The Golden Flight (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Rowan’s and Marguerite’s groups exchanged news while watching the banks for signs of another attack. Chip was at the water’s edge peering down as the place where they had come ashore but was unable to see anything as the swans’ feet had stirred up the clay making the water a milky white. The swans themselves were now feeding quietly in the water, reaching down with their long necks and searching the pool bottom for tasty morsels.

Marguerite’s mind was already formulating an escape plan. She stood up and looked along the pool.

‘SWANS –

The swans raised their heads.

‘CAN YOU FLY WITH TWO SQUIRRELS EACH?

The swans raised their heads in unison.

‘CAN YOU FLY WITH
THREE
SQUIRRELS EACH?’

The swans appeared to consult each other, then shook their heads violently.

‘THANK YOU - STAY CLOSE.’

She counted their combined party and did some calculations, wishing that she had Chip’s Bark-rush to help. She called Chip over and explained the problem. He counted on his claws.

‘With three swans, six squirrels can go at a time, so if six go on the first flight and one squirrel comes back, we then have five, and with the one who came back, that’ll make up six for the second flight – two for each swan. No problem.’

It was decided that Marguerite was to take the other five females on the first flight and return for the five males on the second.

Lord Malachite had seen the swans land on the water and had overcome his fear of the Woodstock sufficiently to peep from behind his tree.

He was amazed to see the three swans wade ashore, each pick up a squirrel and lift it on to its back, then do the same with a second squirrel. He was even more amazed when the swans waded into the water, swam out a little way, flapped their wings and ran along the surface before taking off heavily and flying away to the north-east. He was furious – half his enemy had escaped!

Marguerite guided the swans to land on the lagoon at Ourland in a place away from where they might be seen by humans. The squirrels hurried away, led by Wood Anemone who was the only one to have lived on that island before. Marguerite instructed the swans to return to Rowan’s Pool.

‘SWANS –

ONE SWAN PICK ME UP –

THREE SWANS FLY BACK TO WHERE YOU HAVE COME FROM –

ACTION NOW –

The swans ran across the water and took off, Marguerite on the back of the leading swan. This is getting to be almost a routine, she was thinking. What a wonderful way of travelling this flying business is.

She turned her head to watch the unladen swans behind her. There was only one other there! Away to her left, and now ell on its way towards the swannery at Abbotsbury, was the other swan.

‘THIRD SWAN –

REJOIN THE OTHERS –

ACTION NOW –

REJOIN THE OTHERS –

ACTION NOW –

Marguerite projected her thoughts in the direction of the single swan, now just a speck in the distance but there was no sign that they were being received.

‘TWO SWANS –

STAY TOGETHER –

FLY DOWN TO THE POOL BELOW –

ACTION NOW –

Rowan seeing only two swans return, rushed down to the water’s edge, fearing the worst.

‘Are all the females all right? Meadowsweet, Bluebell...’

Marguerite reassured him, explained what had happened, then turned –

‘TWO SWANS –

WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS –

WAIT NOW –

Chip was counting on his claws again.

‘There are six of us and two swans, which can each carry two squirrels. So four can go but one must come back, so there must be two flights, with only three squirrels on the last flight.’

Rowan tried to insist that
he
stay for the final flight but it was eventually settled by drawing twigs. Spindle and Hickory drew the short ones. They would stay, with the Woodstock to protect them.

Rowan and Marguerite were lifted on to one swan and Sycamore and Chip on to the other. Chip had hoped that he could recover his golden coin and had searched for it surreptitiously, while waiting for the swans to return, but without success.

‘TWO SWANS…

Malachite watched the birds fly off. He was not good at counting but knew there could only be two squirrels left on the island – three at the most. If they got away, so would his chance of ever becoming the Great Lord Silver. He would be the laughing stock of New America. He ordered one more charge…

Spindle and Hickory were sitting on the highest point of the Eyeland, Spindle keeping the Woodstock sighted on the bridge and Hickory watching the opposite bank.

When the grey attackers poured down towards the bridge, Spindle waited until the first were actually on the fallen trunk before scratching a
 after the
 on the Woodstock.

The force spiralled out and several Greys fell into the water. Spindle scratched another
 and the mass hesitated, then turned and scrambled awkwardly up the bank. Spindle tried a
 as they went over the top but there was no noticeable effect on the enemy and no familiar tingle in his own whiskers. The Woodztok’z power huz all gone, he thought.

The last of the wet Greys had hauled themselves ashore and climbed out of sight when a streak of blue and gold flashed past Spindle’s head. A compact little bird with a long straight beak perched on the stump of a broken branch projecting from the fallen tree and peered down into the water below.

