Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

Her mind was full of a jumble of thoughts about the Ropemaker. They didn’t seem quite to fit together, in the same way that the Ropemaker’s own gawky body didn’t . . . and the animals he’d been didn’t either, if Faheel was right, the lion, the donkey perhaps, the cat on the walls of Talagh, the dog by the river, the unicorn on the crag, guarding them, helping them all the way south. . . .

Except for the unicorn. The unicorn was one of the things that didn’t fit. It had been different, menacing, dangerous, almost an enemy, nothing like the Ropemaker himself, strange but friendly, not frightening at all—until she remembered what Tahl had said about the bit of rope that had wrapped itself round Calico’s legs in the pine forest . . . and . . .

And—she really didn’t want to think about this—Ma’s dream. It touched me with its horn . What else could she have been talking about . . . ?

Tilja was jolted out of her wonderings by the appearance of the bird. A little to her right, beyond the nearest flower bed, was a small meadow cropped by a pair of sheep, each tethered to a single peg so that they mowed a series of circles. The bird appeared in what must have been one of yesterday’s circles. At one moment there was just a patch of short-cropped grass; the next it was filled by an enormous brown bird, far larger than the elephants Tilja had sometimes seen hauling loads of timber on the journey south. It had a fiery red crest and a black, hooked beak, which looked as if it had been designed for tearing at meat, but the two sheep merely glanced up at it and went back to grazing. The bird put up an immense, taloned foot and started to scratch itself under the chin, like a farmyard hen. A moment later a large, cushioned litter appeared on the grass beside it. There were poles at each corner with a striped canopy stretched between them and what looked like a sort of carrying handle lying loose on the cloth.

Before the bird had finished scratching, time stopped. Tilja both saw and heard it happen. The bird stuck, motionless, with its claw against its chin and a look of idiot absorption on its face. The sheep stuck with their mouths against the turf. The gulls wheeling above the cliffs stuck in midglide on slanting wings. All over the garden the birdsong stilled in an instant, and in the same instant the endless faint rustle of leaves and hush and shush of waves against the cliffs became a silence so intense that Tilja could hear not only her own breath but, at last, that of the three sleepers in the room.

She frowned. Time ought to have stopped for them. They shouldn’t still be breathing. Then wood creaked on wood behind her and she turned and saw Faheel, now back in the shape of an old man, climbing shakily down the ladder.

“Ready?” he said. “We will need food and drink, if you will carry the basket.”

With trembling hands he fetched stores out of a cupboard and she stowed them neatly away.

“Why hasn’t time stopped in here?” she asked.

“Because you are here. Your friends will stop breathing as soon as you are out of the room, and when you are close to the roc it will wake and carry us to Talagh. Now, if you will let me lean on your shoulder . . . I shall be stronger after a rest.”

As they passed the nearer sheep it began grazing again as if nothing had happened. A few paces further on, the bird woke and went on with its scratching. When they reached the litter Tilja put the basket down and helped Faheel settle onto the cushions, where he lay back with his eyes closed while she found a place for the basket and made herself comfortable at the other end. The bird—a roc he had called it—seemed to know what was expected of it. It rose and settled its feathers into place with a thunderous rattle, so huge, standing, that that she could see only its scaly, yellow lower legs beneath the canopy of the litter, and then only one as it reached out with the other to grasp the handle above the canopy. With a deep thud of its enormous wings it drove itself into the air.

The litter lurched across the grass, almost spilling the passengers before the flight had begun, then swung wildly forward and round as they rushed into the air. Tilja grabbed one of the corner posts and clung to it. Faheel spread his arms wide but stayed where he was, still with his eyes shut. By the time their flight steadied they were already far into the air, and Faheel’s island was dwindling below and behind them. The spume against its rocks neither rose nor fell, but stayed poised in the instant when time had stopped for it.

And still they rose, and the air shrieked past them, fiercer than any winter gale. Now Tilja could see a change in the northern horizon, a darker, grayer, fuzzier line than the blue curve of ocean to east and west, and knew she was looking at the shore of the Empire. The sky was mottled with small clouds that came nearer and nearer as the roc continued to climb. The steady pulse of its wings boomed in Tilja’s ears like strokes upon a monstrous gong. When she tried to shut the sound out with her fingers the bones of her body still rang with it.

Faheel’s eyes were open, looking at her. She saw him beckon and crawled forward against the clawing wind. He put a hand into the fold of his overshirt and drew out the black box in which he kept the ring. Careful not to touch his flesh with hers, she put her ear close to his mouth so that she could hear what he was saying above the wind-shriek and the thud of the wings.

“We go high. It will be cold. Cover me, and then yourself. But first, take this and put it in safety. I must sleep.”

So Tilja took the box and stowed it in the bottom of the basket, and wedged that well with cushions. Then she chose furs and rugs from a pile and spread them over Faheel, and did the same for herself, but sat up for a while and watched the Empire draw nearer. By the time they crossed the coastline they were above the clouds. Between them, over to their left, she could see the innumerable channels of the Great River delta, and so was just able to make out Goloroth, but only its largest details, the wall, the big sheds, and the launching pier. As it slid away behind them she realized how fast they must be going.

It grew colder, and her eyes were watering too much to see, so she coiled herself down into her bedding and pulled a cushion over her head to muffle both wing thunder and wind wail, and closed her eyes. She didn’t expect to sleep, but lay for a while wondering at the strangeness of what was happening—far stranger, she thought, than anything else in her adventure, from the unicorns in the forest to the roc in Faheel’s paddock, stranger even than her gradual discovery of the power that lay in her own lack of any magical power—this business with time. Suppose in the wild hurtle of the start of their flight she had fallen out of the litter, but landed unhurt, what would have happened? Would the roc have stuck in its flight between wing beat and wing beat? Or would Faheel have found the strength to wear his ring again? And if neither of them had been able to do that, what then? Would she have been stuck, moving and breathing, in a world forever still?

She need not have been alone. She could have gone to Faheel’s lower room and Meena and the others would have started to breathe again and she could have waited for them to wake, but they would have needed to stay in her presence in order not to be stilled once more. They could have walked in Faheel’s garden and picked grapes from his vines and eaten them, but fresh grapes would not ripen, ever, unless she stayed near enough to draw them back into time. . . .

But of course, Tahl would have worked out a way of getting her back up to the roc.

Smiling at the thought, she fell asleep and dreamed of Woodbourne in a winter storm, with a gale shrieking through the thatch and a strange, deep booming in the chimney.