Bo! We have to fight!
How?
I don’t know. But I’m going to fight them.
He felt the familiar fury in her thoughts, which was oddly reassuring. He tried to think what they could do, but all the time the old children were shuffling nearer and nearer. At this point, Mumpo realised what was happening, and began to panic.
‘Kess! Bo! They’re coming to get us! Don’t let them touch me! What shall we do? I don’t want to be old!’
‘Don’t jump about, Mumpo! Stay still.’
‘It’s all right, Mumpo. They won’t get past us.’
Remember, said Kestrel, they’re old and weak, and they can only come one at a time. All we have to do is keep them out of reach.
‘Without touching them,’ said Bowman, answering aloud.
‘Keep them away from me!’ cried Mumpo, jerking from side to side in his fear. He tried to grab hold of Kestrel, and was threatening to unbalance them all.
‘Stop it, Mumpo!’
How can we calm Mumpo down?
Feed him, replied Bowman.
Kestrel then realised she was still carrying her nut-socks round her neck, and that in one of the socks there was one mudnut remaining. She unhooked it and reached it out to Mumpo.
‘Here you are, Mumpo.’
As she swung it towards him, she felt the weight of the mudnut, and letting it swing back, she set it circling round and round at the end of the sock. Her eyes followed the swinging weighted end.
‘Bo!’ she cried out. ‘Have you got any mudnuts left?’
Bowman felt the nut-socks round his neck. One mudnut left in each. He had distributed the last two that way, for balance.
‘Two,’ he said.
‘Here’s how we keep them away from us,’ said Kestrel, and she swung her weighted nut-sock through the air before her.
‘Mudnuts won’t hurt them.’
‘They don’t have to. All we have to do is knock them off balance.’
‘Or us.’
‘Remember, we’re young and bendy. They’re old and stiff.’
Not at all convinced, Bowman tried swinging his nut-sock round and round, and nearly fell off the wall. Heart pounding, sweat streaming down his body, he righted himself.
‘It won’t work. I can’t do it.’
‘You’ve got to,’ said Kestrel.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Mumpo. In all this talk of mudnuts, he had forgotten his fear.
‘Shut up, Mumpo.’
‘All right, Kess.’
All this time, the two leading old children were still creeping towards them across the parapet, from either end of the bridge. Others followed steadily behind them. The ones on Bowman’s side were the nearest, and would have to be fought off first.
‘Swing it round, Bo,’ called Kestrel. ‘Get your balance.’
Bowman looked down and saw beneath him now only inky blackness. I wouldn’t mind, if there wasn’t that great drop below, he thought. And as he stared down, a simple idea popped into his head. It’s all dark down there. It can be anything I want. So he stopped imagining the great drop, and built a new picture in his head. There’s no Crack-in-the-land, he told himself. Just a little way below me there’s soft meadow grass. He added some details to this picture: clover, and poppies, and, to be real, a clump of stinging nettles, and he found to his surprise that his fear of falling was gone. That left the old child, shuffling ever closer on the wall.
He swung his nut-sock round, holding it above his head so that it made horizontal circles in the air. He swung it faster, giving it extra power each time it passed in front of him. He imagined the position of the old child’s head, and he swung the mudnut through the air just where it would soon be.
Soft grass, soft meadow grass, he said to himself. Soft cushiony grass.
‘Be careful, boy,’ said the old child, in his creaky voice. ‘Here, take my hand.’
He reached out his withered hand and snickered. But he wasn’t close enough yet.
Kestrel was facing the other way, her nut-sock in her hand, watching the leading old child approaching from her side.
It’s going to be you first, Bo. Can you do it?
I’ll try.
Love you, Bo.
No time to answer, not even in the silence of his head. The old child was close now, his hand patting the air between them. Bowman swung his mudnut, still holding his arm back, and it hissed through the air some way from his attacker.
‘Why struggle?’ said the old child. ‘It’s as the Morah wills. You know that.’
