There was only a glimmer of fire in both firepots. We tore off gilded carvings and red and blue rails from the roofs and used handfuls of thatch for kindling. Our fire smoked and smelt bad on the tiles, and smoke spread over the flat water.
After supper we left Robin sitting by the fire with her hands wrapped round the knees of her awful blue skirt and scrambled over the roofs in the near-dark. I kept wishing I could see into the drowned rooms underneath. But I had to imagine the grandeur. Hern and I collided coming round the tall chimneys above our boat. While we were laughing, we heard the slop and creak of our boat swinging round to face upstream.
“It’s happened again!” said Hern.
We slithered down the steep roof, and sure enough, we could see the boat turned and the rubbish from our supper drifting the wrong way. We knelt with our heads hanging off the roof, trying to see how fast the current went. Hern took a stick and held it with his fingers just out of the water.
“It can’t be the end of the floods,” he said. “My thumb’s wet now.”
Somebody laughed on the roof behind us. I thought it was Duck and turned to tell him about the current. But it was a Heathen girl. I could see just enough to know that she was fair-haired and not Robin. I nudged Hern and he looked too.
“Er – good evening,” we said. I don’t know how Hern felt, but I was hoping very hard she would think we were Heathens too.
“Hallo,” she said. “Why are you two making such a fuss about the tide?”
“Tide?” we said, stupid as owls in a strong light.
“You must know about it,” she said. “The sea rises twice a day and comes up the River.”
“Oh, we know all about that,” Hern said. “We – er – we were just seeing how high it came up.”
“Of course,” she said.
“We know it’s different by the sea,” I lied.
“Of course,” she said. I know she was laughing at us as she slipped away behind the chimneys.
We felt very foolish and very scared. When Robin and Duck learnt we were sharing the roofs with Heathens, they wanted to row away in the dark, but we gave up that idea because we could not see where the two lines of trees were by then. Instead we threw our fire into the water and got into the boat. There we did not sleep for a long time, but we never heard a sound from the Heathens.
WE DID NOT hear the Heathens go, but we were the only people on the roofs in the morning. Hern and I climbed a tower in the middle and made sure of it.
“Now, please,” said Robin as we were all getting into the boat, “let’s decide where to stop. What kind of place do we want to live in?”
“We’re going down to the sea first,” said Duck.
“Surely not,” Robin said. She gestured to the pink clay brother in the bows of the boat. “Think of Gull.”
At once it was certain that Duck, Hern and I were all settled on going to the sea. “I do think of Gull,” said Hern. “I want to see that magician – if there is a magician. I’m going to flood him out with real things. I shan’t believe a word he says. That’s the only way to deal with magic.”
“I’d have thought more magic would be better,” said Duck. “But I’ve got to go there too.”
My thought was that we would find a magician by the sea and he would prove to be Tanamil. I growled like a dog, I was so angry – angry with Tanamil and angry with myself for believing anything he said. “I’m going to see that magician,” I said, “and I’m going to rescue Gull.” I knew I had not the power to do that. I took up the One and shook him, I was so angry. “He’ll help,” I said. “He’d better!”
“Tanaqui!” said Robin. “You mustn’t threaten the Undying! I think you’re all mad or – or something.”
“Don’t you start on about being the eldest and knowing best!” said Hern. “We’ve all decided.”
“I wasn’t,” Robin protested. “I don’t know best. I don’t know anything any more. All I know is that it’s dangerous. If I didn’t know it was quite as dangerous in Shelling, I’d ask to go home.” She bent her head, and tears dripped. Hern sighed.
“We’ll find a really nice home when we’ve been to the sea, Robin,” I said.
It took us four days to come near the sea. It might have taken longer if the wind had not backed to south-west and come hurling over the plains of water, bringing ruffles like goose flesh. With that we made speed even when the tide turned and flowed up the River. Each day it flowed more strongly, until we came to expect it, as we expected the sun to rise. We found it useful, for it showed us where the River truly ran. There were no more trees to mark the River after the first day. Instead there was a very confusing landscape.
