Hexwood

by Diana Wynne Jones

  It was icy, and the stones were painful, but that did not prevent a great deal of splashing and fun. When Ann’s feet were too numb to go on, she threw herself down on the lawnlike slope and lay gazing at the sky, improbably blue between the amazing young green of the leaves overhead. No wonder Mordion loved this wood so much.

  Hume, who seldom kept still if he could help it, became very busy dragging big fallen boughs out of the water and piling them in a heap. “I’m going to build a boat,” he explained, “and I’d better make sure of this timber while I can. I can feel the wood getting ready to change again.”

  This, Ann supposed, was what Mordion meant about wearing the wood like a cloak. She could feel nothing except peace. The huge old trees around her seemed to have been there for centuries and looked as if they would go on growing for centuries more. Change seemed impossible. It was unfair that Hume should feel change coming. “I am not,” she said grumpily, “repeat not, going to help you haul that heap to the house.”

  “Round the house is the only bit that never changes,” Hume said, throwing a last branch on the pile. “But please yourself. I can get Yam – though that’ll mean arguing for an hour to stop him chopping it up for firewood. Let’s climb a tree.”

  They climbed the giant Ann had been lying under, scrambling out on a great clipping bough until they were right over the water, where they roosted comfortably, talking – rather as, Ann dimly remembered, Martin had been doing with Jim Price.

  “How does my eye look?” Hume asked.

  Ann examined it, surprised at how anxious he was. “Better,” she said. “Not nearly so red anyway.” It was still smaller than the other eye, but she did not want to worry Hume by telling him that.

  “Thank goodness!” Hume said devoutly. “I don’t know what went wrong with it, but I’ve been terrified in case it went blind. No one can be a proper swordsman with only one eye.”

  “Why do you want to be a swordsman?” Ann asked. “If I had your talent for magic, I wouldn’t bother to do anything else.”

  Hume dismissed magic as just ordinary. “I’ve got to kill those Reigners for Mordion when I’m old enough,” he explained.

  “But you can easily do that with magic,” Ann pointed out.

  Hume frowned, pulling his mouth wide so that his high cheeks stuck out, and thoughtfully watched a woodlouse crawl on the branch. “I don’t think so. I think Mordion’s right when he says using magic to kill sends a person wrong. I get a sort of feel, doing magic, that it would go wrong for later if I tried anything like that. And I owe it to Mordion to get it right and set him free properly. I wouldn’t want to find I’d used magic to convert the ban to something worse.”

  Ann sighed. “So how is Mordion?”

  “He worries me,” Hume said frankly. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t even dare read his mind any more.”

  Ann sighed again. “That’s another thing I envy you for.”

  “You can tell people’s feelings. That’s just as – no, better!” Hume said. “You don’t have to go inside and – but I’m not going to do that again after the other night.”

  “What do you mean?” Ann asked.

  “Well, you know how Yam always goes on about Mordion being lazy,” Hume said, “because Mordion goes off and just sits somewhere, and it takes hours to find him. Well, that’s just Yam being a machine. Last time we had to look for Mordion, he was up on those really high rocks downriver from the house, and he looked dreadful. Even worse when he tried to smile at me to make me think he was all right. So I took a deep breath. You know how you have to get up courage if you want to say anything personal to Mordion—”

  “Don’t I just. I can never say personal things to him unless I get angry first,” Ann said. It was, she admitted to herself, only anger that could make her ignore the shell of pain Mordion was cased in.

  “Yes, I want to shake him a lot of the time too,” Hume agreed, not quite understanding. “But this wasn’t one of those times. I breathed in and then asked him straight out what was the matter.”

  “What did he do?” Ann asked. “Blast you to outer darkness?”

  “I – almost,” Hume said. “Only it was me that did it. I thought he wasn’t going to tell me, so I thought I’d look in his mind. And,” Hume bent a finger and flicked the woodlouse off into the water, “it was like – Can you imagine somewhere so dark it’s sort of roaring and you can see the dark, and the dark is like the worst cut or scrape you ever had, so you can feel the dark too, hurting? It was like that. Only huge. I had to stop, quick. And I nearly went away, only Mordion spoke then. He said, ‘I’m pure evil, Hume. I’ve been thinking of throwing myself off this rock into those rapids.’ And I took another breath and asked him why. It was so awful I – I sort of had to. And he said, ‘The Great Balance alone knows why.’ What do you think he meant, Ann?”

