"What the bleedin' hell do you think I'm doing? Fell off, din't I? Trying to get me balance on that rotten branch, weren't I? Cracked, din't it? Well, what you waiting for? Not an effing squirrel am I?"
For the third time compose yourself for sleep, listen to the pleasant night-sounds—
Screech!!!
I should also add that if there is the slightest chance that a screech-owl might startle you out of your wits, it is perhaps a wise precaution to attach yourself securely to the trunk so that you do not fall out of it yourself.
One last word on trees as sleeping-places: they look much more comfortable than they really are, and in some of them, especially the more bendy and wavy ones, the actual motion when there is a wind blowing can make toads and fish sick—if, of course, you are idiot enough to take them up there in the first place.
We stood three nights of this, and could have made little more than six leagues progress during the days, when I called a conference.
"Now, listen!" I said. "We can't go on like this . . ." I was raggedy at the edges from lack of sleep and jumped and twitched at every sound, so had decided we would rest in the middle of the day and, leaving Corby as notional lookout, we had all settled under the shelter of a huge beech and slept for a couple of hours. Then I had lit a cautious fire—our first—and made thin pancakes to eat with a slice of the fatty ham. It tasted like the best food I had had for ages, and I had finished with a handful of late brambles and some just-ripe hazelnuts. Moglet had shared the ham and I had shovelled away at the earth under the nearest heap of leaves to provide a feast of insects and worms for Corby and Puddy, and had as usual coaxed a sliver round Pisky's pebble. We were fed, a little rested and warm and now, while daylight chased fears away, would be the best time to pool our ideas and decide where we were going, why and how. I knew animals found it difficult to concentrate, certainly on abstracts, for any length of time, so decided to keep it as simple as possible.
"We have been on the road—all right, Moglet, through the forest and in the trees—for nearly four days now; food is running short, we haven't had much sleep and we haven't made much progress, either. I reckon at this pace we might make a hundred miles by next new moon—if we survive that long. And we don't even know which way we're going, or why . . ." I glanced around at them, all attention, for the moment. "Now, let's think about this. Firstly: what was the most important thing we did four days ago?"
"Escaped from Her," suggested Moglet.
"Good! That was what was more important than anything else at the time. And we did it: we escaped! More by good luck and—" I glanced at Corby and Puddy, "—and a few charms than our own skill, perhaps. That was step number one. What was most important next?"
"Getting you—and us, probably—away from those nasty minded villagers, I reckon," said Corby.
"Right again. So we've managed two important things: we've gained our freedom, and we've kept it—so far. But what is most important to us now?"
"Food," said Corby.
"Water," said Pisky.
"Shelter," said Moglet.
"Safety," said Puddy.
"All short-time daily goals, yes," I said. "But what about the longer term? Why are we all together like this? What are we aiming for? What's stopping us, for instance, just splitting up and going our separate ways and finding different homes or colonies or ponds or what?"
And it was the usually feather-brained Puddy who got it right, rushing around his bowl in great excitement, making wavelets splash against the sides in his desire to get it out.
"We want to get rid of the nasty pebbles so we can eat and stretch and fly and walk and not be bad-tempered with headaches all the time," and he bumped his nose against the glass in the direction of Puddy. "We aren't any of us really free till we do that. Not until I have a pond of golden wives, Puddy has a lady toad and plenty of stones to hide under, Corby can go off and swim through the air again, the cat has cream and a fire and can go hunting at nights and you, dear Thing, can walk upright and not have cramps in your belly . . . So, can I have some sand and a nice plant in my bowl now 'cos I'm clever and it takes a golden king-carp like me to tell you what you ought to know anyway, and I want the plant now and how about another slice of that centipede or midge or whatever it was—"
I clapped my hands then, both to stop and applaud him. "What a clever king-carp! Yes, that is just what I meant. We are all here and belong together because we have a common aim: we want to get rid of these hurting, disfiguring pebbles! They have been with us ever since we can remember—and that's another thing: do any of you find you are recalling more about the time before?"
