Rocking Horse War

by Lari Don

  “But no one knows where the keystone went after the Grey Men fell. It might have fallen into the pass with them. It might still be on the summit of the peak. No one even remembers what it looks like.”

  They both raised their eyes. The ridged summit of the Keystone Peak neatly halved the sky above them.

  “No one has sung with the mountains since, because neither family can make the link without the keystone; and neither family is safe coming here to search for it because the mountains are a no-man’s land where any attack is justified.

  “The war for the mountains and the search for the keystone killed many of my ancestors, and drove most of the rest away. But now it’s not just the families who suffer. The mountains are suffering too. They’ve been neglected for so long they’re starting to crumble.”

  Thomas turned a slow circle, gazing up at the mountains. Pearl wasn’t sure if this was another piece of drama, or if he really was convinced that mountains could “suffer”.

  Then Pearl remembered what he’d said about his mother. “You said, the last day your mother spoke to you. Is she dead?”

  “No. She was injured in an ambush meant for me, three summers ago. We hadn’t even been in the mountains. It was a completely unprovoked attack. Her neck was broken. She’s paralysed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pearl said quietly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise.”

  “You didn’t realise what? That in wars, people get hurt?”

  “In wars, Thomas, people die. My brother — who was even taller, even more handsome and even more charming than you — my brother died in the Great War. I know about wars.”

  “That war killed my father too. A pointless death. Fighting over land cut with so many trenches, land soaked with so much death, that no one could bear to sing with it now. At least you still have a mother and a father.”

  “I’ve already lost one brother and now you’re stealing the rest of my family.”

  They glared at each other.

  Pearl felt tears gather behind her eyes. To stop Thomas noticing, she attacked again. “Why did you let your mother get caught in an ambush meant for you? Were you lagging behind then too, looking out for feathered foes?”

  “No!” Thomas swung his staff towards Pearl, but stopped the swing in time and slashed at the air instead. “We were out exercising the horses and mine fell lame. Mother cantered ahead while I walked home. Then the Laird forced the land to shift.” His voice caught in his throat. “Mother was riding under the cliffs at the base of the Keystone Peak. She was caught in the rockfall.

  “I heard the land roar and her horse scream at the same time. But she never made a sound. She hasn’t made a sound since. We don’t even know if she can hear us. All she does is breathe and swallow the soup the housekeeper spoons into her mouth. During the day her eyes are open. At night they close. But she never looks at me.”

  Thomas blew a long breath out, then looked at Pearl. “How did your brother die?”

  “He was shot. He was armed with a pistol, and he was leading boys armed with rifles straight into machine-gun fire. Was that his destiny, do you think?” She asked the question more harshly than she’d meant, and Thomas, wisely, didn’t answer.

  “How did your father die?” Pearl asked in a gentler voice.

  “He was blown up. His right leg was blown off, and he died while surgeons were amputating his left leg. He wouldn’t have wanted to live if he couldn’t walk the land. So perhaps that was his destiny.”

  After a silence, Pearl said, “It’s not a contest, is it?”

  “No.”

  Thomas began to walk on. Then he paused and spoke without looking back. “I don’t want to hurt the triplets. Or you.”

  Pearl looked at the gun under his arm, and remembered his words at the gateway. “You don’t want to hurt them. But you will if you have to?”

  He lifted his chin to look at their path through the pass, and walked off without answering.

  Chapter 12

  Pearl marched through the pass, thinking about Thomas’s story. She didn’t believe his tale of two fighting men flying off the summit and falling out of the sky to their grave. Surely he didn’t believe it either. Surely he could tell the difference between death in a story and death in a war.

  She looked up at the Keystone Peak and saw a couple of crows circling above the pass. She flinched, then snorted at her own foolishness. Their black wings were flashing in the sunlight, so they must be flying above the shadow of the Anvil. Looking down from the brightness, they wouldn’t be able to see Pearl and Thomas against the dark ground. Not that she really believed birds were looking for them.

  Pearl took a few more steps, then looked up again to check that the birds weren’t flying lower.

  She was slashed across the eyes by a sudden hot pain. She cried out, ducking forward and covering her face with her hands.

  The summer sun had finally reached the Grey Men’s Grave. For a moment Pearl couldn’t move, pinned down by the light, exposed to the sky above.

  As her eyes got used to the brightness burning through her fingers and she took her hands away, she saw Thomas lift his pale face to the golden sunlight.

  “Don’t stand there like an idiot,” Pearl yelled. “The birds can see us now!”

  She scrambled over to hide in the clutter of moraine to her left. After a couple of long seconds Thomas joined her.

  They looked up cautiously. The crows were still circling. Right above them.

  Suddenly the crows swooped down, the tiny dots getting bigger as the birds dived towards Pearl and Thomas like they were scraps of food or shiny objects.

  Pearl had a sudden vivid memory of startling a pair of crows which were pecking out the eyes of a live lamb caught in barbed wire. She felt a moment of sick fear and started scrabbling around for stones to use as weapons. But Thomas stood up and lifted his black stick towards the sky.

  The crows changed course with frustrated shrieks, and flew, straight as a ruled line, through the pass and out to the Laird’s land.

