All at once Ann was acutely embarrassed, standing blocking the pavement and being shown someone’s wallet as if she were a policewoman asking for ID. She saw people staring. She was just going to ask Mordion to put the thing away, when her eye fell on a credit card peeping out of the opposite side of the wallet. Ah, she thought, I can find out who he really is!
“That card,” she said, pointing to it, “is even better than money. You—”
“Yes, I know,” Mordion said. “I tried it out in the wine shop. It’s even got my signature on it. See?”
He held the little plastic oblong out to her. I don’t believe it! Ann thought, staring at the raised letters on it. M. Agenos they said. She was suddenly exasperated. She looked up into Mordion’s smiling, bearded face, like St Francis or something, except for the diving wing of eyebrow. He looked as innocent as a saint, or a baby.
“You’ve lost your memory, you know,” she told him. “Blame the Bannus if you like, but its true! Now you look. Over there.” She took hold of the thick wool of his sleeve and turned him to face the parking bay across the street. “That car. The big grey one. You came here in that car. I saw you.”
Mordion looked at the car with polite interest, but not as if it meant anything to him. “If you say so,” he agreed. “I must have come here somehow.”
At least, Ann thought, he didn’t seem to believe he’d been asleep for centuries any longer. They were making progress. “But don’t you think you’ve got people – family – who must be wondering where you are by now?” she demanded.
“No. I know I’ve got no family,” Mordion said. His smile faded out and he turned and picked up his green sack. “I must get back. Hume really is starving.”
Ann hung on to his sleeve and tried again. “You’ve no need to live in the wood, Mordion. If you wanted, you could be walking about here in ordinary clothes.”
“I like these clothes,” Mordion said, looking down at himself. “The style and the colour seem – right to me. And I like living in the wood, you know. Even if there wasn’t Hume to think of, I would probably stay there. It’s a beautiful place.”
“It isn’t real,” Ann said despairingly.
“No, that isn’t quite accurate.” Mordion heaved his sack up into his arms. “Theta-space has genuine existence, even if no one quite knows what it is. Do come and see us there,” he added over his shoulder as he set off across the road. “Hume was asking after you.”
Ann picked up her own bag and watched him go. He went very quickly in spite of looking as if he was lounging along. “I want to shake him!” she said.
In the shop, Mum was full of the strange customer she had just served. “I suppose he was a monk or something, Ann. Such a lovely smile – and such funny clothes. It seemed odd to see someone like that buying onions.”
“I expect he has a screw loose and several pieces missing,” Ann said grumpily.
“Oh no,” said Mum. “He wasn’t simple, Ann, or mad, or anything like that. But you’re right in a way. Something was wrong. I got the feeling of terrible sadness somewhere.”
Ann sighed as she unloaded groceries on the kitchen table. Mum was right. She was right too. There was something very wrong with Mordion, and very sad. He seemed to be several pieces of a person that did not fit together. Her sigh was because she was realising she would have to go to the wood again, not because of Hume, but because of Mordion. Mordion needed her to keep dinning the truth into him.
She went straightaway. Clock me in, she told her imaginary people as she slipped past the big grey car. It now had pink bud shells all over its sleek roof. I need to know how long I spend in there.
I’ll try, said the Prisoner, but I don’t have much notion of time.
The Slave and the Boy were busy, but the King said, as Ann was going down the path between the houses, I’ll time you. By the way, did you ever get another sight of that van?
Oh yes – and I forgot because some people in armour chased us, Ann said. It was a weighing scale. The firm’s name is Rayner Hexwood.
My worst fears conf—The King’s voice in Ann’s head stopped. Ann’s first thought was that she had crossed the boundary into this theta-space the Bannus made. But that could not be so, she realised. She could see Banners Wood in front of her, looking as it always did, and the houses beyond it through the sparse trees. Because it was Saturday, there were little kids all over it, running along all the muddy paths and shouting as they crossed the stream on the traditional fallen tree and the tree rolled under their feet. Martin and Jim Price were there too, comfortably roosting on the branches of the best climbing tree. But, being older, they were simply there to talk. Martin raised a thumb to Ann as she went underneath them but did not stop talking to Jim for an instant.
