The Ropemaker

17

The Forest Edge

In their haste to be home they made long marches, and in no more time than the shorter outward journey from El-lion’s house had taken them they reached Salata’s encampment. She and her daughters ran to meet them, full of welcome, and then of confusion when Salata found not the Meena she knew and longed to thank, but a lively girl less than half her own age, so her thanks were confused and doubtful.

Her husband, Gahan, was a square, sturdy man who had been with his regiment in some western province at the time of the Emperor’s death. Like most of his comrades he had taken advantage of the confusion to desert, and had made his way home through the turmoil that followed the fall of the Watchers, and come through the Pirrim Hills before the waking of the pines. On the way he had seen enough horrors and marvels to be able to accept anything, so he could thank Meena more simply. He said he would be glad to take them as far as the old road that the Emperors had built before the sickness in the forest had closed the way north.

Salata told them that a third magician had already reached Ellion’s house, and so it was safe from any attack for the time being.

“It can’t be Aileth already,” said Tahl. “She’s right out on the Grand Trunk Road, and that’s days and days away, even for a galloping horse.”

“It must depend on the magician,” said Tilja. “Faheel told me he could have gone to Talagh in an instant without me, and Zara said Aileth had twice her powers.”

“You know what,” said Meena slowly. “I’m getting a feeling about all this—what’s been happening to us since we left the Valley. And before, I daresay. It’s felt like just one thing after another, no connection, but it wasn’t. It’s been all connected, like it was meant to happen. And the same with those three women at Ellion’s house. They haven’t just come there all on their own. They’re supposed to be there. I don’t know what for, no more than they do, but that’s what’s happening.”

“Why don’t you ask your spoons?” said Salata. “I’d love to see them again.”

Meena looked at her and sighed and shook her head. All the way north she had carried the spoons as before in the bag beneath her skirt. It would have been dangerous, of course, to try to use them, but she had never once even mentioned them. Partly, Tilja guessed, this was because they belonged in what Meena called her memory-room, and she didn’t go in there except for some definite purpose; but also, perhaps, there was a kind of grief involved. Axtrig had been alive, like a person, an old, old friend of the family. They had called her “she.” Now there was just this “it.” The old friend was dead.

“Oh, please, Meena,” said Salata’s younger daughter. “I want Da to see.”

Meena sighed again, shrugged and pulled out the bag, laid out the cloth and set the spoons on it. She picked up each of the darker ones and put them back, hesitated and picked up Axtrig. With another sigh she unstoppered the flask and rubbed a drop of oil onto the bowl. She laid the spoon down, leaned forward and concentrated.

“Yes,” she whispered, “yes . . . just a little something . . .”

It was a long time before she straightened and put the spoons away.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It wasn’t like when we were here before, clear as clear. It was more like it used to be in the Valley, little bits of stuff you’ve got to decide what they mean. Anyway, far as I can make out, somebody’s coming. Or something. And there’s people waiting for him. Or her, or it, but somehow I think it’s a him. Waiting in two places, it looks like, but . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Tilja bowed her head, trying to hide the shock of recognition. The three magicians at Ellion’s house, she thought. And me, here. And Meena and Alnor and Tahl. All waiting for the Ropemaker.

And then, with a great surge of relief, He’s coming. He’s alive. Moonfist hasn’t found him yet. And I won’t need to send for him.

She felt the silence and looked up. Everyone’s eyes were on her. Even the two dogs were staring. But there were differences. The bright look of interest in the dogs’ eyes was just that, interest because they were aware of Tilja’s being the center of attention. Salata and her daughters were simply puzzled by the reaction of their visitors to what Meena had said, or rather started to say and not finished. Tahl had his head bowed and was gazing steadfastly at his own clenched fists, but Alnor and Meena were staring directly at her, all with a look that said, Now, surely, at last, you’re going to tell us.

“I . . . I . . . ,” she began, and bit her lip and turned away. She didn’t dare. All three were already far too close to the deadly knowledge. Soon, soon, the Ropemaker would be coming, and then they’d understand.

If Axtrig was right.

