Copyright

First published in Great Britain by Macmillan London Ltd in 1979

This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1979

Map illustration © Sally Taylor 2017

Cover artwork © Manuel Šumberac

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Diana Wynne Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008170684

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008170691

Version: 2016-12-21

For my sister Ursula

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map of Prehistoric Dalemark

PART ONE: The First Coat

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

PART TWO: The Second Coat

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Final Note

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Books by Diana Wynne Jones

About the Publisher

Map of Prehistoric Dalemark

PART ONE

I WANT TO TELL of our journey down the River. We are five. The eldest is my sister Robin. Next is my brother Gull, and then my brother Hern. I come fourth, and I am called Tanaqui, which is a name from the scented rushes that line the River. This makes me the odd one out in names, because my youngest brother is Mallard – only we always call him Duck. We are the children of Closti the Clam, and we lived all our lives in the village of Shelling, where a stream comes down to join the River, giving plentiful fishing and rich pasture.

This makes Shelling sound a good place, but it is not. It is small and lonely, and the people here are dark and unpleasant, not excepting my aunt Zara. They worship the River as a god. We know that is wrong. The only gods are the Undying.

Last year, just before the autumn floods, strangers came to Shelling from over the hills, carrying bundles and saying that our land had been invaded by strange and savage Heathens, who were driving all our people out. Hern, Duck and I went and stared at them. We had not known that we had any land except the country round Shelling. But Gull says the land is very large, and the River only the centre part of it; there have been times when Gull has said quite reasonable things.

The strangers were not very interesting. They were just like Shelling people, only rather more worried. They hired my father to ferry them over the River, which is wide here, and then went on their way beyond this old mill on the far side. But, a week after them, people arrived on horseback: very stern smart men wrapped in scarlet rugcoats, with steel clothes under that. And these men said they were messengers from the King. They carried a golden stork wearing a crown on a stick to prove it. When my father saw the stork, he said they were indeed from the King.

We stared at these men far longer than at the others. Even Robin, who was very shy then, left the baking and came and stood beside us with her arms all floury. The smart men riding past all smiled at her, and one winked and said, “Hallo, sweetheart.” Robin went very pink, but she did not go away as she used to when the Shelling boys called such things.

It seemed these messengers had come collecting men to fight the Heathens. They stayed one night, during which time they had all the men and boys walk before them and told the ones who were fit that they must prepare to come to the wars. It seems they had the right. It seems the King has this right. I was very surprised because I had not known we had a King over us before. Everyone laughed. Hern pretended to laugh at me with Robin and Gull and my father, but he confessed afterwards that he had thought Kings were of the Undying, and not really of this world at all. We agreed that a King was a better thing to have over us than Zwitt, the Shelling headman. Zwitt is an old misery, and his mouth is all rounded from saying no.

The messengers told Zwitt he must go to war, and for once he could not say no. But they also told Aunt Zara’s husband, Kestrel, that he must go. Kestrel is an old man. My father said this must mean that the King’s case was desperate indeed. It made Hern feverishly hopeful. He said if they took Kestrel, they would surely take boys of Hern’s age too. Gull said nothing. He just smiled. Altogether Gull was odious that evening.

Hern crept secretly away and prayed to our Undying, in their three niches by the hearth. He prayed to them to make him fit to go to war and swore that he would free the land from the Heathen if they did. I know this because I heard him. I was coming to pray too. I must say I was surprised at Hern. He usually scoffs at our Undying, because they are not real and reasonable like the rest of life. It shows how much he wanted to go to war.

When Hern had gone, I knelt and implored our Undying to turn me into a boy so that I could fight the Heathen. I am as tall as Hern, and wiry, although Hern beats me when we fight. Robin sighs and calls me boyish, mostly because my hair is a bush. I prayed very deeply to the Undying. I swore, like Hern, that I would free the land from the Heathen if they made me a boy. They did not answer me. I am still a girl.

Then it was time for my father, Gull and Hern to walk before the King’s men. They chose my father at once. And they dismissed Hern at once, saying he was too skinny and young. But Gull has always been tall and sturdy for his age. They told Gull he could go to war if he wished and if my father agreed, but they would not press him. They were fair men. Of course Gull wished to go to war. My father, now he knew he had a choice, was not altogether willing to let Gull go, but he thought of poor old Uncle Kestrel, and he told Gull he could go, provided he stayed close to Uncle Kestrel. Gull came home delighted and boasted all evening. I told you he was odious then. Hern came home trying not to cry.

In the morning the messengers went to the next village to choose men there, giving the men of Shelling a week to prepare themselves. For that week we were weaving, baking, hammering and mending for dear life, getting Gull and my father ready. Hern was like a broody hen the whole time. He made Duck miserable too. Robin says I was as bad, but I deny it. I had found a way to comfort myself by pretending I was a very fierce and warlike person called Tanaqui the Terror of the Heathen. When the messengers came back to Shelling, I pretended they would hear of this person and send Zwitt to fetch her to lead our land to war. I told it to our Undying, to make it seem more true. I wish now that I had not done that. Sometimes I think this is what brought such troubles on us. You should not speak falsehoods to the Undying.

Robin says we all got worse, Hern, Duck and I, every time Aunt Zara came in. She kept coming and thanking my father for taking Gull to look after Kestrel, and she kept promising she would look after us all when they were away. It was all words. She never came near us. But I think my father believed her, and it took a weight off his mind.

After a week the messengers came back, bringing some hundreds of men with them. That night, before they were to leave, my father and Gull naturally prayed to the Undying for safety.

Robin said anxiously, “I’d be happier if you took one of them with you.”

“They belong by this hearth,” said my father. He would not say any more about it. “Hern,” he said. “Come here.”

Hern would not come at first, but my father dragged him by one arm over to the Undying. “Now put your hand on the One,” he said, “and swear that you will stay with Duck and the girls and not try to follow us to war.”

Hern was red in the face, and I could see he was very angry, but he swore. That is my father all over. He never said much – they called him the Clam with good reason – but he saw what was in people’s minds. After Hern had sworn, Father looked at Duck and me. “Do I need to make you two swear as well?”

We said no. Duck meant it. He had grown scared that week while he was sharpening my father’s weapons. I was still fancying to myself that the messengers would send Zwitt in the morning to fetch Tanaqui the Terror.

So much for my fancies! Next morning all the men from Shelling marched away except Zwitt. Zwitt – would you believe this! – fell ill and could not go. What kind of illness is it that has a man in a fever in the morning and out fishing in the afternoon? Hern says it is a very rare and uncommon disease called cowardice.

We went with the rest of Shelling to wave the army off. I do not think I like armies. They are about five hundred men, which is quite a large crowd of people, dressed in all sorts of old tough rugcoats, and some in fur or leather, so that they look as brown and scaly as River mud. Each of these people carries bags and weapons and scythes and pitchforks, all in different ways, so that the army looks like an untidy pincushion or a patch of dead grass. There is a King’s man riding at the side, shouting, “All in line there! Left, right, left, right!” The crowd of people do as he says, not willingly, not fast, so that the army flows off like the River, brown, sluggish and all one piece. As if people could become like water, all one thing! We could hardly distinguish Father or Gull, though we looked hard. They had become all one with the rest. And as the army flows off, it leaves a dull noise, dust in the air, and a smell of too many men, which is not pleasing. It made me feel sick. Robin was white. Duck said, “Let’s go home.” As for Hern, I truly think he lost all desire to go to war that morning, just as I did.

Zwitt called everyone together and said the war would not last long. He said confidently that the King would soon beat the Heathens. I should not have believed a bad man like Zwitt. It was many months before we had news.

Life in Shelling went on, but it was small, quiet and empty. The autumn floods came late. They were less than usual and smelt bad. Everyone agreed that the River was angry because of the Heathens – and they began saying other things too, that we did not hear until later. The floods did not bring as much driftwood as usual, but they washed up strange fish, which nobody liked to eat.

Though Aunt Zara did nothing to help the four of us, we did not go short. We had vegetables from the garden, and the flour was milled from our field. Duck and Hern always catch fish. Duck can find clams by instinct too, I think. The hens were laying well, even in the winter, and we had the cow for milk. Money for other things was scarce, because we had just laid in a great deal of wool when Zwitt’s flock was sheared, before the Heathens came. This I combed and spun and dyed in the ways that my mother had taught Robin and my father, and they have taught me. My mother taught Robin to weave. I was too young to learn when she died, but Robin taught me, and now I do it better than she does. It is that same wool I am using now to weave our story. We did not find much market for my weaving in Shelling that winter. A number of children needed winter rugcoats. But my main – and my best – work is always for weddings. The girls’ families buy my finest rugcoats, with stories and poems in them, to give to the boy they are going to marry. But there were no weddings, with the men all gone. And after we went across the River, no one wanted any of my weaving.

The floods had left us no driftwood to speak of, so we rowed across the River when the leaves started falling to cut wood from the forest on the other side. No one else in Shelling crosses the River. I asked Aunt Zara why once, and she said that the old mill was cursed by the River, and the forest round it, and that they were haunted by a cursed spirit in the shape of a woman. That was why the new mill was built, up along the stream. When I told my father what Aunt Zara said, he laughed and told me not to listen to nonsense. It is quite a pleasure to me to sit weaving in this same old mill, with this same cursed forest round me, at this very moment, and take no harm. There’s for you, Aunt Zara!

