Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“Thanks,” she whispered. “I’ll try and do yours.”

She worked her back against the wall and managed to wriggle herself up, and then he let himself topple sideways so that she could turn, feel down the back of his head and find the knot of his gag. With endless pickings and pokings she managed to undo it.

“Thanks. That’s better,” he whispered. “I’ll see if I can untie you.”

“We’ll never get away.”

“We’ve got to try.”

They found a position where he could get at the cord that lashed her elbows together, but the moment he started to work at the knot a soft, grating voice spoke in the darkness.

“Wait. Not time.”

At the first syllable Tilja had frozen rigid. She stared into the darkness beside the entrance.

“Who are you?” whispered Tahl. Tilja could hear the tremor in his voice.

“Traveler. Like yourselves,” came the quiet answer. “Let those fools sleep. Then we go.”

Tilja heard a grunt from Meena.

“That’s my grandmother,” she whispered. “Can I take her gag off?”

“No noise.”

Carefully Tilja worked herself across the cave floor toward where the sound had come from. She found a leg by touch, turned herself round and by slithering herself up against the wall managed to reach the gag and untie it. Meena muttered savagely under her breath for a little, then whispered aloud, almost sobbing with pain.

“Get my legs undone if you can, girl, whatever the fellow says. This hip of mine’s a nightmare.”

“Is that all right?” Tilja asked into the darkness.

“Wait,” answered the darkness. “Yes. Now.”

Tilja felt her way to the knot, and found it already surprisingly loose. Meena groaned softly as she eased her leg around. Tilja could hear Tahl working at Alnor’s gag.

“Wait still,” murmured the stranger.

That was hard, with their bodies half free and their minds filled with half hope. At last he spoke again.

“We begin. Stay where you are. Do not be afraid. Make no sound.”

For a little while nothing seemed to happen. Then the cord around Tilja’s ankles loosened and fell away. She felt a movement at her back, though she was leaning against the cave wall with no room for anyone to reach behind her. She realized that the cord around her elbows had also come untied, and then, with a spasm of shock, that it was now wriggling around, as if it had been a living creature trapped between her body and the rock. She jerked herself away from it and it fell loose. She heard it slithering off into the dark.

The cave was full of those slithering sounds moving toward the entrance. There were moonlit chinks around the boulder blocking it. They changed shape as the cords wriggled out into the night. Something odd was happening to Tilja’s clothing. It too felt alive. Yes, parts of it, the cords of her cloak and skirt, the lacings of her blouse, were twitching as if they wanted to follow. Only the lashings round her wrists stayed firm.

“All free?” murmured the stranger.

“My wrists are still tied,” Tilja whispered.

She heard his grunt of puzzlement. An odd numbness began to seep up her arms, unconnected with the dull pain of the lashed cord. There was another grunt from the stranger and the numbness vanished.

“Think about it later,” he muttered. “Boy can untie you.”

Tilja rose and turned to let Tahl get at the knot. He too gave a snort of surprise as the rope came free.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

The numbness returned for a moment as something touched the back of her hand.

“No, drop it,” said the stranger.

Tahl let the cord fall and it slithered away like the others.

“Don’t ask,” he whispered. “Explain later.”

Yet again they waited in the darkness. Tilja’s mouth was dry as her body readied itself for flight. She heard the scrape of rock against rock. Something was dragging the wedges clear.

“Shall we help roll it out?” whispered Tahl.

“No need,” said the stranger, not bothering to whisper, but speaking still in his odd, jerky style, with long pauses, as if his mind were somewhere else. “The ropes do it . . . they must tie themselves together . . . find an anchor . . . take strain . . . they are ready . . . ha! Pull, my children!”

At his call the prisoning boulder seemed to leap from the entrance and go crashing down the hillside.

“It is done,” said the stranger, with a sudden, startling laugh that went braying out into the still night. “Cave along that way. Rob the robbers, hey?”

A shape moved into the cave entrance, and Tilja almost cried aloud. It was an enormous head, so large that it almost blocked the opening. It was turned sideways, so that she could see the jut of nose and chin near the bottom, and the outline of a shoulder below, but above them swelled a great ballooning growth of skull. The thing crawled out into the open and vanished.

“You go first,” whispered Meena. “It’ll take Alnor and me a while.”

With sick dread Tilja crouched her way to the entrance, hesitated, crawled out and stood. A white mass of fog filled the valley below them, but the moon was high overhead, paling the stars. The stranger was there, a tall, thin shape in the moonlight. At the top of the neck was a normal human face, eyebrows, eyes, a long nose, smiling mouth, pointed chin and wisp of a beard, and above that the monstrous bulge she’d seen from the cave.

She had backed away and was swallowing a scream before she realized that she had misunderstood what she was seeing. The huge mass above the face wasn’t part of the head, it was a sort of headdress, fold on fold of cloth wound into a cunning shape, like an enormous patterned knot. The man was smiling at her, a normal human smile. But he was still a strange figure in the bright moonlight, seven feet tall or more with his headdress, but thin, and gawky as some long-legged insect.

“Hurry now,” he said. “Out of forest by sunrise.”

“I’m not going anywhere much, not without a horse,” said Meena from the cave entrance. “My hip’s that sore. And Alnor’s ankle’s not so good, either. Calico ought to be somewhere.”

“Horses under the trees,” said the stranger. “Cave first.”

“I’d better come that far,” said Meena. “The so-and-sos found my leather bag, and I’ve got to have my spoons back. And our money and stuff, too. Give us a hand, girl. Alnor? . . . Then you wait here, but I’ll need the boy.”

Leaning heavily on Tahl and Tilja and grunting at every step, she hobbled along the hillside. The stranger was already well ahead of them. For a moment they saw his awkward figure lit by something other than moonlight, before he seemed to disappear into the cliff.

“Meena,” whispered Tahl urgently. “When he was doing that stuff with the ropes in the cave, did you feel anything? Magic, I mean?”

“Can’t say I did, now you mention it,” muttered Meena. “But then I wasn’t minding much beyond this darned hip. What—”

“ Shhh. Later,” whispered Tahl as a light flared into the darkness from where they had seen the stranger vanish. Reaching the place, they found it was a much larger cave, with the embers of a fire just inside the entrance, and beyond that the stranger holding in his hand a short piece of rope whose frayed end blazed steadily, but with almost no smoke, like a good wick in a lamp. Around him lay the bodies of the robbers, all on their sides, with gags in their mouths, their arms and ankles lashed and their legs drawn hard back behind them and tied to the wrists. Some struggled and wriggled, some lay still. A mound of baggage and other stuff was piled at the back of the cave. From where she stood Tilja could see the saddlebags. She followed Tahl in, stepping over the bodies of the robbers, and picked up the bag they had brought from Woodbourne.