It was not yet dawn when they rose next morning and said goodbye to Salata. They reached the old road a little before dark, and there they built a fire and camped, Gahan staying the night to see them safely on their way next day.

The road wound north through barren scrubby hills. Despite its age, it was almost as easy going as the one they had traveled from Talagh, because the Emperor’s engineers had put it in order less than three years earlier, when he had sent his army north to try to fulfill his vow to recapture the Valley. The bridges were sound and the wells and rain cisterns held water for an army on the march.

On the second afternoon they climbed a low pass and saw the dark mass of the forest stretching away east and west, in the full glow of its autumn color. Already there was a smell of winter in the wind. Beyond the treetops, a little above the horizon, or so it seemed, ran a wavering white line, and they knew that they were looking at the snowy peaks of the northern mountains. The sight made Woodbourne seem so near that Tilja felt that she could almost have reached out over the trees and stroked its roofs. The thought steadied her for what she had to do.

The wind, which for many days had blown dry and gentle from the east, had swung unnoticed to the north, and had a new feel to it, colder but softer. Above the snow peaks clouds were massing.

“Looks like we’re in for a wet night,” said Meena.

“We’ll find a place to camp,” said Alnor. “Then, if there’s time before dark, we’ll go a little way in among the trees and see whether Tahl and I feel the sickness.”

“Best let me go in on my own first,” said Meena. “See if I can find a cedar, tell me what’s up.”

“Take Tilja along,” said Tahl. “It’s just the sort of place bad stuff might be hiding. All right, Til?”

Tilja hesitated. Meena should be all right in the forest, surely. The trees were her friends. And she ought to stay with Tahl. He was their danger point. But once again she couldn’t explain. At least, she thought, with something like relief, this is the last time. Tomorrow I’ll be able to tell them everything. If we’re all four still alive.

But perhaps it would be easier for Tahl if she wasn’t anywhere near him, and he could think about something else.

“All right,” she said.

“We’ll build a shelter while we’re waiting for you,” said Alnor. This turned out to be unnecessary. Shortly before they reached the trees they found several tumbledown buildings beside the road, temporary storehouses, they guessed, for the army that had come. Most were already ruinous, while those whose roofs were still sound were dark and rank with the stench of lairing beasts. Small creatures scuttled into hiding as they stood in the doorways.

“I’d sooner get wet,” said Meena, turning away. “What’s that over there?”

The strange little circular hut stood all on its own, well away from the road. It was walled on three sides but open toward the forest. Birds had roosted in the rafters and the floor was spattered with their droppings, but the roof was sound. At the center of the hut was a flat stone on which someone must have lit a small but intense fire, hot enough to redden and crumble the surface, though no ashes remained. They eyed it suspiciously.

“Anyone feel anything?” said Alnor.

“Nothing special,” said Tahl.

“Looks like something’s been going on here, but not that recent, judging by the mess,” said Meena. “There was magicians came with the army, Lananeth told us. It’ll be something to do with one of them. Why don’t we just clean it out—we don’t want to be doing that in the dark—but not move in here unless it comes on to rain? Then Tilja and me can have a go at the forest while you do your kick-fighting. And you may as well get stuff for a fire together, too.”

There was, for once, a decent patch of grazing just below the hut, so Tilja hobbled Calico and left her with the boys while she and Meena returned to the old road and followed it to the edge of the forest, only to find that the place where it had entered the trees was an entrance no more. Three years ago the Emperor’s engineers had started to hack a broad gouge into the forest, and had thus let in the light. Dormant seeds had sprung into growth all across the opening, even between the cobbles of the road itself. A mass of brambles tangled through the dense array of saplings.

“We’ll not do any good here,” said Meena. “And besides, if they’ve gone and cut everything down, where’ll I find a cedar old enough to talk to me? They need to be a hundred years old and more before they start that, and a couple of hundred before they say anything worth hearing. There’s got to be a way in somewhere along here. . . . Now look at that! What’s been happening here? That’s never woodmen who did that!”