The day we cut wood, the light was rich with the end of autumn. It was like a holiday. We broke the stillness of the trees by running about shouting, catching falling leaves, and playing Tig. I do not think there were any spirits who minded, in spite of what Robin said. And she ran about and shouted with us, anyway. She was far more as I remember her, that day, before she grew up and got all shy and responsible. We had lunch sitting on the grass by the old millpool, and after that we cut wood. When the River was pale in the dusk, we rowed back over, with wood heaped in such a stack that the boat was right down in the water and we had to sit still for fear of being swamped. My hair was like a real bush, full of twigs and leaves. I was really happy.

Next day Zwitt and some of the old people came to us with sour faces. They said we were not to pasture our cow with the others in future. “We do not give grazing rights to godless people,” Zwitt said.

“Who’s godless?” Duck said.

“The River has forbidden people to cross to the mill,” Zwitt said. “And you were all there all yesterday. The River would punish you worse than this if you were older.”

“It’s not the River punishing us. It’s you,” said Duck.

Hern said, “You didn’t punish my father for ferrying the strangers over there.”

“Who told you we were there?” I said.

“Zara told me,” said Zwitt. “And you watch how you speak to me, now your father’s away. I won’t stand for rudeness.”

Robin wrung her hands when they had gone. It was her latest ladylike habit, but it meant she was really upset. “Oh dear! Perhaps the spirits over there are angry. Do you think we did offend the River?”

We were not having that. We respect the River, of course, but it is not one of the Undying, and we do not believe in spirits flocking around being angry at everything, the way Zwitt does. I told Robin she was growing up as joyless as Zwitt. Hern said it did not make sense to talk of a river’s being offended.

“And if it is, it ought to punish us, not Zwitt,” said Duck.

“I only meant that it could be offended,” Robin said.

When we had finished arguing, Hern said, “It sounds as if Zwitt was afraid of my father.”

“I wish he’d come back!” I said.

But the months passed and no one came back. Meanwhile, we were forced to move our cow to the edge of the River, just beside our house. We think that was why she never caught the cattle plague all the other cows got. Hern is sure it was. A great deal of mist came off the River that winter and hung about the pasture. Of course our cow was grazing peacefully in the mist most of the time, on the Riverbank, but the other people said it was the mist that brought the disease. When some cows died, and ours had never coughed once, they began giving us very black looks.

Hern was furious. He called them narrow-minded fools. Hern believes there are reasons for everything, and that curses and bad luck and spirits and gods do not make real reasons. “And why is it our fault their wretched cows die?” he demanded. “Because we offended the River, if you please! In that case, why is our cow all right?”

Robin tried to pacify him. “Hern, dear, don’t you think it could be our Undying looking after us?”

“Oh – running river-stinks!” said Hern, and flounced out to the woodshed with such a look of scorn that Robin went into the scullery to cry – she cries a lot – and I stood on the hearth wondering whether to cry too. I do not cry much, so I talked to Duck instead. It is no good talking to Robin, and Hern is so reasonable. Duck is young, but he has a lot of sense.

“Hern doesn’t believe in the Undying,” Duck said. “It’s because they’re not reasonable.”

“Then why didn’t he run away after the army?” I said. “He didn’t, because he’d sworn on the Undying.”

“He didn’t because he saw the army,” said Duck. “Anyway, the Undying aren’t reasonable.”

“Don’t you believe in them either?” I said. I was truly shocked. Hern is one thing, but Duck is younger than me. Besides, we were standing right beside the Undying in their niches, and they must have heard Duck.

Duck turned to look at them. “You don’t have to believe in things because they’re reasonable,” he said. “Anyway, I like them.”

We both looked quite lovingly at our three Undying. Two of them are old. They have been in my father’s family for generations. I can remember lying in my cradle by the fire, looking up at them. Hern says I could not possibly remember, but that is Hern all over. I do remember. The Young One has a face that seems to smile in the firelight, though by daylight you can hardly see his face at all. He is carved of a rosy kind of stone that has worn very badly. You can just see that he is playing a flute, but not much else. The One is even older. It is hard to see what he is really like at all, except that he is a head taller than the Young One. The stone he is made of generally looks rather dark, with glistening flecks in it, but he changes every year when he has been in his fire. The Lady is made of hard, grainy wood. When my father first carved her, just after Duck was born, I remember she was light-coloured like the tops of mushrooms, but she has darkened over the years, and now she is brown as a chestnut. She has a beautiful, kind face.

Duck chuckled. “They’re a lot nicer than Uncle Kestrel’s lump of wood.”

I laughed too. Everyone in Shelling has such awful Undying. Most of them are supposed to be the River. Uncle Kestrel has a piece of driftwood that his father caught in his net one day. It looks like a man with one leg and unequal arms – you know how driftwood does – and he never lets it out of his sight. He took it to the war with him.

I remember this particularly. It was in the first part of the year after the shortest day, and there was a hard frost that night. It was the only frost that winter. I was cold. Right in the middle of the night I woke up out of a dream, freezing. In my dream my father was somewhere in the distance, trying to tell me something. “Wake up, Tanaqui,” he said, “and listen carefully.” But that was all he said, because I did wake up. It took hours to get back to sleep. I had to get in beside Robin in the end, I was so cold.

From what Uncle Kestrel said, I think that was the night my father died. It is hard to be sure, but I think so. I do not want to weave of this.

Before that came the terrible illness. Almost everyone in Shelling got it, and some of the smaller children died. The River smelt very bad. Even Hern admitted that this disease might have come from the River. It was much warmer than it should be for the time of year, and the River was very low and stagnant – a queer light greenish colour – and we could not get the smell out of our house. Robin burnt cloves on the edge of the hearth to hide it. We all had the disease, but not badly. When we were better, Robin and I went round to see if Aunt Zara was ill too. We had not seen her in her garden for days.

She was ill, but she would not let us into her house. “Keep away from me!” she screamed through the door. “I’m not having either of you near me!”

Robin was very patient, because Aunt Zara was ill. “Now, Aunt, don’t be so silly,” she said. “Why won’t you let us in?”

“Just look at yourselves!” screamed my aunt.

Robin and I stared at one another in great surprise. Robin had been very particular about our appearance, partly because she has grown fussy now she is old and partly to please Aunt Zara, who is even fussier. We both had our new winter rugcoats on, with bands of scarlet saying Fight for the King, which I had woven to remind us of the King’s messengers. The rest was a pattern of good browns and blue, which suit us both. My head was still sore from Robin’s combing, so I knew my hair was neat and not the usual white bush. Robin’s hair is silkier than mine, though just as curly. She had striven with it and put it into neat plaits, like a yellow rope on each shoulder. We could not see what was wrong with us.

While we looked, my aunt kept screaming. “I’m not going to have anything to do with you! I disown you! You’re none of my flesh and blood!”

“Aunt Zara,” Robin said, reasonably, “our father is your brother.”

“I hate him too!” screamed my aunt. “He brought you down on us! I’m not having the rest of Shelling saying it’s my fault. Get away from my house!”

I saw Robin’s face go red, then white. Her chin was a hard shape. “Come along, Tanaqui,” she said. “We’ll go back home.” And she went, with me trotting to keep up. I looked at her as I trotted, expecting her to be crying, but she was not. She did not speak about Aunt Zara again. I spoke, but only a little, when Hern asked me what had happened.

“She’s a selfish old hag anyway,” Hern said.

Aunt Zara recovered from the sickness, but she never came near us, and we did not go near her.

It was a long winter. The spring floods were late in coming. We were longing for them, to wash away the smell from the River. I was longing for them in a special way. After my dream I was very anxious for my father, but I hid my worry in a new fancy: that he would come home in floodtime, before the One had to go in his fire, and everything would be all right. Instead no floods came, but at last men began to come back to Shelling from the wars. That was a time I do not want to tell about. Only half came back who had set out, weary and thin. My father and Gull were not among them, and no one would speak to us. Everyone looked at us grimly.

“What are we supposed to have done now?” Hern demanded.

UNCLE KESTREL CAME home among the last. He came to our house first, leading Gull. We were frightened when we looked at them. None of us could behave as if we were glad, though Robin tried. Uncle Kestrel had turned into a real old man. His head nodded and his hands shook, and his face was covered with scraggly white bristle. Gull was inches taller. I knew it must be Gull because of his fair hair and the rugcoat I had woven for him last autumn, though that was shiny with grease and almost in rags, but I would not have known him otherwise.

“Be easy on him,” Uncle Kestrel said when Robin threw her arms round Gull. Gull hardly moved. “He’s had a bad time. It was the Heathens in the Black Mountains did it. We were all in the siege there, and the slaughter.”