  “Blast!” Thomas looked at his watch. “Nearly noon. I should have been checking the time.” He frowned, then said firmly, “We keep going.”

  “But the crows saw us,” Pearl pointed out. “If you’re right about them, they’re flying to the Laird now. So he’ll know we’re coming.”

  “The Laird has Emerald, and we want her back. I’m going on. Are you coming with me?”

  Pearl didn’t hesitate. “Of course I’m coming with you. I don’t trust you an inch on your own.” She grinned at him and took a step to the south.

  But Thomas didn’t follow. She turned to watch as he laid his gun down, then pushed the end of his twisted staff into the ground, tightened his right hand round the top of the staff, and placed his left hand gently on the largest rock in the jumble before him.

  He began to hum, then to sing. Pearl still had no idea what the words meant, but she could hear a story in the song, about mountains reaching to the sky, about the need for height and wind and clouds. As he chanted, she realised the rock was starting to vibrate.

  Thomas was singing to the mountain and the mountain was trying to sing back.

  There was a grating sound, the rock moved slightly on its base and then stopped humming. Thomas took a deep breath and began again. There was no response. He tried a third time, and his voice faltered in the surrounding silence.

  Thomas rested his forehead on the staff. Then he looked at the summits above him.

  “I can’t hear the mountains. Without the keystone, I just can’t make the link. I could use my power to force them to my will, but I can’t help them. They can’t help me. I’m all alone.”

  His brown eyes glistened in the sunlight. “I have to find your sisters. I have to win this war.” He waved the staff in a wide circle round him. “Or all this will be cold crumbling stone, and I’ll have failed.” His voice wavered again. He bent to pick up his gun.

  Pearl wondered if he would answer the questions that were p
uzzling her if she asked him now, when his voice and his confidence were cracking. But it didn’t seem fair to take advantage of his distress.

  So she reached out and brushed his sleeve. “You’re not alone. I’m here. And whether you win or lose, the mountains will still be here. It’s not all your responsibility. Let’s just concentrate on getting the girls back.”

  “You don’t understand!” he snapped. “It is my responsibility. The pulse of the earth’s music keeps the land supple. Without it, the mountains grow brittle, then crumble. They aren’t just silent. They’re eroding, grain by grain.

  “It’s started already.” He pointed to a bright grey scar on the brown slope of the Anvil, so new it wasn’t even on the maps in Pearl’s bedroom.

  “A landslip,” Thomas growled. “They’re happening more and more often. Cliffs breaking off, slopes covered in rubble. These mountains are barely safe now, even if you’re not being attacked.”

  He looked at Pearl coldly. “You’re just fighting for your family, but I’m fighting for the future of this land. Compared to the music of the land, children’s lives are worthless. Worthless.” He shook her hand off his arm and strode away.

  Pearl rubbed her hand on her skirt. Perhaps she couldn’t handle this boy by herself. For the first time, she considered going home and telling Mother the triplets had been stolen.

  Then she imagined Mother screaming, and Father being called back from Perth with lots of logical questions. How could she explain rocking horses that galloped, rings that rolled uphill and crows that spied on climbers?

  She touched the stone beside her with her fingertips. It was still cold after a night in the shadows. She hadn’t really heard it sing, had she? No more than she’d ever seen people fly.

  Pearl frowned. What would Peter have done if he’d found himself following a trail that started with rocking horses and led towards a war?

  Would he have gone home for help, or would he have kept going, exploring new lands and finding new adventures? She had been so young when he died; she only knew him from his maps. But she knew those maps really well.

  So Pearl walked fast to catch up with Thomas. They didn’t speak another word as they walked to the southern mouth of the pass.

  The Grey Men’s Grave ended in a cliff. A new cliff, Pearl assumed, by the sharp landscape of scree and boulders at its foot. This must be one of the landslips that was making Thomas so irritable.

  Then she looked past the cliff and the rock-scattered slope to the Laird’s land: a land of green and blue, rather than the brown and purple they’d left behind them.

  The river which curved round the base of the Anvil was broader now, fed by dozens of silver burns. White flecks were scattered on the green and the blue: sheep on the grass and swans on the water.

  Pearl also saw, with a jolt of surprise, the spiralling towers and jumbled roofs of a fairytale castle. Built from pink, yellow and white stone, it was surrounded by a lacy pattern of ponds and canals, then a checked border of parklands and fields.

  She grimaced. “Isn’t that horrible!”

  Thomas laughed harshly. “Swanhaugh Towers. The Laird’s great-grandfather built it. He came back from his grand tour of Europe with a passion for German castles, French chateaux and Italian villas. But his sketches were a bit muddled.”

  “You think Emmie might be there? And Ruby of course.”

  “If they followed the river, they’ll have trotted right into the Laird’s front garden.”

  “Let’s go then.” Pearl turned to lower herself over the edge, but stopped, suddenly, when she saw another castle, high on side of the Anvil.

  A sour grey fortress, with no more decoration than four plain round towers, one at each corner. It crouched on a sheer outcrop of rock, so the only way to reach it was by a narrow path from the slopes of the Anvil.

