The Spellcoats (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  In the morning the boat, our blankets, the ground and the bare trees were all covered with frost. It looked odd, the white frost on the blood-red earth. The River here ran pink among the yellow, because of the earth.

  Gull would not eat again, and I thought of my dream. I found I was wringing my hands like Robin as I looked down at Gull lying in the frosty boat. I expect it was the cold. “Now what is a watersmeet?” I said to myself. “It is where one river joins another. Hern may say what he likes, but if we do come to another river, I shall fall overboard, or pretend to die, or something, and make sure we stay there.”

  Then it turned out that Robin had come to a decision too. “You know,” she said, “I don’t think we should go any further. I think we should stay on this island and get Gull warm and well again. I think this is the safest place we’re going to find.”

  Gull, for a wonder, said nothing. He seemed too weak to speak. But Duck said, “Oh, honestly, Robin! We’d starve here!”

  Hern said, “We’d be much better off finding a deserted house somewhere. Gull needs shelter, Robin.”

  “Or there must be some people who’ll believe we’re not Heathens,” I said, “and who’ll help us look after him. Let’s go on, please.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” Robin said. “It seems to me we may be killing Gull, taking him on a journey like this.”

  “He wanted to go,” Hern said.

  “He doesn’t know what’s right for him,” Robin said. “Do let’s stay.”

  We took no notice. Hern and Duck climbed over Gull in the boat and put the sail up. I poured water on the fire and put the firepot away.

  Robin sighed and shook her head and looked about eighty. “Oh, I don’t know what to do for the best!” she said. “Promise me you’ll stop as soon as you see a good place.”

  We all promised, easily and dishonestly. I meant only to stop at another river. I do not know what Hern and Duck meant to do, but I can tell when they are being dishonest.

  As we sailed on, the sun came up over the hill at the right of the River, leaving it all dark and blue with frost and turning the left bank to gold. The slopes became higher and steeper as we swirled along, one blue, one gold, until the sun melted the red earth into sight again. There were low red cliffs to the left suddenly, which stopped like the wall of a red house. Beyond that the River was twice as wide or more than that. We could see a row of trees to either side, standing in water, and sheets of water beyond that, flaring in the sun. I think the trees marked the real low banks of the wide River.

  I turned my head as we sailed past the end of the red cliff. And I saw more water there, winding back behind the cliffs, with red cliffs on the other side of it.

  “The watersmeet!” I shouted. I jumped to the tiller and wrestled to get it out of Hern’s hand. Duck jumped with me.

  “Don’t be idiots!” Hern shouted.

  We went to and fro and the sail swung. The boat began going in circles. “What are you doing?” Robin shouted.

  “We’re going to land. We want to land!” Duck yelled.

  With three of us shouting and fighting round the tiller and the boat going in circles, we should have been a perfect mark for bowmen, Heathen or our own. But we were lucky. Hern gave in, though he kept shouting. We came surging round into a great bed of rushes under the first red cliff.

  They were the tallest rushes I have ever seen. They must have been deep in the floods beneath, but they were high above our heads even so. They parted in front of the boat and closed behind, and the speed we had drove us on between them, still arguing, into a sort of green grove, until we grounded on a beach of dry shingle, hidden from both rivers.

  “I suppose this seems safe enough,” Robin was saying when a Heathen man came swiftly down a small red path above us and stopped among the rushes when he saw us.

  “Who was it called?” he said.

  He seemed – how shall I say? – wet with haste or damp with the open air. His skin was ruddier than ours. Otherwise he was not so different, except that he was grown up and four of us were not. His hair was long and golden and even more wildly curly than Robin’s or Duck’s. I must say I liked his face. He had a gentle, laughing look, and his nose turned up a little. His rugcoat was an old faded red one, not unlike the one my father went to war in, very plain and wet with dew. I could see there was red mud splashed on his legs and that he wore shoes like ours, wet too. But to our relief, he had no kind of weapon. His hands were empty, spread to part the rushes.

