by Joan Aiken
“Now: I bet it fits on to the broken bit here, below the big ’un, see—” said Dido proudly, and demonstrated. “Yes! It does! But how in the world did they hoist all them monster stones up this mountain – let alone fitting them like keys into keyholes—?”
Herodsfoot, meanwhile, was looking into the hole. “This goes deeper than the piece you took out, Dido,” he said, and thrust in his arm, groping about in the cavity. “Yes, I thought so. See here!” and withdrawing his hand he triumphantly exhibited another skull, black, and coated with sand.
“Oh, put it back, put it back!” cried Yorka and Talisman, both together.
Lord Herodsfoot looked a little dismayed.
“Oh – yes – I suppose you are right—” he said sadly, gazing at the ebony-coloured skull. “I do covet it, I must confess! It is such a very perfect specimen – it does seem a pity—”
“No, no, quick, put it back,” said Tylo, and Dido agreed.
“Honest, mister – lord – Frankie – you better – listen!”
The sound of drumming had intensified. The throbbing in the air was like the hum of giant bees. Then, suddenly, to everyone’s petrifaction, they heard voices. It was as if a window had opened, for a moment, into a room where people were talking. Some of the words spoken were in unknown languages, deep and guttural or sharp and birdlike. But some could be understood. A man’s voice, loud and deep, said: “I will not have this!” Other, shriller voices could be heard begging, praying: “For mercy’s sake, for mercy’s sake!”
Yorka and Tylo clung to each other, white-faced. Dido and Herodsfoot looked around wildly. Talisman took two steps to Herodsfoot, removed the skull from his hands and speedily returned it to the hole from which he had taken it.
Then she said: “I think we should put something – a gift – to show we meant no harm—”
After a moment’s frowning thought she took out her little notebook (which Dido had returned to her) and tucked it into the hole with the skull.
“Is well done,” agreed Yorka, and added her necklace of nuts. Tylo put in a little knife made from a shell. Dido thought of her game-cloth – but it was too large to go into the hole, so she cut off a lock of her hair with Tylo’s knife. Herodsfoot, visibly grieving, added his tiny shell of djeela-nut oil.
“You really think—?” he said. Their silent looks persuaded him.
As Talisman replugged the hole with the piece of rock that had been cut to fit, the drumming died down to a whispering throb.
Dido, looking sharply about, said, “Hey! I bet this is the hole where that so-and-so Manoel dug out the other skull – lookahere, Doc Tally!”
She pointed to a hole in the ground near the base of one of the fallen stones, with a lump of square-carved rock, evidently the plug which had come from it, lying nearby. Talisman probed the hole, but it contained no skull.
“I believe you are right, Dido.” She slipped in the skull she had brought, and plugged up the hole with the piece of rock, which fitted exactly.
“There!” she said. “Now we have done all we could. I think we should leave this place at once.”
Yorka and Tylo vehemently nodded their agreement.
“Oh!” pleaded Herodsfoot. “Can’t we stay just a few minutes? This is such a unique, such a truly remarkable site. I would give anything to spend just a little more time here. Or to come back here again.”
“Much, much good not come here,” said Tylo, shivering.
“If it were not so misty!” lamented Herodsfoot. “If only I could make a drawing – I could write such an article for the Journal of Natural Philosophy—”
Talisman looked at him with sympathy. “Well – just for five minutes, then. Yorka – do you think—?”
She made a slight, sideways beckoning motion with her head; she and Yorka moved away towards the biggest standing stone. Herodsfoot, absorbed in his own activities, was measuring, pacing, scribbling notes about the arrangement of the rocks on the hilltop and making little drawings. “It is like Devil Among the Tailors,” he was muttering, “or Dead Wall. The distances are similar, if I am not greatly mistaken.”
Meanwhile Talisman and Yorka touched hands, blew on their fingers, and breathed a few words to each other in turn.
Tylo looked wholly disapproving.
“Not good, ask djingli of Old Ones,” he muttered. “Not good, I think.”
Djingli, Dido remembered, was a favour or tip.
