The Spellcoats

  Duck wanted to learn to pipe, too. Hern and I made an outcry at that. If you ever heard Duck sing! But Tanamil obligingly went out and cut hollow reeds for him. I remember his fingers flying as he cut holes in the reeds and bound them together. He made the mouthpieces from joints in the reeds, where the pith is solid. Then he put Duck’s fingers to the holes and told him to blow. Duck blew. Nothing happened.

  “Silence! Thank goodness!” said Hern.

  “Try saying Ptehwh! to it,” said Tanamil.

  “Ptehwh!” said Duck, scarlet in the face. And all the pipes sounded a terrible squealing and braying, as if pigs had got among donkeys. We shrieked with laughter. Duck glowered at us and went outside through the second door, down beside the red River. Shortly we heard halting little tunes from among the rushes.

  Hern raised his eyebrows at me. “Ye gods! I didn’t think he knew any tunes.”

  Tanamil taught Hern things, too. I remember them squatting together in the dust, and Tanamil drawing things there with a pointed stick, and Hern nodding. At other times they were leaping on one another and wrestling. I liked the look of that. I pulled Tanamil’s arm, like Robin, and said, “Show me, too!”

  He showed me. There were things I could not do, not being as strong as Hern, but he showed me the way to use a person’s own strength against him. I think that if a grown enemy—say, Zwitt—walked into this mill at the moment, I could throw him to the ground and maybe kill him. But I am not sure that I should use this knowledge. I think of who it was taught me.

  Two things Tanamil taught me I have used. I forget how it came about, but I know I told him that there were many words I did not know how to weave. He said there was no harm in making your own patterns, provided you taught others what you meant. But he said, “You must use the right pattern for River. That is important,” and he showed me, weaving with rushes. He also showed me a more expressive way of twisting yarn. He had me twist rushes until I could do it. He said, “When you use yarn twisted this way, use it for the strongest parts of your story. Your meaning will leap from the cloth.” I have done this in several places. I do not mind that it was Tanamil who taught me. It works.

  I asked Hern what Tanamil was showing him in the dust with the pointed stick, but he would not tell me.

  Later on I remember Tanamil coming to us when the firelight was leaping on the ceiling and mixing with the ripples of sun there. “There’s a question you must all ask me,” he said. “Each of you ask.”

  None of us could think what to say. I was reminded of the way Aunt Zara will say, “Tanaqui, there is a little word you should say to me. What is it?” And of course I can never think what she means, so I do not say it, and she calls me rude. If only she would say, “Tanaqui, you haven’t said please,” then I should know what she meant and say it. It was like that with Tanamil. He wanted us to say something particular, which was obvious to him, but not at all to us.

  Hern said first, “Would you call yourself a magician?”

  “In some ways, yes,” said Tanamil, “but that is not what I call myself.” And he turned to Duck.

  “Do you believe in the Undying?” Duck asked. He had been thinking earnestly, and I could see he thought he was very clever asking this.

  Tanamil was amused. He turned his face to the flickering roof and laughed. “Not as you do,” he said. “But they exist.” Then he turned to me, still laughing.

  For a moment I thought I knew what he wanted me to ask, and then it was gone.

  “No, no,” he said. “You must ask what you want to ask.”

  This was like Aunt Zara saying I must say please because I wanted to—and who does? “Please,” I said, but that was not it, of course. “Where do you come from?” I said.

  It was not the right question. He laughed again. “I suppose you would say I come from the Black Mountains.”

  I puzzle over this more and more, because I know the Heathens come from the sea. While I puzzled then, Tanamil turned to Robin. And I do not know what Robin asked. I know she asked, and I think she asked right, and that Tanamil answered, but I have no memory of what was said. Duck says I do not remember because Robin was not there at the time. He says Tanamil came and asked each of us separately, and he says I do wrong to put it in here because it happened right at the beginning of our stay. But I remember it almost at the end, and I am weaving this story.

