The Ropemaker Read online

  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.

  “We were dog tired, and we wanted to be off early, so we wolfed our supper and fell into bed. Selly got us up and we were all set to go as soon as it was light. Trouble was, Calico wouldn’t budge, no matter how much we yelled at her and kicked her ribs. She was home and she was staying home.

  “Then I remembered this. The Ropemaker said I might need it, but I didn’t know what for, so I’d just put it away, but now I thought it might be a special sort of whip for telling a flying horse who’s master, so I took it out and gave a her a flick with it. That did the trick, and some!”

  He twitched the tassel and each thread became a wriggling line of flame, brighter than the lamplight, flowing across the table without quite touching the surface. They withdrew the moment he twitched the tassel again.

  “There’s a scorch on Calico’s right haunch,” said Tilja.

  “Sorry about that,” said Tahl, his laugh belying the words. “I hadn’t got the hang of it, then. It does what I want, just because it’s me wanting it. Look.”

  Another flick, and this time the fiery threads flowed out close together, like a loose-woven cord, which coiled around the pile of walnut husks Tilja had been constructing on her platter while she was listening to Da’s story. The husks burst into flame and burnt until they were ashes.

  “Anyway it did the trick with Calico,” said Tahl, still laughing. “One squeal and she was up and away. I gave the thing another shake, trying not to touch her this time, just to tell her I’d still got it, but it did better than that. The fire threads shot out and round behind her, like a dog snapping at her heels, telling her she’d better behave. Could have done with that once or twice on our journey, right? She got it at once.

  “She was really flying now, and Alnor wasn’t having any trouble making her go where he wanted, so I put the thing back under my jacket, but of course I was thinking about it, wondering what else it could do, when the fellow’s name clicked into my mind . . . Dorn. . . . You’d told us about him using his fire whip on the walls of Talagh, remember, Til, and again in the barn in Goloroth? That’s what it was. And that’s why the Ropemaker had given it to me—to use against the horse tribes in the fighting. So I told Alnor to steady Calico best he could and then hold on tight, and I leaned over and spotted a tree in a field and I took the whip and gave it a shake and said, ‘Burn that!’ Aaaah!”

  Tilja couldn’t see his face, but there was something in his voice, something in the wildness of his excitement, and in the long sigh of exhilaration at the end, that bothered her. And there’d been that curious pause as he had spoken Dorn’s name. Tilja remembered the Ropemaker’s words—Bit of stuff I got from Dorn. Better keep an eye on him.

  She rose, taking her plate, moved round the table and scraped the ashes into the trash bucket, then came quietly back and stood behind Tahl.

  Anja had been falling asleep again, but the movement woke her.

  “Go on,” she mumbled, still with her eyes half shut. “I’m listening. What’s happening?”

  “This,” said Tahl, flicking ribbons of fire across the table toward her.

  She screamed. Tahl flicked again, laughing wildly. Tilja leaned over his shoulder and closed her naked hand around the blazing source of the fire. There was the now-familiar quick shock of numbness, and when she opened her fist a twig and a handful of twisted grass stems tumbled onto the table.

  “What did you want to do that for?” shouted Tahl, scrambling up and turning toward her. His face was taut with fury. She thought he was going to strike her. She grabbed his wrist and he went rigid. They stood like that for a moment while she channeled the quick sluice of magic through herself, realizing with relief that Dorn himself wasn’t in it. It was just leftover Dorn stuff, like a dead man’s clothing.

  She let go of Tahl’s wrist and he slumped back into his chair and put his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and again, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop it.”

  Only when he’d spoken did Tilja realize how intense the silence had been while the shadow of Dorn had come and gone through the kitchen. Now she could sense the others relaxing, and daring to breathe.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “The Ropemaker told me it was a risk. But it was worth it, wasn’t it? If it hadn’t been for you, Da would be dead by now, and farms would be burning all across the Valley.”

  “And that’s true,” said Da.