  I thought: Well, if this is a Heathen, they can’t be so very bad.

  “Er – nobody called, really,” Hern said cautiously. “We were arguing about whether to land or not.”

  “It’s lucky you did land,” he said. “There’s a large party of Heathens in a boat coming down the Red River.” Since they were Heathens to him, we knew he meant our people. Not that this made any difference in the danger to us.

  We looked at one another. “We’d better wait until they’re past,” Robin said doubtfully.

  “If you like, you can come up to my shelter to wait,” the Heathen man said politely.

  We did not like this idea, but we did not want him to know we were his enemies. Robin and Hern and I looked at one another again. Duck looked at the Heathen man and smiled. “Yes, please,” he said. I kicked at his ankle, but he just moved out of the way. The next second he was scampering away up the path. Robin gave a small ladylike wail and climbed out of the boat too.

  Hern and I did not know what to do. We thought we ought to stay together, but that meant leaving Gull. We bent down and tried to pull Gull up.

  “Come along, Gull,” I said. “We’re going on a visit.” Hern said encouraging things too, but Gull would not move, and we could not budge him.

  Damp hair brushed my face, and I jumped. The Heathen man was kneeling beside the boat and leaning between us to look at Gull. “How long has he been like this?” he said.

  Hern looked at me. “Months, I think.”

  Robin leant eagerly over us. “Do you know what’s wrong with him, sir? Can you help us?”

  “There’s something I can do,” the Heathen man said. “I wish you could have brought him here before this, though.” He stood up, looking very serious. “We must wait till the Heathen have gone by,” he said.

  Duck came scooting back down the path. “I saw the Heathen—” he said.

  “Quiet!” said the man.

  We heard loud voices and the splashy sound of many people rowing. I never saw the people, and they were all talking at once, but I heard one say, “All clear ahead. None of the devils about.” It sounded like a big, heavy boat, moving fast with oars and current, and I thought they must be patrolling for Heathen. The sounds moved quickly into the wide stretch of the double River and faded away.

  When they had gone, our Heathen said, “My name is Tanamil, which means ‘Younger Brother’.”

  I was not sure we should tell him our names, for fear he might guess we were not Heathens, not having outlandish names like his. But Robin went all polite and ladylike and introduced us all. “This is Hern,” she said, “and Tanaqui, and my brother lying there is Gull. That is Duck—”

  Tanamil looked up at Duck, in the path above. “Duck?” he said. “Not Mallard?”

  Duck’s face went almost as red as the earth. “Mallard,” he said. “Duck’s a baby name.”

  Tanamil nodded and looked back at Robin. “I can guess your name,” he said. “You have to be a bird too, a bright one, a bird of omen. Robin?”

  Robin went red, too, and nodded. She was so confused she forgot to be ladylike. “How did you guess?”

  Tanamil laughed. He had a very pleasant laugh, that I admit, very joyful. It made us want to laugh too. “I’ve wandered about collecting knowledge,” he said. Then he went serious as he looked down at Gull. “And lucky I did,” he said. “He’s very far gone.”

  We all looked at Gull then, thinking Tanamil was exaggerating – until we saw how Gull had changed, even
in that short time. He was thinner and paler than ever. He lay with his eyes closed, breathing so slightly that we could hardly see it. We could see the other bones in his head, joining those sharp cheekbones of his. He looked like a skull.

  Robin seized Tanamil’s arm. She would never have done such a thing in the ordinary way. It shows how upset she was. “What is the matter with him? Do you know?”

  Tanamil continued to look down at Gull. “Yes,” he said. “I know. They are trying to take his soul. He has fought them long and hard for it, but they are winning.”

  Hern gave a sort of shiver. He was angry. He is always angry when people talk this way, but I had never seen him as angry as he was then. “Oh, are they?” he said. “And who are they in that case, and where are you imagining they are?” He was so angry he could hardly speak.