  The next things happened in the night, and I know that was right at the end. We were all asleep among the rugs by the fire. It was more comfortable and warm than we had been since we left home, so I do not know why I woke up, unless it was that Robin and Tanamil were making such a noise with their argument. I only heard a few things they said. I kept falling asleep and waking again to hear them still heatedly at it. I will put what I heard.

  Tanamil was saying, “But they’re bound to go. They all bound themselves, and I can’t keep them forever.”

  “In that case,” Robin said, “I shall have to go, too.”

  “But you never bound yourself,” Tanamil said. “Why should you go?”

  Robin said, “I did. I promised my mother, years ago—”

  “If your mother knew what I was asking,” Tanamil said quickly, “she would tell you to do as I say.” That struck me as unfair. Tanamil did not know what my mother would say. But Robin is always saying and thinking that our mother would want this and not like that, and I am sure Tanamil knew it. Robin began to cry. “All I’m asking is that you stay here with me,” he said.

  All he was asking! I did not care to have Robin bullied like this. I meant to sit up and tell Tanamil a thing or two, but I went to sleep instead.

  I woke up to hear Robin shouting, “I tell you no!”

  And Tanamil shouted back, “Why? Why, why, why?”

  “Because of what you are,” Robin said. She was crying again—or still. “It wouldn’t be right.” I could have shaken her. She had as good as told him we were not Heathens.

  “How do you mean, not right?” Tanamil demanded. “Where’s the difference between us?”

  “Age, for a start,” said Robin.

  “What a feeble thing to say!” said Tanamil. He sounded as disgusted as Hern would have been. But I was glad because I could see Robin was trying to cover up her mistake. “Have you any other silly excuses?” he said.

  “They’re not excuses; they’re reasons,” Robin said coldly.

  “That was unfair. I apologize,” said Tanamil.

  I thought that in spite of her mistakes, Robin was dealing with him better than I could have done. I must have gone to sleep thinking it. When I woke up next, Robin was getting the worst of it.

  “I can’t see how you can know that!” she was bleating, in her feeblest way.

  “I do,” said Tanamil. “Next to Gull, you’re the one most at risk. I’m not just saying it to persuade you—”

  “Then why are you saying it?” said Robin.

  “A hit,” Tanamil said. “Robin, I can’t see much of the future, but I don’t like what I see. Stay here and let the others go. They’ve inherited his toughness. You haven’t.”

  This gave Robin the moral advantage. She is good at taking that. “And what would you think of me if I drew back just because I was born feeble?” she asked.

  That must have been the winning answer. When I woke up again, Tanamil was not in the room and Robin was asleep just beside me. This time it was Duck who had woken me. He was crouched beside me, half rosy in the fire, and the other half of him caught in whorls and ripples of moonlight from the River beyond the door.

  “Tanaqui,” he whispered, “I’ve just remembered something. You know that boatload of people Tanamil said were Heathens?”

  “Yes,” I said. I was suddenly full of distrust for Tanamil. He had taken Gull, and now he was trying to take Robin. I wondered how we had been mad enough to stay with him. I knew he must have cast a spell to make us, and I was scared silly. “What about them?” I said. “They weren’t Heathens, they were our people, weren’t they?”
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  “No,” whispered Duck. “That was the funny thing. They were real Heathens. They had hair a bit like ours and brown faces—like his—and peculiar clothes with iron hats. Why did he call them Heathens?”

  Hern was sitting up on the other side of the fire. “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  “Positive. I saw them,” said Duck.

  We all looked at the small pale figure of Gull sitting on the hearth. I felt sick. Hern said, “Then he knew who we were from the start. We—”

  There was a rilling, splashing noise outside. The rushes at the entrance bobbed, and the moonlight was drowned in the shadow of Tanamil, wading in the water. We dived into our rugs and lay there, so that he would not know we were awake. And we all went to sleep. Duck and Hern remember nothing beyond diving into the blankets either.

  Next morning Tanamil was gone. The shelter was as I remembered it when I first started to think about it, built of old wood and red earth, leaning against the cliff. The one door was open to the sun on the grassy shoulder between the two rivers. It was cold. The fire was out, and I think there were no longer any blankets. There were certainly none when I looked back into the shelter before we left. We got up and hurried into the sun, shivering.

