Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

The new country continued just the same as they rounded each bend of the river, mile on mile of desolate hills, and no sign that anyone lived here at all. Meena stayed where she was all afternoon. It was almost dark before she eased Alnor off her lap and struggled to her feet. She hobbled aft, clutching Calico’s stall to stop herself falling, but this wasn’t only, Tilja realized, because of her hip. She looked dazed, half-awake, not sure where she was.

“Did you see ’em?” she asked. “Little wretches.”

“Unicorns? Oh, where? I was watching the river.”

“In under the trees. Right down by the water, some of ’em, so I could see their reflections glimmering off it. Who’d’ve thought there were that many of ’em? Following us along, come to listen to my singing. All I’d been doing was trying to keep ’em quiet, so they weren’t afraid anymore of that great brute.”

“With ‘Cherry Pits’?”

“Well, it was and it wasn’t. It just came to me. I was thinking about old Alnor, and how he must’ve been a fetching lad once, and then I was thinking about a young man I used to be keen on. Met him at a Gathering, and we really hit it off, only it wasn’t that easy, him living right over at West End. I’d’ve married him too, only there was this farm he was going to come into when his uncle died—really beautiful, it was—still is, I daresay, though I’ve never had the heart to go back. And I couldn’t leave Woodbourne, could I? I mean, maybe I could’ve gone to live at West End with him for a bit, but I’d always have had to come back, wouldn’t I, soon as my own ma was past singing to the cedars? And the worst of it was I couldn’t tell him any of that—not that he’d’ve believed it, supposing I had—so it just came down to he wasn’t going to leave West End for me, and I wasn’t going to leave Woodbourne for him. Of course he couldn’t see rhyme or reason to it, Woodbourne being nothing much of a farm, really, while West End . . . ah, well . . . I don’t think he ever forgave me. . . . Be that as may be, we used to sing ‘Cherry Pits’ together, and that’s what started me off, thinking about Alnor when he was younger, and then about my own young man. . . .”

She shook her head.

“And the unicorns didn’t mind?” Tilja asked. “I mean, that wasn’t their song, was it?”

“Not them,” said Meena. “I don’t know it really matters what I sing to them, provided I know I’m doing it for them, then they make it their song. I’ve never thought of that before—didn’t know I could do any of this, apart from singing to the cedars in the old days, when it was me going out to the lake all those years. Little wretches.”

She seemed to have woken herself up by talking, and spoke the last couple of words in her usual grumbling tone. Tilja grinned at her.

“And what do you think you’re laughing at, young woman? Nothing much to laugh at, far as I can see—we’re never going to get this thing in to the bank on our own, not without Alnor to give us a hand. And I’m all in and I dare say you are too, so here we are in the middle of this stupid great river, and it’ll be pitch dark soon and we won’t be able to see what’s coming and it wouldn’t do us much good if we could, either, for all we could do about it.”

Tilja looked around. She could still just see the loom of the shore on either side, and the water stretching ahead of them, broad and smooth, reflecting the first few stars.

“It doesn’t look as if anyone lives here,” she said, “so we may as well stay on the raft anyway. Calico won’t like it, but she’ll have to put up with it. Let’s have something to eat, and go to sleep, and just hope we don’t come to a waterfall or something in the night. I don’t see there’s anything else we can do, so we might as well make the best of it.”

“I’ve seen better bests,” said Meena, relishing her grumble.

In the last light Tilja did what she could for Calico. In spite of what she’d just said to Meena, her heart smote her when she heard the cross-grained beast’s long, weary sigh. Calico had no idea of what was happening to her, beyond its endless strangeness and discomfort. She was too dispirited even to try to bite or lean against Tilja as she scraped out the floor of the stall and washed it down with a couple of buckets of water. Tilja left her with a full manger and the bucket to drink from and went and groped among the stores for supper. Neither Tahl nor Alnor stirred.

Tired though she was, she woke again and again in the night and raised her head and craned around. Unsteered, the raft was turning slowly in the current, but to Tilja, lying there, it felt as if she was at a center of stillness round which the whole world, and the starry sky, would wheel for ever. The effect made it hard to see how the stars were really moving, until the moon rose and she could judge the passing of time by that. It was long after midnight before true sleep settled on her, soft and warm, and she could settle into it like a hen returning to its nest.

5

The Camp

Something jarred, scraped, lurched. Tilja shot awake and sat up. A light mist veiled the sky, glowing brighter where the moon shone through. That silvery patch was high overhead, so several hours had passed and it must be almost dawn. The mist hid the distances, but nearer the raft she could see open water on one side, and on the other a tangle of dead tree trunks and branches.

“What’s up?” croaked Meena.

“It looks as if we’ve stranded against a sandbank or something. There’s a lot of old stuff washed down from the forest.”

“That’s not good.”

“If it isn’t an island we might be able to scramble ashore.”

“ You might, and that boy, if he ever wakes up. Give ’em a shake, girl, see how they’re doing.”

Tilja eased herself out of her rug and crawled across to Tahl. He was breathing steadily, but didn’t stir at her touch. Neither did Alnor. Since she was up, she crawled to the stern of the raft for a piss, and once there was struck by a difference in the look of the water. She picked up her sweep and probed down, and discovered that the river at this point was less than waist deep, with a firm bottom. Working her way forward, she found it steadily shallower, until she could actually reach down with her arm and pick up a handful of gravel from the riverbed. She went back to her bedding and waited for daylight.

The mist turned golden as the sun rose, became a haze and cleared away. Now Tilja could see that the river had widened to a lake, blocked at its southern end by an enormous reed bed, but the current had drifted the raft side-on against a great sandspit projecting from the western bank. Wrack from many winters past had piled itself against these obstacles, an immense impenetrable tangle of sun-bleached timber, which the raft had now joined. The bank itself was not all that far away.

She dressed and breakfasted and then experimentally took the pole and heaved against a tree trunk. Using all her strength, she managed to open a gap between the raft and the timber, but as soon as she rested the faint current floated it back. If only Alnor and Tahl had been awake, they might have done it between them.

“Supposing I was to give you a hand,” said Meena. “I’m all right, provided I don’t have to go skipping around.”

“I’ll see if I can get Calico into the water,” said Tilja. “She’ll be a bit stiff, but she should be able to tow us ashore provided it doesn’t get much deeper. You’ll have to fasten the towlines. And I’ll need to borrow your cane.”

She stripped off her shoes, stockings and skirt, fetched a handful of her precious hoard of yellownut, showed it to Calico and gave her a few morsels, then let the horse see her putting the rest into the pocket of her blouse. With that incentive Calico backed out of the stall with only a token refusal, and got a scrap more yellownut to keep her interested while Tilja rigged a towing harness of padded rope. Calico started readily enough toward the edge of the raft, but then scrabbled and jibbed as it began to tilt under her weight.