Song for a Scarlet Runner

by Julie Hunt

  As I spoke, I thought of the second lesson of storytelling: See the picture in your mind and the audience will see it, too. Now I imagined a beach. I saw the footprints of the dogs and, for a moment, I could hear the sea – but it was probably just the audience breathing. Somewhere a dog barked. It was a muffled sound.

  ‘Pike, the warrior, found the old man sifting silt at the river mouth,’ I went on. ‘He told of his dream and waited to hear what the Siltman had to say.

  ‘The Siltman’s voice was like wind blowing through dry grass, and his eyes seemed to look through to the next world.’

  I remembered how Eadie had spoken in the Siltman’s voice when she told the story in the marshes, and I made my voice dry and whispery, too. It echoed through the Undercavern.

  ‘You were right to come to me, the Siltman said. You will certainly die, unless I save you.

  ‘Save me? asked Pike. How?

  ‘I must separate your spirit from your body and put it away somewhere safe. If I do that, you can never be killed.

  ‘Then do it, said Pike.

  ‘There’s a price, said the Siltman.

  ‘Name your price, said Pike. I have a strongroom full of gold.

  ‘I don’t want gold, the old man whispered. I want something more valuable.’

  I paused. The sound of the sea grew louder. I wasn’t sure if it was in my ears, or where it was. Perhaps there was a wind somewhere above; or maybe the sound was coming from the passage outside the Undercavern. I raised my voice.

  ‘Give me a child, the Siltman said. Your child.

  I whistled through my teeth the way Eadie had done when she had told the story.

  ‘It’s a deal, said Pike, who had no children.’

  I stretched out my hand.

  ‘The Siltman then reached up and touched the warrior’s chest. He took out Pike’s spirit and dropped it in a bag at his feet.

  ‘One of the Siltman’s dogs had recently given birth and there were puppies in that bag. The spirit went into a puppy. The old man drew out the pup and gave it to Pike.

  ‘Keep him safe, he said. And you will live forever.’

  I stopped speaking, because something was happening outside the doors. I heard a crash, then scratching – loud scratching – and the sound of something tearing.

  ‘Go on!’ Eadie said sharply. ‘Finish the tale.’

  ‘Pike put the puppy inside his cloak and went home. The next day, when he fought his enemy, a spear passed through him without leaving a scratch and he knew everything the Siltman had said was true.

  ‘Years passed. Pike gave no thought to the bargain he had made—’

  Suddenly the doors of the Undercavern burst open. There was a sharp salt wind and the dank smell of wet dog. The candles flickered and went out, and so did the lamps above. The only light was the glow coming from my face, and in that I could see a pack of dogs – a big group of enormous hounds. The audience gasped as the dogs turned their wild, glittering eyes on me. In a moment I was surrounded by huge, grey shaggy beasts.

  ‘Keep still,’ someone shouted.

  I froze. I thought that in a second they would leap at me. But the dogs circled the stone, around and around. In the hush I heard a dry, whispering voice.

  ‘Drop.’

  Immediately the dogs lay down with their heads between their paws. Their eyes were watching me. At the doors, I could just make out the figure of a man standing next to another gigantic hound. He was tall and thin. The man lifted one hand.

  ‘Fetch,’ he said in a voice that was like the wind blowing through dry reeds. In one movement, the dogs leapt onto the stone. They towered above me, brushing me with their wiry coats. I stared out through their legs like a prisoner looking through bars, and when they moved, I moved with them. In this way, they steered me towards the doorway.

  There were murmurs from the audience, who only now dared to speak.

  ‘Extraordinary . . .’

  ‘What a telling!’

  Someone stood up and yelled ‘Bravo’. Then they began to clap, softly at first, as if they were fearing for me, and then with great enthusiasm. They cheered and yelled and stamped their feet. They thought whatever was happening was part of the storytelling.

  Through the dogs’ legs I saw a pair of bare feet, ancient and gnarled – the worn feet of an old man. His trousers were ragged and so thin that I could see his legs through them, smooth and bone-white, like driftwood.