Perhaps the King had simply been called away to a crisis, Ann thought. And I’m not going to be able to get into the whatsit field today. The wood’s too full.
She was nearly down to the stream by then, passing the yellow crisp packet that had been inside the hollow tree for nearly a year now. No good, she thought. But she went on walking, and it took her longer than she had expected to reach the stream. When she did reach it, she was at the top of a high earthy bank. Below her, the stream foamed along as a river, powered by the waterfall on her right and racing round the big brown rocks by which Ann had crossed before.
Ann chuckled. As she slid down the bank, she thought, I take my hat off to that Bannus! It phases the field in so smoothly you simply can’t tell it’s doing it.
For a moment, as she climbed the rocks on the other bank, she thought she was not going to find anyone there by the cave. But that was because they were all three very busy. Hume was writing, very carefully with his tongue stuck out, kneeling by paper spread on a flat stone, using a burnt stick to write with. Ann was disappointed to find he was still small. Beyond Hume, there was a most efficient firepit, where an old iron pot was dangling from a tripod of tough wood, smelling smoky but enticing. An iron griddle and a number of stone-age-looking pots stood in the ashes.
The shelter had walls now, of woven willow daubed with mud. A home-made ladder led up to the roof. It looked very flimsy, and it creaked, but it had to be stronger than it looked, because Yam was just climbing that ladder on his big spongy feet, carrying a mighty bundle of rushes. Mordion was on the roof, pegging smaller bundles of rushes into place to make thatch.
“I see you decided to cheat after all,” Ann called up at him.
“Only a little,” Mordion called down, “and only over the cooking pots.”
“Hume must be provided with regular meals,” Yam stated. Ann could only just hear him, because Hume threw down his burnt stick and galloped to meet her, clamouring as usual.
“Ann, Ann, come and look at my writing!”
Ann went and looked kindly at the paper. It was the whitish-brown kind of paper that wrapped fish and chips. Hume had done two rows of scribbles and, underneath those, Yam is on the rufe. He has a lader. It was crooked but quite readable.
“That’s very good,” Ann said, pointing to the writing. “But I don’t think the other two are quite letters.”
“Yes, they are,” Mordion called from the roof. “He’s learning Hamitic and Universal script as well as your Albionese. Yam insisted. Yam, I may tell you, is a real bully.”
“The man has to be kept up to the mark as well as the child,” Yam pronounced. “That bundle is inefficiently spread, Mordion. Left to himself, Ann, Mordion sits and broods.”
“I don’t brood,” Mordion said, “but I like to sit with the sun on my back and fish. And think, of course.”
“You idle,” said Yam, “and you sleep.” He bent his head towards Ann. His face was creased beside his blank mouth and she supposed he was smiling.
“Draw me a picture, Ann! Draw for me like Mordion!” Hume clamoured. He turned the paper over. On the other side, Mordion had drawn a beautiful small-headed cat stalking a mouse, a realistic horse – horses were something Ann could never get rig
ht – and an even more realistic dragon. Each drawing was labelled in the three kinds of writing.
Ann felt most respectful. “I can’t draw anything nearly as good, Hume, but I’ll try if you want”
Hume did want, so Ann drew him a cow and an elephant and a picture of Yam on the ladder – Yam turned out far too chunky, but Hume seemed pleased – and labelled each one for him in English. While she drew, she listened to Yam saying things like, “You will have to retie all these. Bad work lets rain through,” or “That peg is not in straight,” or “You must take your knife and make these edges more even.” Mordion never seemed to argue. Ann marvelled at how happy and submissive he seemed. Yam was so bossy that she was not sure she would have stood for it herself.
After an hour or so, Mordion suddenly came down the ladder and stretched. “There is half the roof still to do,” Yam said. Ann did not understand how a flat robot voice could manage to sound so reproachful.