  Pearl could see the clifftop castle was old and uncared for. The hard sun shone on cracks in the towers, and piles of tumbled stones at the base of the walls showed how much higher they’d once been. But this lump of native grey stone looked more solid than the wedding-cake castle below.

  Pearl wondered why Peter hadn’t put these two very different castles on his maps. Perhaps he’d felt castles weren’t permanent enough to deserve a place beside mountains and rivers.

  She turned to Thomas. “Is that your family’s ancient stronghold?”

  “Yes. Landlaw Hold.”

  She saw pride in his face. Not pride in himself, for once, but pride in something bigger and older.

  “Do you like it?” he asked eagerly.

  “It’s very impressive.”

  “It’s even more impressive inside! I’ve only been able to sneak in a couple of times myself. It’s too close to the Laird to be safe just now, but once we’ve won the war I’ll take you to see it.” The offer was made with an open smile, but then his face closed down. “Yes. We will all go and see it soon.”

  Then he looked at the cliff and said with his usual smooth charm, “The fastest way down is to climb. Can you manage that?”

  “Of course I can,” Pearl said quickly. “But you’ll not be able to carry your stick and gun. You’ll need both hands. Just leave them behind a rock.”

  “I never leave my staff, and I should take the gun too. The Laird didn’t send all his swans to your house today, and swans are bigger and braver than crows.”

  Thomas took off his jacket, wrapped it round the staff and the rifle, and tied the sleeves round his chest to secure the bundle to his back. “A homemade rucksack!”

  As soon as he moved, the gun slid out and crashed to the ground. Pearl laughed at his surprised face, and watched as he took off the sagging jacket and tried to push the gun back inside.

  Then, not wanting to waste any more time, she pulled green gardening twine from a pinafore pocket and tied the jacket tightly round the gun and stick. Thomas looked at her knots critically.

  “I’ll not be able to get them out fast.”

  “Neither will gravity.”

  He nodded and put the bundle back on. They peered over the edge again.

  “It’s not a race,” announced Thomas as they examined the rock face, looking for safe handholds and footholds.

  “What do you mean?” said Pearl.

  “You don’t have to try and prove you’re a better climber than me. You might spend all your time with deer and heather, but I’ve spent the last couple of winters in the Alps and I don’t want you going too fast to try and beat me. It’s not a race.”

  “Of course not,” agreed Pearl. “I would never be that daft.”

  But as she spoke, she swung herself over the edge to the first handhold she’d seen, then scrambled down the rock face. Her skirt made it hard for her to see the rock beneath her, and she hadn’t planned a route all the way to the bottom, but she was sure she could find handholds and footholds.

  The cliff was higher than her own four-storey house, and the ground at its base was steep and rocky. If she fell, she’d break most of her bones when she landed, and the rest as she bounced down the slope.

  Pearl quickly discovered why there was so much loose stone at the bottom of the cliff. The cliff was still crumbling, the surface of the rock fragile and fracturing. She had to test each hold by pulling or stamping gently on it. But she really did want to beat Thomas, so she kept moving as fast as she could.

  She glanced up at him. He was taking a route to her right, a few yards above her. She was descending faster, because the stick and gun strapped to his back made him less agile.

  Suddenly, the projecting stone supporting her left hand broke off and she swung out from the cliff. Pearl gasped, and slammed herself inwards again. She forced her left hand into the same crack as her right hand. Dust drifted out of the gap as the decaying rock began to split and shear under the increased pressure. She shifted her left foot down and around, prodding the cliff, searching for a foothold. She was past the point where she’d mapped out a route, and she couldn’t look down because her arms were
squashed together in front of her face.

  “Are you alright?” called Thomas, still climbing steadily down.

  “Yes,” she grunted into her sleeves. He couldn’t do anything to help anyway. Not unless she really believed he could sing the mountain solid again.

  Her left foot still dangled in the air. There were no footholds. Her right foot was aching, taking almost all of her weight, and her hands were sliding out of the crowded, crumbling crack.

  She looked up, saw one of the handholds she had just moved down from and jerked her left hand back up to it. Then she hung all her weight on her hands as her feet shifted back upwards to footholds she’d already tested. Now she could look for another way down.

  Thomas moved smoothly past her.

  “You’re going the wrong way, Pearl. But don’t worry. It isn’t a race, after all.”

  Pearl felt her cheeks flare pink, and turned her head away from him. Then she traversed the cliff and followed his route down.

  Thomas was waiting for her at the bottom with a gentle smile that was meant to be consoling, but made her want to punch him.

  “You’re shorter than me, and you’re wearing a dress. You were bound to take longer.”

  “So it was your destiny to win and my destiny to lose, was it?” Pearl snarled.

  “If you want to put it like that, yes.”

  “Nonsense! If that stone hadn’t broken off, I would have won. That wasn’t destiny, that was chance.”

  “It wasn’t chance. You went down a fracture line, a fault in the rock. That brittle stone was going to break away as soon as any weight was put on it.”

  “But I might have taken a different route,” she objected.

  “No, you took that route because it looked the quickest from the top, and you were being hasty because you wanted to beat me. Even though it wasn’t a race.”