  Robin was there first, holding the little figure of Gull. “I take it he means us to go,” she said dourly. “I think he might have said good-bye.”

  “He might have given us breakfast,” said Duck.

  “We’ve got food in the boat,” said Hern. “Come on.”

  The boat was there, bobbing in a green cave among the reeds, with our food and the Undying still in her.

  “I’m relieved to see that,” said Hern. “Get in. Let’s eat as we go.”

  “Why the hurry?” I said.

  “Who’s bossy?” said Duck.

  “I’m head of the family!” Hern shrieked, turning on him. “Do as I say!”

  Duck and I both turned to Robin. She looked at the clay image between her hands and shrugged. “I suppose that’s the truth of it,” she said.

  “Then he’d better be polite about it,” Duck said. We glowered at Hern, Duck and I.

  “I can’t be polite until I’ve had some breakfast,” said Hern. “I’m frantic for it. We’ve eaten nothing but illusions since we landed. Isn’t that so, Robin?”

  “I don’t think so. How should I know?” Robin said as she climbed into the boat.

  We poled out from among the reeds into the current of the two rivers and went drifting down a reddish, lazy flood between two lines of trees that ought to have marked the banks. The bread was horribly stale. The cabbages smelled. We chewed carrots, tough cheese, and dried fruit. Duck was so hungry he ate an onion. His eyes streamed. We all felt soggy, irritable, and frightened in a gloomy sort of way. We knew we were back in real life, and we wished we knew the reasons for it: why Tanamil had kept us and why he had turned us out.

  “You said we ate illusions,” I said to Hern as we finished eating. “But you don’t believe in enchantments.”

  “I believe in what I can see,” said Hern. “I saw what happened to Gull. I damn near broke the spell, too. I wish I had. And that food was too good to be real. I can’t accept it wasn’t real, but I suppose I’ve got to. It’s—it’s offensive.”

  “Bad luck,” Duck said politely.

  Hern was too gloomy to hit him. He said, “It’s the way it’s all mixed up in my head that annoys me. I can’t remember properly.” I saw Hern was having the same trouble as me. “It’s maddening!” he said. “Robin, what happened to us?”

  “How should I know?” said Robin. She was gloomiest of the lot.

  We put the sail up. There were worms, earwigs, and beetles in the folds of the sail, and wood lice and things with many legs making their home under the mast. Hern scowled at them. He scowled at the trees as we beat slowly from line to line of them, tacking against the wind. We did not sail beyond the trees, although there were acres of white water, glittering into the distance beyond, because we did not know how deep it was. There were no people, only trees sticking up from sheets of water.

  Hern said, “Does anything strike you about these trees?”

  Nothing did. Duck said, as we sailed under spreading branches, “Oaks, elms, willows.”

  “Go back to sleep!” said Hern. “Tanaqui, you’re supposed to notice things. What about these trees?”

  I looked up. The oak we were under was large, but quite ordinary. It was just beginning to get leaves, like bundles of yellow rags. The elm and the willows beyond it were just as ordinary, because they were already bright new green. “Everyone knows oaks are late,” I said. “Trees always look like this in Spring.”

  “That’s it!” Hern shouted. “Exactly! When we came to the watersmeet, all the trees were bare!” We stared up at the new leaves, astonished. Hern was right. I remembered I had said it was like sailing back to winter, this far down the River. “Now think back to last night,” Hern said. “There was a moon. But there was no moon when we set out, was there?”

  That was true again. “What do you think has happened?” I said, shivering.

  Hern scowled. “A lot of days have passed. I wish I knew how many. I wish I knew why. What was Tanamil up to?”

  “Do you think he’s made us … too late for—for the One’s fire?” I said.

  If any read my weaving and do not know the One, I must tell you that once a year, as soon as the floods go down in Spring, the One requires to be put in a fire, from which he emerges renewed. It is a peculiar habit, but he is the One and not like the other Undying. I do not know what would happen if the One went into his fire at the wrong time. No one has dared try it.