Bowman said nothing. He flexed his legs, and tested his balance on the narrow parapet. He swung the weighted nut-sock faster and faster, and gauged the distance between them.
‘You mustn’t be afraid to be old,’ murmured the old child. ‘It’s only for a little while. And then the Morah will make you young again, and beautiful.’
He kept shuffling forward as he spoke, and now Bowman calculated he was within range. But he had to be sure.
‘There, there,’ said the old child. ‘Come and let me stroke you.’
Bowman swept his arm forward over his head, swung the mudnut at full power, and aimed for the grizzled head.
Wheee!
It whistled harmlessly past, meeting no resistance. Bowman tottered and almost fell. The old child had ducked.
‘Oh, dear, dear,’ the deep voice sniggered. ‘Be careful, boy. You wouldn’t want to – ’
Bowman swung again, made bold by anger, and hammered the weighted sock smack! into the old child’s face, catching him full on the cheek, just below the ear.
‘Yow! Yow-ow-ow!’
Clutching at his face, the old child rocked on the wall, and lost his balance. His arms reached for support, but there was nothing. He beat the air, as if to hold himself up, but even as he did so, he fell.
‘Aaa-aaah .. .’
The thin voice, keen with terror, shrieked as he fell, and went on shrieking, down and down and down. And still they could hear that ghastly scream, dropping and dropping, until at last it ceased.
Hubba hubba hubba Bo! cried Kestrel.
Nut-sock flying, she ran at her own attacker, and swept him too off the parapet and into the great gorge.
This galvanised the old children, and uttering creaking cries of vengeance, they pushed in on Bowman and Kestrel from either side. But only one could come forward at a time, and as Kestrel had foreseen, their reactions were slower and their joints were stiffer, and the twins sent them tumbling, one after another, into the inky darkness.
Kestrel exulted as she swung her weapon.
‘Come on, you wrinkly old pocksicker! You want to practise sky-diving too?’
‘Hit him, Kess!’ cried Mumpo, bouncing with excitement. ‘Knock him off!’
Kestrel lunged forward and struck, and another old child fell shrieking into the void. Mumpo called after him.
‘You’re going to go smash! Smish-smosh-smash and bashed flat, yah-de-dah, stupid stinky no-friends!’
After seven of the old children had been sent tumbling from the wall, they stopped shuffling forward, and murmured among themselves. Then turning with nervous care, they faced the other way, and shuffled back to their companions on either side of the gorge. They had retreated.
The twins saw this, and raised their arms in the air and cheered in triumph. Bowman especially was flushed with a fierce and unaccustomed pride.
‘We did it! We beat them!’
‘They won’t come near us again!’ cried Mumpo.
But the old children hadn’t gone far. They climbed down from the parapet at either end, and there they stayed. Mumpo may have believed that their victory made them safe, but Kestrel and Bowman knew otherwise. They knew that on the land, where the old children could cluster round them as they had done before, a swinging nut-sock would never save them.
Once again, they were trapped.
‘Chase them, Kess!’ cried Mumpo. ‘Bash them again!’
‘I can’t, Mumpo. T
here’s too many.’
‘Too many?’
He looked one way across the long bridge, peering into the night; and then the other.
‘We have to stay here,’ said Kestrel. ‘At least until morning.’
‘What, all night?’
‘Yes, Mumpo. All night.’
‘But Kess, we can’t. There’s no room to sleep.’
‘We’re not going to sleep, Mumpo.’
‘Not sleep?’
To Mumpo, sleeping was as necessary and as unavoidable as eating. He wasn’t so much dismayed as bewildered. How could he not sleep? Sleep wasn’t something you chose. Sleep came upon you, and closed your eyes for you.
The twins knew this as well as Mumpo.
‘Come on, Mumpo,’ said Bowman. ‘We’ll sit either side of you, and if you want to sleep, you can.’
They sat down on the wall in a row, and Bowman and Kestrel held hands round Mumpo, who sat between them, and they both leaned inwards, to hold him in a double hug, just like a wish huddle. That way if he fell asleep they could stop him from rolling off the wall. Mumpo felt the close warm embrace of the twins, and was deeply happy.
