The Mapmakers' Race

by Eirlys Hunter

  “Silently, Tom pulled open the cellar door, and threw a bucket of cold water onto the snoring bodies inside to wake them. Quickly, quickly, he untied the ogre’s clothesline and knotted one end to the heavy iron boot scraper beside the back door.

  “Taking a big breath he called out, ‘Are you there, Stoneheart?’

  “The ogre came roaring out, Tom pulled the clothesline tight, and the ogre tripped over it and tumbled to the ground. Fast as lightning, Tom wrapped the clothesline round and round the ogre’s thrashing legs and tied him up. When the other travellers climbed out of the cellar, Tom told them to open all the garden gates, freeing the geese and the pigs from their pens. The animals ran out snorting and squawking and charged at the ogre. He howled in fright and pulled one leg free, stumbled to his feet, and hobbled down the road as fast as he could, pulling the boot scraper behind him. The animals chased him all the way to the raging river; Stoneheart saw them coming up behind him and he jumped. There was an almighty splash and Stoneheart was never seen or heard of again.”

  A stick cracked in the fire and Humphrey squeaked. “That’s quite a bit scary, that story.”

  “What happened to Tom?” asked Joe.

  “He carried on over the mountains to safety. Tom was my great-great-great grandfather. It’s a true story—and I can prove it. See?”

  Beckett took something from his pocket and stretched his hand out in the firelight. A heart-shaped stone. “It’s been passed down my family. I sharpen my pocket knife on it.”

  Humphrey touched the stone with a cautious finger. “Is he truly dead? The ogre?”

  “Dead as a doornail,” said Beckett.

  “You cook our dinner,” said Humph uncertainly.

  “But I’m not an ogre,” said Beckett.

  “What a good story!” Sal shivered. “Scary. Fifteen days to go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE HORSE’S TREASURE

  Joe climbed up to the top of what Humphrey had insisted on naming Elephant’s Ridge, and saw the confusion of valleys that Francie had sketched for him. Which way to go? They’d have to scramble all the way down a thickly forested slope to the valley floor, cross the river at the bottom, somehow, climb up the other side and go along, then up, then over the next ridge—which was even higher and had snow on the top. Two short tunnels and a bridge could take the train through, but the path would have to zigzag endlessly up and down.

  They still had a long way to go.

  He met the others coming up the saddle. They were hot and sweaty and pleased because they were nearly at the top, but plodded on in disappointed silence when he led them straight down the other side.

  “Keep a lookout for Stoneheart, Humph!” said Joe.

  Humph looked around wildly. “But he’s dead. Beckett said.”

  “Beckett thinks he’s dead because he was never seen again. But maybe he just swam across the river and built another house.”

  “Joe’s teasing,” said Sal. “Take no notice.”

  Joe slammed the slasher through ropey crabstitch creeper. “Who needs mechanical horses, anyway?” He was tired and hungry and didn’t feel like being kind to anyone. “Me.”

  He slashed through stickleweed, spear grass and spineythorn. “Die, die, die.”

  “Three sevens? Six nines?” screeched Carrot, who was clinging on to Joe’s shoulder as he pulled aside the undergrowth.

  “A million and one.” Joe checked his compass. They were further west than he wanted, but that couldn’t be helped. Down and down. It was even harder work than going up. His knees were sore and he’d run out of breath for talking or singing. They all became covered in mud as they slipped and slithered down his zigzag track, and their boots got heavier and heavier. Joe’s heart sank as he heard the ominous sound of rushing water and caught a glimpse of a wild river through the trees.

  At last the ground flattened out.

  Joe called back to Beckett, “Are donkeys good swimmers?”

  “They’ll probably swim to save themselves, but I can’t.”

  “Nor can Humph,” said Sal.

  They pushed out of the forest to the bank of a river that flowed fast between great boulders, white water exploding everywhere in a series of cascades. Even a good swimmer would get pummelled to death, or forced head down between the rocks, if they fell in.