Herodsfoot gave a cry of jubilation. For, all at once, the grey mist lifted, dispersed and was gone in a flash, the three great monoliths, slightly glittering with damp, stood up against a brilliantly blue sky; and a tremendous panorama was visible on every side of the hilltop.
“Oh, bless my soul, what a piece of luck,” exulted Herodsfoot. “What good fortune, couldn’t ask for better, upon my word, this is capital, capital—” and he hurried about even faster, pacing distances, reading his compass, taking bearings through his telescope.
“Lord Herodsfoot, we must go now,” urged Talisman, after a few minutes of this. “We have a long distance to cover still – and we are very exposed, very visible here on this hilltop—” Talisman was extremely pale. Beads of sweat trickled down her brow.
“Oh, my dear girl, I know – but just a couple of minutes more—”
Now he was measuring the height of the monoliths.
Dido had moved out from among the stones – they gave her the cold colly-wobbles, as she muttered to Tylo – and was studying the southern tip of the island, through Herodsfoot’s spyglass, which he had laid on a rock while he went to work with a tape-measure. Dido had a good look at John King’s residence, two-thirds of the way up Mount Fura. It was a largeish white mansion, situated just at the edge of the tree-line. Its grounds and shrubberies were surrounded by high walls.
“And it’s well guarded too,” Dido said to Tylo. “I can see dozens of coves all around it. D’you think they will let us in, Tylo? It don’t seem mighty likely to me – not if Manoel gets there first and tells his tale. He’ll tell King that Doc Tally and I are a pair of murderers and that Cap Sanderson is a djeela-nut smuggler.”
“Maybe so,” said Tylo uncertainly. “Best we get on, hurry, get there first.”
“Any chance you got a cousin there among the guard?”
He shook his head. “Not I know.”
Dido turned the telescope eastwards. Here Mount Fura seemed to come to an abrupt stop – the gentle curve ended in a perpendicular line that ran straight down to the ocean.
“Blimey – is that the Cliff of Death?”
Tylo nodded.
“How high?”
“I no know. Cliff is sacred place – no one allowed there. Unless they go to jump. Maybe three-hundred-men high?”
Dido had not the least guess how high that might be. She thought, if the top of the cliff is a forbidden place, and Manoel went there to throw the baby over, that’s another black mark he chalked up against himself with the Old ’Uns who set up the stones. I reckon he’s in for big trouble, by and by. I only wisht it would come soon . . .
“Please Lord Herodsfoot – you must come away—”
“A moment – just let me get the dimensions of this big feller—”
Now, with his tape, he was measuring the circumference of the biggest monolith.
“Well I’ll be blessed!” exclaimed Dido.
She had tracked the telescope down to the little harbour where the Kai river ran out into the ocean, at the eastern base of Mount Fura. Mount Fura was, in fact, a small steep island, separated from the rest of Aratu by the Kai ravine. And the harbour – Dido remembered it was called Manati, and there was a fishing village – was Aratu’s only beach, all the rest of the coastline being craggy rock that fell straight into the sea.
“What you see?” inquired Tylo.
“There’s the Siwara! In that little harbour; she’s just tying up. Come and see, Doc Tally!” she called.
But Talisman was saying to Herodsfoot, “Listen, my friend, I lifte
d the mist for you – which was hard work. You have had time to do your drawings, now you really must be sensible and come—”
He burst out laughing. “You lifted that mist? Oh, my dear girl, come on! The mist going was just a happy accident – very sorry, but you can’t take the credit for that!”
She gave him a very cool look. “Is that what you think?”
“My dear, it’s what I know Very sorry – but I’m not buying that one! Now – just one job more—” He placed his compass on the ground and made some calculations.
Doctor Talisman was angry. Two small red spots appeared on her cheekbones. She pressed her lips tightly together. Then she said: “You wish to return to this place?”
“Of course! Very, very much. If not on this visit to Aratu, then on some future visit.”
“You don’t really believe I am a Kanikke, do you?”
“My dear, I am quite sure that you believe it.”
“Well, I will show you something.”
Talisman picked up a small bone that was lying in the dust at the foot of the great monolith. Herodsfoot’s eyes widened. He exclaimed, “Why, great heavens, I believe that is a man’s finger-bone!”