‘We’re the three friends,’ he said. And so great was his trust that he actually did fall asleep, sitting on two feet of stone wall, balanced half a mile above the granite gorge.
The twins did not sleep.
‘We can’t get away from them, can we?’ said Bowman.
‘I don’t see how.’
‘One of them said to me, “Don’t be afraid to be old. The Morah will make you young again.”’
‘I’d rather die!’
‘We’ll go together, won’t we, Kess?’
‘Always together.’
They fell silent. Then, after a while,
‘What about ma and pa and Pinpin?’ said Bowman. He was imagining what they would think if they never returned. ‘They wouldn’t know we were dead. They’d go on waiting for us.’
Somehow this picture of his parents still hoping, after they were dead, upset him more than the prospect of dying. Because they were in a kind of a wish huddle, he turned his dismay into a wish.
‘I wish pa and ma could know what’s happening to us.’
‘I wish we could escape the old children,’ said Kestrel, ‘and find the voice of the wind singer, and get safely home.’
After that they were silent. The only sounds were Mumpo, snuffling in his sleep, and the sighing of the wind through the great gorge below.
And distant thunder.
‘Did you hear that?’
A red flash lit up the sky, and faded away.
‘Is it a storm?’
Again the roll of thunder. Again the burst of red light. This time they saw it: a jet of fire, far off, streaking skywards, and then curving down to earth.
‘It’s coming from the mountains.’
‘Look, Kess! Look at the old children!’
Crash! went the thunder, and flash! went the fireball, and as the arc of burning red was traced across the sky, and another, and another, the old children on both sides of the gorge were calling, and running about, and watching the falling fire.
Now the thunder was rolling all the time, and the fireballs were shooting skywards in all directions. Some of the burning fragments were falling close by. The twins saw one pass within a few yards of them, and drop down and down, a glowing ember, into the ravine below. Another fell to earth on the ground ahead, and burned for a moment, before fading into the night.
The old children were going wild. At first the twins thought it was fear, but then they saw how they were reaching their arms to the sky, and hurrying towards the fireballs as they sank to earth.
‘They want to be hit!’
As Kestrel spoke these words, a fireball landed directly on one of the old children, and at once exploded in a gush of orange flame. The brilliant light faded as quickly as it had come, leaving behind – nothing.
The old children became frantic, running about, stretching up their arms, crying,
‘Take me! Take me!’
And here and there, more by luck than by judgement, a fireball would fall on one of them, and he would be consumed.
The sky was now bright with fire, and the thunder was unceasing. So many fireballs rose up that they could distinguish their source, which was the highest of the mountains in the northern range. The twins gazed at it, too awed by the spectacle to be frightened, and Mumpo slept stolidly on.
‘That’s where we have to go,’ said Kestrel, looking at the mountain. ‘Into the fire.’
The fireballs fell all around them, and they never moved, because they had nowhere to go. Somehow they knew they would be safe. This wasn’t for them, this shower of death, they were only accidental witnesses. This was for the old children.
‘Take me!’ the old children cried, reaching for the fire. ‘Make me young again!’
But when the flame took them, it left nothing.
Then the thunder began to fade, and the sky grew darker, as the fireballs came less and less frequently. The last few rose only a little way into the night, and fell far off. The remaining old children, crying pitifully, ran off towards them, as if they could cover the many miles before the flaming fragments fell to earth. And after a while, the mountain was silent, and the twins realised they were alone again.
They woke Mumpo gently, not wanting him to get up with a bounce and fall off the parapet. In fact, he remained half asleep, and did as he was told without really knowing where they were going. So feeling their way with care, they crossed to the other side of the gorge, and stepped down from the narrow parapet to the safety of solid ground.
Here Mumpo simply curled up and went back to sleep. The twins looked at each other, and realised how exhausted they were. Kestrel lay down.
‘What if they come back?’ said Bowman.