I think more people had lived in that part of the land than I knew existed before. It rose into humps and lumps everywhere. The flooded River flowed round them in lakes, in strings of shallow pools, and in a multitude of smaller rivers. Often the first sign we had that we had missed the main River was that we found ourselves sailing beside the posts of a fence. There were houses on nearly every hump of land and more houses half underwater. Not all these houses were burnt, but there were no people anywhere. We risked staying in an empty house one night, but none of us felt comfortable there. Even when we put our Undying in the empty niches by the hearth, it still felt like someone else’s house.
Many of the humps had animals on them. We have three cats now, Rusty and Ratchet, and Sweetheart, who came from the island where the gulls were. I love cats. Robin named them. There was one island full of dogs, but they were wild and hungry and barked at us so fiercely that we did not go near them. Most of the humps were full of sheep. They had lambs, because it was spring. We wondered whether to catch some to eat, but we were not that hungry yet. We had plenty of dried fruit and pickled fish, and there were cows stranded on every hillside. Once we had got used to the way things were, we did not hesitate to milk those cows.
By the fourth evening in that confusing landscape, the mountains we kept seeing in the distance drew in around us, in the form of low, empty-looking hills. They were dark, stony and infertile. But the island we landed on was grassy and covered with bushes. There little black Sweetheart came running to meet us, purring and mewing. Never have I seen a cat more glad to have human company.
That morning I was woken by melancholy crying. I got up and found the waters covered with white floating birds, and more flying, catching the sun in a way that had me blinking.
“What are these large mournful birds?” I said.
Hern laughed. “Haven’t you seen seagulls before?”
“She may not have done,” Robin said. “They stopped coming to Shelling years ago. They used to come and cover the field when it was ploughed, Tanaqui, and Father said they came inland to get away from the spring storms.”
“But I remember them,” Hern protested. “She’s only a year younger than me.”
“Please, Hern,” said Robin. “I’m much too tired to quarrel about seagulls.”
“They used to come after the floods,” Hern said. “Does that mean the River’s going down, then?” He scrambled to test the height of the water. He tried a different way nearly every day to see if the floods were over, but the tides grew stronger and steeper the nearer we came to the sea and defeated all his methods. That day Hern hung a piece of twine with knots in it from a bush. But the end of it floated instead of sinking, and Sweetheart came along and played with it. Hern roared at her. It was very odd: Hern, of all of us, was the one who was determined that the One should go in his fire at the proper time.
Duck picked Sweetheart up. “Don’t make such a fuss, Hern,” he said. “When the floods go down, it’ll be quite obvious.”
“But we don’t have a bank to measure by!” Hern snarled.
“Then we’ll find out some other way,” said Duck.
“Stop maddening me,” said Hern. “Take that cat away.”
Robin was very quiet as we sailed that morning. I should have noticed she was not well, I know, but I was thinking
of other things. The gulls followed us. They made a noise like sharp misery, and I was afraid of them. They watched us with hungry eyes like beads. When they floated on the River, they seemed lighter than was natural. I was not sure they were really birds. There was a new light in the air, bleached and chalky, like bones, or Hern’s eyes when he is angry, and the gulls wheeled about in it. The hills on either side of us were low and rocky, with no trees to speak of, and they seemed to come together in front of us into a bank of mist. The wind hissed over them. The River filled the wide space in between, grey now, and covered with angry shivers in all directions. Where the water met the land, it rose into high waves with white tops. These waves went riding landwards, growing taller as they rode, until they were too tall for themselves, whereupon the white top fell over and smashed on the land. Everywhere was crash, crash of falling waves, and the seagulls crying out. I kept looking at Gull to make sure he was safe. I was frightened.