It was a regrettable digression for they all spent the next quarter hour telling me of brief flashes of memory they had experienced. I had had these too: I could remember now some time when I was without my burden; a pleasant villa in the country, a brown-faced nurse, music from a tinkling fountain—
"All right, all right!" I clapped my hands again. "So, for all of us, part of our Mistress's curse is wearing off. But not these burdens," and I touched my stomach, Corby's wing, Moglet's paw, Puddy's forehead and dipped my finger to Pisky's mouth. "So this is a stronger spell, but one we must be rid of if we are to lead normal lives, as Pisky suggests."
He stood on his tail and waved his fins but I interrupted quickly before he could remind us again about sand and plant.
"Now none of us can remember the stones being put in place, but that our Mistress set great store by them there is no doubt. There is another thing, too: She was so frightened lest they be discovered that she covered them all with a disguise of skin. Each of your pebbles, whether you can see them or not, is hidden under a covering like a blister: this is one of the things that makes me think they were stolen. What is more, I believe they were all stolen of a piece from the same person, for if you remember when we were apart from each other she would chastise us unmercifully, yet when you clustered under my cloak she would not dare touch us herself but would order Broom to beat me . . ."
"Brave Thing," murmured Puddy.
"Saved us all," said Moglet, and nuzzled against my hand.
"Nonsense," I said gruffly. "What I was trying to get at was that once the stones were together within us, near touching, they themselves gave us some sort of protection. A sort of power, if you like . . ."
"The Fellowship of the Pebbles?" suggested Corby caustically.
"Don't be silly! And yet . . . Yes, perhaps even that. This is why we must stay together for our own protection and seek the owner of these stones, for obviously they must be important to him. Or her. We must find this mysterious person and ask them to take the pebbles back. They will know how to remove them without hurting us." I hoped I was right. "But where do we look? That's our real problem."
They were all silent for a minute or two.
"Can't be from nearby," considered Puddy. "She'd never risk nearby."
"How do we know the owner won't kill us when he finds us, or we find him?" said Corby. "May think we pinched the bloody things!"
"It's a possibility," I admitted. "But we shall just have to explain. After all, only an idiot would burden themselves with these things voluntarily, and might be even bigger idiots to return them. I think that whoever it is will be so glad to have them back that he will reward rather than punish."
"Could be an ogre," said Moglet nervously. "Or another witch. Or a dragon . . ."
But at this Corby, Puddy and myself all jeered: there weren't any dragons. They were just a myth, a tale to frighten children.
"Now, concentrate: how do we go about looking for him, this pebble-owner?"
We were silent again for a while.
"Ask someone?" said Moglet.
"But who?" said Corby. "Use your chump, feline. Most people wouldn't have any idea what we were talking about."
"Magician might know the answer," said Puddy. "Or wise man. Or sage."
"A good idea," I said. "But how does one go about finding one? And how would we know we were going in the right direction? I don't even know whether there are any magicians or wise men any more, like Moglet's dragon—"
"My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greatgrandfather used to live in a lake where dragon-shadows floated over like kites at noonday," said Pisky unexpectedly. "All colours they were, like jewels, and they sang songs like cymbals and temple-gongs . . ."
"But that must have been a long, long time ago," I said gently. "For each generation of king-carp lives for a great many years. No, I think we must try and find the owner of these stones. Somehow we must decide on a direction and it must be the right one, then when we have done that we can worry about food and transport and the quickest way of getting there.
"Now, can any of you remember anything the Mistress ever said or hinted or implied that might give us some idea where these came from?"