‘Turn thiz way, very zlowly,’ Spindle said.

Hickory took one look along the opposite shoreline and did as Spindle had instructed. He saw the brilliantly coloured bird.

‘What is it?’ he asked in a whisper.

‘Him’z a kingfizher bird. Yew hardly ever zeez wun of them. Uz’z lucky today.’

Hickory smiled to himself. He had grown fond of the ex-zervant, with his patient, helpful manner, always ready to accept whatever Life threw at him. Here were the two of them, on a tiny island, outnumbered many times over by squirrels with a totally different outlook, who were determined to kill them both, and he was saying they were lucky to see a bird!

Now he was quoting one of their Kernels –

‘Zquirrelz do not live

By nutz alone. Take time off

To zeek out beauty.’

Hickory looked at the bird again. The blue plumage of its back and tail was brighter than the sky above, brighter even than the reflected blue of the water below. The feathers on its underside glowed more red than gold, more gold than chestnuts. He did not even know a name for that colour.

The bird tilted off the broken branch and dived into the water, to rise a moment later with a dragonfly larva in its beak which it smashed against a tree and swallowed head first.

With a flicker of its wings it sped along the pool, a gold and blue streak above the pink and white of the lilies.

‘My Wood Anemone do call Kingzfizherz the birdz of happinezz,’ Spindle said.

Hickory’s tail arched into a ‘question,.’ sensed by Spindle though he was still watching the bridge.

‘Her zayz that it iz no good expecting to be happy
all
the time – Life’z not like that. Now and then yew will get a glimpze of happinezz – like now and then yew will see a kingfisher bird. Enjoy it when yew can, her zayz.’

‘Kingsfishers or happiness?’ Hickory asked.

‘Both, yew zilly zquirrel,’ Spindle said, amusement and affection in his voice.

‘Uz iz lucky then, izn’t uz, Spindle-friend,’ said Hickory imitating the Ourland accent as the Greys again poured down the bank for another attack.

Hickory was alongside Spindle. ‘Use the Woodstock, use the Woodstock,’ he shouted as the Greys streamed across the tree trunk.

‘Him’z Zun-gone,’ said Spindle kicking the twisted stock down the bank and into the water as he leapt for a tree. Hickory leapt for another, ran up it and across a branch into Spindle’s tree.

‘Up to the top,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

Greys were climbing all three trees, trying to get above the two fugitives but the tree Spindle had chosen was the tallest and the two stopped just below the highest cluster of needles and turned to face downwards, one squirrel on each side of the slender trunk. The top swayed with the movements of the many Greys climbing towards them.

Lord Malachite, having learned that the Totem Stick was dead, had come out of hiding and was standing on the bridge urging others on.

‘Prime territories for those who kill,’ he shouted. ‘Kill the traitor. Kill the Brown Job. Kill, kill, kill!’

‘This is it, Spindle-Friend,’ said Hickory, twisting his tail around the trunk where it met Spindle’s. The tails hooked together as a ring of savage Greys climbed ever nearer. The Red and the Grey, their tails tightly intertwined in a symbolic twist of friendship, hung by their back feet and slashed desperately at the attackers.

Grey after Grey fell back, faces torn and bleeding from the claws and teeth of the squirrels above them until Malachite called a halt and the attackers withdrew down the trunk to gather round the old Lord as he gave them new instructions.

Hickory and Spindle, tails still linked, strained unsuccessfully to hear what was being said.

Soon the change of plan became apparent. Four Greys climbed the tree together, stopped just out of reach of the bloodstained claws above them and started to gnaw simultaneously through the thin trunk. Chunks of bark and splinters of wood fell among the massed Greys waiting on the Eyeland below. The scent of fresh resin drifted up to Spindle and Hickory.

‘Uz do love that zmell,’ said Spindle.

‘Take a good sniff then,’ replied Hickory. ‘It’ll probably be our last. The Sun be with you.’

‘And with yew,’ said Spindle as the tree’s top lurched sideways and fell into the grey mass below.

Marguerite flew back from Ourland to Rowan’s Pool for the final pick-up, taking care that her instructions to the swans could not be misunderstood. As they glided in and landed on the water she knew that something terrible had happened. The swans paddled towards the Eyeland which seemed silent and deserted. Then she saw the two bodies, one red and one grey, hanging from the highest tree, their necks jammed into forks, their tails swinging in the evening breeze. High in a tree on the deserted bank of the Mainland she glimpsed a grey movement. It was another tail, that of Sitka.