“Never mind that. What is your full name?”
“My full name?” He was puzzled. “It is Algernon Francis Sebastian Fortinbras Carsluith, Baron Herodsfoot.”
Using the bone, Talisman wrote these names on the smooth dusty rock.
“Now,” she said. “That writing will remain there until your next visit.”
He was very much amused. “That’s a safe promise! When you know the chances against my coming back here are about a hundred to one – maybe five hundred to one!”
Chuckling, he packed away his writing tablet and prepared to descend the hill. “But it is a very, very kind gesture, my dear, and I am greatly obliged to you – I shall take the will for the deed.”
Chapter Seven
AS THEY WALKED DOWN THE HILL, THE MIST rose again and swirled about them.
“How very lucky we were to have that interval of sunshine,” said Herodsfoot happily.
He seemed unaware of any atmosphere, other than the mist. But Dido, walking between Yorka and Talisman, noticed Yorka give a quick, glancing look upwards at the doctor; Talisman’s face remained completely blank.
“Yes; that was a piece of luck,” she said after a moment.
“I suppose,” Herodsfoot teased her, “now that my name is written up on that rockface in your handwriting, you’d say that put me in your power?”
“Would I say so?”
“Because of your being a Kanikke. And that being such a sacred place.”
“Are you trying to make fun of the things the Forest People believe? I thought you sympathised with the Forest People? And understood their beliefs?”
“I do understand them. And I go halfway – well, one-third of the way – to sharing some of their beliefs. Isn’t that enough? Nobody can share all of anybody else’s beliefs. I know that one must be respectful; and on no account must one make fun of them. Isn’t that enough?”
Suddenly his voice, his face had grown very anxious. “Dear Talisman, I’ll believe in the fairy queen and Robin Goodfellow and – and King Oberon and the whole bag of tricks if only you won’t be cross with me.”
“It was never my intention to – oh,” she cried out impatiently, “how I wish we had not been obliged to come here! The Forest People are quite right, it is a bad-luck place.”
The mist had dispersed by the time they reached the grove where the horses had been tethered, and they saw there was a woman, one of the Forest People, waiting there. When she saw Talisman she made a deep bow and then fell on her knees beseechingly.
“Wise One, will you come to my wocho? It is my son – my little Oynat—” She spoke the Dilendi language; by now Dido understood enough to follow, and it seemed the doctor did too. “It is his eyes, Excellence. He sees nothing but devils. He is very much afraid. So are we all . . .”
“Yes, of course I will come.” Talisman picked up her medical bag which she had left with the horses. “How far is it?”
“In the forest – two, perhaps three hours from here.”
Herodsfoot began to protest. “But what about our plan to go to Limbo Lodge?”
“I must see what I can do for this woman’s son,” Talisman said patiently. “When I have done that, I will either join you this evening – where do you spend the night . . .?”
“It is at the house of a man called Ruiz – an Angrian, but he lives by himself in the forest,” Herodsfoot said. “Tylo has been telling me about him.”
“Well, if I can get there by midnight I will find somebody to guide me. Or I will come tomorrow morning.”
Herodsfoot seemed wholly dissatisfied with this plan, but Talisman had already mounted her mule. “Yorka, will you come with me? In case there is anything I don’t understand?” Yorka nodded. “We can all take it in turns to ride the mule.”
The three set off at a rapid trot, going westwards.
“I don’t know – I wish—” Herodsfoot began uneasily. “Was that woman telling a true tale?”
Tylo took no notice of this. “Best not hang-stand here, lordship,” he urged. “Come quick off this hill.”
It was plain that he regretted losing the company of Doctor Talisman; he looked after her sadly. He seemed to feel that her presence conferred some protection on the group.
Dido was sorry, too. Doctor Talisman was one of the most sensible people she had ever come across and – despite the fact that Tylo was a shrewd boy and knew his way all about the island – Dido felt that Lord Herodsfoot, though he had a kind heart and engaging manners, was like a loose cannon on a ship’s deck: there was simply no knowing where he would roll off to next. It’s lucky at least that most of the folk here seem to like him, she thought.