  ‘You will come with me,’ the Siltman said. ‘The bargain is complete.’

  I felt myself swept up, thrown onto the back of one of the dogs, and the Siltman was behind me, with his hard, bony arm around my waist. The dogs surged towards the doorway. Eadie leaned towards me as we passed. I thought she was going to grab me, but she didn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry, Peat,’ she cried. ‘I had to do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ I yelled.

  The dogs bounded past, leaping the second set of doors that were lying flat on the floor of the passageway, the green felt shredded, and Eadie disappeared behind me. The roar of the audience’s applause faded and the wind roared in my ears instead as we raced away from the Undercavern.

  In a moment we came to a place where the passageway forked. The Siltman gave a sharp whistle and the dogs streamed to the left. We were going down, deeper into the earth, instead of following the passage back towards the alcove and the night markets.

  I screamed as the pack of dogs careered forward. They were running wildly, weaving in and out and leaping across each other. Their paws thudded on the ground, and the sound echoed through the passage as they charged ahead with their tongues hanging out and a look of mad joy in their eyes. Terrified, I grabbed a handful of hair and tried to hang on.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I cried. ‘Why?’

  The Siltman didn’t answer.

  THE SILTMAN

  The passage was wide but the roof was low and it grew lower as we ran along the tunnel.

  ‘Head down,’ breathed the Siltman.

  I leaned forward, pressing my head against the dog’s neck as the pack rose and fell around me like a grey sea. The dogs were running like they would never stop. They raced around a bend, and then the ceiling arched above us and I could sit up again.

  ‘Hold!’

  The pack slowed and came to a halt, and the only sound was panting. It was cold in the tunnel and I could see the white breath of the dogs curling from their mouths like question marks. They looked to the Siltman, waiting for a command. He slipped to the ground.

  ‘Stay,’ he said, and I didn’t know if he was talking to me or the dog I was on. He looked over the pack, then he moved among the dogs, patting each one, running his hands over their backs and down their legs, checking their paws, feeling their ears and necks and noses.

  ‘Flank!’ he called.

  One of the dogs came to him, pushing its way through the others.

  ‘Grey!’ The Siltman whistled. ‘Fathom!’

  Two more dogs followed.

  ‘Drop.’

  Except for the three he had called, all the dogs lay down, including the one I was riding. They were focused on the Siltman, waiting for instruction.

  I looked back up the tunnel. I could have slid to the ground and run, but my body was frozen in shock. And how far would I get?

  ‘Change.’ The Siltman pointed to one of the standing dogs. ‘You will ride Fathom.’

  The dog pricked its ears at the sound of its name and stepped forward, and then I felt the Siltman’s hands on my ribs as he picked me up and threw me onto the dog’s back. When he let go I could still feel the prints of his fingers burning into my sides, not hot but freezing cold.

  ‘Grey. Flank. Stay by!’ He flicked his hand and the dogs took their places, one on either side of me.

  ‘Away!’ commanded the Siltman and the pack was up and running again. This time the Siltman didn’t ride. He ran beside one of the dogs with his hand on its shoulder, and he ran like the wind, not like an old man with bon
y legs.

  There were very few lamps in this tunnel. Long stretches of darkness followed short spaces of light. And then there were no more passage lamps at all. The dogs ran freely in the dark, as if they knew where they were going.

  ‘Ease,’ cried the Siltman.

  The dogs slowed to a steady pace.

  ‘You have nothing to fear,’ came his whispery voice. ‘You will stay with me and help me with my work. You will sift silt at the river mouth in winter, and in summer you will travel with me to the far north.’

  He groomed the dog beside him as he spoke, raking his fingers through its long grey hair. ‘When you return, your footprints and those of your dogs will appear on the beach three weeks before you do.’

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘You’re the storyteller,’ the Siltman said. ‘But let me tell you a story. Once, long ago, there lived a young woman called Eadie. She was perhaps a bit older than you, and she was learning the art of healing. In order to protect herself from all the dangerous illnesses she would be called upon to cure, she came to me for advice.’

