Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

The noises moved away. Meena gave a sigh of pleasure.

“Lovely,” she whispered.

“Do they really shine in the dark?”

“You saw it too? I thought I was imagining it. And the cedars are waking up, too. I can hear them beginning to mumble.”

They slept again and woke in the dim forest daylight, cleaned themselves up and ate the last of their food to save carrying it, and then set out with lighter hearts. They walked steadily all morning, without feeling the need to rest. Meena sang almost all the way, more loudly than the day before, and mixing in bits of ordinary song, just as she had done on the raft, so that Tilja could now join in and carry on to the end of the song while Meena’s voice, after a line or two, went floating away into the cedar song, weaving in and out through Tilja’s tune.

She was halfway through “Cherry Pits” when she saw her first unicorn.

Still singing, Meena nudged her elbow and glanced to the right, a gesture and look that said, Over that way, but don’t stare . Cautiously Tilja half turned her head and out of the corner of her eyes caught a flicker of whiteness in the shadows. It vanished and came back and this time for a moment she saw it clearly, moon-white against the dark depths of the forest, small as a child’s pony, with a flowing mane and tail, but straight-backed and light-boned as a deer, the arched neck carrying the head high, to balance the weight of the ivory horn. Then it seemed to sense her astonished gaze and twitched itself out of sight among the tree trunks.

Soon another appeared on the left, and this time she was careful only to glance and glance away, and it stayed there, moving along with them, coming and going among the tree trunks. The first one reappeared, and a mare and foal joined it, and then more, so that after a while there was a troop of them on either side, a line of that unearthly whiteness threading its way through the forest.

For a long while Tilja was so absorbed in wonder that she was barely listening to Meena’s singing. At last she heard it, one particular note like a cry of pain, except that it was a pure sung note, wild as birdsong, throbbing with joy. She turned and stared. Meena’s cheeks were streaming with tears. She couldn’t possibly see the faint tracks they had so far been following, but her feet seemed to know the way.

The forest ahead grew darker and became a solid wall of cedars, much younger than the giants they had been passing, with interlacing branches sweeping to the ground, impenetrable except at one narrow opening that became a winding path barely wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side. Now Tilja guessed where she was, though the path seemed different from the one along which she and Dusty had wrestled with the logging sledge almost a year ago. Glancing over her shoulder, she could see no sign of the unicorns, but Meena hadn’t faltered in her song so she knew they must still be there, following, out of sight beyond the last bend. Round yet another corner lay the lake, still as a sheet of steel. The grassy clearing where they had found Ma was a short way off to their right.

Still singing, Meena stopped and turned, holding her spread hands in front of her as if she was asking for some special favor. Tilja understood the gesture at once. This was not for her—she was an intruder. This was for Meena. But she could stay and watch, or Meena wouldn’t have let her come as far as the lake. She turned and scrambled away beneath the branches beside the water, found a comfortable place with a good view of the clearing, and sat down.

Meena had almost reached the arena. The air was so still that whispers of her song came floating across the water, and when she halted and turned to face the lake Tilja could hear it clearly.

This seemed to be what the unicorns had been waiting for. One after another they emerged from the opening and paced solemnly along beside the lake, moving not like ordinary animals, tame or wild, but like a team of dancers entering to begin some stately dance. There were twenty-three of them, and the single foal. Their reflections gleamed, perfect, in the unruffled surface.

They gathered in a wide circle around Meena and stood and waited. Her voice had dropped so low that Tilja could no longer hear it as Meena sank to the ground and spread her arms in a gesture of welcome. The unicorns came right up to her and lay down, without any jostling, but arranging themselves in two exact rings, their bodies spreading out like the petals of an open flower. Tilja understood that she was watching something wholly magical, not the man-magic of Talagh, or of the ring, but the kind of magic by which Faheel had made friends with mountains and with oceans. She was filled with delighted amazement that she, Tilja, whose touch could undo powerfully woven charms and destroy great magicians, was allowed to watch this happen.

After a long while the song ended. Meena bowed her head. The unicorns backed away into their circle and returned to her, one at a time. Each lowered its horn and touched her above the heart. She in her turn laid her fingers on each muzzle, both gestures clearly blessings of farewell. The foal came with its mother, seeming to know exactly what to do. Its horn was about as long as Tilja’s middle finger.

When they had finished they turned and came just as solemnly back along the lake, but before they reached the opening something seemed to startle them. They bolted and were gone. Meena hadn’t moved. She was sitting as before, with her head bowed, deep in her trance. She didn’t look up when Anja appeared running along the far side of the lake, shouting excitedly. A moment later Ma came out of the trees, leading Tiddikin by the bridle. Tilja ran, and met them on the other side of the clearing.

“The cedars told us!” cried Anja, gasping for breath every few words. “They’ve woken up! I heard them talking. So did Ma! They said we’d find you by the lake, and we did! Are you all right? Da’s gone to fight the horse people! Calico came back! She’s got wings ! She’s gone too! And those boys! Where’s Meena? What’s that girl doing by our lake?”

Tilja didn’t answer, but gave her a hug and kiss and ran to meet Ma. Ma knelt and held her tight, both of them sobbing quietly. Her hug was as awkward as ever.

“Oh, I’m so happy to see you!” Tilja said as soon as she could speak. “Is Da all right? The river told us the pass was open and there’d been fighting in the Valley.”

Ma let go, rose and dried her face on her skirt. “Horsemen came through the passes, just like we said they would. People always start to believe you when it’s too late. Da’s gone to help try and fight them back, of course. That was ten days ago. We’ve been coming up to the forest every day to see if the cedars had anything to tell us, but they’ve been asleep, oh, almost since you left. And then this morning they started to wake up, just mutters and mumbles at first, but—Anja can hear them better than I can, and she swore they were saying you and Meena were coming back through the forest.”

“Nothing about the fighting?”

“No, but . . . I suppose that’s Meena, over there?”

She asked the question so matter-of-factly that Tilja blinked. Then she remembered what Anja had said and realized that if you’ve seen what you know to be a cantankerous brute of a horse come flying into your farmyard, ridden by two boys, one of whom you last saw as a blind old man, then it mightn’t be hard to believe anything, let alone work out what had happened to Meena. Anja must have made the connection too, she now saw. She was kneeling beside Meena, bombarding her with questions, giving her no time to answer, and Meena had her arm round her and was laughing aloud.

Tilja had no idea how Ma’s meeting with Meena would go. It must be very strange for both of them, she guessed, even stranger than it had been for Tilja herself, finding her grandmother had become a sort of elder sister. They stood and looked at each other for a while; then Meena stretched out her hands and Ma took them and they kissed each other gently.