Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“Tilja?” he whispered.

“I’m here. I got a soldier to carry you out of the city and the roc brought us home. I’ve still got your ring.”

“Well done.”

He spoke the words so quietly that Tilja could barely hear them. She thought he had gone back to sleep but then he whispered again. A question. She didn’t catch the words but guessed his meaning.

“The roc’s guarding the door,” she said. “But . . . whatever it was happened at the end . . . that darkness . . .”

He didn’t answer for a while, but then spoke more firmly.

“I will tell you what happened. You remember, before we went to Talagh, I told you that you had brought me both good news and bad?”

“Yes, but you didn’t have time to tell me that bad news.”

“It lay in your description of the contest on the walls after your grandmother had spoken my name and the spoon had moved. The magician who came from the outer city . . .”

“Zara told us he was very powerful—she’s the Lord Kzuva’s magician. She said that in the end it took four Watchers to drive him off. And then they were all trying to find him.”

“They did not succeed. He was there, in that darkness. He came for the ring, and now that he has woken he will try to come again. If he did so, not even the roc could hold him back. Nor could I, as I am now. You yourself might withstand him—I do not know. But I have even more powerful friends, who will protect us until I have said my farewells to them, and for a little while longer. By nightfall I shall be gone, and so will you and your friends. I will rest now, and then eat. And then we must work. I will tell you more later.”

“Can we wake my friends up?”

“Not yet. But before we go. Now, while I rest, go to the upstairs room, put the box with the ring back on the shelf from which I took it and open the silver box beside it. Take out the jewel it contains and give that to the roc, with my blessing and my thanks.”

Tilja did as she was told. The room at the top of the ladder was as she had first seen it. She could tell exactly where the ring box belonged by the circular patch in the dust on the shelf. The jewel in the silver box was an egg-shaped ruby as big as her two clenched fists. It was warm to the touch, and there was something inside it that seemed to be moving in sudden little spasms that changed the way the light shone into it. As she carried it down the ladder she could sense, faintly against her palm, the same tiny movements. She had felt something like that so often at Woodbourne that she understood at once what the jewel must be. She forgot all about the enemy who might come, all about Faheel, all about Meena and Alnor and Tahl and her own adventures. For the moment this mattered more than anything else in the world.

She edged out past the roc, laid the jewel between the immense yellow, black-taloned feet, and stood back and waited. The ruby doubled in size, and doubled again, and again. With a bubbling, crooning sound far down its throat, the roc bowed its head and pecked at the glowing surface, precisely but firmly, studying the movements inside the jewel each time before it pecked again. At the seventh peck the jewel cracked. The thing inside gave a convulsive heave, the ruby fell apart and the fledgling roc struggled to its feet with shreds of crimson yolk sac patterning its fluffy golden feathers. It cheeped, just like any new-hatched chick at Woodbourne.

The roc crooned over it, delicately picked the yolk sac away, and then lifted the chick, twisted its own head round and settled it into the hollow between its shoulders. It turned back and stared at Tilja. There was a question in its eyes.

“Faheel sends you his blessing and his thanks, and says you can go,” she said. “And I’d like to say thank you too.”

Perhaps it understood her tone, for it bent its huge head and nibbled gently at her ear, and in unthinking response she reached up and teased her fingers among the soft plumage beneath its neck.

Her hand froze. This great magical animal, and she, Tilja . . .

But no, nothing had happened, no flow or pulse of power out of that fullness into her emptiness. The roc was different. Its magic was of another kind. She must ask Faheel.

It raised its head and she stood aside to let it pass. It walked a few paces, glanced back at her, then hurled itself into the air. Two small golden feathers came floating down as the wings pounded out their rhythm and it sped away. Tilja picked them up and went back indoors.

Faheel was up and sitting by the table, sipping the orange juice she had found in his store cupboard. He had peeled an apple and cut a slice of bread and was eating slowly.

“Yes, you are right,” he said when she asked him about the roc. “There are different kinds of magic. Almost all human magic is made magic, made like a clay pot or a wooden chair. The wood and the clay are not chair and pot until the carpenter and the potter make them so. The air is full of wild magic, gusting around, so that a magician can gather it into himself or herself and give it shape and purpose. That is made magic. Your power appears to be to unmake that making. It is as if you could put your hand on a chair and return it to the tree from which it was shaped. The roc is not of that kind. It is natural magic, magical of its own nature. If you put your hand on a tree it would not change. It is itself already.”

“You made the roc do what you wanted.”

“No, I asked it. It owed me a favor. Many great magicians would risk everything they have won to possess the egg of a roc, but as well as there being two kinds of magic there are two kinds of magician. Once, like all who have held the ring, I was of the first sort, using made magic. But the ring is of both sorts, magic both made and natural. That is why it is so powerful. From it I learned to be of the second sort, and thus made friends with the creatures of natural magic, and was given new powers by them. So it was safe for the roc to give her egg into my keeping until it was due to hatch.”

“Look, I’ve got two of its feathers.”

“Keep them well hidden, or they will betray you. Tie them to your arm, as you did with the spoon. They have power—and purpose, for all I know.”

“This island—what makes it so peaceful—is that natural magic? Is that why I could feel it?”

“Yes, it is inherent in the island. It was here before I came and will remain when I am gone. I could live here not because I have magical powers, but because I have the friendship of the island.”

“Are unicorns natural magic too?”

“Indeed, yes. That was what finally persuaded me that I must prevent your friend the Ropemaker from becoming a Watcher. To transform oneself into an animal is not very difficult, though it has its perils. But to transform oneself into a magical animal, and even more to return to one’s human form, requires immense power and is still very dangerous. Even when I had all my strength I would never have tried it except for the greatest cause. But he did. He cannot have understood what he was risking. That was why my hope was that his powers were both untaught and uncorrupted, and why part of my reason for going to Talagh was to give him the ring. I failed. So now I must ask you to take it to him. Will you do that?”

Tilja stared at him. The Ropemaker?

“I . . . I’m not sure he is my friend,” she whispered. “He . . . he almost killed my mother, if he was the unicorn.”

“Yes. I told you it was dangerous to transform oneself into a magical animal. That is the main danger. One may take on too much of the nature of that animal. A unicorn such as you saw would not have ordinary human sympathies. But remember, your mother went to sing to the cedars again, and he did not try to stop her.”