The Ropemaker (8 page)

She scampered off. Watching from the kitchen door, Tilja saw her tug at Ma’s apron and start to whisper. Ma bent to listen, straightened and looked for a while almost blankly at Tilja, with her mouth slightly open—that gone-into-a-dream look she’d worn sometimes since the night of the first snows. She shook herself, sighed and looked away.

“All right,” she said. “Don’t be long.”

By now it was getting on toward dusk on a mild, sunless day, with the clouds moving all in one mass, blown by a steady wind. Anja led the way in under the trees to a place where three cedars growing together made a patch of dark green gloom. She stopped.

“Listen,” she said.

Tilja did her best. She strained to hear, to listen with her whole soul, but all she could make out was the hiss of the wind through the cedar needles and a faint, pulsing hoot where moving air swirled into a hollow trunk. Almost weeping with disappointed yearning, she shook her head.

“But they’re talking to you!” said Anja, astonished.

It was too much to bear. Tilja grabbed at her wrist.

“If they’re so clever, why don’t they know I can’t hear them?” she snarled. “All right, what are they saying? Or aren’t you allowed to tell me?”

“Let go! I can’t hear them either when you’re doing that. Please let go.”

Reluctantly Tilja loosened her grip.

“What are they saying?”

Anja drew a breath, waited, and spent it all on the first slow syllable. Another breath for the next, and the next, and the next.

“Go. Tilja, go. You go too. Find Faheel. Make us strong again.”

Faheel

4

The River

Tiddykin went dead lame the day before they left. “There’s nothing for it,” said Da. “No chance of find-ing a decent horse at any price, this time of year. Meena will have to make do with Calico. I’ll fix the horse seat to fit her better, and take a look at her harness. Tilja can give me a hand.”

Together they went over the worn old gear, buckle by buckle, strap by strap, stitch by stitch, cleaning, oiling, replacing, making good. They worked for a while in silence, but then, without looking up from what he was doing, Da said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, “I’d give my right arm for this not to be happening. All my married life I’ve had to accept this stuff. I don’t understand it, I don’t feel it in my bones, it means nothing to me, but I’m forced to believe in it. It isn’t just your mother and Meena saying it’s so—Anja too, now. It’s because it works. Time and again. You found that when you lost the hand ax. Even when it seems pure nonsense—how can Faheel still be alive, for pity’s sake? But the cedars say you’ve got to go and look for him, so you have to go, and I have to accept it. Accept it, though it means I may never see you again.”

Tilja sat blindly picking at a stretch of frayed stitching on the girth. Her thoughts, if you could call them thoughts, were a muddle of astonishment and grief. Why had he never once said anything like this before, never let her glimpse, even, what his feelings for her might be? No, they were secret, those feelings, like the unicorns, yes, private unicorns, deep in the pathless forest inside himself. But to Tilja they mattered more than anything else.

Since that evening when Tilja and Anja had come back from the forest and told the others what the cedars had said, he hadn’t spoken a word about her going, apart from the practicalities of it. His only response, on hearing the news, had been to look across the room at Ma, who had silently put on her cloak and boots and gone out into the dusk. When she had come back they had turned to look at her where she stood in the doorway, but she had simply nodded once to him, telling him that what Anja had said was true, and gone back to the stove. From that point on they all had taken it for granted that Tilja was going with Meena, not just to see Alnor and Tahl safe through the forest, but to join them in their search for Faheel.

“I’m coming back,” she said now. “Whatever happens, I’m coming back.”

“If you can.”

“But I was going to have to go one day, wasn’t I? Anja will have the farm, because she can hear the cedars. Like Ma did, instead of Aunt Grayne.”

“One day. But not yet. You’re not ready. And nor am I.”

“Anyway, I’m coming back. And that’s that.”

He grunted, and Tilja realized that though she might have used exactly the same words half an hour ago, on their way out to the tack shed, she wouldn’t have meant them in the way she did now.

There was another long pause while they got on with their work in silence. Then, without having to screw herself up to it, but asking the question easily, naturally, she said, “Do you know about the unicorns?”

“Know?” he said musingly. “Well, I’ve guessed. . . . You
know
?”

“I guessed too. But then I made Meena tell me.”

“Made Meena tell you? That’s as miraculous as any unicorn. In that case . . . maybe you should ask your mother to tell you her dream. All right, got all those stitches out? Then see what you can do with this while I sew ’em back.”

Ma told her about the dream reluctantly, with long pauses during which she seemed to be forcing herself to go on. She didn’t know when she had had it. It could have been while she was still lying by the lake, or in her six-day coma at the farm, or even later, in an ordinary night’s sleep. She’d only remembered it after the next full moon, when she’d gone out with another load of barley to spread beneath the trees.