  Tanamil was not offended. He seemed to understand Hern. “The one who is reeling your brother in now,” he said, “is a powerful man who sits beyond the edge of my knowledge. I think he is down by the sea.”

  Hern seemed not to know what to say next. He did not seem angry any more. “Gull kept saying he must go to the sea,” I said.

  “Then the man who wants him is there,” Tanamil said. “Now I must get to work. We must save your brother without this powerful man suspecting. You understand?” He looked at us all very solemnly. “If what I do seems strange to you, it is done for the best. Will you remember that?”

  “Yes,” we all said, nodding, even Hern, though I had expected him to object. For all Tanamil was a Heathen, we felt we trusted him. He seemed to know so much.

  He told us to get out of the boat and stand beside him in the rushes. We all did so willingly, leaving Gull lying in the bottom of the boat. Tanamil squatted down by the water’s edge, where he dug and prised in the ground with his fingers until he had a double handful of wet red earth. We watched, mystified, as he dumped his pile of earth on the dry part of the path and set to work, squeezing, pinching, moulding, smoothing at it. Occasionally he glanced in the boat to see how Gull was doing, and continued moulding the earth. Shortly Hern began to look sarcastic. The earth was becoming a man-shaped figure, a young man-shaped figure, a figure we could recognise.

  “It’s Gull!” Duck whispered. “Isn’t it like him!”

  It is very like him. I have it in front of me as I weave. It is Gull to the life, but not so thin as he was when he lay in the boat. The wonder of it is that Tanamil caught the Gull he could not have known – the Gull who once laughed and boasted about going to war, and poled about the River whistling because he found life good. I can remember Gull like that – and an awful tease – but how could Tanamil have known?

  When the figure was finished, Tanamil sat comfortably down in the rushes and said, “You can sit down if you want.” Only Hern did so. The rest of us stood watching anxiously. Tanamil brought out from his rugcoat a slender reddish pipe, which seemed to be made of a bundle of thin reeds, and began to play it. After the first few notes Hern, who had been scornfully plaiting rushes, looked up, fascinated. It was a sad, sobbing tune that seemed to have a thread of laughter running through it. The notes ran, caught themselves, blended and ran on, singing. I saw Duck’s mouth open and Robin’s face entranced. That pipe chimed like bells and ran like water. In it I felt all spring budding and bursting as it does along the Riverside, and yet it was spring in the future, overlaid by a sad winter. I hoped it would never stop. I wanted it to run for ever as the River does.

  I looked down at the red figure of Gull standing in the path. It was drying. I could see it turning pinker, shrinking a little, flaking slightly, and plainly becoming harder every second. I could have sworn the notes of the pipe were sucking water from it and then baking it under my eyes. It became harder, pinker and smaller yet, until it seemed impossible that any moisture was left in it. Tanamil still played, watching the image as he played, until the pink was whitish. Then he drew to a close so gently that I did not at first realise he had stopped. There was no silence. There was the sound of the two Rivers running on either side of us, and the wind stirring the reeds, and birds on the cliffs. All these noises seemed to have caught and held the music.

  “OH!” said Robin, like a scream. “Gull—!”

  I looked into the boat and Gull was transparent. I could see the boards and a corner of the blanket beneath him. I could see how the hair at the back of his head was pressed flat as he lay. As I looked, he was fainter. He was like a pool of liquid with his own reflection in it, and the liquid seemed to be drying up. It shrank, still with the whole of Gull in it, and dwindled till it lay only in the space in front of the tiller.

  Hern jumped up. His foot went out to kick the dry image.

  “Don’t touch it!” Tanamil said, quick as a bark.

  Hern’s foot went back to the ground. At the same instant the liquid Gull dried away entirely. There was nothing but an empty boat.

  We stood staring, with pale faces, too shocked to speak. Tanamil put his pipe away, stood up and gently moved the image of Gull from the red earth. “There,” he said, with Gull in his hands. “He’s safe now.”

