"You know well," said the handsome buzzard, fluffing his feathers, and I was surprised I could understand. "For a watching brief—a week only you said, and nothing of the distances, the time-shift, the abominable weather—you said you would find me—"
"Ah, yes," said The Ancient hastily. "Now I remember . . . Well, then: fly some seven leagues west-by-south—you'll have to correct with this wind—turn due south by the cross at Isca—now the new-fangled Escancastre, I believe—then another two leagues. Bear west again till you come to the old highway bearing roughly north-south. Two miles further on there is a sudden switch to east-west and there you will find a southerly track. Half a mile on there is a barton in a valley, a stream running east-west on its southern border: can't miss it, the place is full of sheep. In a wood just northeast of the barton—Totley, it's called—you will find a deeper wood, triangular in shape, and there you will find—what I promised you. She has," and he glanced at me to see if I was listening and, as I was, lowered his voice. I did not realize till afterwards that he was speaking bird-talk, but it didn't seem to make much difference: I still understood. "She has," he repeated to the bird, "been blown from oversea by that last southeasterly and is not used to us as yet. Wants to return to the mountains of Hispania . . . But doubtless you will be able to persuade her to stay. Tell her . . ." and he bent forward to whisper in Kiya's hidden ear. "That should do it!" And he tossed the buzzard in the air and it rode the wind, balancing delicately from wingtip to wingtip, before taking an updraught and sliding away out of sight above the conifers to my right.
"Now then," said The Ancient, flicking a lump of bird-dropping from his already liberally marked blue gown. "Now then—where were we? Ah, yes. You were about to thank me for my hospitality and ask about the next stage in—"
"Sit down," I interrupted, reseating myself and patting the turf beside me. "And explain. Please?"
But he remained standing, drawing the edges of his cloak together and becoming very tall all of a sudden.
"And don't," I said, "fly off into another dimension or something: we've had enough of that for the time being . . . Just think of me as your equal, for the moment, and, as such, wanting answers."
"To what?" But he did sit down, rather heavily it's true, and at a discreet distance. "What to?"
I crossed my legs, comfortably, and selected another blade of grass. "Lots of things . . . Firstly, how long has this quest taken us? The truth, mind!"
He regarded me under bushy eyebrows like the thatch of an ill-kept house. "Why—how long do you think it took?"
I recognized the ploy, but went along with it for the time being. "Well, the others obviously think it took at least six months—"
"So?"
"So why is my hair no longer? So why are my clothes no tattier? So why did we conveniently lose all those things on the way, like the sealskin, that could have proved we actually went anywhere? So why did Kiya still have the feathers of a yearling? So—"
"All right, all right, all
right
!" yelled The Ancient. "All right . . . I can see you have been talking to that blasted unicorn—"
"Not a word! So, you do admit—"
"I admit nothing! So there . . ." and he grabbed a stalk of grass, just like me, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "Just prove it, that's all! Prove it!"
"So there is something to prove, then?"
"I didn't say so—"
"You did!"
"Didn't!"
"Did!"
"Not!"
I lay back and laughed. "For an Ancient you are behaving more like a New—no, listen!" For he had half-risen and his face was all red. "I didn't mean to be rude, you know I didn't. But isn't it time we stopped being childish and started talking like—like adults?" Like human beings, I had been going to say, but I wasn't sure of his claim to this. I rolled over on to my stomach. "I admit I am being presumptuous, but there are certain questions I should like—more, I think I deserve—answers to. Straightforward answers. Agreed?"
"Agreed," came the rather sulky answer, but a sharp glance from under the bushy eyebrows accompanied it. "Shake on it?"
"Good!" I offered my hand, all unsuspecting. A moment later an almighty shock ran through my fingers and palm and up my arm into my shoulder and I was knocked sideways by a sudden strike of power that left me numb. I had not anticipated he would use anything like that: so far it had been a low-dice board game but now he had thrown a double and I was no match for this.
"Thanks," I said, rubbing my still-tingling arm. "All right, you're the boss. My strengths have been accidental, yours are calculated. Truce?"
