Midwinter Nightingale (26 page)

Dear old Cousin Samuel:

…As I stood in my chilly Convenience, gazing out at the evening mist on that day fifteen years ago, I became aware of a cautious skinny figure dressed in white, which was making its way silently and warily toward the waste bins.

Really there was no need to tiptoe, as this ferocious battle was being fought a few miles to the south, and the noise of cannon and musket fire and grenades quite drowned the cries of gulls and the evening twitters of the birds. Yes, the Battle of Follodden. You remember it, I'm sure.

People are always rather self-conscious about visiting the waste bins. They are still there now, a row of four against the drystone wall. They have labels on them: WICKER BOXES, BOTTLES, PAPER, GARMENTS. The bottle bin has three round holes for CLEAR, BROWN, and GREEN. The paper bin has a hinged letter-box flap over its slot. And the garment bin has a massive, heavy, cylindrical drawer-like fitment. You pull it toward you by a brass handle, and when you have pushed in your bundle of trousers or whatever, you let go of the handle and it swings upward and shoots your offering down onto the pile inside. The bins are cleared by council carts, which come every month at midday when the Hobyahs are not active, and the contents are sold or given away to the poor of the parish, who are glad to receive them, however ragged.

Hobyahs are not interested in the contents of the bins. It is true that Hobyahs enjoy a good mess—if clothes or bottles are left lying on the grass, the Hobyahs will tear and smash and throw them all over the ground—but what they really go for is live meat.

Me? No, dear Samuel, the Hobyahs are not interested in me. Long ago they gave me up as a bad job. And they are afraid of my friend Tatzen over the loch. And they don't like my broom or my golf club; all the years they have hung outside my door they have never been touched.

People don't care to be seen dumping their bottles and cast-off clothes. They leave that task till the last possible moment before the Hobyahs come out of their holes…. Sometimes they leave it too late and then there is an unexplained disappearance. Sometimes that is blamed on me.

Well, I watched this thin, cautious, white-clad character making her way toward the garment bin, and I soon came to the conclusion that it was my sister Hild. You never forget a person's walk. We had not met since I ran away from home to enter the Seminary of the Three Secrets, where I met you, dear Samuel, but I could see that now was the time to break that silence.

I have a carrier pigeon so as to communicate with my friend Tatzen on the north side of the loch. And it will carry this letter to you by and by. I wrapped a message round its leg and launched it from my broken doorway. “In the coach park by the garment bin. I'm going there now.” Then I floated over on my broom quicker and easier than a sprint.

I tapped Hild on the shoulder as she was in the act of pulling the brass handle, and said, “I shouldn't do that if I were you.”

She jumped as if an arrow had hit her and said, “Why not?” And she added, “What business is it of yours, anyway? You nasty dirty low-down witch?”

I can't remember if you met my sister Hild? We never did get on when we were living as sisters in the same house. My sailor dad was drowned, you may remember, so then Ma married Stan
Hugglepuck, who ran the Dukes Arms and later became Provost. Hild was his daughter. There's just a year between us, but she was always bigger and bossier, and Stan never took to me. One of the reasons why I ran away to study the Ninefold Path.

I said, “Because they just emptied the garment bin yesterday. They won't be round again for a month.”

“What's that got to do—” she began irritably, but then the white-wrapped bundle that she had been on the point of dropping into the brass cylinder stirred and let out a thin whimper. Our eyes met over the linen wrappings.

I said: “He'd starve to death before the council cart came again. Wouldn't be very nice for them to find his body.”

Hild snapped, “How do you know it isn't a girl?”

To me, that didn't seem to make much difference. We stood and eyed each other.

At that moment there was a whistling overhead, like the wind in ships' rigging. Louder than the distant gunfire. We looked up. It was my friend Tatzen the otter-worm, circling overhead, letting out little puffs of hot flickering air.

Hild let out a terrified scream. Then she did a thing that really surprised me. Dropping the live bundle, she snatched my broom, mounted it inexpertly—I don't suppose she had ever ridden a broom in her life—and lit off, on a zigza.g course, up into the air.

I thought, Oh, well, let her go—brooms are replaceable, after all—and I stooped to pick the bundle off the ground before the Hobyahs arrived.

It was letting out some perplexed, indignant yells.

Tatzen had done a U-turn and gone after Hild, who was riding jerkily in the direction of the loch. It seemed likely that he would overtake and grab her before she reached the waterside.

She looked back, saw him, and dived downward. Vanished into a bank of mist.

And that was a mistake because the Hobyahs were beginning to stir under the thick vapor that lay like frost on a cake over the grassy slope. You could see the mist stirring and humping as they moved about, coming out of their burrows, waking, rubbing heir big bulging eyes. Scratching the ground wih heir claws. Grinding their teeth.

I heard a shrill scream, and then a lot of short frantic cries.

Then silence.

Tatzen turned and came back to settle beside me in the coach park. Stretching his stumpy legs and his long furry neck, he studied the bundle in my arms.

“Hold it a minute,” says I, “while I go and look in he coach.”

For there was a mud-splashed coach and four exhausted horses parked by the entrance.

But nothing could be learned from the coach. The woman inside it was dead, poor hing. There was no luggage, no belongings, no clue to tell who she was or where she had come from. The coach driver had gone, and we would not be hearing any more from my sister Hild. I undid the traces so that the four weary horses could get away from the Hobyahs when they arrived, as hey soon would.

Then I went back to Tatzen. He had coiled himself into a ring
and was thoughtfully studying the small face that poked out from the folds of the linen napkin.

“The mother's dead,” I said.

“What'll we do with this?”

“You had better take it across the loch and leave it on someone's doorstep. No Hobyahs on that side of the water.”

I expected him to argue, and I was prepared to point out that my broom had been stolen, but to my mild surprise he said, “Very well,” and rose vertically into the air, letting out small puffs of steam.

The sounds of battle were coming closer all the time.

Tatzen has not shown much concern for
my
welfare, I thought rather sourly. But otter-worms and humans have different priorities; you have got to make allowance for the fact that they are cold-blooded creatures, partly amphibian. And he had relieved me of a responsibility.

I went back to my Convenience, skirting round some dozy Hobyahs, and took down my golf club from its hook.

A golf club is not so good as a broom but is better than nothing.

I'd go and check on the bundle in five years or so. See how it was making out.

Best wishes, dear Samuel, from your loving cousin. How are
you
getting on?

Malise

Published by Dell Yearling an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.

New York

Copyright © 2003 by Joan Aiken Enterprises, Ltd.

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