Gull did not show he had heard. His face was empty. Robin led him to a seat, where he sat and stared. Duck, Hern and I stood in a row looking at him. Only Robin remembered to ask Uncle Kestrel to come in. She bustled about for cake and drinks, and dug the three of us in our backs to make us help her. Duck fetched the cups. I pulled myself together and got out our best plum preserves, but my face kept turning to Gull, sitting staring, and then to Uncle Kestrel, so old. Hern just stood there staring at Gull as hard as Gull stared into space.

Uncle Kestrel is a very direct person. “Well,” he said as soon as he was sitting down, “your father’s dead, I’m afraid. Out on the plains, a long way from here.”

We were all expecting that. None of us, not even Robin, cried. We just went pale and slow, and sat down without wanting to eat to hear what Uncle Kestrel had to tell.

Uncle Kestrel was glad of the good food. He beamed at Robin and ate a great deal. Whatever war had done to Gull, Uncle Kestrel came out of it completely natural. In the most natural way he broke off a big lump of cake, put it in Gull’s hand, and closed Gull’s fingers round it. “Here you are. Eat it, boy.” Gull obediently ate the cake without looking at it – without looking at anything. “You’ll find you have to do that,” Uncle Kestrel explained to us. “He’ll drink the same way. Now, to the sad news.”

He told us how Father had died of wounds in the middle of winter, a long way off. I think, from the way he said it, that my father had dragged himself along pretending to be well for Gull’s sake, because Gull had needed looking after even then. The fighting had been terrible. Our people were not used to it, and few of them had real weapons. The Heathen had good weapons, spears, and bows that could send an iron bolt through two men at once. “Besides being trained from their cradles to fight like devils,” Uncle Kestrel said. “And they have enchanters in their midst, who conquer us with spells. They can draw the strength from you like sucking an egg.”

Hern stared. “Piffle.”

“You haven’t seen them, lad,” said Uncle Kestrel. “I have. You know them by their long coats. They’ve set their spells on the very River himself, knowing him to be our strength and our lifeblood. Take a look outside, if you don’t believe me. Have you ever known him that colour and smelling like he does?”

“No,” Hern admitted.

“So, by fair means and foul,” Uncle Kestrel said, “the Heathen have beaten us. They’ve brought their women and their children, and they mean to stay. The land is full of them. Our King is in hiding, bless him.”

“What will we all do?” Duck asked in an awed whisper.

“Run away to the mountains, I suppose,” said Uncle Kestrel. He looked worn out at the idea. “I’ve run from them for months now. But you five might stay if you wished, I think. This is a funny thing—” He glanced at Gull and began to whisper. I do not think Gull was listening, but it was so hard to tell. “The Heathen look almost like you do – the fair hair. He’s had a deal to bear – Gull – from our side saying he was a Heathen changeling and bringing bad luck, and from the time the Heathen took him, thinking he was one of them.” We all stared at Gull. “Be easy on him,” said Uncle Kestrel. “As you see, they gave him back – this was in the Black Mountains – but he was not himself after that. Our men said he carried the Heathen’s spells, and they might have killed him but for your father.”

“How awful!” Robin said in a very high voice, like a sneeze or an explosion.

“True,” said Uncle Kestrel. “But we had our good times.” Then for quite a while he sat and told us jokes about people we did not know and things we did not understand, to do with the fighting. I am sure he meant to cheer us up. “That’s what kept me sane, seeing the jokes,” he said. “Now I suppose I’d better be off to see Zara.” He got up and limped away. He did not behave much as if he was looking forward to seeing my aunt. Nor would I, in his shoes.

Robin cleared the cups away. She kept looking at Gull, and Gull just sat. “I don’t know what to do with him,” she whispered to me.

I went away outside, in spite of the smell from the River. I was hoping to be able to cry. But Hern was sitting in the boat, on the mud below the Riverbank, and he was crying.

“Just think of Gull like that!” he said to me. “He’d be better dead. I wish I’d gone after the army.”

“What good would it have done?” I said.

“Don’t you see!” Hern jumped up, so that the boat squelched about. “Gull had nobody to talk to. That’s why he got like that. Why was I such a coward?”

“You swore to the Undying,” I reminded him.

“Oh that!” said Hern. He was very fierce and contemptuous. The boat kept squelching. “And I swore to fight the Heathen. I could swear to a million things, and it wouldn’t do any good. I just wish—”

“Stand still,” I said. It suddenly seemed to me that it was not only Hern’s angry movements that were making the squelching round the boat. Hern knew too. He stood bolt upright with his face all tear-stained, staring at me. We felt the small shiver run along the banks of the River. The mud clucked quietly, and a little soft lapping ran through the low green water. There were yards of bare mud on both sides of the River, but in a way that I do not know how to describe, it looked different to us. The trees on the other bank were stirring and lifting and expecting something.

“The floods are coming down,” said Hern.

If you are born by the River, you know its ways. “Yes,” I said, “and they’re going to be huge this time.”

Before we could say more, the back door crashed open and Gull came out. He came out stumbling, feeling both sides of the door and not seeming to know quite where he was.

“The River,” he said. “I felt the River.” He stumbled over to the bank. I put out both hands to catch him because it looked as if he were going to walk right over the edge. But he stopped on the bank and swayed about a little. “I can hear it,” he said. “I’ve dreamt about it. The floods are coming.” He began to cry, like Robin sometimes does, without making a sound. Tears rolled down his face.

I looked at Hern, and Hern looked at me, and we did not know what to do. Robin settled it by racing out of the back door and grabbing Gull in both arms. She hauled him away inside, saying, “I’m going to put him to bed. It’s frightening.”

“The floods are coming down,” I said.

“I know,” Robin called over her shoulder. “I can feel them. I’ll send Duck out.” She pushed Gull through the door and slammed it.

Hern and I pulled the boat up. It was horribly hard work because it was stuck a long way down in the mud. Luckily Hern is far stronger than he looks. We got it up over the edge of the bank in the end. By that time the sick green water was racing in swelling snatches, some of them so high that they slopped into the grooves the boat had left.

“I think this is going to be the highest ever,” Hern said. “I don’t think we should leave it here, do you?”

“No,” I said. “We’d better get it into the woodshed.” The woodshed is a room that joins the house, and the house is on the rising ground beyond the bank. Hern groaned, but he agreed with me. We got three of our last remaining logs to make rollers, and we rolled that heavy boat uphill, just the two of us. We had it at the woodshed when the woodshed door opened and Duck came out.

“You did arrive quickly!” I said.

“Sorry,” said Duck. “We’ve been putting Gull to bed. He went straight to sleep. It’s awful having him like this. I think there’s nothing inside him!” Then Duck began to cry. Hern’s arm tangled with mine as we both tried to get them round Duck.

“He’ll get better,” I said.

“Sleep will do him good,” Hern said. I think we were talking to ourselves as much as to Duck.

“Gull’s head of the family now,” Duck said, and he howled. I envy both boys for being able to howl.

Hern said, “Stop it, Duck. There’s the biggest ever flood coming down. We’ve got to get things inside.” The River was hissing by then, swish and swish, as it began to spread and fill. The bad smell of winter was mixed with a new damp smell, which was better. I could feel the ground shaking under us, because of the weight of water in the distance.

“I can smell it,” said Duck. “But I knew there was time to be miserable. I’ll stop now.” And he did stop, though he sniffed for the next hour.

We jammed the boat into the woodshed. I said we ought to bring the hens in there too. Hens are funny things. They seem so stupid, yet I swear our hens knew about the floods. When we looked for them, they had all gone through the hedge to the higher ground above Aunt Zara’s house and we could not get them back. They would not even come for corn. Nor would the cow go into the garden at first. Usually her one thought was to get in there and eat our cabbages. We pushed and pulled and prodded her, because we were sure she was not safe on the Riverbank, and tethered her where she could eat the weeds in the vegetable patch.

“She’ll eat those cabbages somehow,” said Duck. “Look at her looking at them.”

We were pulling up all the cabbages near her when Robin came out. “Oh good,” she said. “Pull enough for at least a week. I think the floods will be right up here by tomorrow. They feel enormous.”

We ran around picking cabbages and onions and the last of the carrots and dumped them on the floor of the scullery.

“No,” said Robin. “Up on the shelves. The water’s coming in here.”

She is the eldest, and she knows the River best. We did as she said. By this time it was getting dark. The River was making a long, rumbling sound. I watched it while Robin milked the cow. There was brown water as strong as the muscles in your leg piling through between the banks. The mud was covered already. I could see the line of yellow froth bubbles rising under the bank as I watched. The colour of the water was yellower and yellower, as it always is in the floods, but it was a dark yellow, which is not usual. The air was full of the clean, earthy smell the floods bring. I thought it was stronger than usual, and sharper.

“There’s been different weather up in the mountains where the River comes from, that’s all,” Hern said crossly. “Shall I wake Gull up and give him some milk?”

Gull was so fast asleep that we could not wake him. We left him and had supper ourselves. We felt strange – half excited because of the rumble of the water outside, half heavy with misery. We wanted sweet things to eat, but when we had them, we found we wanted salt. We were trying to make Robin cook some of the pickled trout when we heard an odd noise. We stopped talking and listened. At first there was only the River, booming and rushing. Then we heard someone scratching on the back door – scratching, not knocking.

