The Ropemaker (38 page)

This seemed to be what the unicorns had been waiting for. One after another they emerged from the opening and paced solemnly along beside the lake, moving not like ordinary animals, tame or wild, but like a team of dancers entering to begin some stately dance. There were twenty-three of them, and the single foal. Their reflections gleamed, perfect, in the unruffled surface.

They gathered in a wide circle around Meena and stood and waited. Her voice had dropped so low that Tilja could no longer hear it as Meena sank to the ground and spread her arms in a gesture of welcome. The unicorns came right up to her and lay down, without any jostling, but arranging themselves in two exact rings, their bodies spreading out like the petals of an open flower. Tilja understood that she was watching something wholly magical, not the man-magic of Talagh, or of the ring, but the kind of magic by which Faheel had made friends with mountains and with oceans. She was filled with delighted amazement that she, Tilja, whose touch could undo powerfully woven charms and destroy great magicians, was allowed to watch this happen.

After a long while the song ended. Meena bowed her head. The unicorns backed away into their circle and returned to her, one at a time. Each lowered its horn and touched her above the heart. She in her turn laid her fingers on each muzzle, both gestures clearly blessings of farewell. The foal came with its mother, seeming to know exactly what to do. Its horn was about as long as Tilja’s middle finger.

When they had finished they turned and came just as solemnly back along the lake, but before they reached the opening something seemed to startle them. They bolted and were gone. Meena hadn’t moved. She was sitting as before, with her head bowed, deep in her trance. She didn’t look up when Anja appeared running along the far side of the lake, shouting excitedly. A moment later Ma came out of the trees, leading Tiddikin by the bridle. Tilja ran, and met them on the other side of the clearing.

“The cedars told us!” cried Anja, gasping for breath every few words. “They’ve woken up! I heard them talking. So did Ma! They said we’d find you by the lake, and we did! Are you all right? Da’s gone to fight the horse people! Calico came back! She’s got
wings
! She’s gone too! And those boys! Where’s Meena? What’s that girl doing by
our
lake?”

Tilja didn’t answer, but gave her a hug and kiss and ran to meet Ma. Ma knelt and held her tight, both of them sobbing quietly. Her hug was as awkward as ever.

“Oh, I’m so happy to see you!” Tilja said as soon as she could speak. “Is Da all right? The river told us the pass was open and there’d been fighting in the Valley.”

Ma let go, rose and dried her face on her skirt. “Horsemen came through the passes, just like we said they would. People always start to believe you when it’s too late. Da’s gone to help try and fight them back, of course. That was ten days ago. We’ve been coming up to the forest every day to see if the cedars had anything to tell us, but they’ve been asleep, oh, almost since you left. And then this morning they started to wake up, just mutters and mumbles at first, but—Anja can hear them better than I can, and she swore they were saying you and Meena were coming back through the forest.”

“Nothing about the fighting?”

“No, but . . . I suppose that’s Meena, over there?”

She asked the question so matter-of-factly that Tilja blinked. Then she remembered what Anja had said and realized that if you’ve seen what you know to be a cantankerous brute of a horse come flying into your farmyard, ridden by two boys, one of whom you last saw as a blind old man, then it mightn’t be hard to believe anything, let alone work out what had happened to Meena. Anja must have made the connection too, she now saw. She was kneeling beside Meena, bombarding her with questions, giving her no time to answer, and Meena had her arm round her and was laughing aloud.

Tilja had no idea how Ma’s meeting with Meena would go. It must be very strange for both of them, she guessed, even stranger than it had been for Tilja herself, finding her grandmother had become a sort of elder sister. They stood and looked at each other for a while; then Meena stretched out her hands and Ma took them and they kissed each other gently.

“I suppose I’ve got a third daughter now,” said Ma.

“If you like,” said Meena, laughing. And then, still laughing, but with a note of the old sharpness beneath the words, “You’ll have to make the most of it,
Ma
. Soon as Alnor comes back and we’ve done what we’ve got to, I’ll be telling you what’s what again, like always.”