We all thought. I could recall little except that She had always seemed nervous that the pebbles would be found; not by the villagers certainly, for she was always contemptuous of them, and there were only certain times when she would not let me, who carried one of the stones in my navel for any to discover, out of the hut on errands. In winter I had been glad not to go when the easterly wind howled across the icy meadows, or when the wind veered northerly and flakes of snow or sleet stung one's cheeks; but sometimes when those same winds brought long, hot days, settled weather and even the far distant smell of the seas over which it had travelled—
But Corby was there before me. "There were times when she wouldn't let you out, Thing, even though we were down on provisions, times when it seemed she tested the wind to see if it blew too strong from one direction, or near it. Then she kept us all close, even in the hottest weather, when all within stank, as though she feared the scent would be carried downwind too far."
"The east wind," said Puddy, "and the northeast. So, who looks for these pebbles lives to the west, or southwest. That is the way we must go."
It was so simple, now we came to consider it! And the very next pond we came to Pisky was given his layer of sand, fresh water and a little green plant with two snails on it for company. He was so proud and happy that he was like a housewife in spring, moving that plant busily from one side of the bowl to the other, until Moglet remarked that perhaps we should fit wheels to it. The snails, too, though of somewhat limited intelligence, discovered something neither Pisky nor I had: the pebble would revolve in the fish's mouth and therefore, with some reminding, they would make a paste of whatever I offered Pisky, smear it on the pebble and revolve that segment into his mouth, which kept him going and was one less chore to worry about.
From then on, perhaps because we had a definite goal in view, however vast and faraway was the southwest, we made better progress and the weather held good for us. Now was the month of Leaf-Change, so we hastened as well as we could to beat the frosts of Leaf-Fall, splitting our sleeping into an hour or two at midday and pressing on well into dusk before seeking shelter and rising again at dawn. I had crept into a couple of villages we passed, usually at twilight when my appearance would cause less comment, for more flour, cheese and eggs, and supplemented this diet with berries, roots and nuts, and we were only hungry half the time.
Then with the new moon the weather changed and we ran into rain and wind, a roaring wind that swung crazily from south to northwest and back again, and we were chased from the shelter of barn by barking dogs, from warm rick by angry farmer. Corby was not too bad, Pisky of course couldn't care less and Puddy was more or less comfortable, but Moglet and I were thoroughly wet and miserable and shivered and growled and spat at ourselves and the others impartially. My cloak was reasonably weatherproof, but there came a time when it was so waterlogged and heavy that it would have been a pleasure to throw it away, and one night when it was too wet to light a fire and the flour and salt were damp and the cheese mouldy, I just threw myself on the ground scattering sack and animals anywhere, and sobbed my despair.
"Oh, I wish I were dead!"
"Now then, that's no way for youngsters with all their life afore them to be speaking! Just a little rain it is and isn't the earth glad, her being so thirsty after the suns of ripening? And the wind running free like a 'prentice let out early . . . And can't you smell the salt of the sea and the pines and the black rocks and the heather and curving downs that he brings with him?" The voice was high, light and ran on like a stream over small stones.
At the first words I had sprung to my feet, knife at the ready, and of course all my friends were now clustered under my cloak, hampering any footwork I might need. But as the voice went on and on soothingly, a hand holding a flickering lantern appeared from beneath the stranger's cloak, was held steady for a moment and then moved slowly up and down so we could see who was speaking.
A tall, tall man, seeming almost as tall as a tree in that flickering, smoky light, and as thin as a shadow seen sideways. Clothes all browns and greens, like the earth and the grass and the leaves, and then a merry red cap atop an untidy cluster of black curls, all twisted and gnarled like the potbound roots of a youngling tree. A face round and guileless as a child's, full red lips and rosy cheeks, but skin tanned and seamed like leather; a pair of snapping black eyes, by turns bright and shy.
The figure bowed and set down a covered basket.
"Thomas Herrilees Trundleweed at your service, Missy. Commonly known as Mushroom Tom, by'r leave. On account of my tasting 'em and treasuring 'em, and gathering 'em and selling 'em, too. Out in all weathers I am, best to find my little darlings and talk to 'em and tickle 'em awake and pluck 'em and eat 'em raw, or cooked in a little butter, or added to a stew, or even dried at a pinch . . . And whom may I have the honour of addressing?"