“Then you do it,” Mordion said. “I’ve had enough for the moment. I’m flesh and blood, Yam. I need to eat”
“Refuel then by all means,” Yam said graciously.
“So you dostick up for yourself a bit?” Ann remarked as Mordion came and stirred the iron pot.
Mordion looked up at her from under his eyebrow. “I brought it on myself,” he said. “I asked Yam if he knew how to build a house.”
“But I wouldn’t stand for it even if Yam was human!” Ann exclaimed. “Don’t you have any self-respect?”
Mordion straightened up over the cooking pot. For that instant, Ann knew what it meant when they said someone was towering in his wrath. She backed away.
“Of course I—” Mordion began. Then he stopped, and thought, with his brow riding in over his nose, just as if Ann had asked him something very difficult. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Do you fancy I need to learn some self-respect?”
“Er – well – I wouldn’t let a machine push me about like that,” Ann answered. Mordion in this mixture of wrath and humility alarmed her so much that she looked at her watch and found it was time for lunch.
But when she had said goodbye and was halfway down the rocks to the river, it occurred to her that the Bannus was a machine, and she had let that push her about for days now. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! She nearly went back and apologised, except that she could not bear to look that foolish.
She went past the yellow crisp packet in the hollow tree, sure that she would be at the muddy little stream any second. But when she came to water, it was the river. While she was crossing carefully from rock to slippery rock, Ann could see Yam at the top of the cliff opposite, sitting with his silver chin in his silver hand, contriving to look doleful. By the time she had scrambled up the path that Mordion and Hume had worn going down to the river to wash, she could see Yam was dented as well as doleful. It seemed as if some years had passed.
“What’s the matter?” Ann asked Yam.
Yam’s eyes glowed mournfully at her. “This is not what I wish,” he said. “It is quite against my advice. The correct procedure is to use an antibiotic.”
An extraordinary warbling noise, shrill and throbbing, came from the other side of the house. Ann dodged round its walls – it had put out another room since she was last here – and came into the flat space by the firepit, to find Mordion and Hume kneeling face to face there, surrounded by little clay pots and lines drawn in the dusty earth. The noise was from flute-things they were both blowing. These were white pipes with jagged round holes in them. They seemed to be made of pieces of bone. Mordion’s beard was inches longer, although his hair, like Hume’s, had clearly been hacked off to shoulder length. This, and the fact that Hume was about twelve years old, was so much what Ann expected that she did not think about it until much later. She simply covered her ears against the awful skirling of the pipes.
Hume saw her move and shot her a friendly look between two throbbing notes. One of his eyes was smaller than the other, and very red and runny. Ann was not sure whether she expected this or not. Mordion’s deep, light eyes turned her way. Next second, Ann found herself backing away from a place in the air where everything made a small transparent whirl, like a sort of pimple in the universe.
“If Yam sent you to interrupt us,” the whirling pimple said with Mordion’s voice, “please don’t.”
“I – I wasn’t going to,” Ann said.
“Then just stand there quietly for about five minutes,” said the transparent place.
“All right,” said Ann.
Mordion had not stopped playing for an instant all through this, and neither had Hume. Ann stood against the flimsy wall of the new part of the house, interested, envious and wistful. This was the part of Hume’s education she most wished she could share. She watched another whirling, transparent place begin to form between the two screaming flutes. This one was long and thin, like an unstable figure of eight. When the thing was properly formed, Mordion and Hume both bent their pipes to it, blowing away for all they were worth, and guided it carefully to stand twirling over one of the little earthen pots. Like charming an invisible snake! Ann thought, as the pipes moved the whirling thing on to the next pot, and the next. Before long it had visited every pot in the circle. Mordion and Hume sat back on their heels, piping only very gently now, and watched and waited. The whirling thing hovered for a moment, then made a determined dart for one of the little pots. Ann was not sure what happened then. The whirling thing was suddenly gone, but that particular pot seemed to stand out from the others somehow.