  Sal looked around in despair. “We’ll to have to go back up. Find another way down.”

  Beckett said, “Back up? I’d rather drown,” and stomped off.

  Humph threw himself to the ground. “You said nearly there. You said!” he wailed. “I hate you all. I only want Ma.”

  Then Sal lost it, too. “Don’t be a such a total baby,” she shouted. “At least you get to ride some of the way. I want Ma, too, you know. I wish we hadn’t started this stupid journey.”

  Joe flopped down on a mattress of thick comfy moss. It was waterlogged—he might as well have been lying in a puddle—but he was so wet and muddy already he didn’t care. He closed his eyes; he wanted sleep and more sleep, followed by a great big plate of steaming dinner, or the other way around, and there was absolutely no way he was going back up that mountain.

  The river thundered, Humph cried, Sal yelled, then said she was sorry, then yelled again when he didn’t stop crying. Something snapped. More snaps. Some crackling. A hiss.

  Joe opened one eye. Francie had lit a fire—her first ever. She’d done it the Francie way. She’d made a perfect circle of identically sized river stones, then she’d broken a dead branch into pieces all the same length and built the fire with them. She’d found two forked branches and stuck them into the ground either side of the fire, so their forks were the same height. She’d stripped the twigs off another branch, wetted it so it wouldn’t burn, and sat it across the forked sticks with the billy hanging from it.

  Joe struggled to his feet, told her it was the most elegant fire anyone had ever made, and stuck his sodden back near its warmth. Francie looked pleased with herself, and when the billy boiled she made tea and filled their mugs.

  Beckett came back. “I thought I smelled smoke.”

  “Time for sugar biscuits?” Joe said, at the same moment as Sal. They laughed then they both said “Sorry for being grumpy”, at the same time. Joe was used to twin moments with Francie but he’d never been twin-like with Sal before. It warmed his insides.

  “Sugar biscuits! At last!” Humphrey ran to find the tin.

  Ma’s sugar biscuits were rock hard. They were big and had to be sucked, not bitten or chewed, and they were the best treat ever for someone who was exhausted.

  “We’ll be able to cross somewhere,” said Joe. “We just have to fight our way down-river until we find the right place.”

  Francie had map-work to do and Sal wanted to look at the altimeter. Humph had curled up under a tree with his thumb in his mouth, so Joe and Beckett went downstream to look for a place where the water was calmer. They’d been pushing their way through the undergrowth along the riverbank for ages and Joe was about to say, maybe they should try upstream instead, when they came to a large area of churned-up mud. There was a patch of scarlet under the ferns ahead.

  It was a mechanical horse.

  “Busticated.” Humph poked a finger inside the hollow at the back of the horse’s leg, which lay apart from the rest of the metal animal. He pulled out some rigid wire, and the end of a spring, and tested the hinge at the knee. While he investigated the horse, the others searched through its abandoned load to see if they could salvage anything useful.

  The first box contained books, mostly by Sir Monty himself.

  “Vanquishing the Desolo Desert and Conquering the Peaks of the Meru Manaya. For goodness’ sake!” Sal threw them back in the box, then picked one out again. “Actually, no. We can use the pages for toilet paper.”

  Beckett shook a pile of clothes out of a duffel bag. “A tailcoat! And a boiled shirt! Imagine taking fancy nob-wear on a race!”

  His own red-check shirt was more hole than
cloth so he swapped it for the stiff-fronted white cotton, buttoned the nob braces to his trousers to replace the string he’d been using for a belt and slipped his arms into the tailcoat. Then he pulled out a shiny black disc and waved it in the air. The crown popped out and, hey presto, it was a collapsible top hat.

  Beckett put it on, stuck his thumbs in his braces and bowed. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. How do you do?” His posh accent was very convincing.

  “How, how, how?” Carrot shrieked from her perch on the mechanical horse’s rump.

  “Now you just need some new boots,” said Joe.

  Beckett folded the empty duffel bag. “Waterproof. We can keep the food in it.”