  “I don’t know.” Ann gave a little shiver as a blue logo painted on a rusting white van passed before her mind’s eye. “Maybe it’s something to do with the ban.”

  “Yes. So you can see why I have to break it for him,” Hume agreed. “But of course I couldn’t say that to him then. He hasn’t even told me about the ban, or about creating me to break it. Somehow I knew he really would jump off the rock if I brought it up just then.”

  “So what did you do?” said Ann.

  Hume grinned. “I was cunning. I went just as selfish and – and brattish as I could, and I whined – actually I probably snivelled – that he wasn’t to leave me all alone in the wood with his corpse. On and on.” Hume wriggled on the bough, rather ashamed. “I was scared. I felt selfish. And it worked. I felt bad. Mordion climbed down and said he was selfish. He said I was the one good thing Fate had allowed him to do.”

  “He’s sort of said that to me too,” Ann remarked. “But Hume! Suppose you hadn’t found him in time!”

  “I used wood magic,” Hume admitted. “He’d have called it cheating, but I knew it was urgent – and anyway, while I was doing the working, the wood more or less told me I was doing right. And afterwards I went and told Yam that he was never ever to call Mordion lazy again, and I set him to watch Mordion whenever I wasn’t there.”

  “So Yam’s watching him now?” Ann said. That was a relief after what Hume had had to say.

  “Yes,” said Hume. “Yam’s busy and he can’t haul that wood to the house. So you have a choice. You can either help me haul it, or you get bounced off this branch into the water.” He began bouncing the great bough they were on, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until the new leaves at the end were dipping into the river at every bounce, while Ann shrieked and implored and scrambled frantically back towards the shore.

  Needless to say, she helped Hume haul his timber to the house.

  Past the yellow crisp packet tucked into the hollow tree, there seemed no change in the wood, and Ann could still hear the shrieking of the little kids trying not to fall off the rolling tree that bridged the stream. But somehow she never reached the stream herself. Instead, the shrieks seemed to get hoarser and she came out beside the house on the other side of the river. The shrieks were the shrieks of Hume as he fled round and round the firepit pursued by Mordion. Mordion was holding a wooden sword. Hume was all legs these days, considerably taller than Ann. But so was Mordion all legs, and he was gaining on Hume.

  “Hey, stop!” she said. “What’s going on?”

  Mordion stopped. She could not tell whether he was laughing or angry. Hume evidently thought angry, for he took advantage of Ann’s interruption to get himself on to the thatched roof. Up he went, with two mighty striding heaves, where he crouched, ready to flee again if Mordion came after him.

  “This,” Mordion said, pointing with the wooden sword.

  Ann turned round to find Yam leaning against the woodpile, rather sideways, with much of his silvery skin flapping round his knees and a whole lot of his works showing. “It was an accident,” Yam intoned. “I was not swift enough. It is lucky I am not a human.
”

  “If you were a human, Hume would have got what he deserved and been skewered,” Mordion said.

  “I would not!” Hume said indignantly from the roof.

  “Yes, you would. You are getting far too used to taking advantage of the fact that Yam is not allowed to hurt you,” Mordion retorted. “Come down off there and see what a real human would do.”

  “What do you mean?” Hume asked warily.

  “What I say,” said Mordion. “Yam saw he would hurt you and stopped. You waited for that and carved him open. If you’d been fighting me, I wouldn’t have stopped. So come down and I’ll show you.”

  “You mean you—?” Hume was clearly astonished. So was Ann. Neither of them had ever seen Mordion do anything remotely warlike.

  “I do mean it.” Mordion stooped and picked a sword up from the earth. It was a long, grey, beautifully wicked blade. He held it out hilt foremost to the roof. Ann wondered where the sword had come from. Hume had manipulated the Bannus field for it, perhaps? “Here you are,” said Mordion. “You can use this and I’ll use Yam’s wooden one, and we’ll see what happens. Or are you scared?”