For the first time he smiled, and nodded his head. "You are an endearing child, Flower . . . I must admit you have called upon powers that I would have thought impossible. Still, a flower may hold a thorn . . ." and he chuckled, shaking his head, and somewhere bells rang.
"You," I said, "have had ever so much more practice . . . Perhaps, then, because of what I did accidentally, you will accept that I have a right to some truthful answers? No more evasions? No more—" I rubbed my arm "—games?"
He nodded and his beard replaited itself, even to the knot. "No more games."
I studied him; at last we were on equal terms, but only perhaps because he had won earlier. "Right. Last things first: in that cave . . . The Power. Where did it come from? How did I manage to use it? And was it bad or good?"
"Backwards answer: neither good nor evil. Just there."
"Explain!"
He considered for a moment, chin in hands. "Under and over and about and through this old world of ours there flow sources of Power, as aimless as streams and rivers. As I said, they are neither good nor bad, they are just
there.
Clever magicians and wise men and shamans know where and when and sometimes how, but how
you
knew how to use it, I just don't know."
"But the gods—God—whatever; are they, It, good or bad, or just people like ourselves? Or forces and powers in their own right? And how many are there of them?" I was bewildered.
"I think—but I do not know, child, I do not know—that there must be a Supreme Being, above all others, who wishes for us, for the world as we know it, our good. There are also Forces, name them I cannot, who wish to take all Power for themselves: riches, domination, everlasting life. And they have forgotten the welfare of ordinary people. Just see you use whatever powers you find in the proper way. There is good, there is bad: make sure you choose aright!"
I wanted to ask whether it would make the slightest difference what I did, but then, stealing into my heart as soft as a mouse at dusk, came the answer; a tentative sureness that quietened my fears and gave me breath where before there had been none. It was a sureness outside of myself, borne on the gentle touch of breeze on my cheek, the feel of the crisscross of grass under my hand, the sad smell of autumn, the sweet call of the wren, the taste of doubt in my mouth—
"I will try," I said simply. It did not matter whether one used the prayer of the peasant or of the enlightened, the supplications of the Christian or the infidel, like smoke they would find their outlet, their goal. The only thing one had to remember was that one's reach had to be towards this goal, this good, and that prayer was the way—not for oneself, for all.
I smiled at The Ancient. "Thank you. I feel much better." I noticed him shuffle himself together, as if he had just got out of a tight corner and was now about to obliterate himself from further questions. "But there are other things . . ."
He glowered at me. "What things?"
"Time," I said. "Time . . . What is time?"
"Time? Time . . . is something man invented to table the night and the day. To explain the good times and the bad. To excuse the wrinkles in the skin. To count the falling of the leaves; to guard against the sudden sun—to know how long to boil an egg . . ."
"And our time?" I prompted. "
Our
time? The days, the weeks, the months we spent on our quest? Why did it take six months by our calculations and nothing by yours?"
"How did—? No, you have answered that question. All right. Time was invented by man: you understand that?"
I nodded. "Minutes, hours, days—yes. But not the concept in full." I hesitated. "We arrived with you in late winter, left on a summer's day when it seemed we had been with you but a week, and arrive back in late winter again apparently not one day older. Some of our travelling seemed to take weeks, some days. Some of the places we visited looked as if they existed now, others had a strangeness we could not account for—"
"You travelled," said The Ancient, "in time. As you know it."
"Explain!"
"Think of a tapestry. It perhaps shows a court scene, a country scene, a hunt; someone has embroidered part of it only. At the sides are the silks that wait to be sewn, the future. Those already in the picture are the past. The threads now on the needle are the present. All there, all at the same time, yet not all in the picture. Not yet. But the picture can be added to at any time without changing the essentials. It will still be a court scene, a hunt . . . And even if the tapestry is complete, or one thinks it is, as the hangings shift and sway in a draught and a candle brightens one fold and then another, one can imagine it is only the lighted corner that is important." He leant forward and cupped my masked face in his hands. "So, you found yourselves first in one part of time and then another." He wagged his beard. "And don't ask how I got you there and back, because a magician never gives away all his secrets. Suffice it to say that I had the power—" He laughed, and released me. "No, the knowledge to do it. And you didn't change anything: Time-Travellers are observers. Oh, you robbed the Tree-People of a meal, released some trapped animals, helped a traveller on his way, but you didn't change history; you can only do that in the now, when it is your hand guiding the needle."