“I didn’t want to go,” she said. “I was filled with fear, a numb, black, griping horror in my chest and stomach. . . . But I went. I made myself . . . and I got there and tipped the barley out and went down to the lake to sing, and . . . and I remembered the dream. I was standing like that in it, just getting ready to sing, when I heard something moving toward me, crashing its way through under the trees. Then it crossed a bit of rock and I heard its hooves. It sounded like a horse, and I thought somehow Calico must have got out and followed us, though she’s never . . . and then it came out into the open and I saw it wasn’t Calico, or Dusty either—it was as big as Dusty but even through the snow it seemed to be a funny sort of reddy chestnut . . . and then it lifted up its head and I saw the horn. . . .”

There was a longer pause. Eventually Tilja said quietly, “You mean it wasn’t one of ours. It’s all right, I know about ours. Meena told me.”

Ma shuddered and dragged herself out of the pit of remembered dread.

“No,” she said. “Ours are white, smaller than Tiddykin. I gather Meena saw them that day. I never have, but I’ve seen their hoofprints in the snow . . . anyway this—this
thing
. . . it came toward me . . . I was stuck . . . you know, in nightmares . . . and then it stopped and lowered its horn and . . . touched me. . . .”

She raised her hand and felt the place on her forehead where the strange mark had been.

“That’s all,” she said, forcing a kind of briskness into her voice.

“Are you sure it was a dream?” said Tilja. “You don’t think it was what really happened, before you went to sleep, that time we found you by the lake?”

Ma shook her head, but doubtfully. Tilja guessed that though she knew it could have been so, she really wanted it to have been only a dream. But she herself remembered the creature in the forest that had bellowed so terrifyingly at them when they were bringing Ma back from the lake. She remembered how Dusty had wheeled to meet its challenge. There had been something there—something real.

“But what happened the second time?” she said. “I mean when you went to the lake and remembered?”

Ma barely relaxed.

“It started all right,” she said. “I realized I could feel them there, in under the trees, waiting for me to sing. So I sang, and they heard, but it wasn’t
right
. I mean, it wasn’t the way it’s supposed to be—like this stupid weather—they could hear me, but they weren’t really listening. And I wasn’t sure about the song, either, the way I usually am. I had to do it from memory. And it’s been like that since then. . . . Anyway, spring’s here now and I won’t have to do it again this year.”

Spring had come suddenly, a normal-seeming spring, though with far less slush and mire than a true snowfall would have left. The wind swung south and smelled of sap and growth, and the swelling leaf buds tinged the gray forest with smoky purples and browns and yellows. Aconites and wild irises sprang open under the mild sun, and within two days the family was out in the fields from dawn to dusk, Da and Dusty with the heavy harrow; Ma behind them with the seed basket on her left hip, broadcasting the seed with a steady sweep of her right arm; then Anja and Tiddykin with the light harrow, burying the seed before the birds could grab it (Tiddykin could pretty well have done the job un-led) ; and Tilja last of all, with Calico and the roller, watching the repetitive pattern of golden grains arcing out from Ma’s hand and falling in a graceful curve, like the ghost of a huge, slowly beating wing.

Tilja was filled with a kind of happy grief that she should be seeing Woodbourne at its most loved season, and family and horses working all together, expressing that love, and their love for each other, in their work, expressing it in a way that her parents could not have put into words, this last time, when she might never see it again.

Last of all they sowed the little barley field by the stone barn. That evening they ate their Seed-in Feast, as if this were a year like any other year, but all knowing that it was not. And next morning Da came in to breakfast to tell them that Tiddykin was lame, and they would have to take Calico after all.

They spent the rest of that day packing and readying. Anja went down to Meena’s with the last of the old barley from the little field, so that Meena could bake a loaf to give to Faheel. Alnor was bringing a flask of water from the snowmelt above the sawmill. They had no idea if this was what they were supposed to do, but it felt right.

The six of them left next day, four travelers, Ma and Anja. Da stayed to look after the animals. He said goodbye to Tilja as if she’d be home next week. She set her jaw and didn’t look back as Woodbourne went out of sight.

“The river is in our blood,” Alnor had said. “It is not in yours. You will need time on the river to learn to work the raft.” So they journeyed upstream and spent the first night at Aunt Grayne’s.

The raft was already waiting for them, and Alnor and Tahl, and Tahl’s two cousins, Derril and Silon, who had built it. Aunt Grayne had beds for them all, so they slept under her roof and went aboard in the morning.