  “Safe how?” said Robin.

  “Where is he?” said Duck.

  “What have you done?” I said. As for Hern, he was speechless.

  Tanamil held the dry pink Gull out to Robin, and she took it, utterly dismayed. “What – what do I do with this?” she said.

  “Keep him safe until you come to your grandfather,” Tanamil said.

  “We haven’t got a grandfather,” said Duck.

  Tanamil looked round at us all as if he did not know what to say. “I didn’t know how little you understood,” he said at last. He considered a moment; then he said, “Gull’s soul is not usual. If an enemy took it, he could use it as a spout to drain off the souls of his soul, as it were, and draw through it the souls of his forebears, right down to his first ancestor. I do not know if the man who was trying to take it knows this, but I know he should not have a chance to find out. What I have done makes Gull’s soul safe without this man being any the wiser. If I swear by your Undying that Gull is safe, will you believe me?”

  “He’s safe from us too, by the look of it,” Robin said, and Tanamil laughed.

  “Come up to my shelter and warm yourselves,” he said, “before you go on.”

  I do not know how we came to agree to this. Tanamil was a Heathen. He had just taken Gull from us, and the way he had done it proved him to be a powerful magician. Yet we thought of none of these things. We went up the red path between the rushes with him, Robin carrying Gull.

  The path came up on a grassy shoulder beneath the red cliff. From there we could see into both Rivers. Our own River wound back in a high gorge, mighty, swift and yellow. The other River ran red and was smaller, though no less swift, and it had a merriment about it that I had not seen in a River before. It sang between red walls. The trees, ferns and reeds seemed greener there. It was full of birds. We heard the noise of birds at all times while we were with Tanamil.

  When I remember Tanamil’s shelter, I am confused. I thought it was built against the face of the red cliff, of red mud and driftwood, and that we pushed reeds aside to go in. But I could swear that we went inside the cliff itself. Indeed, we must have been inside the cliff, for I remember a second entrance low down beside the second River, where the red water slapped robustly among the fringed tops of tanaqui. The sunlight came in green through it and danced on the ceiling in curls and ripples.

  Inside was a comfortable enough room, with chairs, a table and piles of rugs, some of fur, some woven plain, and a good fire blazing. Tanamil had no Undying at his hearth, Heathen that he was. Robin carefully put the dry little image of Gull there instead. Seeing her do that broke the spell that was on me for an instant – I am now sure that it was a spell. I jumped up, saying, “Oh! We left our Undying in the boat!”

  Tanamil smiled his pleasant smile at me. “Don’t worry. They’ll guard the boat for you.”

  I sat down again, a
nd for a long time I did not remember we were on a journey or consider our danger or even think of Gull. I had the time of my life instead. We all did, although Robin did not seem to enjoy herself so much at the end. But I cannot remember much that happened. Up till now it was all confused in my head. But by thinking and thinking and discussing it with Duck, I have remembered it better – though I am not sure we have it in the right order.

  “That’s the trouble with you, Tanaqui,” Duck said to me. “You always have to have things in order. You’re as bad as Hern.”

  I think Duck is right, though I did not realise it before. If I cannot get a thing straight in my head, it offends me, like a piece of weaving that has gone wrong – like Robin’s awful blue skirt. This is why Hern and I are so much more horrified than Duck by our strange time with Tanamil.

  I REMEMBER WE HAD an excellent meal by that good fire. It was food such as I had only heard of before, lobster and fine white cakes and venison, with dried grapes afterwards. Uncle Kestrel told us of grapes. They grow among the trees of the Black Mountains, on trailing creepers. When I first heard of the King, my father said he ate lobster and venison every day. I never thought to have them myself. We had wine too, like our King. Wine is fine pink stuff with a sparkle to it. Tanamil said it was from the Black Mountains. Robin poured a little of hers in front of the dry statue of Gull. Tanamil laughed at her for doing it, and Robin went very pink. But Duck says she did it again at supper.