  “You know what I’m thinking,” said Ma in a low voice. “Now that we’ve all seen a bit of real magic, we understand that we’re better off without it, here in the Valley. It belongs in the forest and the mountains. It has no place here, among us.”

  “And that’s true too,” said Da.

  “But what happened next?” said Anja. “What happened in the battle?”

  Tahl raised his head and attempted a smile.

  “Alnor’s turn,” he said.

  “If you wish,” said Alnor, formal among near strangers. “There is not a great deal to tell. We landed twice at farms to ask where our people were gathered, and arrived around midmorning. We could see the fighting, and I spotted Dusty in the middle of it, so I didn’t wait. I had no trouble with Calico—she must have warhorse blood in her somewhere, I think. I just shook the reins and gave her a kick with my heels and she came swooping down and gave a great ringing neigh as we were going in. ‘Neigh’ is the wrong word. It was more like a cock crowing, a cock the size of an elephant.”

  “That’s the roc,” said Tilja. “It did that when we were leaving Talagh.”

  “I expect so,” said Alnor. “Anyway, there is more magic in old Calico now than just flying. Right through the din of the battle every horse must have heard her—one moment they were charging up the slope and the next they were all over the place, out of control.”

  “That’s right,” said Da. “Dusty too. And till then the horsemen could’ve done almost anything they wanted with their ponies.”

  “Then we were over them,” said Alnor. “And Tahl started to use his whip. Leaning over, I could see the fire ropes just licking the riders out of the saddles without even touching the animals. We went round a couple of times and then flew over and did the same on the far side, and harried them around for a bit, but there didn’t seem any point in going on with that once they were all crowding into the pass, so we came back to look for Solon and see how the battle had gone. He had hurt his arm—he didn’t tell you . . .”

  “Kick from a horse,” muttered Da.

  “So we talked with some of the war council and decided to fly up the pass and make sure the horsemen kept going. In fact we went right over onto the far side and burnt their tents, so they knew we could get at them there too, if we wanted. We’d have liked to come straight back to Woodbourne, but Calico had done a lot and we were tired too, so we spent the night at our camp, and then flew over the pass again this morning to check. We didn’t find a soul in sight in a day’s journey from the pass, so we turned round and came home. Anything else, Tahl?”

  “The whip,” said Tahl in a low voice. “It wanted to burn the horses. I wouldn’t let it.”

  “Sounds like you’re well shot of it,” said Meena. “Well now, I suppose you stay-at-homes are wanting to know what we’ve been up to since you saw us off on the raft. It’s mostly going t
o be Tahl and Tilja, for the first half, anyway, because it’s confusing for Alnor and me after what’s happened to us. And then there was a bit when the other three of us were asleep, and only Tilja knew what was going on. It’s going to take a while—there’s a lot of it to tell. You sure you’re up to it, Til?”

  “We can wait till tomorrow,” said Ma.

  “I can’t,” said Anja.

  “Thing is, there’s something we’ve got to do, Alnor and me,” said Meena, “and it’s only going to be worse for us if we hang around. So we’d like to get this over, if Til’s not too tired.”

  “I’m all right,” said Tilja.

  In fact the story seemed to tell itself, just as it had when she’d told it to the Ropemaker. Perhaps it was easier for them to understand because they had all just seen a piece of true, dangerous magic doing its work in Ma’s kitchen, until Tilja’s touch had unmade it. Even Anja, when she next woke, asked almost no questions, but stared at Tilja with wide, amazed eyes, as if her sister had been as strange a creature as the great roc that had carried her to Talagh. It must have been midnight before she reached the point where Meena and Alnor had eaten their grapes on the southernmost tip of the Empire, and from then on they joined in the telling. Tahl too by now had recovered his spirits, so they could pass the tale round among the four of them. Clearing the table while one of the others was talking, Tilja noticed a glint of gold among the litter of grass stalks into which Dorn’s whip had disintegrated. Yes, of course, she thought. For a piece of magic that powerful. She picked up the single strand of the Ropemaker’s hair and wound it carefully round the little finger of her left hand.