Hern and Duck became frightened too, when we found we were not masters of the boat any longer. None of us understands the mass of contradictory currents in which the water flowed to the sea. Sometimes we were racing forward, sometimes we seemed hardly to move, and then, around midday, we were taken by the tide and borne back towards Sweetheart’s island. We kept the sail up and tried to beat on, but we found we were taken more and more towards the left. After a whole morning we had gone barely two miles.
“I think we’d better keep leftwards,” Hern said at last, “and try to land somewhere over there.”
“Oh, yes, do let’s land!” Robin said. She said it so desperately that we all looked at her and saw that she was ill. She was shivering, and her face was an odd colour – almost like the lilac flowers in Aunt Zara’s garden. I think we did wrong to bring Robin to the sea.
Hern said, “I’ll land in the first possible place.”
Duck picked up a blanket and wrapped it round Robin. “Would you like the Lady, Robin?” he said. I confess now that I felt jealous at how kind they both were to Robin. I found it hard to be kind to her, and I still do. She looked so ugly, and she kept shivering for no reason. I hope I did not show my feelings. I put the Lady in Robin’s hands, but Robin seemed to forget her, and she dropped to the boards.
“Have the Young One,” said Duck.
“No,” Robin said, with great firmness.
After endless sailing in heaving grey water, we came near land. It would be mid-afternoon by then. Everything was bleached, brownish and sandy-looking and smelling a new smell, like a fresh-caught fish. That is the smell of the sea. And the land was not in a solid line as we had thought, but in islands of heaped-up sand, with the true land just as sandy, some way beyond. In between the land and the islands the sand-coloured water raced and sucked, while on the outer side of them it was all waves, crashing continually. How Hern got us ashore on the last island, I shall never know. He must be a better boatman than me.
Here was our final island. It was made of crusty sand. Sharp-edged grass grew on it and bent prickly bushes, all twisted in the wind. The wind had dug out holes and hollows in the sand. We found the largest hollow, facing back to the land we had come from – from there it looked like blue mountains – and we made a camp, dragging the boat up to give Robin some shelter. Down below was a place where all the things in that part of the flood were hurled on the island and pinned there by the racing water.
“Ugh!” said Duck when he saw it.
There were dead hens, drowned rats, cabbage stalks – many horrid remains – but there was wood and waterweed too. We made a good fire from it. We wrapped Robin in rugcoats and blankets, and she still shivered. We offered her food.
“I couldn’t!” she said. “Just water.”
“Water!” I said. Hern and I looked at one another. There was a drop in the jar, but there was no water on the island. I went down to the grey flood and tasted it. The River here mingles with the sea, and the sea is salt. I do not know where the salt comes from, but the sea is not fit to drink.
“What do we do now?” I whispered.
“We can’t take the boat,” Hern whispered back. “She’d be cold without it, and the current’s terrible. I can’t see any sign of a stream either.”
We gazed at the low sandy land helplessly. Naturally Duck chose that moment to say in a loud voice, “I’m dreadfully thirsty!”
“Shut up!” we both said.
But there was Robin heaving herself up on one arm, with rugs dropping from her and her teeth chattering in her blue-grey mouth. “Is the water gone? I’ll go and get—”
“You lie down,” I said, glaring at Duck. “I’m just going to get some.” I took the water jar and stumped off up the sandy hill, with no idea what I was going to do. I was really depressed. When I come to think of it, I find wide-open spaces always make me unhappy. It was the same with the lake. I have been brought up where the land is hilly and close. Here it was as if the land had not been properly made. Everything was flat and sand grey or River grey and hung with peculiar purple-grey mist. You could not see very far, even if there was anything to see. The only thing my eye could cling to was the wide channel of rushing grey water between me and the shore, and I did not see myself getting across that.
All the same, I stumped down towards the channel. I had some notion that the water would not be salty there. And as I went, I thought I heard Duck screaming from the rushing channel. It was the way he screams when he is really frightened. “Help!” he screamed.
I remember I dropped the jar and came down to the water like a plough in a furrow of dry sand. It was not Duck. It was a much smaller child. He was in the channel, thrashing about in the racing muddy water and travelling past in it as fast as I could walk, screaming all the while. There was a horrid while when I seemed to stand there staring. But I think I took my shoes off and got out of my rugcoat while I stared.