  ‘No! I don’t want to hear your story.’

  The Siltman took no notice of me.

  ‘I told her there was only one way of keeping safe. I could remove her spirit from her body and hide it away, in my land of the Ever, so she would always be protected.’

  ‘You’re telling the wrong story,’ I cried. ‘Your story is the one about a warrior called Pike.’

  ‘There are many stories,’ the Siltman replied. ‘I told Eadie she would never catch a disease. She would never be injured. She would never grow old. And that is what happened. For long years she wandered the world, curing the sick and injured. Nothing could harm her. She was immune. But there was a price, and that price was a child . . .’

  ‘It’s not true,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe it! You’re telling lies.’

  ‘The Siltman never lies,’ he replied. ‘When I demanded payment, Eadie fled to the safety of the marshes and she remained there for a very long time. Until you arrived.’

  One of the dogs howled and another answered, then the pack was running again.

  I closed my eyes and tried to keep hold of my thoughts. The wind roared past. I felt as though my life was a very small thing that was streaming out behind me. I called out to Marlie and to Mother Moss and Wim. Then I called to the stranger and to Amos Last, and to the sleek and Bella and Bright. No one could hear me, but if I could hold onto my friends I would have something. Their names disappeared behind me, though, and soon there was nothing in my mind except the howling of the dogs and the huge hollow made by the knowledge that Eadie had betrayed me.

  THE SILVER RIVER

  If you asked me how long we were in the tunnel, I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t know if it was night or day. But finally the dogs stopped howling and slowed to a loping sort of trot. They were hot and sweating, and the air was full of their smell as the tunnel narrowed.

  ‘Hold,’ said the Siltman. And to me, ‘Get down.’

  I dumbly obeyed. There was nothing left in me to resist him.

  The Siltman ran his hands over the rock wall in the same way he had run his hands over the dogs, patting and feeling.

  ‘See it?’ he asked.

  The stone had a greenish tinge.

  ‘Closer,’ he ordered, and when I moved nearer, the rock glinted in the light from my face and I saw it was shot through with a bright seam of silver.

  The Siltman reached into his pocket and took out a tiny hammer. He chipped a piece off the rock and put it in his bag, then he whistled and we were moving forward again. The dogs he had chosen for me stayed close, one on each side and one behind. Up ahead I could hear the others splashing through a creek. The ceiling became very low and soon the dogs were whining as they scrambled on their bellies. I hit my head on a rock and crawled forward on my hands and knees, moving into icy-cold water. One of the dogs grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me along. The water got deeper, and soon I realised that the dog was swimming, pulling me after him. At one stage my head dipped under the freezing water.

  ‘Here!’

  I looked up and saw the Siltman crouched some distance ahead, on dry land. The tunnel was slightly higher there. The dog dragged me to the Siltman and dropped me at his feet.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said, and he crawled ahead, moving quickly until we came to a place where the tunnel opened out. He stood up and told me to do likewise.

  When I got to my feet my clothes pulled tightly on me, as if they had shrunk in the water.

  There was light ahead. We had almost reached the end of the tunnel. The dogs whimpered with excitement.

  ‘Away!’ the Siltman whispered, and all the dogs surged forward, some still scrambling on their bellies, others scraping their backs on the low roof of the tunnel. I followed and saw that the light was not daylight but a night sky full of stars, and that there was an expanse of bright water – or perhaps it was mud or wet sand.

  The dogs emerged from the tunnel and their backs gleamed silver in the moonlight. They shook themselves, each standing for a moment in a spray of shining water before racing across the mud flats, for that’s what they were. The Siltman brushed past me into the open, his arm resting over the last dog.

  ‘This is the Silver River,’ he said. ‘The tide is out. We’ll cross and camp on the other side.’