  Francie was busy yanking the pins out of a collection of butterflies she’d found arranged on a board. She held the delicate bodies on her palm and let the breeze take them.

  “Look.” Sal opened a wooden box labelled Hudson’s Patented Clippers. It had gadgets in slots marked for Fingernails, Toenails, Moustache, Beard, Nasal Hair and Ear Hair.

  The idea of bringing special clippers for nose hairs made them all laugh so much that Sal and Joe had to wipe away tears and Beckett got hiccups.

  Sal recovered first. “We’d better keep going. We don’t need any of this stuff, and we still need to get across the river.”

  “Wait.” Joe was rummaging through a crate containing silver cutlery, a tablecloth and—

  “Treasure!”

  Four bowls made of tin, with tin lids clipped onto them. They were heavy. They looked familiar.

  “You know what I think these are?” He grinned at Sal.

  “Puddings? Plum puddings!”

  “You’re a pudding!” said Joe.

  The river bank had been horribly churned up by all the mechanical hooves and was just a strip of mud. Beckett was the first to lose his footing and fall flat on his back. Humph thought that was hilarious, until Beckett grabbed one of his ankles and pulled him down. Splat. Humph looked outraged for a moment then he started shrieking with laughter and rolling over and over until only the whites of his eyes gleamed from his mud cocoon. Joe gave Beckett a hand up and ended up face down in the mud himself; Sal hooted at him, so Joe threw a handful of mud at her, which she dodged, but skidded and sat down hard.

  When they finally managed to slither and stagger on, exhausted from laughing, they were all caked in mud, except Francie, who was as sure-footed as the donkeys.

  “Good thing mechanical horses don’t poo,” said Joe, setting Humph off into hysterics again.

  They came to a place where the river broadened out into a wide pool above another series of rapids. The mechanical horses’ tracks continued on this side but Joe knew that was taking them further from the way they needed to go.

  “Let’s try.”

  The river was still hurtling downhill, but the surface was smooth, and the bottom looked gravelly. No rock-hopping required, but it might be deep.

  “It’ll wash the mud off at least.” It was starting to dry and was annoyingly itchy.

  They had to get three swimmers, two non-swimmers and two donkeys across, plus their supplies, some of which—like the food and the maps—had to be kept completely dry.

  Sal plonked herself down on the bank. “Don’t talk to me, I’m going to do some thinking.”

  She sat in silence for a few minutes, squinting up at the trees, staring at their baggage and looking from one side of the river to the other.

  “All right, I’ve worked it out.”

  The three swimmers, Sal, Francie and Joe, did rock-paper-scissors to see who would cross first. Joe won. They tied one end of the rope round his middle and threw the other end over the branch of a tree. Beckett let it out gradually as Joe walked into the water, prodding the riverbed in front of him with a stick to make sure there was somewhere to put his feet. The water was freezing and streaked with dissolving mud as it tugged at Joe’s legs, then his waist, then his chest.

  The current was faster than he expected and tried to snatch his legs out from under him. If he was swept over the rocks he wouldn’t have a chance. He was being driven nearer to the edge. Then his stick prodded down into nothingness, was swept out of his hand, and …

  Bubbles, blackness.

  He was tumbled over and over, his back scraped against something sharp. His arms and legs flailed. He felt Francie panicking. He was desperate for breath—but which way was up? Which way to air? He felt himself being pulled up and back by the rope. His hand banged against a branch; he closed his fingers around it, and pulled himself towards it with his last ounce of strength. His face popped up above the roiling surface and he coughed and spat, lungs burning, eyes streaming.

  The branch stuck out from a small tree that was trapped between the rocks above the rapids. He kept a tight hold and hauled himself along it until his feet found the bottom, then he staggered through the shallows and collapsed onto the bank, coughing up water and shaking with cold and fright. He was across.

  The others bellowed with relief, and cheered when Joe sat up. “Still alive!”

  That was the first step in Sal’s plan. When Joe stopped shaking he tied the rope to a tree trunk and Beckett did the same, to make a tight line just above the water. There wasn’t much rope to spare.