I rose to my feet. I did not fully comprehend, but the image of the tapestry stayed in my mind. So time was a vast picture, never finished, that one could stitch oneself into at any point . . .
"I don't
really
understand," I said.
He laughed, and rose to his feet also. "Sometimes I feel I don't either, if that's any consolation!"
Together we walked back down the little hill towards the others, but slowly.
"Snowy? He understands all this?"
"Better than you or I, for he is immortal."
"Can the immortal never die?"
"No one can kill them, unless it is their choice to die."
We walked on in silence for a moment.
"Was it necessary for us to go the long way round?" I asked.
"The long way?"
"Yes. Making us suffer all that long journey, making us believe it took so long . . ."
"Maybe it was not necessary. But think how much you all would have missed, how much all those adventures and travelling together taught you of each other and of yourselves!"
"We might have been killed, any or all of us—"
"Not while you five held the jewels and the dragon was still alive in the Now. You were indestructible."
"And Snowy? And Conn?"
"As I said, unicorns are immortal, with or without their horns."
"And Conn?"
"Ah, well . . ." For the first time he looked guilty. "Well, I must admit that there I took a chance. But then . . ." He reached out and squeezed my hand, regaining his composure. "But then . . ." He winked and tapped his nose, "I knew you would look after him, you see . . ."
I frowned. "As far as I can recall he took care of himself, and all of us too, in the end. And it was rather presumptuous of you to suppose that I—"
"Loved him?"
I went all hot under my mask. "That has nothing—"
"Everything!"
"—to do with it! It was only in the beginning—"
"The Lady Adiora?"
"—that he faltered. In the end he was looking after everyone."
"Exactly!"
"Exactly what?"
"Your tests came when you were ready for them, not before. The first was Snowy, as you call him, to point the way."
"I notice I was last . . ."
"So? It was rather a grand finale, wasn't it?"
We stayed in that enchanted place for a week, allowing even for The Ancient's erratic sense of time, grew sleek and mended our gear and healed the last bruises the quest had engendered. And though it was winter away from this place, where we were the sun shone by day and the old man's owl too-whitted us to sleep at night, cosy in the cave. I was given a new comb by the magician and it did wonders for my tangles and for Snowy's mane and tail. I sharpened my little dagger on the honing-stone by the cave entrance till it was as sharp as a dragon's tooth. Conn looked over his spotty armour and pronounced it "no worse." Pisky's bowl was cleaned to his satisfaction, Corby's plumage once more lay straight, Puddy had a nice rest and declared his headaches much better, I played with Moglet with twine, leaf and nut till she grew tired, and The Ancient appeared in a different robe and headgear every day.
I didn't tell the others about the Time-Travel bit: it had confused me enough without my having to explain it to anyone else.
On the seventh day I found The Ancient on his hands and knees with a measuring stick at midday, frowning at the shadow it cast.
"One more day," he said.
"And?"
"Then it's on your travels again. The dragon still waits, or had you forgotten?"
No, I had not forgotten. I had just hoped against hope that perhaps we would have had a little longer . . .
It was near the shortest day. Away from the shelter of The Ancient's hide away we found how much the weather had changed in the world outside. In spite of our thickest clothes we shivered in the chill wind that whined down from the northeast and huddled closer as he led us across moorland, past the stone circle where I now recognized we had started and ended our quest, and northwards towards the sea. Across the tumbled grey water of the straits one could see the farther shore, massed and woody on its lower slopes and soaring upward to bare scree and the distance-shrouded mountains, their tops capped like the magician himself with fanciful shapes, in their case of snow. It was both an awesome and an awe-inspiring sight and I was not the only one who drew back and trembled, for Moglet cuddled closer in my arms, Corby blinked and Conn whistled.