The Borrowers Afield (8 page)

A great moth had lumbered into the alcove, attracted by the candle; it was fawn-colored and, to Homily, hideous, drunk and blinded with light. "Save the tea—" she cried, panic-stricken, and seizing the purple thistle-head, beat wildly about the air. Shadows danced every way and, in their shouting and scolding, they hardly noticed a sudden, silent thickening of night swerve in on the dusk; but they felt the wind of its passing, watched the candle gutter, and saw the moth was gone.

"What was that?" asked Arrietty at last, after an awed silence.

"It was an owl," said Pod. He looked thoughtful.

"It ate the moth?"

"As it would eat you," said Pod, "if you went mucking about after dusk. We're living and learning," he said. "No more candles after dark. Up with the sun and down with the sun: that's us, from now on."

"The water's boiling, Pod," said Homily.

"Put the tea in," said Pod, "and douse the light: we can drink all right in the dark," and turning away he propped the broom handle back against the wall and, while Homily was making the tea, he tidied up the annex, stacking the ears of wheat alongside the boot, straightening the borrowing-bags, and generally seeing all was ship-shape for the night. When he had finished he crossed to the hanging shelf and ran a loving hand along his neatly hanging row of tools. Just before they doused the light, he stood for a long time, deep in thought—his hand on an empty nail.

Chapter Ten

"Necessity hath no Law."
Brigham Young died 1877

[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, August 29th]

T
HEY SLEPT
well and woke next morning bright and early. The sun poured slantwise into the alcove and, when Pod had unlaced it, into the neck of the boot. For breakfast Arrietty gathered six wild strawberries and Homily broke up some wheat grains with Pod's small bell-clapper which, sprinkled with water, they ate as cereal. "And, if you're still hungry, Arrietty," remarked Homily, "you can get yourself a nut." (Arrietty was and did.)

The program for the day was arranged as follows: Pod, in view of last night's happening, was to make a solitary expedition across the field to the island of trees in the center, in one last bid to find the badger's set. Homily, because of her fear of open spaces, would have to stay behind and Arrietty, Pod said, must keep her company. "There's plenty of jobs about the house," he told them. "To start with you can weather-proof one of the borrowing-bags, rub it all over hard with a bit of candle, and it'll do for carting water. Then you can take the fret-saw and saw off a few hazel nuts for drinking out of and while you're about it you can gather a few extra nuts and store them in the annex, seeing as we don't have a spade. There's a nice bit o' horse hair I saw in the hedge going toward the stile, caught on a bramble bush: you can fetch a bit o' that along, if you feel like it, and I'll see about making a fish net. And a bit more corn-crushing wouldn't come amiss...."

"Oh, come on, Pod—" protested Homily. "Oblige you, we'd like to, but we're not slaves."

"Well," said Pod, gazing thoughtfully across the ocean of tussocky grass, "it'll take me pretty near all day—getting there, searching around, and getting back: I don't want you fretting..."

"I knew it would end like this," said Homily later, in a depressed voice, as she and Arrietty were waxing the borrowing-bag. "What did I tell you always, back home, when you wanted to emigrate? Didn't I tell you just how it would be—drafts, moths, worms, snakes and what not? And you saw how it was when it rained? What's it going to be like in winter? You tell me that. No one can say I'm not trying," she went on, "and no one won't hear a word of grumble pass my lips, but you mark my words, Arrietty, we won't none of us see another spring." And a round tear fell on the waxed cloth and rolled away like a marble.

"What with the rat-catcher," Arrietty pointed out, "we wouldn't have if we stayed back home."

"And I wouldn't be surprised," Homily persisted, "if that boy wasn't right. Remember what he said about the end of the race? Our time is come, I shouldn't wonder. If you ask me, we're dying out."

But she cheered up a bit when they took the bag down to the water to fill it up and a sliver of soap to wash with: the drowsy heat and the gentle stir of ripples past their landing stage of bark seemed always to calm her; and she even encouraged Arrietty to have a bath and let her splash about a little in the shallows. For a being so light the water was incredibly buoyant and it would not be very long, Arrietty felt, before she would learn to swim. Where she had used the soap the water went cloudy and softly translucent, the shifting color of moonstones.