20

Home

It was sunset when they came out of the forest, a fiery sky to the west, and a soft pink light glinting off the northern snow peaks. Tilja stopped and gazed down at the long-loved farmstead. It looked shuttered and dark and still. All the way from the lake she had been twanging with worry about Da. According to Ma, the boys had arrived two days back in the last light, told her their news, and at dawn flown off to the army. Ma didn’t think there could be much that two boys, even on a flying horse, could do against a horde of mounted warriors, but Tilja was confident in the Ropemaker’s magic. That wasn’t enough, though. Da had left ten days earlier, taking Dusty with him. Neither of them knew anything about war, and there must have been fighting already. Anything could have happened to Da, and she knew it and Ma and Meena knew it, and all the while they had trudged between the trees it had been impossible to think about anything else.

But now, as she stood and looked out over the darkening Valley, she found she could put that aside as her whole being brimmed with happiness to be home. No, she could not stay here forever. Yes, everything could still go agonizingly wrong. But this was the place she belonged, at least for now, as a fox belongs in its lair. Home.

Anja, perched on Tiddykin’s back, pointed northwest.

“Look! Look!” she cried.

They looked. Black against the flaming sky, already far too large for any bird, wide wings spread into a long glide, Calico too was coming home. Now Tilja could see the riders on her back, and how in flight she tucked her legs up beneath her, as if she were jumping a hedge—something that, as far as Tilja knew, she’d never attempted in her life. She circled twice, the second time so low that they could hear the whistle of her plumes. Tiddykin looked up and whinnied, apparently recognizing her despite her strange behavior. She answered with a ringing neigh and settled into the farmyard with a mighty battering of wings that sent all the loose straw litter swirling up in a flurry that caught the last rays of the sun and glinted gold as it rose above the shed roofs.

Tilja and Meena picked up their skirts and ran down the spare ground and across the meadow. Anja slid down and scampered after them. They reached the farmyard to find Calico stuck in the stable door, unable to go any further because her wings wouldn’t go through. She was starting to flap them with all the panicky indignation of a hen being stuffed into a coop. A glancing blow sent Tahl crashing into the water butt. Alnor shouted. Calico heaved and flapped and squealed. A little more of this and she’d have the stables down.

Tilja was over the gate before she knew it and running for the far door. She grabbed a handful of yellownut and thrust it under Calico’s nose. Calico paused and sniffed at it, unbelieving—yellownut after all these months. She lowered her head, but Tilja had moved her hand and she had to take a pace back to reach it. Then another, and another, until she was out.

Tilja gave her the yellownut and heaved the door shut while the horse chewed it. Anja was already pestering Tahl.

“What happened?” she was saying. “Where’ve you been? Why are they kissing like that? That’s my grandma! Grandmas don’t kiss people! Not like that!”

“I know how you feel,” said Tahl. “That’s my grandpa.”

“Did you see my da? Did he kill a lot of people?”

“Tell you later. Is there anything to eat? We’re starving. There was food at the camp, but Calico had got it into her head she was coming home.”

“Barn rat with wings,” said Tilja. “Da’s all right, then?”

She put it like that because his face hadn’t changed when Anja had asked him.

“Fine,” he said cheerfully. “I told him you were on your way home, so he started back yesterday as soon as the fighting was over. We got him on one of the rafts. The river’s in spate, so he could be back tonight.”

“Fighting?” said Anja. “Tell me! Tell me!”

“Food,” said Tahl, “or I’ll eat
you
!”

Despite his obvious weariness he seemed in tearing high spirits. Ma took Anja off to start getting a meal together while Tilja rubbed Calico down, wearing gloves so that she didn’t touch the magical wings with her bare hands. There was a strange mark, like a burn, on Calico’s right flank. When she’d finished she coaxed Calico into the barn, which had much bigger doors than the stable, bribing her shamelessly with yellownut to get her to behave, and then tethering her as close as she safely could in front of a full manger. Tiddykin got a good share of yellownut too, because she’d waited so patiently and then done whatever was asked of her without it. By the time Tilja reached the kitchen the others were sitting down to eat.