  Beckett and Sal unloaded the donkeys. Francie led Dumpling by her halter and made clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth. Dumpling seemed to understand because she followed Francie into the water without hesitating. Francie hung onto the rope with one hand and didn’t lose her footing even when the water rushed up to her chin. Dumpling walked beside her and swam hard when the water lifted her hooves off the bottom.

  Then Sal brought Humph over on her back. She lost her balance in the middle and they both went under, but she clung onto the rope and Humph clung onto her, and she was able to haul them both to dry land.

  Humph inspected himself. “I’m nearly clean!”

  Sal and Humph set about collecting wood and building a fire, and Francie gave Sal the box of matches she’d brought over, dry as dry, tucked into the mat of her hair. Then Francie and Joe went back together—to a screech of “Wrong way!” from Carrot.

  This time, Francie led Treacle over, with Dumpling whinnying encouragement from the other side. When they were safely across, Joe unknotted the rope, climbed the tree and retied the rope to a higher branch so it sloped down to the far side of the river. Beckett had retrieved some of the wire, straps and buckles from the broken mechanical horse, and they used these to hang the loads from their flying fox. First up was a sack with the altimeter.

  “Ready?” Joe yelled, and gave the sack a shove. It slid down into Sal’s arms on the other side.

  “Not even a splash!”

  “No splashing on Humphrey River,” shouted Humph.

  “Humphrey River? Really? Then I name this Dead Horse Crossing.” Beckett passed the rucksacks up and Joe buckled them over the rope and sent them safely across. Carrot watched with interest while Dumpling’s basket with the surveying tools crossed, followed by Treacle’s basket with the food. When the waterproof duffel bag holding the map tube zoomed down, Carrot was perched on top, feathers fluttering.

  Then it was Beckett’s turn. He climbed onto a lower branch, hung a strap over the rope, held on tight with both hands and pushed off. He hurtled down, feet trailing through the water because he was so tall. He was going so fast that for one awful moment Joe thought he was going to smash straight into the tree on the other side, but Sal threw a sleeping bag over the end of the rope just in time to break his slide.

  The only thing left for Joe to do was to untie the rope and cross back over the river himself, but that turned out to be the hardest part of the whole day. He wriggled and pushed but the knot was immovable. He was balanced on a branch, stretching around another branch, trying to undo a knot that he couldn’t even see properly, with fingers so wrinkled and cold there was no feeling left in them. The sun had long since gone from the river, and had nearly gone from the mountaintop
s too. His wet clothes clung to him, cold and clammy. The others were sitting in their sleeping bags drinking hot tea while their clothes dried around the fire, but Joe couldn’t stop his teeth chattering.

  Beckett shouted to him to cut the rope loose, and after a while even Sal yelled at him to cut it. Joe’s pocketknife was in his pocket where it always lived, but even though his body was shaking, he remembered what his father had said about always carry the longest rope you can. He was determined not to shorten the rope any further. When Sal offered to come over and help, he yelled at her. What magic powers did she think she had over a knot? He needed something to poke the rope with. He climbed down and ran back to the mechanical horse and felt around in the gloom for something thin and sharp. A horseshoe nail would have been perfect but this metal horse didn’t have shoes. He stabbed his finger on one of the butterfly pins and he sliced his thumb on a bit of loose metal, but eventually he prised a metal rod like a knitting needle out of the horse’s broken leg.

  He worked the skewer in between the tight fibres of the knot. He wriggled and jiggled, digging the point further in, trying to ignore the smell of steaming pudding that wafted over the river. It was so enticing that he thought he might drown in his own saliva.

  Finally, he created a gap wide enough to get his frozen fingertip into, then a whole finger, and at last he was able to tease the knot apart and tie the rope round his middle.

  “Pull me over,” he called, and this time the river water felt warm to his exhausted, shivering body.

  “You did it!” Sal gave Joe a hand, dripping, up the bank, and helped him get his wet clothes off.