‘I don’t care,’ said Kestrel, and she too fell asleep.
Bowman sat down on the rough scratchy ground and decided he would keep watch over the others. However, within moments he too was asleep.
19
Mumpo goes wrong
When the twins awoke, it was full daylight. There were no signs of the old children of the night before. They were lying close to the edge of the great gorge that they had only seen before in the half light of dusk. Now as they rose and stretched their aching limbs they saw the fearsome depth of the gorge, and the fragile thread of wall by which they had crossed it, and they were amazed.
‘Did I really walk on that?’ said Bowman.
Kestrel was looking down at the great stone arches that carried the bridge across the gorge. She could see now what had not been obvious the night before, that the supporting stonework was crumbling at many points. One of the columns that held up the arches was so worn at its base by the floodwaters of the river that it seemed to stand on a pin-point. But Kestrel said nothing to Bowman about this, knowing that they would have to return this way.
Mumpo now awoke, and announced that he was hungry.
‘Look, Mumpo,’ said Kestrel, showing him the spectacular sight of Crack-in-the-land. ‘We crossed that great bridge!’
‘Did we bring anything to eat?’ said Mumpo.
Bowman found the nut-sock that he had used as a weapon against the old children, and pulled out the mudnut. It was heavily bruised, but better than nothing.
‘Here you are.’
He tossed it towards Mumpo, but Mumpo missed it. It rolled over the sloping ground to the edge of the gorge. He chased after it, and saw where it disappeared over the edge. Kneeling on the edge, he peered down.
‘I see it!’ he cried. ‘I can get it.’
‘I’ve got another one,’ said Bowman.
‘Let him get it if he can,’ said Kestrel. ‘We need all the food we’ve got.’
They joined Mumpo at the edge, and saw where the mudnut was caught in a tussock of springy grass growing from the rock face. Just below it was a clump of bushes. Bowman backed away, made giddy by looking down t
he immense drop. Mumpo lay on his stomach and reached over the edge for the mudnut. He could almost touch it, but not quite. So he started to wriggle forward.
‘Careful, Mumpo.’
But Mumpo was hungry, and his only thought was for the mudnut that lay before his eyes. He wriggled a little further, and his fingers touched it. But still he couldn’t grasp it.
‘Just a bit more,’ he said, and wriggled again. His hand reached for the mudnut, just as his body started to slither over the edge.
‘He-e-elp!’ he cried, realising he couldn’t stop himself.
Kestrel threw herself on to his legs, and wrapped herself tight round them.
‘That’s better,’ said Mumpo, and dangling over the edge of Crack-in-the-land, his mind was back on his breakfast.
‘Climb back!’ called Kestrel. ‘Back!’
‘I’ll just get the – ’
His fingers were closing over the mudnut, when a withered bony hand shot out of the bush below, and seized his wrist.
‘Aah! Aah! Help me!’
Mumpo jerked in terror, and Kestrel nearly lost hold of his legs.
‘Bo! What’s happening?’
Bowman forced himself to look over the edge, and saw there one of the old children, half supported by the bush, gripping tight to Mumpo’s arm.
‘Bash him, Mumpo!’ Bowman screamed. ‘Bite him!’
‘What is it?’ cried Kestrel, struggling to hold Mumpo, feeling the extra weight pulling him down.
‘Help me,’ came Mumpo’s pitiful voice, changing as he spoke, growing deeper. ‘Help me .. .’
‘It’s one of the old children,’ said Bowman. He unhitched his second nut-sock, and trying not to look down at the giddy-making drop, he swung it over the edge. The weighted end brushed the old child harmlessly on the shoulder. At once he turned to look up at Bowman, and his wrinkled face contorted with hatred and rage.
‘Babies!’ he hissed. ‘Silly little babies!’
That made Bowman look at him properly. He saw the thinning grey hair, the wizened cheeks, the scrawny neck: and he felt the hard dry longing in him, to hurt and to destroy. He raised the nut-sock high and he swung it hard, and he brought it down on the old child’s upturned face.