Home felt like a shoe that didn’t quite fit, a shoe the right size and shape, but with odd little bumps and hardnesses that the foot isn’t used to, a shoe that needs wearing in. Nothing in the kitchen had changed, that she could see. It was the people—Anja cocky and bossy as ever, especially now that she was so excited at their homecoming, but different. When Tilja had given her the mother-of-pearl hair comb she had bought for her in the market at Ramram, and somehow ferried home unbroken, through all her adventures, Anja had been delighted with it, but instead of rushing off and looking for something she could see her reflection in and then flaunting it in front of everyone and pestering them for admiration, she had first thanked Tilja rather gravely, almost as a grown-up might have done, and actually said it must have been a nuisance to carry it all that far. Yes, Anja had changed, because for several months now she had been the elder daughter, and one day Woodbourne was going to be hers, and she had begun to understand in her bones what that meant.

That hurt. Tilja didn’t want it to, but it did. She had accepted with her mind, and believed that she had accepted with her heart, that her own life was going to be elsewhere, but it wasn’t wholly true. Not yet.

The change in Ma was different, subtler, harder to pin down and then understand. Tilja first noticed it when Anja was prattling on about going up to the forest “every, every day” to see if the cedars had woken up. Ma made the usual gesture with her hand to tell her that that was enough, started to say something herself, and stopped. That would never have happened in the old days. Either she wouldn’t have spoken or else she would have known before she started exactly what she intended to say, and said it. She seemed to have lost some of that confidence.

Once she noticed, Tilja saw other tiny signs of this change, slight hesitations in familiar actions, an odd, quick smile that didn’t seem to mean anything at all, fiddlings with loose wisps of hair. Perhaps, she thought, it was something to do with the magic dying out of the forest. Once that had happened, what was the point of Ma being at Woodbourne at all, instead of Grayne? What was the point of all those Urlasdaughters before her, trudging out year after year through the winter snows to sing to the unicorns? Twenty generations of certainty, gone. Oh, the cedars were talking again. Only that afternoon Meena had sat by the lake with the unicorns spread round her, singing to tell them she was home, and was reweaving the magic for another twenty generations. But nothing would ever bring back the old certainties into Ma’s own mind. So she fiddled with her hair.

At first the boys were too busy wolfing their meal to talk much, so they hadn’t begun on their story before they heard Brando’s yap of welcome from his kennel by the door. Tilja rose eagerly and turned to fetch the lantern, but Anja was there first and snatched it up.

“Anja,” said Ma, firmly. “Da would like to say hello to Tilja first. He’s been very worried about her.”

“I’ve been worried about
him
,” said Anja, but handed the lantern over. Tilja lit it with a spill from the stove and carried it out into the yard, where she found Da wiping Dusty down with a fistful of straw, as if all he’d been doing was a day’s plowing. He turned and gazed at her in silence.

“I told you I’d come home,” she said.

Without a word he picked her up as if he were about to lift her onto Dusty’s back, just as he’d done almost a year ago, sending her out to look for Ma by the lake. He held her for a moment, studying her face, and set her down.

“You’re tired,” she said.

“Not as tired as I might have been. I’d’ve had five days on the road, but for the raftmen. You’ve grown. It’s been a while. Done what you went for?”

“Yes, in the end. I hope so, anyway. We’ll know when the snows come. Da, I haven’t just grown, I’ve changed. But this is still home.”

“Good.”

That was all, and all she’d expected, but she could feel his happiness echoing hers, so it was enough.

Tired though they all were they talked far into the night, exchanging their adventures.

“And don’t leave anything out,” said Anja. “Da always leaves stuff out. I want to know
everything
.”

“Do my best,” said Da.

“Good,” said Anja, and fell asleep, and after that slept and woke and asked questions and was asleep again before they were answered.

Just as Anja had said, Da couldn’t help leaving most of his story out. His hands spoke better than his tongue. But piecing his mumblings together, Tilja made out that as soon as the pass was open, in high summer, the raids had begun, but had been driven off without too much loss. Then there’d been a lull, until eighteen days ago the lookouts on the crags had reported an army of horsemen massing on the northern plain, and the message had gone out for all able-bodied men to rally below the pass.