“So tell more about this Mario Ruiz feller,” Dido asked Tylo as they jogged along a winding glade, hung about with dangling creepers and frilled with tree-ferns. “If he’s an Angrian, why the dickens does he choose to live all on his lonesome in the forest? Does he have a spice plantation like the Ereiras?”
“No, no. He humble fellow. Not rich.”
“What does he live on?”
“Hot spring near house. People sometime come, bathe, drink water.”
“And pay him for that? I see. I wonder why he likes to live alone?”
“He wifie die. He a bit noddle-stricken.” Tylo tapped his forehead.
“Bats in the belfry, you mean? I hope he’s harmless.”
“Now-and-now,” said Tylo.
Dido reflected that people in Aratu whose wives died tended to grow peculiar. There was John King, shutting himself up in Limbo Lodge; and this Ruiz, choosing to settle in the jungle by a hot spring.
“Well, he sure fixed to live at the back of beyond.”
Their way now led them up a deep narrow gorge with a watercourse beside the path, which was half hidden underneath juicy vegetation.
Lord Herodsfoot became very silent after Talisman left them, and rode for over two hours wrapped in thought.
Coming out of this meditation at last, he suddenly asked Dido: “Do you think she was angry with me?”
There could be no doubt who the she was that he referred to.
“Well yes – I reckon she was; a bit,” said Dido bluntly.
“But why? Just for teasing her? Because she lays claim to magical powers? I mean, really!” said Herodsfoot. “I’m sure she’s a good doctor and a clever girl – but one has to draw the line somewhere! Don’t you think?”
“Mylord Oklosh,” said Tylo very positively, “Doc Tally come-soon-been right-up Kanikke. She learn touch trouble-stone, write true question on black sand. She learn do all these things with Aunt Tala’aa. Own sister to Night Woman . . .”
“How can you be so sure?” Herodsfoot said sceptically. “Pray, when is all this supposed to have taken place?”
“When she see Aunt Tala’aa. Time with Aunt
Tala’aa go—” Tylo made an expressive gesture, moving his hands back and forth.
“I don’t see how all that could have happened – just in one night,” argued Herodsfoot obstinately. “Really – surely – she is just an ordinary person – like you and me and Dido here. After all – she only arrived in this island two days ago. She told me so.”
We ain’t so blooming ordinary, Dido thought: I never before met anybody like Herodsfoot here – or Tylo, for that matter – and I guess I’m the only one on this island who comes from Battersea . . .
There was a loud crack of thunder overhead and a few heavy drops of rain began to splash down.
“I hope we ain’t too far from the wocho of this Ruiz feller,” Dido called to Tylo, who was riding about twenty yards ahead. “Sounds like dirty weather coming up—”
“Yes, must make haste—” he called back, and kicked his pony into a canter.
Ten seconds later a terrifying thing happened. The whole cliffside on their left, loosened perhaps by storms, suddenly became detached and roared down on to the trail with an ear-splitting booming rumble which reverberated up and down the narrow gully for several minutes after the first fall, as more and more fragments were dislodged from the rockface and followed the first landslide.
The horses of Dido and Herodsfoot screamed with terror and reared back from the huge pile of rock and earth which now blocked the way.
“Save us!” gasped Dido. “Tylo! TYLO! – Where are you?”
No answer came back from the monstrous heap of smoking rubble in front of them.
And at this moment the gathering storm broke in all its fury: rain lashed down in torrents, tremendous gusts of wind battered them, thunder cracked and pealed overhead, blue-white lightning made the scene stand out in nightmarish clarity.
“Oh my goodness gracious me!” lamented Herodsfoot. “That poor poor unfortunate boy! I fear he has indubitably perished under this shocking avalanche. There is no way in the world that we can rescue him! It is only by the mercy of providence that we ourselves did not likewise perish.”
He seemed likely to go on in this vein for some time, but Dido said, “We’d best not stop here a-grieving and a-chewing it over, lordship. I’m as sorry as can be about Tylo, he was a right decent feller, but it ain’t noways healthy here, we’d best go back. No way of going forward; and more of the cliff above us looks likely to come down. You can see the nags ain’t happy—”