They were now a little beyond the road, staring at a tangled jumble of smashed timber. Many great trunks had been snapped like twigs twenty feet above the ground. Trees that still stood had lost half their branches. Then, as they walked on along the edge of the forest, the damage ended as suddenly as it had begun and they could pick their way through the fringe of undergrowth to ancient standing woodland, like that above Woodbourne, shadowed leaf litter between the soaring trunks, with only here and there a shrub or smaller tree that could thrive in such darkness.

“What do you make of that?” said Meena, gazing back to the ruin they had passed. “That’s never a storm did that, just all in one place. That’s got to be magic, like I was saying back at the hut. Now, just stand still a moment, will you . . . ? Don’t tell me there’s none over this side . . . not a whisper . . . you’d’ve thought . . .”

“Can you tell where the lake is?”

“Should do . . . let’s try a bit further on—maybe it’s something to do with you. You just stay here . . .”

She ran off between the trees, halted a moment and waved to Tilja to join her.

“Got it,” she said, pointing. “Still a long way off, though. I was right, too—I can’t feel it now with you being so close.”

“I didn’t seem to do that to you that time we went to fetch Ma out of the forest.”

Meena paused, frowning, while she went to fetch the memory from the other room.

“Wasn’t the same, then. You’ve changed. Found yourself, if you know what I mean. There’s a lot more to you now. And that’ll be why I couldn’t hear the cedars. So if you’ll just keep a bit behind me . . .”

Again she ran off, but this time didn’t stop until she turned aside and disappeared. Tilja found her standing at the foot of one of a group of enormous cedars, their boles as broad as haystacks, their spires way out of sight above the canopy. She watched while Meena laid her hands against the ridged red bark, bowed her head and stood motionless. After some while she straightened, turned and came slowly back. Tilja had never seen her, either young or old, look so stricken.

“Just mumbles and mutters,” she said sadly. “Like when you wake someone up only they don’t want to be woken. The magic’s dying, Til. It’s dying!”

“Perhaps they’ll wake up when . . . What about the unicorns? Are they still there?”

“If they are, they’re hiding. Ah, well, there’s one way to find out. Let’s go and fetch the boys in before it gets dark.”

The answer came clearly. Barely twenty paces in under the trees Alnor stumbled and would have fallen if Meena hadn’t caught him. Close behind them, Tahl halted, swaying, and closed his eyes, waiting for Tilja to turn him and lead him back into the open. Her touch seemed to have no effect on the sickness. Calico watched the proceedings with a bored sneer.

“That’s the unicorns being so scared, and they’ve good reason,” said Meena when they’d helped the boys out and settled them down to rest beside a small grove of sweet chestnuts that stood separate from the forest.

“You mean they were there? Somewhere close by?” said Tilja.

“Don’t have to be,” said Meena. “It fills the whole forest, what they’re feeling. Maybe it’s worse when something’s happened to scare them, but they’ve no need of that just now. Like I say, they’ve reason enough without it. The cedars aren’t talking, and what that means is the magic’s dying out of the forest. Not just the sickness—that’s worse than ever, like you’ve just seen, but it’s not going to stay like that. Once the magic is gone, the unicorns can’t live here anymore, and they know it. That’s why they’re so scared right now. And when they’ve gone the sickness will go too, and anyone will be able to come through the forest—soldiers, tax collectors, anyone. That’s why we’ve got to get back, see it doesn’t happen.”

“There’s got to be a way through,” mumbled Alnor, lying with his head in Meena’s lap. “We’ve both got to get back, he said, and he’d have known if I couldn’t.”

“Oh, there’ll be a way all right,” said Meena, running her fingertips along his bare forearm. “We just need to find someone who knows where it is.”

She paused, and glanced sideways at Tilja.

“And tell us what to do when we get home,” she added.

There was a silence. Tilja shrank into herself. Tahl was looking directly at her now, and didn’t glance away when she caught his eye. Now that the moment had come, he had allowed himself to think it all through. He knew. She swallowed.

“All right,” she said. “He told me not to tell you, in case . . .”

“Then don’t,” said Alnor.