  Hern hunched up and brooded. There was the chalky bleakness in his eyes that always frightens me. My brother Hern is going to be a frightening man if he grows up as angry as he is now. The stoop of his shoulders and the jut of his nose put me in mind of the shadow Uncle Kestrel cast on our wall. Hern stared out chalk-eyed over the white water and said, “We have been taught that the One is our ancestor. We have also been told that Gull’s soul could be used to pour out the virtue of our ancestor. We hear that Heathens have skill in this. We meet a Heathen, and strange things happen. It has always seemed to me that the One’s habits are insane, until now. But if I believe what I saw happen to Gull, why should I not believe that the One himself is under attack now? The question is—”

  “Do stop going on about it, Hern,” Robin said. “You must have noticed the days were going by.”

  “—are the floods going down?” said Hern.

  “We didn’t notice,” I said. “Do you know how long we were there?”

  “I didn’t count,” Robin said. “It felt about ten days.”

  “Ten days!” I exclaimed. “No wonder the cabbages were bad!”

  “Are the floods going down or not?” said Hern.

  We looked anxiously at the spreading waters. The River, in its double strength, was bringing down sticks, straw, boughs, leaves, and weed, between the two lines of trees. “Look, look!” Duck cried out, pointing to the nearest floating bough. We looked and found that it was moving not down the River but gently backward. We were aghast.

  “The River’s flowing the wrong way!” said Robin.

  For over an hour the sticks, straw, and leaves continued to move gently upstream. Our boat still went forward, tacking against the wind, but we were all in the greatest panic. Duck and I hung over the side watching the debris. We had no idea if this meant the end of the floods or more malign magic.

  “That magician by the sea must be turning the whole River now,” I said.

  “If there is a magician there,” said Hern. “Think who told us there was.” He stared at a place where the water was gently troubled, as if the true current of the River were forcing its way against the unnatural flow. “Gull’s soul is one thing,” he said. “It can’t be very heavy. But it would take magic stronger than I can believe in to turn all this weight of water. There must be some other explanation.” r />
  To our surprise and relief, the sticks and weeds turned at midmorning and began going the proper way.

  We stayed in the boat all that day. There was nowhere to land in the sheets of water on either side of the trees. But at nightfall we were all sick of raw food. In the dusk we saw what we took for a low island or small mountain out in the flood. We drew up the keel and poled cautiously across to it. It proved to be the roofs of a mighty house, not high, but covering the space of several cornfields. Some roofs were old thatch, some new and steep, of slippery tiles, with painted carvings at the ridge and bundles of tall chimneys.

  “I bet the King lived here,” said Duck.

  We thought Duck was right. But everyone there had gone to the wars and not come back. We tied the boat to the bars of a window and landed on a flat space of tiles, bringing our Undying with us. Hern thought we might have to put the One in his fire anytime. I could not bear to touch Gull for many days after that, so I brought the Young One. As I set him down, I was struck by the resemblance between them. Gull seems to be made of the same flaky pink stone. Yet I know the Young One was carved many lifetimes ago.

  There was only a glimmer of fire in both firepots. We tore off gilded carvings and red and blue rails from the roofs and used handfuls of thatch for kindling. Our fire smoked and smelled bad on the tiles, and smoke spread over the flat water.

  After supper we left Robin sitting by the fire with her hands wrapped round the knees of her awful blue skirt and scrambled over the roofs in the near dark. I kept wishing I could see into the drowned rooms underneath. But I had to imagine the grandeur. Hern and I collided coming round the tall chimneys above our boat. While we were laughing, we heard the slop and creak of our boat swinging round to face upstream.

  “It’s happened again!” said Hern.

  We slithered down the steep roof, and sure enough, we could see the boat turned and the rubbish from our supper drifting the wrong way. We knelt with our heads hanging off the roof, trying to see how fast the current went. Hern took a stick and held it with his fingers just out of the water.