Mordion laid his pipe down. “That’s the one then.” He took up the pot and carefully anointed Hume’s bad eye with the greenish runny mixture in the pot. “Blink it in,” he said, “if it doesn’t sting too much.”
“No, it’s all right,” Hume said, blinking vigorously. “It’s soothing.”
“Then that spell worked,” said Mordion. “Good. Thanks for being so patient, Ann.”
Ann dared to leave the house wall and come over to the firepit. “I wish I could learn to manipulate the paratypical field like that!” she said yearningly.
“We didn’t,” said Hume. “We worked pure magic. Look.” He blew a warbling scale on his bone flute, and a flight of birds came out of the end of it like bubbles, and flew away into the boughs of the pine tree.
“Good heavens.’” said Ann. And she asked Mordion, “Really magic?”
“I think so,” said Mordion. “Hume seems very good at it.”
“So’s Mordion,” said Hume. “Wood magic, herb magic, weather magic. Yam hates it. I’ll go and tell Yam he can come back now, shall I?”
“If he’s not still sulking.” Mordion looked at Ann as he said this, and she nodded slightly. She was used to this. Mordion wanted to speak to her privately. Hume knew he did, and Hume had offered to go away in order to let Ann know that he too wanted to talk to her. It was odd, Ann thought, as Hume bounded away. Both of them seemed to think of her as a sort of consultant.
“What’s wrong with his eye?” she asked as soon as Hume was safely out of hearing.
“I’m not sure,” Mordion replied. “It’s been like that for some time. You must have noticed. I think it’s growing wrong. My feeling is that I bungled that eye when I made him. I shan’t forgive myself if he grows up with only one eye.”
“Sometimes,” Ann told him, “you are like a mother hen, Mordion. He was perfectly all right when he was older – younger – well, most of the time. Why should you have bungled him? It’s much more likely that living here in this wood he’s got an infection from lack of vitamins or, well, that kind of thing.”
“You really think so?” Mordion asked, anxiously relieved.
“Sure of it,” Ann declared.
Mordion picked up the clay pot and turned it round in his hands. “I think we found the correct herb to cure it. There were nine possibles. Magic likes nines. I’ll keep using it.”
“Can’t you teach me wood magic – or whatever it was you just did?” Ann asked.
“I’d like to, but—” Mordion thought, twirling the clay pot. “To learn this sort of magic, you have to be sure you’ve accepted the wood – wear it round you like a cloak – and you don’t, do you?”
“I can manipulate the Bannus field sometimes,” Ann protested.
“That’s different,” said Mordion. “There are two – no, three – sorts of paratypical field here. There’s the one the Bannus makes, there’s the one the wood makes, with its attendant nature magics, and there’s also pure mind magic, though I think the three interact quite often. Mind magic’s the one you’re good at, Ann, and you don’t need me to teach you that. So you think Hume’s eye is really not my fault?”
Ann assured him again it was not. Though goodness knows why he takes my word for it! she thought, as Yam marched round the house carrying two dead rabbits.
“Now, the hocus-pocus is over,” Yam said, “here is some furry fuel.”
“Come and play, Ann,” Hume said, bounding after Yam.
Ann got up gladly and went with Hume. She liked Hume a lot when he was older. The two of them went racing and leaping upriver, to where the land usually flattened out below the hill where they had found Yam.
“The wood’s changed again,” Hume called over his shoulder.
“How?” panted Ann. The sole drawback to Hume this size was that he could run much faster than she could. She supposed it was living wild that did it.
“There’s a new place by the river,” Hume called, receding. “I’ll show you.”
They came to the place a few bends up, and it was beautiful. Here the river bank flattened out and ran down to the water like a green lawn, under mighty forest trees. The river was wide here, and shallow, and ran flickering over multitudes of small stones. It was an open invitation to take your shoes off and paddle. Ann and Hume both cast their footgear on to the short grass and galloped into the water.
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