Word had gone round of what was happening, and various rumors of why, so a small crowd had come to see them off. Most thought they were mad, and some said so, but Tilja sensed even so a kind of friendliness and sympathy among the watchers. Anyway, it was just as well that they’d helpers at hand, because it took six strong men to get Calico aboard the raft and into her stall, even heavily doped with the blue hemp mixture that horse copers used to quieten fractious animals.

Ma made no more fuss over their parting than if Tilja had just been staying on a few days with Aunt Grayne. She kissed her and with barely a shake in her voice wished her luck and told her to come back safe. Anja had a good blubber, of course, but Tilja guessed she meant it.

“I really am coming back,” she told her. “I promise. And I’ll bring you something special from the Empire.”

She stepped aboard and found a place for her pack. Derril and Silon poled the raft from the shore and as the current took it away she waved to her family until the bend of the river hid them.

As soon as they were out of sight she looked for something practical to do, to dull the grief of that parting. This raft wasn’t like the ones she’d seen before. Those had been just several tree trunks lashed side by side, being floated down the river to where they were wanted, with a post at the stern to hold the sweep that the raftman used to guide his clumsy craft. This one was made of straight poles a couple of handbreadths thick, fitted close together to form a rough deck. There was a slot down either side, into which inflated goatskins had been lashed for extra buoyancy. At the stern were two sweeps, wide apart, with a rail beside each for the sweepmen to steady themselves against. At the bows there was space for the passengers, and their small pile of baggage, and fodder for Calico. In the middle was Calico’s stall.

Tilja was really worried about the stall. The Ortahlsons might have had the river in their blood, but they obviously didn’t know much about horses. She found Calico already jerking her head resentfully against the short lead, though for the moment the hemp, and her own strong sense of self-preservation, seemed to be keeping her quiet.

Tilja heaped an armful of hay into her manger and turned to see Derril watching her.

“All right?” he said.

“If she doesn’t panic or throw one of her tantrums. She’d have the stall to bits, and maybe hurt herself badly, or fall in the river. She might even have us all in.”

“They told us she was the quietest horse in the Valley.”

“That was Tiddykin. She went lame. This is Calico. Look out!”

Too late. Derril had incautiously reached out to pat Calico’s cheek, and Calico had taken her chance to show him her feelings. He swore, and sucked at his hand. Tilja heard Silon laugh from his post at the stern sweep.

“See what you mean,” Derril muttered. “Come along aft now, and we’ll show you and your gran how to handle a raft. Lay off for the moment, will you, Alnor, so we can give the ladies a bit of practice.”

Tilja didn’t understand what he was talking about. As far as she could see, Alnor had been sitting on his pack near the front of the raft, with his head bowed, while Tahl squatted beside him gazing ahead and once or twice making some brief remark. But now Alnor raised a hand to show he’d understood, and Tahl turned and grinned to Tilja and then made himself comfortable among the baggage.

By the time she was back at the stern the raft, which had been riding true in the center of the current, had begun to turn its prow toward the left bank.

“See there,” said Derril, as the cousins pulled gently on their sweeps to straighten it. “You didn’t think she’d been staying straight of her own, did you? She’s a lovely little job, this raft, easy as easy, though I say it myself, but left to herself she’ll want to slew, one way or t’other. So far Alnor’s been keeping her right for us, chatting away to the current, telling it what he wants of it.”

Tilja stared, at Derril, at Alnor, at the quietly moving river.
Magic!
she thought.
Real magic, here in the Valley!
It didn’t seem the same as Anja and Ma listening to the cedars, or Alnor and Tahl to their mill stream. That seemed almost ordinary by comparison. But now Alnor had actually been using his strange power to make something happen in the real world. It was amazing.

“Can you do that too?” asked Tilja.

“Wish I could, but there never seems to be more than just one up at Northbeck has the knack of it. I daresay young Tahl will be doing it when he starts rafting, but the rest of us have to steer the hard way. And looks like that’s what you’ll be doing, once you’re into the forest.

“Now, which of you’s going to watch ahead and do the steering? How’s your eyes, ma’am, if you’ll pardon my asking?”

“You’ll be lucky if yours are half as good, my age,” snapped Meena. “You see what you make of it, girl.”

“Right, ma’am, if you take that sweep there, and the lassie takes this one . . .”

Tilja took the sweep two-handed and put her back against the rail, the way Derril had. She was now facing the right bank, but looking to her left, she could see past Calico’s stall, all the way down the river to the next bend. Meena was behind her, facing the same way, so that she could watch what Tilja was up to and do the same. Derril stood beside Tilja with one hand on the end of her sweep, gradually letting her take over as she got the hang of it.