“I’ll go,” said Hern, and he seized the carving knife on his way to the back door.

He opened it and there was Uncle Kestrel again, half in the dark, with his finger to his mouth for quiet. We twisted round in our seats and looked at him as he limped in. He had neatened himself up since he was last here, but he was still shaking.

“I thought you were the Heathen,” Hern said.

“They’d be better company for you,” said Uncle Kestrel. He smiled. He took a jam tart from Robin and said, “Thanks, my love,” but that did not seem natural any longer. He was frightening. “Zwitt’s been at my house,” he said, “calling your family Heathen enchanters.”

“We’re not,” said Duck. “Everyone knows we’re not!”

“Do they?” asked Uncle Kestrel. He leant forwards over the table, so that the lamp caught a huge bent shadow of him and threw it trembling on the wall, across shelves and cups and plates. It looked so threatening with its long, wavering nose and chin that I think I watched it most of the time. It still scares me. “Do they?” said Uncle Kestrel. “There are men in Shelling who have seen Heathens with their own eyes, and who remember your mother – lovely girl she was, my Robin – looked just like the Heathen. Then Zwitt says you dealt ungodly with the River—”

“That’s nonsense!” Hern said. He got angrier with everything Uncle Kestrel said. It was good of Uncle Kestrel not to take offence.

“You should have gone over to the old mill by night, lad,” he said, “like I do when I go for mussels. And it’s a pity neither you nor your cow got the sickness the River sent.”

“But we all got it!” Robin protested. “Duck was sick all one night.”

“But he lived when others his age died,” said Uncle Kestrel. “There’s no arguing with Zwitt, Robin, apple of my eye. He has the whole of Shelling behind him. If Duck died, they’d have thought up a reason for that. Don’t you see? Do none of you see?”

The huge shadow shifted on the wall as he looked round the four of us. I saw that we seemed to be strangers in our own village, but I had known that before. So had Robin from the look of her. Duck looked quite blank. Hern almost shrieked, “Oh, yes, I see all right! Now my father’s dead, Zwitt’s not afraid of us any more!”

The shadow shook its head and bent across two shelves. “But he is, lad. That’s the trouble. They’re frightened. The Heathen beat them. They want to blame someone. And spells have been cast by the Heathen. Hear the River now!”

We could all hear. I had never heard such rushing. The house shook with it.

Uncle Kestrel said softly, “He’s coming down like that to fight the Heathen at the Rivermouth. That’s where they set their spells, I heard.”

“Oh!” said Hern. He was going to be rude.

“I understand,” Duck said just then. “Zwitt wants to kill us, doesn’t he?”

“Now, Duck!” Robin protested. “What a silly idea! As if—” She looked at Uncle Kestrel. “It’s not true!”

The shadow on the wall shook. I thought it was laughing. I looked at Uncle Kestrel. He was serious – just shaking in that new old-man way of his. “It is true, my Robin,” he said. “Zwitt was at my house to blame me cruelly for not killing young Gull while I had him. Gull carries the Heathen spells for you, it seems.”

Nobody said anything except the River for a moment, and that rushed like thunder. In the midst of it Robin whispered, “Thank you, Uncle Kestrel.”

“How are they going to kill us?” Hern said. “When?”

“They’re meeting to decide that now,” said Uncle Kestrel. “Some want to throw you to the River, I hear, but Zwitt favours cold steel. They often do who haven’t seen it used.” He stood up to go, and to my relief the huge shadow rose until it was too big for the wall to hold it. “I’ll be off,” he said, “now you understand. If Zara knew I was here, she’d turn me out.”

“Where is Aunt Zara?” I asked.

“At the meeting,” said Uncle Kestrel. He may have seen me look. As he limped to the door, he made me come with him while he explained. “Zara’s not in an easy position. You must understand. She’s afraid for her life of being called one of you. She had to go. It’s different for me, you know.” I still do not see why it should be different for Uncle Kestrel. Even Robin does not see.

I opened the door for him on such a blast of noise from the River that I put my hands to my ears. It was louder than the worst storm I have known. Yet there was barely any wind and only a few warm drops of rain. The noise was all the River. The lamplight showed black silk water and staring bubbles halfway to the back door.

Uncle Kestrel bawled something to me that I did not hear as he limped away. I slammed the door shut, and then Hern and I barricaded the doors and windows. We did not need to discuss it. We just ran about feverishly wedging the heaviest chairs against the doors and jamming benches and shelves across the shutters. We wedged the woodshed door by pushing the boat against it. We made rather a noise blocking the window just over Gull’s bed, but Gull did not move.

All this while Duck was standing leaning his head against the niches of the Undying, and Robin was still sitting over supper. “I can’t believe this!” she said. Another time we went by, she said, “We’ve only dear old Uncle Kestrel’s word for it. He’s not what he was. He may have misunderstood Zwitt. We’ve lived in Shelling all our lives. They wouldn’t—”

“Yes, they would,” Duck said from the niches. “We’ve got to leave here.”

Robin wrung her hands. She will be ladylike. “But how can we leave, with the River in flood and Gull like this? Where should we go?”

I could see she had gone helpless. It annoys me when she does. “We can go away down the River and find somewhere better to live,” I said. It was the most exciting thing I have ever said. I had always wanted to see the rest of the River.

“Yes. You can’t pretend you’ve enjoyed living here this winter,” Hern said. “Let’s do that.”

“But the Heathen!” Robin said, wringing away. I could have hit her.

“We look like the Heathen,” I said. “Remember? We might as well make some use of it. We’ve suffered for it enough. I suppose Aunt Zara thought we were Heathen when she told us to go away.”

“No,” said Robin, being fair as well as helpless. It makes a maddening combination. “No, she couldn’t have. She just meant we look different. We have yellow, wriggly hair, and everyone else in Shelling has straight black hair.”

“Different is dead tonight,” Hern said. Clever, clever.

“We’ve only Uncle Kestrel’s word,” said Robin again. “Besides, Gull’s asleep.”

So we sat about, with nothing decided. None of us went to bed. We could not have slept for the thousand noises of the flood, anyway. It made rillings and swirlings, rushings, gurglings and babblings. Shortly there was rain going blatter, blatter on the roof and spaah when it came down the chimney and fell on the fire. Behind that the River bayed and roared and beat like a drum, until my ears were so bemused that I thought I heard shrill voices screaming out across the floods.

Then, around the middle of the night, I heard the real, desperate bellowing when our cow was swept away. Robin jumped up from the table, shouting for help.

Hern sat up sleepily. Duck rolled on the hearthrug. I was the most awake, so I scrambled up and helped Robin unblock the back door. It came open as soon as we lifted the latch, and a wave of yellow water piled in on us.

“Oh help!” said Robin. We heaved the door shut somehow. It left a pool on the floor, and I could see water dripping in underneath it. “Try the woodshed!” said Robin.

We ran there, although I could tell that the cow’s bellows were going away slantwise down the River now. Water was coming in steadily under the woodshed door. We pulled the boat back easily, because it was floating, but when we opened the door, the wave of water that came in was not quite so steep. Robin insisted that we could wade through the garden to the cow. We hauled up our clothes and splashed outside, trying to see and to balance and to hold skirts all at once. The rain was pouring down. That hissed, the River hissed and gluck-glucked, and the water swirled so that I half fell down against the woodshed. I knew it was hopeless. The cow was faint in the distance. But Robin managed to stagger a few yards on, calling to the cow, until even she was convinced there was nothing we could do.

“What shall we do for milk?” she said. “Poor cow!”

We could not shut the woodshed door. I tied the boat to one of the beams, and we waded back to the main room and shut that door. The woodshed is a step down. Soon water began to trickle under that door, like dark crawling fingers.

Robin sat by the hearth and I sat with her. “We shall drown if it comes much higher,” she said.

“And Zwitt will say good riddance and the River punished us,” I said. I sat leaning against Robin, watching water drip off my hair. Each drop had to turn twenty corners because my hair hangs in springs when it is wet. And I saw we would really have to leave now. We had no cow. We had no father to plough our field. Poor Gull could not do it, and Hern is not strong enough for that yet. We had no money to buy food instead, because no one would take my weaving, and even if we had, the people in Shelling probably would not sell us any. Then I remembered they were going to kill us, anyway. I thought I would cry. But no. I watched the firelight squeeze a smile out of the Young One’s face, and Duck’s mouth open and shut on the hearthrug, and the water from the woodshed trickle into a pool. Robin was soft and warm. She is maddening, but she does try.

“Robin,” I said. “Did Mother look like us? Was she a Heathen?”

“I don’t know,” said Robin. “It’s all vague. I think she had hair like ours, but I may be making it up. I don’t remember. I don’t even remember her teaching me to weave.”

That surprises me still, Robin not remembering. She was nearly eight when our mother died. I was much younger when Robin taught me to weave, and I remember that perfectly. I can recall how Robin did not know the patterns for all the words, so that she and I together had to make quite a number up. I am not sure that anyone except my family will be able to read much of this, even of those who know how to read weaving. To everyone else, my story will look like a particularly fine and curious rugcoat. But it is for myself that I am weaving it. I shall understand our journey better when I have set it out. The difficulty is that I have to keep stopping because the clicking of my loom disturbs poor Robin.

