns?”

“Know?” he said musingly. “Well, I’ve guessed. . . . You know ?”

“I guessed too. But then I made Meena tell me.”

“Made Meena tell you? That’s as miraculous as any unicorn. In that case . . . maybe you should ask your mother to tell you her dream. All right, got all those stitches out? Then see what you can do with this while I sew ’em back.”

Ma told her about the dream reluctantly, with long pauses during which she seemed to be forcing herself to go on. She didn’t know when she had had it. It could have been while she was still lying by the lake, or in her six-day coma at the farm, or even later, in an ordinary night’s sleep. She’d only remembered it after the next full moon, when she’d gone out with another load of barley to spread beneath the trees.

“I didn’t want to go,” she said. “I was filled with fear, a numb, black, griping horror in my chest and stomach. . . . But I went. I made myself . . . and I got there and tipped the barley out and went down to the lake to sing, and . . . and I remembered the dream. I was standing like that in it, just getting ready to sing, when I heard something moving toward me, crashing its way through under the trees. Then it crossed a bit of rock and I heard its hooves. It sounded like a horse, and I thought somehow Calico must have got out and followed us, though she’s never . . . and then it came out into the open and I saw it wasn’t Calico, or Dusty either—it was as big as Dusty but even through the snow it seemed to be a funny sort of reddy chestnut . . . and then it lifted up its head and I saw the horn. . . .”

There was a longer pause. Eventually Tilja said quietly, “You mean it wasn’t one of ours. It’s all right, I know about ours. Meena told me.”

Ma shuddered and dragged herself out of the pit of remembered dread.

“No,” she said. “Ours are white, smaller than Tiddykin. I gather Meena saw them that day. I never have, but I’ve seen their hoofprints in the snow . . . anyway this—this thing . . . it came toward me . . . I was stuck . . . you know, in nightmares . . . and then it stopped and lowered its horn and . . . touched me. . . .”

She raised her hand and felt the place on her forehead where the strange mark had been.

“That’s all,” she said, forcing a kind of briskness into her voice.

“Are you sure it was a dream?” said Tilja. “You don’t think it was what really happened, before you went to sleep, that time we found you by the lake?”

Ma shook her head, but doubtfully. Tilja guessed that though she knew it could have been so, she really wanted it to have been only a dream. But she herself remembered the creature in the forest that had bellowed so terrifyingly at them when they were bringing Ma back from the lake. She remembered how Dusty had wheeled to meet its challenge. There had been something there—something real.

“But what happened the second time?” she said. “I mean when you went to the lake and remembered?”

Ma barely relaxed.

“It started all right,” she said. “I realized I could feel them there, in under the trees, waiting for me to sing. So I sang, and they heard, but it wasn’t right . I mean, it wasn’t the way it’s supposed to be—like this stupid weather—they could hear me, but they weren’t really listening. And I wasn’t sure about the song, either, the way I usually am. I had to do it from memory. And it’s been like that since then. . . . Anyway, spring’s here now and I won’t have to do it again this year.”

Spring had come suddenly, a normal-seeming spring, though with far less slush and mire than a true snowfall would have left. The wind swung south and smelled of sap and growth, and the swelling leaf buds tinged the gray forest with smoky purples and browns and yellows. Aconites and wild irises sprang open under the mild sun, and within two days the family was out in the fields from dawn to dusk, Da and Dusty with the heavy harrow; Ma behind them with the seed basket on her left hip, broadcasting the seed with a steady sweep of her right arm; then Anja and Tiddykin with the light harrow, burying the seed before the birds could grab it (Tiddykin could pretty well have done the job un-led) ; and Tilja last of all, with Calico and the roller, watching the repetitive pattern of golden grains arcing out from Ma’s hand and falling in a graceful curve, like the ghost of a huge, slowly beating wing.

Tilja was filled with a kind of happy grief that she should be seeing Woodbourne at its most loved season, and family and horses working all together, expressing that love, and their love for each other, in their work, expressing it in a way that her parents could not have put into words, this last time, when she might never see it again.

Last of all they sowed the little barley field by the stone barn. That evening they ate their Seed-in Feast, as if this were a year like any other year, but all knowing that it was not. And next morning Da came in to breakfast to tell them that Tiddykin was lame, and they would have to take Calico after all.

They spent the rest of that day packing and readying. Anja went down to Meena’s with the last of the old barley from the little field, so that Meena could bake a loaf to give to Faheel. Alnor was bringing a flask of water from the snowmelt above the sawmill. They had no idea if this was what they were supposed to do, but it felt right.

The six of them left next day, four travelers, Ma and Anja. Da stayed to look after the animals. He said goodbye to Tilja as if she’d be home next week. She set her jaw and didn’t look back as Woodbourne went out of sight.

“The river is in our blood,” Alnor had said. “It is not in yours. You will need time on the river to learn to work the raft.” So they journeyed upstream and spent the first night at Aunt Grayne’s.

The raft was already waiting for them, and Alnor and Tahl, and Tahl’s two cousins, Derril and Silon, who had built it. Aunt Grayne had beds for them all, so they slept under her roof and went aboard in the morning.

Word had gone round of what was happening, and various rumors of why, so a small crowd had come to see them off. Most thought they were mad, and some said so, but Tilja sensed even so a kind of friendliness and sympathy among the watchers. Anyway, it was just as well that they’d helpers at hand, because it took six strong men to get Calico aboard the raft and into her stall, even heavily doped with the blue hemp mixture that horse copers used to quieten fractious animals.

Ma made no more fuss over their parting than if Tilja had just been staying on a few days with Aunt Grayne. She kissed her and with barely a shake in her voice wished her luck and told her to come back safe. Anja had a good blubber, of course, but Tilja guessed she meant it.

“I really am coming back,” she told her. “I promise. And I’ll bring you something special from the Empire.”

She stepped aboard and found a place for her pack. Derril and Silon poled the raft from the shore and as the current took it away she waved to her family until the bend of the river hid them.