Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

Calico in her panic had tripped on her hobble and fallen. She was still struggling to her feet when Tilja found her. Shakily Tilja helped her up and stood with her for a while, soothing and calming her, and at the same time soothing herself with the homely feel of horse. Then she left Calico to graze and went and sat, in front of the hut, waiting, in a tangle of hope and dread, for the Ropemaker. Or Moonfist.

A wall of cloud was looming to the north—the rain must already be sheeting down at Woodbourne—but overhead the sky was clear, and the setting sun, hardly lower than when she had gone into the hut, colored the cloud mass with heavy purples and fringes of gold. Time passed. Nothing happened until Meena, Alnor and Tahl came cautiously up the slope, just as the last fiery streaks were dulling in the west. Meena had her skirt held up in front of her, full of the chestnuts they’d been collecting.

“Is everything all right?” said Alnor.

Tilja could hear the anxiety in his voice.

“I . . . don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m hoping someone will come and help us, but there may be other things. . . .”

“D’you want us to keep away still?” said Meena. “I don’t fancy leaving you here alone in the dark.”

“Nor us being away from you, either,” said Alnor, “if that sort of stuff’s going to happen. Let’s get a fire going. We’ll need it anyway if we’re going to get the chestnuts roasted before it rains.”

Nobody wanted to talk about what had happened or might still happen. Alnor used his tinderbox to light the dry branches that he and Tahl had already laid in while Meena and Tilja were in the forest. By the time it was fully dark the embers were hot enough for the chestnuts. They were fat and full of flavor, but Tilja could barely eat for tension. In her mind the conviction grew and grew that Axtrig had been wrong and the Ropemaker wouldn’t come after all, would never come, because Moonfist had already found and destroyed him. And if Moonfist himself came . . . She felt utterly drained, certain that she would lack the strength to deal with him. When a chestnut popped or a burning branch collapsed, her heart leaped like a rabbit. And if anything beyond the circle of firelight stirred—a leaf, a settling bird—she froze with the hair on her nape erect while she waited for the intruder.

What came in the end was a little mouselike creature. She saw it first as a pair of glistening eyes at the edge of darkness. She froze. It crept forward, nose twitching. Now Meena saw it, and whispered to the others to sit still. Very slowly she leaned and crumbled part of a chestnut into the animal’s path. It hesitated, then came on in short, nervous darts. When it reached the crumbs it sniffed at the largest one, picked it up between its forepaws, sat back on its haunches and nibbled rapidly. The firelight sparkled off its fur. There was something odd about its movements, a kind of gawky deftness, as if it had not really been born as a whole mouse, but had been somehow assembled from several other mice. Like the unicorn, the dog, the lion . . .

You have eaten our food , Tilja thought. Now you must deal well by us.

She smiled and waited for what it would do next.

Without warning it turned and flipped away into the darkness.

Nobody said anything. For a moment she assumed they hadn’t recognized the mouse-thing, and were waiting for it to recover its nerve and return. Then she became aware of their stillness. She looked. All three were sitting rigid, gazing straight ahead of them, unblinking. At the edge of darkness she could see Calico, motionless.

Something moved on the far side of the fire. A man was standing there, behind Alnor, watching them. She knew at once he was Moonfist. He came round the fire and faced her, looking down. She scrambled to her feet. He was about Da’s age, but broader and shorter, and clean-shaven, not dressed in the fashion of the Empire, but wearing a soft cap, short cloak, jerkin and leggings, with a belt of large silver links at the waist. He carried a sturdy wooden staff with a leather bag tied to it at the top. There was nothing about him to tell her she should be afraid, but she was. Fear seemed to beam out of him. Fear held Meena and the others rigid in its nightmare. She was outside the nightmare. She could move and think. And be afraid.

He glanced at Alnor. Alnor jerked and strutted forward, stiff as a doll, and faced him. Moonfist studied him for a moment, then laid his hand on his shoulder. Instantly Alnor became a little mannikin, only a few inches high, dangling from Moonfist’s hand. Moonfist slipped him into the leather bag at the top of his purse. He did the same to Meena, but when Tahl stood in front of him he paused.

“Too clever,” he murmured. “Too clever for your own good.”

He tapped him on the shoulder, put him in the bag and turned to Tilja.

“You have my ring,” he said. “Give it to me.”

“It isn’t yours,” she whispered.

“It is mine,” he said calmly. “Faheel should never have had it. Give it to me.”

“No.”

“You destroyed Varti, who was last of the Watchers,” he said. “All powers are now mine. I could destroy you, but choose not to. You will be useful to me. Give me my ring, and I will give you back your companions unharmed.”

“No.”

“Very well.”

He glanced at the leather bag and it became a transparent globe, lit from within. The three mannikins were awake now, alive, looking around, seeing her, staring at her with terrified, pleading eyes. Moonfist glanced at the fire. A white flame shot up at its center and steadied, gently roaring. He gripped his staff by its lower end and swung the globe toward the flame. The mannikins shrank away from the heat, covering their heads with their arms. He stopped the movement and looked at her.

She put her hand into her blouse, drew out the box, opened it and took out the ring. Gripping it lightly between the forefingers and thumbs of both hands, like a priestess laying an offering on a shrine, she held it toward him. He reached out his cupped hand to accept it. At the last moment she let go with her left hand and snatched at a finger, while her right flung the ring into the darkness where the mouse had gone.

“Ramdatta!” she cried.

In the shadows something moved, began to explode. Then she was in darkness.

Again, but hopelessly, she sought the lake. She was still holding Moonfist’s finger. He strode beside her in the darkness, untroubled. She had to take him to the lake. She couldn’t have let go, even if she had wanted, but she didn’t. To take him was the only hope. If he was with her, with all his powers, he was not by the fire, and the Ropemaker would have a few moments more to find the ring.

They were there. In the starless blackness she could feel the icy wind sweeping down from the glaciers, hear the rattle of wavelets at her feet.

He stretched out an arm and called. Four heavy syllables. Four blows on a great gong, echoing and reechoing from the mountains. Avalanches slid bellowing toward the lake, and with a vast, sucking roar the water started to drain away, down through the chasm that Moonfist’s cry had opened beneath it.

It was happening to her. Everything that was in her, everything that made her Tilja, thoughts, memories, loves, hopes, dreams, terrors, was draining away through the hand that held Moonfist’s finger, into him, becoming part of him.

No, I will not , she thought. I am Tilja, Tilja, Tilja, Tilja. There was nothing to hold to, nothing to stop the awful slither of herself into the man’s otherness. She had to have something to hold to. Her free hand clutched uselessly at her own body, as though that would do, and brushed against the roc feathers in the pocket of her blouse. Yes, there! Not the actual feathers, not the memory of the roc, but the place, Faheel’s island, where, while his unseen friends had danced their dance of farewell, she had discovered who and what she was, the innermost Tilja, her true self.