NOW THE THING that finally decided us to leave was this. It was around dawn, though there was no light coming in round the shutters as yet. My neck ached down one side, and my mouth tasted bad. The fire was very low, but I could see Duck rolling and stirring in front of it. Hern was sitting on the table.

“The floor’s all wet,” he said.

I put my hand on the hearthrug to move, and it was like a marsh. “Ugh!” I said. It is a noise there is no word for.

At that, the door to the bedroom swung open, and there was Gull in his nightshirt, feeling at the frame of the door as he had done before. I heard his feet splash in the water on the floor. “Is it time?” Gull asked.

“Time for what?” said Hern.

“Time to leave,” said Gull. “We have to go away down the River.”

Robin, I swear, had been asleep up to then, but she was on her feet, splashing about, trying to soothe Gull back to bed before he had finished speaking. “Yes, yes. We’re leaving,” she said. “It’s not quite time yet. Go back to bed till we’re ready.”

“You won’t go without me?” Gull said as she shoved him back through the door.

“Of course not,” said Robin. “But we haven’t packed the boat yet. You rest while we do that, and I’ll call you as soon as breakfast’s ready.”

While she put Gull back to bed, Hern and I splashed about in an angry sort of way, filling the lamp and lighting it again and putting the last logs on the fire. Duck woke up.

“Are we really leaving?” he said when Robin came back.

Hern and I thought Robin had just been soothing Gull, but she said, “I think we must. I think Gull knows best what the Undying want.”

“You mean, the Undying told him we must go?” I said. Early though it was, my back pricked all the way down with awe. Usually I only get that in the evenings.

“Gull must have heard us talking,” said Hern. “That explains it just as well. But I’m glad something made up your stupid minds for you. Let’s get the boat loaded.”

Then I did not want to go at all. Shelling was the place I knew. Everywhere beyond was an emptiness. People came out of the emptiness and said things about Heathens with spells, the King and war, but I did not believe in anywhere but Shelling really. I did not want to go into the nowhere beyond it. I think Hern felt the same at heart. We went slowly into the woodshed with the lamp, to push the boat out ready to load.

Water rolled in from the woodshed as soon as we opened the door. It came round our ankles like yellow silk, lazy and strong and smooth, and made ripples in the living room. Inside the shed the boat was floating level with the step. The lamp shone up from our startled reflections underneath it.

“You know,” said Hern, “we can load it in here and just row out through the door.”

I looked towards the door, dazzled by the lamp. I looked too low, where the land usually slopes towards the River, and I had one of those times when you do not know what you see. There was a long, bright streak, and in that streak, a smooth sliding. I thought I had been taken out of my head and put somewhere in a racing emptiness. There I was, upside down under my own feet – a bush of hair and staring eyes, wild and peculiar. I wonder if this is how Gull feels, I thought.

Duck did not like it either. “There’s water high up, where the air usually is!” he said, and he waded over and tried to shut the door.

Hern was the only one of us who could shut the door against the force of the water. I always forget how strong Hern is. You would not think he was, to look at him. He is long and thin, with a stoop to his shoulders, very like the heron he was named for.

We argued a great deal over loading the boat and trailed up and down the ladder to the loft a great deal too often at first. Robin said we should take the apples. Hern said he hated last year’s fruit. It was because none of us wanted to leave. Gradually, though, we grew excited, and the loading went quicker and quicker. Hern packed things in the lockers, shouting orders, and the rest of us ran to and fro remembering things. We packed so many pots and pans that there was nothing to cook breakfast in and almost nothing left to eat. We had to have bread and cheese.

Robin got Gull up and dressed him in warm clothes. The rest of us were in our thick old waterproof rugcoats, which I only make when they are truly needed, because it is double weave and takes weeks. My everyday skirt was soaked, and I did not want to spoil my good one. Besides, I had had enough of splashing about in a skirt in the night. I wore Hern’s old clothes. I tried to persuade Robin to wear some of Gull’s. A year ago she would have agreed. But now she insisted on being ladylike and wearing her awful old blue skirt – the one I made a mistake in, so that the pattern does not match.

The only warm rugcoat we could find which fitted Gull was my father’s that my mother had woven him before they were married. My mother was mistress of weaving. The coat tells the story of Halian Tan Haleth, Lord of Mountain Rivers, and it is so beautiful that I had to look away when Robin led Gull to the table. The contrast between Mother’s weaving and Robin’s blue skirt was too painful.

It occurred to me while we were dressing Gull that there was not so much wrong with him as I had thought. He smiled once or twice and asked, quite reasonably, whether we had remembered fishing tackle and spare pegs for the mast. It was just that he stared so at nothing and did not seem to be able to dress himself. I wonder if he’s blind, I thought. It did seem so.

I tested it at breakfast by pushing a slice of bread at Gull’s face. Gull blinked and moved his head back from it. He did not tell me not to or ask what I thought I was doing, as Hern or Duck would have done, but he must have seen the bread. I put it in his hand, and he ate it, still staring.

“I tried that last night,” Duck whispered. “He can see all right. It’s not that.”

We were sitting round the table with our feet hooked on the chair rungs because water was coming in from all the doors, even the front door, and most of the floor was a pool. There was a hill in the corner where my loom and spinning wheel stood, so that was dry, and so was the scullery, except for a dip in the middle. We laughed about it, but I did wish I could have taken my loom. The boat was so loaded by then that there was no point even suggesting it.

As I put the last slice of bread in Gull’s hand, there was an explosion of sizzling steam from the hearth.

“Oh, good gracious!” Robin shouted. She soaked us all by racing to the hearth. Water was spilling gently across the hearthstones and running in among the embers. Amid cloud upon cloud of steam, Robin snatched up the shovel and scooped up what was still alight. She turned round, coughing, waving one hand and holding up the red-hot shovelful. “The pot, the firepot, quickly! Oh, why do none of you ever help me?”

That fire has never been out in my lifetime. I could not think how we were to light it again if it did go out. At Robin’s shriek, even Gull made a small bewildered movement. Hern splashed away for the big firepot we use in the boat, and I fetched the small one we take to the field. Duck took a breakfast cup and tried to scoop up more embers in that. He had only rescued half a cupful before the water swilled to the back of the fireplace and made it simply a black, steaming puddle.

“I think we’ve got just enough,” Robin said hopefully, putting the lids on the pots.

Everything was telling us to leave, I thought as I waded with Hern to the woodshed to put the pots in the boat. The River had swung the outer door open again. It was light out there. Outside was nothing but yellow-brown River, streaming past so full and quiet that it seemed stealthy. There was no bank on the other side. The brown water ran between the tree trunks as strongly as it ran past the woodshed door. It was all so smooth and quiet that I did not realise at first how fast the River was flowing. Then a torn branch came past the door. And was gone. Just like that. I have never been so near thinking the River a god as then.

“I wonder if there’s water all round the house,” said Hern. We put the pots in the boat and waded back to see.

This was very foolish. It was as if, among all the other things, we had forgotten what Uncle Kestrel had told us. We climbed the slope beside my loom and took the plank off the shutters there. Luckily we only opened the shutter a crack. Outside was a tract of yellow, rushing water as wide as our garden, and not deep. On the further edge of it, in a grim line, stood most of the men of Shelling. Zwitt was there, leaning on his sword, which looked new and clean because he had not been to the war. The swords of the others were notched and brown, and more frightening for that. I remember noticing, all the same, that behind them the yellow water had almost reached Aunt Zara’s house. Where they were standing was a point of higher ground between the two houses.

“Look!” we called out, and Duck and Robin crowded to the open crack.

“Thank the Undying!” said Robin. “The River’s saved our lives!”

“They’re making up their minds to cross over,” said Duck.

They were calling to one another up and down the line. Zwitt kept pointing to our house. We did not realise why until Korib, the miller’s son, came past the line with his longbow and knelt to take aim. Korib is a good shot. Hern banged the shutter to just in time. The arrow met it thock a fraction after, and burst it open. Hern banged it shut again and heaved the plank across. “Phew!” he said. “Let’s go.”

“But they’ll see us. They’ll shoot!” I said. I hardly knew what to do. I nearly wrung my hands like Robin.

“Come along,” Hern said. He and Robin took hold of Gull and guided him to the woodshed.

“Just a minute,” Duck said. He splashed over to the black pool of the hearth and gathered the Undying down out of their niches. It shocks me even now when I think of Duck picking them up by their heads and bundling them into his arms as if they were dolls.

“No, Duck,” said Robin. “Their place is by this hearth. You heard your father say so.”

“That,” said Duck, “is quite ridiculous nonsense, Robin. The hearth’s in the firepots, and the firepots are in the boat. Here.” He pushed the Young One into Hern’s hands. I noticed Hern did not object. Because Robin was busy with Gull, Duck pushed the One at me. He kept the Lady himself. She has always been his favourite. The One felt heavy in my hands, cold and grainy. I was afraid of him and even more afraid of slipping in the water and losing him. I took him so carefully to the boat that they were all calling out to me to hurry and trying not to call too loud. I could hear Zwitt talking outside. He sounded near. They had a heavy blanket over the boat, hanging over the mast. Robin was holding it down on one side, Duck on the other. Hern had the boat untied and was standing ready to push it out of the shed.