They had made their stand at the foot of the mountains, on a long meadow, rising to a ridge, and flanked on one side by precipitous stony woodland and on the other by the ravine carved out by the melting glacier. All one day they had held off the attacks of the horsemen, but during the night a large troop of the enemy had somehow climbed down into the ravine and swum their horses down the swollen river, so when they woke next morning the men of the Valley had found themselves surrounded.

There was nothing for it but to turn about, facing both ways, and stick it out long as they lasted. For a while there was heavy, close fighting, and then the horsemen sounded their horns and drew off, readying for the final assault. The men of the Valley waited, knowing they were done for. Da was seeing to Dusty (“Suppose I was saying good-bye to him,” he muttered) when all of a sudden the horse gave a great squeal and reared up. Men were shouting all along the line, and he looked round and saw the enemy, all over the place, struggling to control their horses. . . .

“And there, rushing in above them like, like I don’t know what, was—”

“Calico!” yelled Anja, wide awake for the moment.

Da laughed with the rest of them. The interruption somehow seemed to loosen his tongue.

“That’s right, chicken,” he said. “Only I didn’t recognize her, didn’t even spot her for a horse, not at first, nor that she had riders on her, because hardly had I seen her before the fire came down, ropes of it, wriggling around in the air and lashing out at the men below. And men and horses were screaming and bolting around, and the fire ropes went snaking off after ’em, dragging the men out of the saddles.

“The thing circled round close by us a couple of times so now we could see it was a horse, a horse with wings, and a couple of fellows on its back, one of them holding the reins and the one behind making the fire ropes. Then it came on at us and I ducked down, thinking we were for it too, but the fire laid off while it went over and then it shot out ten times as strong the other side, where the main lot of the enemy were. The lie of the ground had stopped ’em seeing what was up beyond us, so they’d almost reached our line when it fell on ’em. They heaved round and raced yelling for the pass and the flying thing swooped to and fro, harrying ’em on.

“We’d mostly turned to watch what was happening, and now the fellows who’d got behind us came hammering through, taking no notice of us, no more than if we’d been a row of bushes or something, so we opened up and let ’em by and they raced on and joined the scrimmage at the foot of the pass. But there must’ve been a couple of hundred of ’em—more—they left lying on the ground, and riderless ponies careering about. And we just stood there, not knowing what to make of it. One moment we’d thought we were dead men, and next it was all over.

“There’s a lot of good men we won’t see again. Young Prin down at Siddlebrook’s one of ’em, sorry to say.”

“Prin!” said Ma. “But he’s only sixteen, no, seventeen now. Oh dear!”

Da shook his head, leaned back in his chair and reached for his cider.

“But what happened next?” asked Anja. “What about Calico? I’ve got to know about Calico.”

“You won’t get any more out of him,” said Ma. “Ask Alnor or Tahl. They know.”

Tilja’s eyes were heavy with sleep. She looked round the familiar kitchen. With just one lamp burning, and the glow and flicker from the open stove, it was a place of gleams and shadows. Only the old table was a pool of light, with a pile of fruit and nuts at the center, and the remains of a loaf, and cheese, and on the pewter platters a scatter of peelings and husks. Meena and Alnor had moved to the settle by the wall and were sitting in the corner at its darker end. Tahl was on the other side of the table from Tilja. The lamp was between them, so his face was hard to see, but his hands were bright-lit as they fiddled with the curious silken tassel that the Ropemaker had given him. Tahl glanced over his shoulder at Alnor, waiting for him to start.

“Why don’t you let Tahl do it?” Meena suggested. “He’d only keep interrupting you.”

“Instead of Alnor putting me right when I’ve finished,” said Tahl. “Where’d I better start?”

“Flying away from us on the other side of the forest,” said Meena. “We can tell them the rest of it later. Last we saw you were way up in the sky, heading off north.”

Tahl didn’t even pause to gather his thoughts. The story came bursting out of him.

“First off the only problem we had was staying on,” he said. “Calico knew where she was going. Alnor tried using the reins a bit, but she wasn’t having any, so we just let her fly until we got here. She was heading for her stall, like this afternoon, when Alnor managed to hitch her to a post, and by then Selly and Anja were here, and Anja got her quiet by giving her a feed in the yard, and we had a bite to eat while Selly told us about the horsemen coming through the pass and all the men going off to fight them.