After her bath Arrietty felt refreshed and left Homily in the annex to "get the tea" and went on up the hedge to collect the horse hair. Not that there was anything to "get," Homily thought irritably, setting out a few hips and haws, and some watercress, and cracking a couple of nuts with the bell-clapper.

The horse hair, caught on a bramble, was halfway up the hedge, but Arrietty, refreshed by her dip, was glad of a chance to climb. On the way down, seeking a foothold, she let out a tiny scream: her toes had touched, not the cool bark, but something soft and warm. She hung there, grasping the horse hair and staring through the leaves. All was still—nothing but tangled branches, flecked with sunlight. After a second or two, in which she hardly dared to breathe, a flicker of movement caught her eye as though the tip of a branch had swayed. Staring she saw, like a bunch of budding twigs, the shape of a brownish hand. It could not be a hand, of course, she told herself, but that's what it looked like, with tiny, calloused fingers no larger than her own. Picking up courage, she touched it with her foot and the hand grasped her toes. Screaming and struggling, she lost her balance and came tumbling through the few remaining branches on to the dead leaves below. With her had fallen a small laughing creature no taller than herself. "That frighted you," it said.

Arrietty stared, breathing quickly. He had a brown face, black eyes, tousled dark hair and was dressed in what she guessed to be shabby moleskin, worn smooth side out: he seemed so soiled and earth-darkened that he matched not only the dead leaves into which they had fallen but the blackened branches as well. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Spiller," he said cheerfully, lying back on his elbows.

"You're filthy," remarked Arrietty disgustedly after a moment. She was still very angry.

"Maybe," he said.

"Where do you live?"

His dark eyes became sly and amused. "Here and there," he said, watching her closely.

"How old are you?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Are you a boy or grown-up?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Don't you ever wash?"

"No," he said.

"Well," said Arrietty, after an awkward silence, twisting the coarse strands of grayish horse hair about her wrist, "I'd better be going..."

"To that hole in the bank?" he asked—the hint of a jeer in his voice.

Arrietty looked startled. "Do you know it?" When he smiled, she noticed, his lips turned steeply upwards at the corners making his mouth a "V": it was the most teasing kind of smile she had ever seen.

"Haven't you ever seen a moth before?" he asked.

"You were watching last night?" exclaimed Arrietty.

"Were it private?" he asked.

"In a way: it's our home."

But he looked bored suddenly, turning his bright gaze away as though searching the more distant grasses. Arrietty opened her mouth to speak but he silenced her with a peremptory gesture, his eyes on the field below. Very curious, she watched him rise cautiously to his feet and then, in a single movement, spring to a branch above his head, reach for something out of sight and drop again to the ground. The object, she saw, was a taut, dark bow strung with gut and almost as tall as he was; in the other hand, he held an arrow.

Staring into the long grass, he laid the arrow to the bow, the gut twanged and the arrow was gone. There was a faint squeak.

"You've killed it," cried Arrietty, distressed.

"I meant to," he replied and sprang down the bank into the field. He made his way to the tussock of grass and returned after a moment with a dead field mouse swinging from his hand. "You got to eat," he explained.

Arrietty felt deeply shocked. She did not know quite why—at home, under the kitchen, they had always eaten meat; but borrowed meat from the kitchen upstairs: she had seen it raw but she had never seen it killed.

"We're vegetarians," she said primly. He took no notice: this was just a word to Spiller, one of the noises which people made with their mouths. "Do you want some meat?" he asked casually. "You can have a leg."

"I wouldn't touch it," cried Arrietty indignantly. She rose to her feet, brushing down her skirt. "Poor thing," she said, referring to the field mouse, "and I think you're horrid," she said, referring to him.

"Who isn't?" remarked Spiller, and reached above his head for his quiver.

"Let me look," begged Arrietty, turning back, suddenly curious.

He passed it to her: it was made, she saw, of a glove finger—the thickish leather of a country glove; the arrows were dry pine-needles, tipped with black-thorn.

"How do you stick the thorns to the shaft?" she asked.

"Wild plum gum," replied Spiller.

"Are they poisoned?" asked Arrietty.

"No," said Spiller. "Fair's fair. Hit or miss. They got to eat—I got to eat. And I kill 'em quicker than an owl does. Nor I don't eat so many." It was quite a long speech for Spiller. He slung his quiver over his shoulder and turned away. "I'm going," he said.

Arrietty scrambled quickly down the bank. "So am I," she told him.