“Get in, Tanaqui. You can be religious in the boat,” he said. I climbed in carefully and found Gull lying in the bottom where Robin had put him. As soon as I was in, Hern started to push the boat. It was so loaded that he could hardly move it. I pushed up the blanket and offered to help. “Get down!” he snapped, red in the face, with his teeth showing.

As he said it, the boat was through the door, and the current took her sideways along the end of the house, all in seconds. I am not sure whether Hern meant to get in straight away and did not have time or whether he meant to stay out and push us into deep water. At all events he was still surging through the edge of the floods with his hands on the stern when the boat came out beyond our house, in front of Aunt Zara’s, and the Shelling people saw us.

They shouted. I had not seen how they hated us till I heard them shout. It was terrible. Some of them were wading in the water towards our house, and they ran through it towards us. Zwitt slipped over. I hoped he drowned. The others on dry land yelled and pointed at us and cursed. And Korib, on one knee, bent his bow to an arrow again.

“Hern! He’s shooting!” I screamed.

Hern was trying to push us sideways into the deep River. He tried to get round to hide behind the boat at the same time. That pushed us the other way. We wove about. Korib shot. It was as good a shot as the first. Hern would be dead, but at that instant we reached the real Riverbank at last, and the ground went from under Hern. He disappeared up to his neck, and the arrow hit the rudder instead. Korib took another and bent his bow again.

Hern had the sense to hang on to the boat. If he had let go then, he would have drowned, for he lost his head completely. “My clothes are heavy!” he screamed. “The River’s pulling me down!”

Duck and I climbed about over poor Gull, trying to heave Hern up, and Hern went hand over hand along the boat to keep out of Korib’s aim. The boat tipped frighteningly, and Hern’s caution was undone, because it spun round and let Korib see him again. The boat was spinning all the time after that. Every time I saw the bank, it was in a different place. Korib kept shooting, at Duck and me as well as at Hern, but we were too busy trying to get Hern aboard to be frightened. Afterwards we counted six arrows stuck in the blanket, besides the one in the rudder.

We got Hern up in the end. Robin, by that time, had hooked the tiller in place and was trying to steer, but the boat still went round and round. Hern sat streaming beside Gull, very much ashamed and trying to laugh it off. “When your clothes are full of water, you can’t swim, you know,” he said. “They weigh a ton.” We made him get into dry things.

By this time we were almost at the end of the part of the River we knew, right down to the thick forest. We had gone that fast. I took the steering from Robin and tried to stop us spinning so. It was not easy. The current ran so strong that if you pushed the boat at all sideways, you were spinning again before you could count five. It took all my skill, but in spite of what my brothers say, I am as good a waterman as they.

“This is dangerous,” said Duck, watching me. “We can only go where the River wants. How can we get to the bank?”

Before I could say to Duck what I felt like saying, Gull said suddenly, “We can go where the River wants.” He sat up with his back against a thwart. He seemed happy and dreamy, as he used to be when we went fishing on a summer day, and we were sure he was better.

This made us realise – as if we had not known till then – that we had left Shelling far behind, and we were glad. I do not think one of us has ever regretted it. We laughed. We talked over all the lucky things that led to our escape, which is a time none of us will forget, I think, and all the while we were going, fast as a swallow skims, straight down the centre of the River, and the trees on the bank seemed to spin about with our speed.

We must have gone leagues that day, and in all those leagues there was nothing on either bank but flooded forest. All there was to see was tall bare trees, with the green just coming to the upper boughs and water winding among their trunks. They had a chilly, slaty look. I confess I was disappointed. It is often the way when you dream of doing something new; it is not so new after all.

When night came on, I tried to work the boat across the current to the eastern bank. Shelling is on the west bank. We did not think Zwitt had sent anyone after us, but we kept to the other side of the River for a number of nights all the same. This caution nearly drowned us that night. The River whirled; the boat whirled and went on whirling, despite all Hern, Robin and I could do, pulling together at the tiller. Only Gull sat calmly. Duck picked up the Lady and hugged her to his chest. Then the River rushed beneath one side of the boat, and we tipped. I put out my hand and took hold of the One. But he felt so cold and hard that I put him down and picked up the Young One instead. It surprises me still that we came among the trees without sinking. I am sure it was because of our Undying.

We poled and pushed on the trees until we came to higher ground, where we landed and let some of the fire out of our firepots. We cooked pickled trout for supper, and very good it was. Gull seemed so far recovered that he was able to eat for himself.

“I think being back with the River is curing him,” Hern said.

That night, after a long quarrel, we decided to sleep in the boat. Hern and Duck were for sleeping on land. Robin, with sound sense, said that if the Shelling men found us, we need only untie the boat to escape. Duck said we could just as easily run away into the forest. In the end Robin said, “Gull’s head of the family. Let’s ask him. Gull, shall we sleep on the land or in the boat?”

“In the boat,” Gull said.

In the middle of the night Gull woke us up shouting and talking. Robin says he talked of disaster and Heathens at first, but when I woke up, he was saying, “All those people! So many people, all rushing. I don’t want to go with them. Help!” Then he shouted for my father, and I could hear he was crying.

We all sat up, and Hern got the little lamp lit. Gull seemed to be lying asleep in the boat, but he was talking, and tears were running down his face. Robin bent over him and said, “It’s all right, Gull. You’re with us. You’re safe.”

“Where’s Uncle Kestrel?” Gull said.

“He brought you to us because that was safest,” Robin said.

“I’m not safe from the rushing people,” said Gull. “Don’t tell me to pull myself together and be a man. They want to take me with them.”

We wondered who had told Gull to pull himself together. Probably my father. He was not called the Clam for nothing. He did not like people to talk about their troubles.

“Of course we won’t tell you that,” said Robin. “We’ll keep you safe from everything.”

“I want Uncle Kestrel,” said Gull. “The people are rushing.”

It went on like this for a long time. Each time it seemed that Gull was listening to Robin and she was getting him calmer, he would ask for Uncle Kestrel and talk about these rushing people of his. Robin began to look desperate. Hern and I suggested all sorts of things for her to say to Gull, and she said them, but after another hour it did not seem as if Gull was listening at all.

“What shall we do?” said Robin.

Duck had sat all this while cross-legged and half asleep, hugging the Lady. “Try giving him this,” he said, and held out the Lady – by her head, of course.

It worked. Gull put both hands to the Lady and held her to his face. “Thank you,” he said. Then he rolled over and went to sleep, with his cheek pressed against the hard wood. I could see Duck looking woeful at losing the Lady, but he did not say anything.

FROM THAT TIME ON, Gull was worse and worse.

When we woke next morning, we found the floods had risen to cover the place where our fire had been. The tree we had tied the boat to was twenty yards from dry land; after that we always slept in the boat. Gull was awake too, lying with the print of the Lady on his cheek, but he did not move until Hern started poling us to the higher ground. Then he sat up and called out, “Where are you going? We must get on.”

“Why must we get on?” Hern said. He was angry with lack of sleep.

“We must get down to the sea. Quickly,” said Gull, and tears ran down his cheeks across the mark of the Lady.

“Of course we will,” said Robin. “Be quiet, Hern.”

“Why should I? This is the first I’ve heard about having to get to the sea,” Hern said. “What’s got into him now?”

“I don’t know,” Robin said helplessly.

This new idea of Gull’s gave him no peace, nor us either. Whenever we stopped to eat, he wept and urged us to hurry on to the sea. When we stopped for the night, he was worse still. He kept us all awake talking of Heathens and people rushing and, above all, calling out that we must get on, down to the sea. I grew almost too tired to look at the Riverbanks, which was a pity because the land grew new and interesting after that day. On the day following, the sides of the River were steep hills, covered with a forest, budding all colours from powdery green to bright red, so full of circling birds that they strewed the sky like chaff. Among the trees and birds we saw once a great stone house with a tower like a windmill and a few small windows.

Hern was very interested. He said it looked easy to defend, and if it was empty, it would make a good place for us to live.

“We can’t stop here!” Gull cried out.

“It was only an idea, you fool!” Hern said.

Altogether Hern became more and more impatient with Gull. It was hard to blame him, for Gull was very tedious. As the hills held the River in, we floated at a furious pace on a narrow, rushing stream, but we still did not go fast enough for Gull.

“I’d get to the sea tomorrow, if I could, just to shut you up!” Hern said to him.

Duck became as bad as Hern that day. He sighed sarcastically whenever Gull said we must hurry. He and Hern laughed and fooled about instead of helping us look after Gull. I smacked Duck several times, and I would have smacked Hern too, if I could. I smacked Duck again that night, in spite of Robin shouting at me, when Duck would not let Gull have the Lady.

Duck jumped out on land, hugging the Lady. He was lucky not to fall in the water. We were tied among little brown bushes, with a slope of slimy earth above, where the bank was no bank at all and the River kept slopping our boat into the bushes and away. “She’s mine!” Duck shouted, sliding and scrambling above me. “I need her! Give Gull the One. He’s strongest.”