“Only if there’s anything we can do,” said Tahl.

“You’ll have to stay right away,” said Tilja. “And . . . and if it goes wrong . . . he said it might . . . no, there won’t be anything.”

There was another silence.

“He told you to try this?” said Alnor.

“Yes . . . if . . . I can’t tell you that either.”

“Then it’ll be all right,” said Meena firmly. “If it’s something you’ve got to do, you’d better get it over. And just smell that wind—it’ll be raining in a couple of hours. You’d best take Calico. We’ll stay here and look for chestnuts. Don’t you worry about us. They’re good honest trees, these. They’ll look after us.”

Tilja settled herself by the strange burnt slab in the little circular hut. She wanted privacy, secrecy, for what she had to do. Everywhere else was too exposed.

Ten seconds, she told herself. That should be enough.

Her fingers were covered with sweat as she rolled up her sleeve, unwound first the lashings that held the roc feathers in place and then the Ropemaker’s hair from their quills. She slipped the feathers into the pocket of her blouse and laid the hair on the rock beside her. Then she hauled the box out, opened it, laid it down beside the hair and started to count to ten. At three the hair tie burst into flame. Instantly the flame was a raging blast of fire straining toward the forest. At the hut’s edge it became a roaring gale. She could see the bushes outside being lashed about, and hear the crash and creak of falling timber mixed with Calico’s squeals of panic. She smelled her own clothes and hair beginning to scorch in the heat, but felt nothing on her skin. The flame was a made magic and could not harm her. Grasping that knowledge, she forced her hand into the heart of the blast, found the box by touch and picked it up. The flame died instantly.

The Ropemaker’s hair tie had vanished. The ring floated in blackness, as she’d first seen it. The box seemed untouched. She closed it, ran the cord round her neck and slid it in under her blouse.

Calico in her panic had tripped on her hobble and fallen. She was still struggling to her feet when Tilja found her. Shakily Tilja helped her up and stood with her for a while, soothing and calming her, and at the same time soothing herself with the homely feel of horse. Then she left Calico to graze and went and sat, in front of the hut, waiting, in a tangle of hope and dread, for the Ropemaker. Or Moonfist.

A wall of cloud was looming to the north—the rain must already be sheeting down at Woodbourne—but overhead the sky was clear, and the setting sun, hardly lower than when she had gone into the hut, colored the cloud mass with heavy purples and fringes of gold. Time passed. Nothing happened until Meena, Alnor and Tahl came cautiously up the slope, just as the last fiery streaks were dulling in the west. Meena had her skirt held up in front of her, full of the chestnuts they’d been collecting.

“Is everything all right?” said Alnor.

Tilja could hear the anxiety in his voice.

“I . . . don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m hoping someone will come and help us, but there may be other things. . . .”

“D’you want us to keep away still?” said Meena. “I don’t fancy leaving you here alone in the dark.”

“Nor us being away from you, either,” said Alnor, “if that sort of stuff’s going to happen. Let’s get a fire going. We’ll need it anyway if we’re going to get the chestnuts roasted before it rains.”

Nobody wanted to talk about what had happened or might still happen. Alnor used his tinderbox to light the dry branches that he and Tahl had already laid in while Meena and Tilja were in the forest. By the time it was fully dark the embers were hot enough for the chestnuts. They were fat and full of flavor, but Tilja could barely eat for tension. In her mind the conviction grew and grew that Axtrig had been wrong and the Ropemaker wouldn’t come after all, would never come, because Moonfist had already found and destroyed him. And if Moonfist himself came . . . She felt utterly drained, certain that she would lack the strength to deal with him. When a chestnut popped or a burning branch collapsed, her heart leaped like a rabbit. And if anything beyond the circle of firelight stirred—a leaf, a settling bird—she froze with the hair on her nape erect while she waited for the intruder.

