Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

At first the boys were too busy wolfing their meal to talk much, so they hadn’t begun on their story before they heard Brando’s yap of welcome from his kennel by the door. Tilja rose eagerly and turned to fetch the lantern, but Anja was there first and snatched it up.

“Anja,” said Ma, firmly. “Da would like to say hello to Tilja first. He’s been very worried about her.”

“I’ve been worried about him ,” said Anja, but handed the lantern over. Tilja lit it with a spill from the stove and carried it out into the yard, where she found Da wiping Dusty down with a fistful of straw, as if all he’d been doing was a day’s plowing. He turned and gazed at her in silence.

“I told you I’d come home,” she said.

Without a word he picked her up as if he were about to lift her onto Dusty’s back, just as he’d done almost a year ago, sending her out to look for Ma by the lake. He held her for a moment, studying her face, and set her down.

“You’re tired,” she said.

“Not as tired as I might have been. I’d’ve had five days on the road, but for the raftmen. You’ve grown. It’s been a while. Done what you went for?”

“Yes, in the end. I hope so, anyway. We’ll know when the snows come. Da, I haven’t just grown, I’ve changed. But this is still home.”

“Good.”

That was all, and all she’d expected, but she could feel his happiness echoing hers, so it was enough.

Tired though they all were they talked far into the night, exchanging their adventures.

“And don’t leave anything out,” said Anja. “Da always leaves stuff out. I want to know everything .”

“Do my best,” said Da.

“Good,” said Anja, and fell asleep, and after that slept and woke and asked questions and was asleep again before they were answered.

Just as Anja had said, Da couldn’t help leaving most of his story out. His hands spoke better than his tongue. But piecing his mumblings together, Tilja made out that as soon as the pass was open, in high summer, the raids had begun, but had been driven off without too much loss. Then there’d been a lull, until eighteen days ago the lookouts on the crags had reported an army of horsemen massing on the northern plain, and the message had gone out for all able-bodied men to rally below the pass.

They had made their stand at the foot of the mountains, on a long meadow, rising to a ridge, and flanked on one side by precipitous stony woodland and on the other by the ravine carved out by the melting glacier. All one day they had held off the attacks of the horsemen, but during the night a large troop of the enemy had somehow climbed down into the ravine and swum their horses down the swollen river, so when they woke next morning the men of the Valley had found themselves surrounded.

There was nothing for it but to turn about, facing both ways, and stick it out long as they lasted. For a while there was heavy, close fighting, and then the horsemen sounded their horns and drew off, readying for the final assault. The men of the Valley waited, knowing they were done for. Da was seeing to Dusty (“Suppose I was saying good-bye to him,” he muttered) when all of a sudden the horse gave a great squeal and reared up. Men were shouting all along the line, and he looked round and saw the enemy, all over the place, struggling to control their horses. . . .

“And there, rushing in above them like, like I don’t know what, was—”

“Calico!” yelled Anja, wide awake for the moment.

Da laughed with the rest of them. The interruption somehow seemed to loosen his tongue.

“That’s right, chicken,” he said. “Only I didn’t recognize her, didn’t even spot her for a horse, not at first, nor that she had riders on her, because hardly had I seen her before the fire came down, ropes of it, wriggling around in the air and lashing out at the men below. And men and horses were screaming and bolting around, and the fire ropes went snaking off after ’em, dragging the men out of the saddles.

“The thing circled round close by us a couple of times so now we could see it was a horse, a horse with wings, and a couple of fellows on its back, one of them holding the reins and the one behind making the fire ropes. Then it came on at us and I ducked down, thinking we were for it too, but the fire laid off while it went over and then it shot out ten times as strong the other side, where the main lot of the enemy were. The lie of the ground had stopped ’em seeing what was up beyond us, so they’d almost reached our line when it fell on ’em. They heaved round and raced yelling for the pass and the flying thing swooped to and fro, harrying ’em on.

“We’d mostly turned to watch what was happening, and now the fellows who’d got behind us came hammering through, taking no notice of us, no more than if we’d been a row of bushes or something, so we opened up and let ’em by and they raced on and joined the scrimmage at the foot of the pass. But there must’ve been a couple of hundred of ’em—more—they left lying on the ground, and riderless ponies careering about. And we just stood there, not knowing what to make of it. One moment we’d thought we were dead men, and next it was all over.

“There’s a lot of good men we won’t see again. Young Prin down at Siddlebrook’s one of ’em, sorry to say.”

“Prin!” said Ma. “But he’s only sixteen, no, seventeen now. Oh dear!”

Da shook his head, leaned back in his chair and reached for his cider.

“But what happened next?” asked Anja. “What about Calico? I’ve got to know about Calico.”

“You won’t get any more out of him,” said Ma. “Ask Alnor or Tahl. They know.”

Tilja’s eyes were heavy with sleep. She looked round the familiar kitchen. With just one lamp burning, and the glow and flicker from the open stove, it was a place of gleams and shadows. Only the old table was a pool of light, with a pile of fruit and nuts at the center, and the remains of a loaf, and cheese, and on the pewter platters a scatter of peelings and husks. Meena and Alnor had moved to the settle by the wall and were sitting in the corner at its darker end. Tahl was on the other side of the table from Tilja. The lamp was between them, so his face was hard to see, but his hands were bright-lit as they fiddled with the curious silken tassel that the Ropemaker had given him. Tahl glanced over his shoulder at Alnor, waiting for him to start.

“Why don’t you let Tahl do it?” Meena suggested. “He’d only keep interrupting you.”

“Instead of Alnor putting me right when I’ve finished,” said Tahl. “Where’d I better start?”

“Flying away from us on the other side of the forest,” said Meena. “We can tell them the rest of it later. Last we saw you were way up in the sky, heading off north.”

Tahl didn’t even pause to gather his thoughts. The story came bursting out of him.

“First off the only problem we had was staying on,” he said. “Calico knew where she was going. Alnor tried using the reins a bit, but she wasn’t having any, so we just let her fly until we got here. She was heading for her stall, like this afternoon, when Alnor managed to hitch her to a post, and by then Selly and Anja were here, and Anja got her quiet by giving her a feed in the yard, and we had a bite to eat while Selly told us about the horsemen coming through the pass and all the men going off to fight them.

“We were dog tired, and we wanted to be off early, so we wolfed our supper and fell into bed. Selly got us up and we were all set to go as soon as it was light. Trouble was, Calico wouldn’t budge, no matter how much we yelled at her and kicked her ribs. She was home and she was staying home.

“Then I remembered this. The Ropemaker said I might need it, but I didn’t know what for, so I’d just put it away, but now I thought it might be a special sort of whip for telling a flying horse who’s master, so I took it out and gave a her a flick with it. That did the trick, and some!”