I was so angry that I tried to climb out after him. But the boat slopped away from the bushes, and Robin caught the back of my rugcoat and hauled me back. “Leave him be, Tanaqui,” she said. “Don’t you be as bad as he is. Let’s try Gull with the One.”

We put the dark glistering One in Gull’s hand, but he cried out and shuddered. “He’s cold. He pulls. Can’t we get on now?”

“Some of us have to sleep, Gull,” I said. I was nearly as cross as Hern. I gave him the Young One instead, but Gull would not have him either. We had a dreadful night.

In the morning, Duck gave Gull the Lady, looking a little ashamed. But by that time Gull was not having the Lady either. Robin could hardly get him to eat. All he wanted was for us to untie the boat and go on.

“Fun and games all the way to the sea,” said Hern. “Then what will he want?”

“I don’t think he should go to the sea,” said Duck.

“Oh, not you now!” said Hern. “Why not?”

“The Lady doesn’t want him to go,” said Duck.

“When did she tell you that?” Hern asked jeeringly.

“She didn’t,” said Duck. “I just had a feeling and knew.”

Most of that morning Hern was jeering at Duck for his feeling. Robin snapped at Hern, and I yelled at Duck. We were very tired.

That was the day we came to the lake. The hills on either side of the River seemed to retire away backwards, and before we were aware, we were out at one end of a long, winding lake. They tell me it is usually a smaller lake than we saw, but because of the floods, it filled a whole valley. We could see it ahead, white with distance, stretching from mountain to mountain. I think they were real mountains. Their tops went so high that grey clouds sat on them, and they were blue and grey and purple as Uncle Kestrel described mountains. We had never seen such a great stretch of water in our lives as that lake. In the ordinary way we would have been interested. Water in such quantity is restless. It is grey and goes in waves, chop, chop, chop, and lines of foam stretch like ribbons back from the way the waves are going. There was a keen wind blowing.

“What a horrible wind!” Duck said. He crouched down in the boat, hugging his precious Lady.

Hern said disgustedly, “There’s miles of it! I hate seeing how far I have to go.”

Maybe I said that, when I think. Hern and I both found the place too large. As for Gull, he struggled up and stared about. “Why have we stopped?” he said.

We had not stopped, but the current ran weaker in such a mass of water, and I think our boat had turned sideways from it as we came out into the lake. I could see beyond us a wrinkling and a lumping in the lake, more yellow than grey, where the River flood rushed through the larger waters.

“Get the sail up,” I said.

“Don’t order me about,” said Hern. “Get up, Duck, and help.”

“Shan’t,” said Duck. You see how angry we all were.

Hern was stepping the mast when Gull said, “What are you doing? Why can’t we get on?”

“I am getting on, you mindless idiot!” said Hern. “I’m putting the sail up. Now shut up!”

I do not think Gull listened, but Robin said, “Hern, can’t you show poor Gull a bit more sympathy?”

“I am sympathetic!” snarled Hern. “But I wouldn’t be honest if I pretended I liked him this way. Tell him to keep his mouth shut, if I worry you.”

Robin did not answer. We got the mast and the sail up, and Duck condescended to let the keel down. The keel is a thought of my father’s, to make a flat riverboat sail well, and it is the best thought he ever had. We raced through the grey waters, leaning. Gull lay quiet in the bottom. Duck sang. When he sings, you know why we call him Duck. Hern told him so. And through their new argument, I noticed Robin still said never a word. She was white and wringing her hands.

“Are you all right?” I said. She annoys me.

“I think we’re going to drown,” said Robin. “It’s so big and so deep! Look at the huge waves!” I would have laughed at her if I had seen the sea then. But the boat did lean, and the water did churn. The shore on both sides was some miles off – too far for swimming – and I thought the lake was deep. I began to be as frightened as Robin. Hern did not say how he felt, but he did not steer near the middle of the lake where the current ran. He kept to one side, and drew nearer to the land there. Shortly we came to a point of land reaching into the lake, with trees on it. The trees grew down to the water’s edge and marched on in. We sailed over the tops of trees right under water. Robin’s eyes went sideways to them, and she gave a squeak at how deep the lake was. Her hand went out to the One, but she was too much in awe of him to pick him up. She fumbled round till she found the Young One. Her hands went white with clinging to him.

We passed more points of land and more submerged trees and came to a wide bay, where the lake had flooded up a side valley. In the distance we could see a green pasture at the edge of the water. It looked a good place to land. Hern steered that way.

Immediately Gull rose up and screamed at him to keep straight on. Hern looked at me expressively, and we sailed on.

There was an island on the far side of the bay, a miserable thing where a tuft of willow trees bent over a marsh. Gull let us land there because it was straight ahead. I think it had always been a marshy place, that island, perhaps a saddle of marsh low on the hillside, because round it in a wide ring we saw the heads of rushes – just their heads – pushing above the water. They were tall tanaqui mostly, bravely trying to flower in the spring. The air was full of their scent as the boat came pushing in among them, disturbing marsh birds every moment.

Hern laughed. “Look! A line of baby brothers!” He pointed to a row of ducklings plodding after their mother among the willows. Duck flounced round with his back to Hern and fell into a deep sulk. Which Hern must have known he would do. My brothers are maddening.

We got out, lit a smoky fire, and ate. Gull would not eat. He just sat with food in his hand. Robin tried thrusting bread in his mouth, but he just sat with it there.

“Oh, I don’t know what to do with you, Gull!” Robin cried out. Soon after that she fell asleep, leaning on a willow with the Young One in her lap and Gull sitting sightlessly beside her. Duck was still sulking. Hern and I got up and wandered over the island, but not together. He was at one end, and I was at the other, and I felt I did not care whether I ever saw him again.

I hated that island. The boughs of the willows rattled in the wind, like teeth chattering. They had bright yellow buds on, and the colour looked thoroughly dreary against the grey water. The grey water went crush, crush, crush, among the tops of the rushes, bringing their scent in ripples. I looked down at the oily sort of peat under my feet, and I looked out across the grey miles of water to the purple line of land beyond, and I felt truly miserable.

Then I thought I heard my mother’s voice behind me. “Tanaqui, for goodness’ sake pull yourself together, child!” she said. “Are you too cross to think?”

Naturally I turned round. There was only the empty grove of willows, with Hern’s back beyond them, and the other purple shore much nearer but quite as melancholy.

And my mother’s voice spoke behind me again, by which I knew I was imagining it, because she would have had to be standing in the water, among the tips of the rushes. “You mustn’t let Gull go to the sea, Tanaqui,” she said. “Can’t you see that? Promise me to stop him.”

I turned round again, and of course there was nothing. “Might as well try to stop the River, the way he carries on,” I said, just in case she could hear me. Then I thought what a fool I was. I did almost cry, but not quite. I went back to the fire instead.

Gull was not there. I was quite horrified for a moment. Then I found he had got back into the boat and was lying there, staring up at the grey sky. “You’d better stay there,” I said to him. I went and looked at Robin, still asleep. I had a feeling, from what Uncle Kestrel said, that my mother had looked a little like Robin. If you look at Robin that way, not just as a person you know very well, she is very pretty. Her face is longish, but round and even, and her eyebrows are quite dark. She always calls her hair yellow and wriggly, but I think that is what people mean when they talk about golden curls. Her eyes are large and blue. Even with her eyes shut, and mauve shadows under them, she was pretty.

She woke up as I looked. “Why are you staring? What’s the matter?”

“Gull’s gone back to the boat,” I said.

“By himself?” said Robin. “Oh, dear, what is the matter with him, Tanaqui?”

“He had a bad time in the wars,” I said.

Duck came marching across from somewhere, carrying the Lady by her head as usual. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “Uncle Kestrel told you. The Heathens put spells on him, and now they want him to go to the sea.”

“I don’t think it’s quite like that, Duck, love,” Robin said, looking worried. “Tanaqui, I had a dream—”

But I have not heard to this day what Robin’s dream was because Hern came rushing back just then, full of brisk talk about getting to the end of the lake by nightfall, and Robin must have forgotten her dream. Whatever it was, it made her happier. She was nothing like so scared of the lake after that.

That lake is huge. We sailed in it all that day and half the next. Beyond the island it became wider yet, until we could barely see the other shore. There were more islands scattered on it, and we learnt not to sail too near them, because our keel got tangled with any trees or bushes that grew at their edges before the floods came. We had one lucky escape from a bush and another from a great torn bough, moving on the flood, which I did not see behind the sail.

I think the banks of the lake must have been quite crowded with people before the Heathen came. We saw planks floating and logs cut for winter, hen coops, barrels and chairs. Duck saw two drowned cats, and I saw a dog. We all saw the corpse except Gull. That was horrible. We came quite near, because Robin insisted the person was alive, until we saw it was only the waves moving her. We thought it was a girl, but she was so small and the clothes so strange that it was hard to be sure. The long hair was browned with the water, but we could see it had been fair and curly.