  Hume shifted a little, crouching towards the eaves of the roof. “Well – I—Yes. I don’t want to kill you.”

  Mordion laughed. This was another thing Ann had barely ever seen him do. “You,” he said, “would be so lucky! Come down and try.”

  “All right.” Hume turned on his stomach and slid down, landing, to Ann’s envy, lightly and athletically in front of Mordion. “You’re sure?” he said, taking the hilt of the sword.

  Mordion nodded. Hume made what seemed a half-hearted slash at him. Mordion promptly knocked the metal sword aside with his wooden one and delivered Hume a decisive thwack to the side of his head.

  “Guard yourself,” he said. “I’ve already killed you once. Or maybe just scalped you.”

  Hume swallowed and came forward again, much more carefully. There was a lightning thwack – CLANG. The metal sword fell to the ground and Hume received another punishing blow, this time to his leg.

  “Dead again,” said Mordion. “If you haven’t lost that leg, you’re busy bleeding to death from it. You’ve got into some really careless habits, Hume.”

  Hume was scowling. He picked his sword up and came at Mordion a third time. This time Ann could tell he was really trying. He lasted a little longer anyway. Round and round the two went, leaping and weaving, with, every so often, one of those lightning flurries of action that seemed to leave Ann’s eyes a step or so behind. Hume escaped the first two, but on the third he was hit in the ribs with a hefty drub. He staggered backwards.

  “Third death,” Mordion said cheerfully. “Want to stop?”

  “No!” said Hume, with his teeth clenched. He rushed in on Mordion and was hit again. This time Mordion did not ask him if he wanted to stop. They just went on, furiously. Ann sneaked round the other side of the firepit and took shelter beside Yam. She had never seen anything like this, particularly from Mordion. He was so fast.

  “Ouch!” she whispered as the wooden sword hit Hume again, smack, on his shoulder.

  “This is a somewhat underhanded way to punish Hume,” Yam intoned softly. “The damage is only to my tegument and is easily mended.”

  Ann glanced at Yam and could not help feeling he looked indecent with all those silver twiddly works showing. “I think, though,” she said, wincing at another slapping blow, “that Hume probably needed taking down a peg.”

  “But not this way. It is clear Mordion is a master swordsman,” Yam said.

  “He is. He’s enjoying himself,” Ann said. Mordion was smiling as he fought, smiling widely and keenly. Opposite him, Hume’s teeth were bared, but it was not a smile. Hume was sweating.

  Then it was over. There was another flurry and Hume was forced to his knees with Mordion’s wooden sword pressed against the back of his neck. “This time you’re beheaded,” Mordion told him and stood back to let Hume get up.

  Hume was nearly in tears. He got up very slowly to give himself time to recover and dusted busily at the knees of his tracksuit. “Swine!” he muttered.

  “Actually, you’d be quite good if you weren’t so careless,” Mordion said.

  “I am good!” Hume said angrily. “I got you once. Look at your left wrist.”

  Mordion looked at the not-quite-recent red slash there. “So you did,” he said. “But you’re not as good as you think you are.”

  “Go and – and jump in the river!” Hume snarled at him and ran away round the house.

  Mordion stood for a moment staring at that hardly healed cut. So did Ann. Uh-huh! she thought. How much time has passed? Not much.

  Meanwhile Mordion shrugged and leaned the wooden sword against the house as carefully as if it were a real one. “Yam, you’re not to let him fight you in future,” he said. He sounded distant and chilled. “I’d better teach Hume myself, although—” He stopped then, for so long that Ann thought he was not going to say any more. She moved out towards the firepit. Mordion looked at her as if he had not known she was there before this. “I have a hideous distaste for anything to do with killing,” he said.

  “But you enjoyed that fight!” Ann said.

  “I know. I can’t understand it,” Mordion said. “Ann, I have to mend Yam yet again. Could you go and find Hume and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid?”

  “All right,” Ann said, hoping Hume had not gone too far away.