  I could see him clearly for the first time, but somehow he was less distinct than he had been in the dim light of the Undercavern. His tattered shirt flapped around him like a bag hung over a doorframe, and his wispy hair covered half his face. There was no wind; yet everything around him was blowing. He strode ahead with long light steps, and the dogs stopped and looked back, waiting for him. When he had caught up, they followed him in a line, their shadows stretching across the wet sand.

  I watched them move away. The ground was shiny and their paw prints filled up with water, leaving a trail of silver dots in their wake. In another time or another life, it might have been a beautiful sight; a scene I would have liked to describe to Marlie. But Marlie was long gone, and I was lost as well.

  I gazed after the dogs and realised there weren’t as many of them as I had thought. In the tunnel there had seemed to be dozens of them, but now I counted eighteen, nineteen, twenty . . . I stopped counting and stared. I had reached the end of the line. There were twenty dogs, but twenty-one shadows.

  The Siltman looked back.

  ‘Come, Siltgirl,’ he called. Then he shouted something and three dogs broke from the line, circling back behind me. One barked. Another made a low growl. They herded me after the Siltman, and he only began moving once I was close behind him.

  When we reached the far side of the river bed the Siltman raised his hand. His nails were long and pointy, more like the nails of a dog than a person. He made as if to throw something. Silt blew from the folds of his sleeves into my eyes, blinding me.

  ‘Fetch,’ he called.

  I heard the dogs yelp and bound away. When I could see again, each had a stick in its mouth. The Siltman made a fire.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said in his whispery voice. ‘I don’t feel the cold and soon you won’t, either.’

  I looked back the way we had come. A wall of mountains towered above us.

  ‘Is Hub up there?’ I asked.

  ‘Hub is a lifetime away. Forget about Hub.’ He scooped up a handful of black sand and let it trickle through his fingers. ‘Well, not exactly a lifetime,’ he muttered. ‘But at least a year.’

  The sand was fine and sooty, and it blew away before it reached the ground. A strange and empty feeling came upon me, as if I had somehow been left behind in Hub and only my body had arrived in this place. And even that seemed different to me. I looked at my feet, pale and long – they might have belonged to someone else. My trousers were halfway up my legs, as though the bottoms had been cut off. And they were tight. So was my vest. I held out my arms to see if the sleeves of my dres
s had got shorter as well, and I felt it split at the back. I put my hand to my face. There was no trace of the white clay Eadie had painted on me.

  ‘You’ve grown,’ said the Siltman. ‘The journey does that. But now you have arrived you won’t grow anymore.’

  He sat down a short distance away and all his dogs settled down around him. A gull flew overhead and they watched it pass. One dog yawned. Another scratched itself behind the ear then rested its head on its paws. The air was salty and I could hear sea booming in the distance. I remembered a snatch of song from what seemed a long time ago: Where the river meets the sea, you’ll meet your destiny.

  ‘Does this river flow into the ocean?’ I asked.

  The Siltman ignored my question.

  ‘Now you will tell me a story,’ he said, looking beyond me with his strange pale eyes. I glanced over my shoulder to see what was there, but there was nothing except the riverbank.

  I didn’t reply. I wasn’t going to tell him a story. I wasn’t going to tell him anything.

  The Siltman sighed. ‘You’ll change your mind in time.’ He scooped up more river sand and poured it from one hand to the other. ‘And there’s plenty of time,’ he said. ‘Time is like silt. We have all the time in the world.’

  He lay down among his dogs and looked at the night sky. After a while I realised he had gone to sleep, although his eyes were still wide open. His dogs were asleep, too. The shaggy hair on their backs rose and fell in time with the Siltman’s breathing.

  THE SILTMAN’S BOY

  That night I dreamed of dogs – huge dogs racing through the waves. They were grey and slavering, and their howling was carried on the wind. They turned on me, chasing me along an endless beach. I ran hard, and behind me their paws, thudding on the wet sand, sounded like thunder. I ran inland and found myself in Bane Valley. The dogs were gaining on me. Their jaws snapped and their mouths drooled. I knew Bane Valley ended in the steephead, so I turned and faced the pack.

  ‘Call off your dogs,’ I cried.