“It’s a Heathen,” Duck said. He took the pole and turned her. Her throat was cut. Duck pushed her away with the pole quickly, and then he was sick. We all felt terrible. We none of us said anything, but we knew we did not dare to go near any of our own people. That corpse looked just like us.

We met no one living all the length of that lake. Once or twice we thought we saw other corpses, but we did not go near them. Nobody was sailing except us. Later in the day it rained. A big purple cloud hung over us, lower than the rest of the sky, and rain soused down on us out of it. Behind us the lake was silver with sun, and in front of us a mighty rainbow came down across some dark green pine trees growing on a point of land and buried itself in the lake at their roots. We saw the trees sunlit through the colours of the rainbow. But the rain cloud hung above us. “Just like our bad luck does,” Duck said gloomily.

That point of land was a long way off. By the time we reached it, night was coming on and we decided to tie up there. Gull protested, but we were getting used to that.

“I’m sorry, Gull,” Robin said. “We have to stop for the night.” From Robin, that is steely firmness.

Gull would not get out of the boat. We all pulled and pushed at him, but he would not move. In the end we had to pole the boat round the point, where it was sheltered from the wind, and pull it up out of the water with Gull still in it. We did that because we did not trust him not to sail away while we were getting supper. In that place the land fell back and a marshy stream came down to meet the lake. The lake had come up to meet the stream a long way. Nowhere was dry. Rushes of all sorts grew there, and the flag irises were green already, with brown water round their roots. The evening filled with the scent of tall tanaqui and the smell of damp smoke. Robin could not get the fire to go.

“Look,” said Duck, pointing down to where the reeds grew away under the water. A heron was standing there, with its head bent, looking for fish. “Look, a big brother, with long legs like sticks.” Trust Duck to remember Hern’s insult.

Hern roared with rage and dived at Duck.

Duck fled down among the tall rushes, hugging the Lady. “And a long nose!” he screamed back. Hern went galloping and squelching and roaring after him.

“Oh, go and stop them, Tanaqui!” Robin said. She was crouching over the fire, blowing it.

I went down among the rushes after my brothers, grumbling. I think it was too bad of them still. I could see where Hern had gone, from the path of trodden rushes and deep footprints filling with oily water, but even though it was getting dark, I was fairly sure that Duck had doubled back and was lying low uphill somewhere. When I came to the lake, all the light was in the water, and Hern was an angry shadow against it, with his head bent, glaring for Duck along the sopping shore. We were facing the pine trees on the point there, looking across the bay of muddy water from the stream and the lake.

Hern looked so like a heron, standing there, that I nearly laughed as I said, “Duck didn’t come this way.”

Hern turned round, saw I was laughing, and raised his hand to hit me. I turned to run away.

Then we neither of us moved because our mother’s voice said, “Hern! Tanaqui!”

We both turned the same way, to look out across the gloomy inlet. From that I know Hern heard it as well as I did. And I know I saw a shape standing there, in the mist above the water, whatever Hern says. I saw the dark body with a blur of whiter hair and a smudge of white face. The same voice said, “Stop fighting and look after Gull. You mustn’t let him go to the sea, whatever you do. Take him down to the watersmeet.”

“Take him where?” I said. “Mother, what’s wrong with Gull?” I heard Hern laughing while I said it. “What’s so funny?” I said.

“You standing there talking to trees and stones and half the boat,” Hern said. “Take a look.”

As he spoke, I saw it was true. The stern of the boat came out of the reeds a short way, with water showing beneath, and that was the lower half of the dark shape. The upper half was the trunk of a pine tree that seemed exactly above it. And above that I saw dimly that a bush was budding around a light-coloured rock, high up on the point, making the hair and the face. “But there was a voice,” I said. “You heard the voice.”

“The heron,” said Hern. There was indeed a bird crying out. The cries grew fainter as I listened, and I heard wingbeats. “We’re all tired out,” said Hern. “That’s what did it. I just hope Gull lets us get a proper night’s sleep tonight, or we’ll be as bad as he is.”

“It didn’t seem like being tired,” I said. I felt very foolish.

“Well, it wasn’t Mother,” said Hern. “She’s dead. I admit I made the same mistake for a second, but don’t say a word to Robin, will you? You’ll only upset her.”

I agreed to that. So many things upset Robin. We went back among the rushes and helped Robin get supper. Duck appeared when it was ready. Hern gave him a look in the firelight, but he did not say anything, and Duck sat down hugging the Lady and said nothing either.

Gull would not eat. He lay in the boat, growing colder and colder, and would only say, “Why can’t we go on?” Robin heaped all our blankets round him, but he never grew warm. Nor would he eat in the morning. But at least he was quiet that night. Duck gave him the Lady without being asked, and we had hours of good sleep.

We went on down the lake next day. By the middle of the morning we could see the high purple land standing right across our way, and we thought it was the end of the lake. But we could see no way for the River to flow out. Hern said that it must flow out, since the current in the middle of the lake was still strong. We agreed that we would eat lunch somewhere on the high purple shore and then look for the rest of the River. So as the land approached, Hern took down the sail, intending to row to the rocks on the shore. For all our knowledge of the River, we were fooled into doing that. The lake looked smooth and calm, and the rocks ahead were so vast that we did not see how fast we were moving until the sail was down. Then we saw we were not stopping. The crates and barrels and driftwood went with us at the same speed as before, and the mountain strode towards us.

“Oh good!” said Gull, lying in the bottom of the boat. “We’re really getting on.”

“I shall hit him!” said Hern, with his mouth pulled like a grin. “I shall really hit him!” He lugged the oars aboard again, because they did nothing but turn us this way and that, and fell on the sail, trying to hoist it again.

“Don’t do that!” Robin and I shrieked. The wind had gone, because we were right under the mountain, and the boat tipped horribly. Hern looked up to argue, but by then we were speeding straight at a huge cliff, and he put his arm over his head instead.

It looked as if we were going to crash into that cliff. You think a great many things very quickly when you see death coming. I thought: It’s a bad thing, the way Gull wants to get on! Bad, bad! and at the same time I wondered why there were no great waves dashing on the rock ahead. The water was all smooth, stretched smooth and rapid, with only a few yellow bubbles at the edge.

And then jerk. I thought my head had come off my neck. The boat turned in a wrench as the current turned, and we were thrown past the cliff into a narrow gap of roaring water.

Here the rushing was as loud as the night the floods came, with echo upon echo shouting within that. The big walls of rock were so high on either side that there seemed almost no light, and the sky a ribbon high above. The look I snatched at it showed great trees growing in the sides of the rock, looking small as bushes. But I could not keep my eyes off the River. I could not have done as Hern did and taken the keel up. I hung on to the sides of the boat and stared at the foaming water. It was crushed and tormented into a small space with great rocks in it, which tattered it into riding waves, threw it in spouts, and spun it in glassy circles. Our boat spun and tossed and raced with it. One moment we were in the centre, white under the light, and the next we were in black water at the sides of the gorge. Far down below in the black water, I could see ferns and grass growing, deep down on the sides of the cliff. I tried to shut my eyes – it was so deep – and went on staring in spite of myself.

I thought I heard screaming voices. I paid no attention until something came battering into the water just by the bows of the boat. The boat slewed round. I saw the spout of a splash just falling back into the water and looked up. There were tiny people up there, on top of the cliffs, black against the sky, and a thin bridge stretched across the gap. It had been broken. Two thicker halves stuck out on either side, and the centre had been mended with planks. I saw the light between the planks. The bridge was lined with round heads, and beside each head was a ragged round lump of rock, ready to drop on us.

“They think we’re Heathens!” Robin screamed. She dragged a blanket over her head and Duck’s, and half over Gull too. Hern and I were left outside. There was nothing we could do. Our boat swirled towards the bridge. The rocks moved, hung, and then got larger and larger, and we found our heads jerking up to watch and then down at the furious River, not knowing what to look at. All around us were spouts of water as the rocks came down. They jerked us this way and that, and I think it was the jerking that saved us. We were splashed all over, but nothing hit us. Then, before we had time to feel glad, there was more light and Hern was screaming there were rapids ahead.

We were through the falls the same moment. There was a lurch and a swoop, and the boat’s nose went down, heaving more water over Hern and me. After that we were out and sliding a boiling, racing width of water most of the way across a second smaller lake. I think the falls were not steep, but I did not dare look back. Sometimes I wake up at night thinking I hear the chunking splash of rocks coming down in the River, and I still tremble all over.

THIS IS TO BE a very big rugcoat. We have been here in the old mill for days and days now, and though I am weaving close and fine, I have still not half finished my story. Even so, I think I shall finish it long before Robin is well. She is more fretful every day, and her face is the colour of candles. I find it so hard to be patient with her. That is why I am weaving. When Uncle Kestrel first brought me my loom and my wheel and my wool, I was sick with impatience, and it all went so slowly. I had to spin my wool and set up the threads on the loom, and even when I began to weave, it took half the morning on the first sentence. But now I have found how to go fast. I set the first part of the pattern and cast the threads, there and back, and then the row to hold it, and while I do that, I am thinking of my next line. By the time I have finished that band of words, I often have the next three or four ready in my head. I go faster and faster, click

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