“Keep swimming!” I screamed at the child. “Swim for your life!” He heard me. A fountain of water went up from his arms and legs, but I could see he had no idea how to swim. I ploughed down into the water. I remember squawking. It was far colder than the River is by Shelling, and the bottom was no bottom at all. It was just sinking stuff. You had to swim or sink in the mud. I swam madly. I had never swum in a flood before. My father forbade it. But I think, even that first night of the flood, the current was not as strong as the one in that race. My legs were towed sideways before I was afloat. No wonder the child screamed so. I swam with my whole strength, and yet I could not seem to cross that narrow channel.
I think I caught up with that drowning child simply from being heavier. Since I was trying to go forward, I was carried to him on a slant. That is, I was carried to where I had last seen him. He had gone down a second time by then. I thought he was drowned, and I was thinking of saving myself when a heavy sand-coloured head bobbed up just by my fingers. I wound my hand in the hair and pulled.
Then it was all panic. The child’s terror got into me too. We both thrashed and screamed and sank. I roared at him to be quiet, and he shrilled at me to let go, and to get him out, and called me names. I called him a crab-faced idiot and fought him until the water was in spouts around us. While we struggled, the current dragged us along against the land, and I saw we were travelling out towards the sea. I put my hand against the bank to stop us. And my hand stuck in the land, up to my elbow. I dream of that still. The bank was as soft as curd cheese. Somehow, I got us out on to it, out of the sucking waters, and the cheeselike land sucked us down instead. I floundered through it, dragging that poor child by his hair. I came to hard sand under my elbows, coarse as sugar, and I cried with relief.
The child cried too, on hands and knees, with water pouring out of his mouth and hair. His face was red and blue in patches, and his bare feet and legs were raw purple. He was wearing a silly kind of tunic and drawers which must have been cold even when he was dry. He shivered, and I shook.
“Shut up,” I said. “You’re all right now.” He looked at me as if it was all my fault.
“You’re saved,” I said. “By me. You’re looking at the person who pulled you out. How did you fall in, anyway?” He seemed vague about that. He muttered something. “I see,” I said. “You were fooling about and you slipped. Where do you live?”
He gave me a shifty look. I think he said, “I didn’t say that,” but he still didn’t speak properly.
“Then what did you say?” I said.
“I said some natives pushed me in.” He said it very loudly and clearly, so there was no mistake, and he gave me the defiant look people do when they are lying.
“Liar,” I said, but I said it without thinking. The wretched child was a Heathen. My wet hair was the same sand colour as his, and I knew his would dry fair too. I thought that if I had let him drown, it would have been revenge for my father at least, but what had my father to do with him? I could not have stood on the island and let him drown. “You’d better go home and get into dry clothes,” I said. “Where can I find some water?”
He gave me another sideways look and pointed to the racing channel behind us.
“Very funny!” I said. “Do you think I’m a fool?” He shook his head swiftly. “Water to drink,” I said. “I was looking for some when I heard you yelling.”
He looked at me from the corners of his eyes, very carefully. Maybe he knew I was not a Heathen. Something made him afraid and respectful of me. “There’s water up here,” he said, and jerked his shivering chin to the sandy hill above us.
“Show me,” I said.
Both shivering hugely, we marched up and inland, over one sandy hump and round another. The wind was cruel. And there, running between two more sand-humps, was a peculiar little stream, very flat and shallow. It came out of the sand about a foot above my head and, instead of flowing down into the River, simply buried itself in the sand and vanished, just beside my mauve feet. I tasted it, and it was good. “Thanks,” I said. “Now you’ve shown me, you can go home, but mind you tell them the truth about what happened. If you spin them that story about the natives pushing you in, I shall know at once, and I shall come and get you.” I did not see why he should blame our people for his own silliness.
The Spellcoats (UK) Page 8