They walked along in the dry ditch together. Spiller, she noticed, as he walked glanced sharply about him: the bright black eyes were never still. Sometimes, at a slight rustle in grass or hedge, he would become motionless: there would be no tensing of muscles—he would just cease to move. On such occasions, Arrietty realized, he exactly matched his background. Once he dived into a clump of dead bracken and came out again with a struggling insect.

"Here you are," he said and Arrietty, staring, saw some kind of angry beetle.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A cricket. They're nice. Take it."

"To eat?" asked Arrietty, aghast.

"Eat? No. You take it home and keep it. Sings a treat," he added.

Arrietty hesitated. "You carry it," she said, without committing herself.

When they came abreast of the alcove, Arrietty looked up and saw that Homily, tired of waiting, had dozed off. She was sitting on the sunlit sand and had slumped against the boot.

"Mother—" she called softly from below and Homily woke at once. "Here's Spiller..." Arrietty went on, a trifle uncertainly.

"Here's what?" asked Homily, without interest. "Did you get the horse hair?"

Arrietty glancing sideways at Spiller saw that he was in one of his stillnesses and had become invisible. "It's my mother," she whispered. "Speak to her. Go on."

Homily, hearing a whisper, peered down, screwing her eyelids against the setting sun.

"What shall I say?" asked Spiller. Then, clearing his voice, he made an effort. "I got a cricket," he said. Homily screamed: it took her a moment to add the dun-colored patches together into the shapes of face, eyes and hands; it was to Homily as though the grass had spoken.

"What ever is it?" she gasped. "Oh, my goodness gracious, Arrietty, whatever have you got there?"

"It's a cricket" said Spiller again, but it was not to this insect Homily referred.

"It's Spiller," Arrietty repeated more loudly, and in an aside she whispered to Spiller, "Drop that dead thing and come on up...."

Spiller not only dropped the field mouse but a fleeting echo of some dim, half-forgotten code must have flicked his memory, and he laid aside his bow as well. Unarmed, he climbed the bank.

Homily stared at Spiller rather rudely when he stepped onto the sandy platform before the boot. She moved right forward, keeping him at bay. "Good afternoon," she said coldly. It was as though she spoke from the threshold.

Spiller dropped the cricket and propelled it toward her with his toe. "Here you are," he said. Homily screamed again, very loudly and angrily, as the cricket scuttled, knee high, past her skirts and made for the darker shadow behind the boot. "It's a present, Mother," Arrietty explained indignantly. "It's a cricket: it sings—"

But Homily would not listen. "How dare you! How dare you! How dare you! You naughty, dirty, unwashed boy." She was nearly in tears. "How could you? You go straight out of my house this minute. Lucky," she went on, "that my husband's not at home, nor my brother Hendreary neither...."

"Uncle Hendreary—" began Arrietty, surprised, and, if looks could kill, Homily would have struck her dead.

"Take your beetle," Homily went on to Spiller, "and go! And never let me see you here again!" As Spiller hesitated, she added in a fury, "Do you hear what I say?"

Spiller threw a swift look toward the rear of the boot and a somewhat pathetic one toward Arrietty. "You can keep it," he said gruffly, and dived off down the bank.

"Oh, Mother—" exclaimed Arrietty reproachfully: she stared at the "tea" her mother had set out, and even the fact that her mother had filled the half hips with clover honey milked from the blooms, failed to interest her. "Poor Spiller! You were rude...."

"Well, who is he? What does he want here? Where did you find him? Forcing his way on respectable people and flinging beetles about! Wouldn't be surprised if we all woke up one day with our throats cut. Did you see the dirt! Ingrained! I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't left a flea—" and she seized the thistle-broom and briskly swept the spot where the miserable Spiller had placed his unwelcome feet. "I never had such an experience as this. Never! Not in all my born days. Now, that's the type," she concluded fiercely, "who would steal a hat pin!"

Secretly, Arrietty thought so too but she did not say so, using her tongue instead to lick a little of the honey out of the split rose hip. She also thought, as she savored the sun-warmed sweetness, that Spiller, the huntsman, would make better use of the hat pin than either her mother or father could. She wondered why he wanted the half nail scissor. "Have you had your tea?" she asked Homily after a moment.

"I've eaten a couple of wheat grains," admitted Homily in a martyred voice. "Now I must air the bedding."