Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

9

The Grand Trunk Road

At noon on the fifth day of their journey south, they were sitting in the shade at the edge of a pinewood on a hillside above the Grand Trunk Road. In the far distance they could see the Great River, which had run beside the road for a while, but had yesterday swung away east. Before they saw it again it would have plunged down cataracts, roared through foaming gorges, and almost lost itself in a chain of prodigious lakes, until at last it came back to the road at Ramram, far to the south.

Everything was very still. Once or twice someone went past, people in too much of a hurry to rest out the hottest part of the day. Tilja could hear voices over to their left from where more travelers were also taking advantage of the shade. The only other noises seemed to be the ceaseless hum and click and buzz of insects.

“Might as well get it over,” Meena muttered. “Come along, girl.”

She heaved herself to her feet and started to hobble up the slope, leaning heavily on her cane. When they were well away from the road she stopped beside a mounded ants’ nest.

“This’ll have to do,” she said. “We’re not going to find anywhere flatter. We’ll do it like we did on the wall, only we won’t try Axtrig straight off. Start with one of the other ones, and don’t let go of it until you’re good and ready, and grab it as soon as anything happens, supposing it does. I’ll go over there.”

She fished the leather bag from under her skirt, took out the cloth and laid it over the anthill, and groped again in the bag for one of the nameless spoons. When Tilja took it, it felt like ordinary lifeless wood, no different from any other spoon she had ever handled, but the now familiar numbness seeped into the skin of her left forearm, where Axtrig was strapped against it, under the long sleeve of her blouse. She no longer found it an unpleasant feeling. It was simply something that happened. Not letting go of the spoon, she laid it on the cloth and looked toward Meena.

“I’ll count to three,” said Meena. “Don’t look at me. Just watch the dratted spoon. One. Two. Three.”

She saw Meena’s lips move as she whispered Faheel’s name. The numbness in her forearm exploded through her body. She gasped and staggered. Then it was gone. The spoon on the ant heap hadn’t stirred.

“What’s up?” said Meena. “Nothing I could feel.”

“It didn’t move,” said Tilja. “Only Axtrig . . . it must have been when you said the name . . . she really wanted to answer, but she couldn’t, because I was touching her.”

Meena grunted, then sighed.

“Nothing for it, seemingly,” she said. “We’re going to have to give her a go. Quick as you can, mind . . . no, wait . . . try holding your hand out flat with the cloth on it and laying her down on that—not letting go with your other hand, mind, till we’re ready, and seeing what happens. . . .”

Forcing herself into calmness, Tilja rolled up her sleeve and untied the ancient spoon. Through her fingertips she could feel the difference from the other one, the sense of life still there in the grained wood. Holding Axtrig firmly in her right hand, she slid her left hand under the cloth, only to discover that its underside was now swarming with ants, mercifully not the biting kind. She gave the cloth a good shake and then used her teeth to arrange it over her open palm so that she could balance Axtrig there, still keeping her right hand in contact with the wood.

“Ready,” she said.

“Sure? Then I’ll count again. One. Two. Three.”

Tilja let go of Axtrig, keeping her hand poised close above her, watching her, not Meena. For a moment nothing happened. Three or four baffled ants continued to scuttle around on the cloth. Then, all in an instant, they froze into stillness. This time it was different. The world remained the same and the spoon twitched round. Tilja actually saw it move. At once she closed her right hand down on it. As her palm touched the wood the ants resumed their scuttling. Down the hill, she heard Calico neighing in panic. She looked up.

Meena was bent over her cane, steadying herself from falling. She let out a long breath and straightened.

“Could’ve been worse,” she muttered. “Could’ve been a lot worse. Anything come of it, then?”

“Yes, Axtrig moved. And she’s still pointing the way we’re going.”

“Well, that’s something. Let’s get out of here, now. I don’t know if one of those Watchers or anyone would’ve picked it up but there’s no point hanging around to find out. Just listen to that stupid horse. If she felt it, there’ll be others. I’ll be starting off while you get yourself sorted out.”

Trembling now with the relief that it was over, Tilja strapped Axtrig back against her arm, rolled the sleeve down and put the cloth away. All round her the woods seemed empty and silent. The other party of travelers, further along the hillside, seemed to have stopped their chatter, but as Tilja ran down the slope to catch up with Meena they started again. In their voices there was a note of alarm.

Day after day they traveled on, unhindered and unquestioned. Since they were on their way to Goloroth nothing else needed to be known about them until they reached the city and gave their names to the officials at the entrance, who would then fill in certificates for Tilja and Tahl to take home, showing that their grandparents had indeed passed through those last gates. Not that they actually had any intention of going that far. All that concerned them was to travel south for as long as Axtrig told them. When at last the old spoon began to point in a new direction, then they would turn aside and start to bribe their way with the money that Ellion had given them. Meanwhile, for convenience, they continued to wear the uniforms of fourteenth graders, but used their own names if anyone asked.

The Grand Trunk Road swarmed with travelers, merchants, messengers, officials with their retinues, troops of soldiers, drivers of loaded oxcarts, gangs of slaves being taken to market or to some big task of building or destruction, people of all ages and accents and manners, but always more going south than north. Old and young, pair by pair, made the long journey to the City of Death, but only the young came back.

A section of every way station was set aside for those making that journey. Here free meals were provided, but plain stuff, so that the food stalls still did good business. The atmosphere inside these enclosures was strangely cheerful. Almost all the old people seemed completely to accept what was happening and to face the end of their lives with dignity and not with fear. Tahl, typically, got into talk with some of them and asked bluntly how they felt about what they were doing.

“Much the best way of it,” one old woman told him. “Easy for me, mind. I started to get the shakes, which runs in the family, so I knew how long I’d got, and there was time to make all the arrangements and set up a nice funeral party and be gone, and I’m really making the most of it, seeing all these places and meeting all these people, when all my life I’ve never been more than nine miles from my own front door.”

Not everyone felt like this. Some were already in the grip of their last illness, some made the journey with dread, and some with fierce resentment, but most seemed to be going south almost gaily, and these helped to keep the doubters from gloom. When they had collected their evening meals they would settle in groups of twenty or more—people who had been strangers until only a few days earlier—and gossip and sing far into the night, songs of all kinds from all over the Empire, silly or sentimental or stirring, but not often sad.

“Makes me feel a right fraud,” Meena said, “seeing them all so cheerful when what’s happening to them isn’t going to happen to me, ever, not once I’m home.”