  He was quite near, only at the bottom of the steep path down to the river in fact. Ann could see him quite clearly in the unaccustomed brightness down there, sitting brooding in the boat he had made. It was a surprisingly good boat, with a flat bottom and clinker-built sides – not at all the sort of boat you would expect a boy to build – but Ann barely noticed it because of the strange new look of the river. The familiar waterfall was no longer there. The river now flowed in a flat welter of white water split with jagged rocks, and fairly roared through the bubbling pools beyond. The home-made floats of Mordion’s fish traps bobbed desperately there, like drowning rats. It was wide, and tumultuous, and flat. The steep cliffs on either side had been scooped away backwards, as if a bomb had hit the place. Ann stared, and halted halfway down to stare again.

  She was too astonished to consider Hume’s state of mind. “Whatever happened to the waterfall?” she said as she reached the shingle where the boat was.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t remember!” Hume growled, and went straight on to his grievance. “Mordion is a total swine! What right has he to do this to me? What right? And grinning all over his face while he does it, too! Funny joke!”

  Ann realised she had better forget about the river. Hume’s pride was hurting. “Well, he is sort of like your guardian, Hume. He did bring you up.”

  “He’s no right!” There was an angry grate in Hume’s voice that Ann had never heard before. “Guardian, nothing! He just happened to find me in the wood and just happened to feel responsible for me. He has no right to hit me – and pretending it was a fair fight while he does! I’11 show him rights! I’m going to leave this wood, Ann. I’m going to go so far away that bloody Mordion won’t ever be able to find me!”

  “I really don’t think you should do that,” Ann said quickly. Unlike Mordion, Ann had never let herself consider what might happen if Hume went outside the paratypical field. But the instant horror she felt at the mere idea told her that she knew very well, deep down.

  “Afraid I’ll vanish away, eh?” Hume said harshly. “That’s the hold Mordion thinks he’s got on me. I don’t believe that story any longer.”

  “It’s not worth the risk, Hume,” Ann said – no, bleated. She could hear her voice waver.

  Hume ignored her. He stared at the rushing white water and said, “Well, at least I cut his wrist. I hope it hurt.”

  This reminded Ann that very little time had passed, really. She swung over the side of Hume’s boat and sat on the gunwale where she could see Hume’s face while he stared
, brooding, at the water. If she was right, Hume’s eye had been quite badly infected only half an hour or so ago. It ought still to look bad. But look as she would, all Ann could see was a face that looked about sixteen with two healthy grey eyes in it, much the same colour as Mordion’s. Or was Hume’s left eye perhaps a little smaller? That could simply be because Mordion had hit him. There was a white welt along Hume’s left cheek, swelling and spreading to a red and blue bruise. Poor Hume. More than his pride was hurting.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Hume demanded.

  “I was wondering if your eye was better,” Ann said.

  “Of course it is! Years ago!” Hume was now looking at Ann as closely as she had looked at him. “I can’t help noticing,” he said. “Why are you always the same, Ann? I keep growing, and Mordion’s begun to go grey in his beard, but you never look any different.”

  “I – er – time goes slower outside the wood,” Ann said awkwardly.

  “It’s not that I don’t like the way you look,” Hume explained. “I do. I like your cheekbones – the way they stick out – and your blue eyes with the brown skin. And I like the way you have fair bits on the outside of your hair – the fair shines on the dark wriggles.” He put out his hand to take hold of the nearest bit of Ann’s hair, and then, before Ann could move, he put his hand awkwardly behind her head instead, and tried to kiss her.

  “Don’t!” Ann said, leaning away backwards. This was something she had simply not been prepared for.

  “Why not?” Hume demanded, pulling her towards him.

  “Because,” said Ann, leaning away mightily, “there are other girls you’d like better. I – er – I’ve got this cousin with bright fair hair. So fair it’s nearly white, and the biggest brown eyes you ever saw. Lovely figure too. Better than mine – I’m dumpy.”

  Hume let go of Ann with such alacrity that she was quite offended. “Is she nice?”

  “Very,” Ann invented. “Sweet, clever, understanding.”