What came in the end was a little mouselike creature. She saw it first as a pair of glistening eyes at the edge of darkness. She froze. It crept forward, nose twitching. Now Meena saw it, and whispered to the others to sit still. Very slowly she leaned and crumbled part of a chestnut into the animal’s path. It hesitated, then came on in short, nervous darts. When it reached the crumbs it sniffed at the largest one, picked it up between its forepaws, sat back on its haunches and nibbled rapidly. The firelight sparkled off its fur. There was something odd about its movements, a kind of gawky deftness, as if it had not really been born as a whole mouse, but had been somehow assembled from several other mice. Like the unicorn, the dog, the lion . . .

You have eaten our food, Tilja thought. Now you must deal well by us.

She smiled and waited for what it would do next.

Without warning it turned and flipped away into the darkness.

Nobody said anything. For a moment she assumed they hadn’t recognized the mouse-thing, and were waiting for it to recover its nerve and return. Then she became aware of their stillness. She looked. All three were sitting rigid, gazing straight ahead of them, unblinking. At the edge of darkness she could see Calico, motionless.

Something moved on the far side of the fire. A man was standing there, behind Alnor, watching them. She knew at once he was Moonfist. He came round the fire and faced her, looking down. She scrambled to her feet. He was about Da’s age, but broader and shorter, and clean-shaven, not dressed in the fashion of the Empire, but wearing a soft cap, short cloak, jerkin and leggings, with a belt of large silver links at the waist. He carried a sturdy wooden staff with a leather bag tied to it at the top. There was nothing about him to tell her she should be afraid, but she was. Fear seemed to beam out of him. Fear held Meena and the others rigid in its nightmare. She was outside the nightmare. She could move and think. And be afraid.

He glanced at Alnor. Alnor jerked and strutted forward, stiff as a doll, and faced him. Moonfist studied him for a moment, then laid his hand on his shoulder. Instantly Alnor became a little mannikin, only a few inches high, dangling from Moonfist’s hand. Moonfist slipped him into the leather bag at the top of his purse. He did the same to Meena, but when Tahl stood in front of him he paused.

“Too clever,” he murmured. “Too clever for your own good.”

He tapped him on the shoulder, put him in the bag and turned to Tilja.

“You have my ring,” he said. “Give it to me.”

“It isn’t yours,” she whispered.

“It is mine,” he said calmly. “Faheel should never have had it. Give it to me.”

“No.”

“You destroyed Varti, who was last of the Watchers,” he said. “All powers are now mine. I could destroy you, but choose not to. You will be useful to me. Give me my ring, and I will give you back your companions unharmed.”

“No.”

“Very well.”

He glanced at the leather bag and it became a transparent globe, lit from within. The three mannikins were awake now, alive, looking around, seeing her, staring at her with terrified, pleading eyes. Moonfist glanced at the fire. A white flame shot up at its center and steadied, gently roaring. He gripped his staff by its lower end and swung the globe toward the flame. The mannikins shrank away from the heat, covering their heads with their arms. He stopped the movement and looked at her.

She put her hand into her blouse, drew out the box, opened it and took out the ring. Gripping it lightly between the forefingers and thumbs of both hands, like a priestess laying an offering on a shrine, she held it toward him. He reached out his cupped hand to accept it. At the last moment she let go with her left hand and snatched at a finger, while her right flung the ring into the darkness where the mouse had gone.

“Ramdatta!” she cried.

In the shadows something moved, began to explode. Then she was in darkness.

Again, but hopelessly, she sought the lake. She was still holding Moonfist’s finger. He strode beside her in the darkness, untroubled. She had to take him to the lake. She couldn’t have let go, even if she had wanted, but she didn’t. To take him was the only hope. If he was with her, with all his powers, he was not by the fire, and the Ropemaker would have a few moments more to find the ring.

They were there. In the starless blackness she could feel the icy wind sweeping down from the glaciers, hear the rattle of wavelets at her feet.

He stretched out an arm and called. Four heavy syllables. Four blows on a great gong, echoing and reechoing from the mountains. Avalanches slid bellowing toward the lake, and with a vast, sucking roar the water started to drain away, down through the chasm that Moonfist’s cry had opened beneath it.

It was happening to her. Everything that was in her, everything that made her Tilja, thoughts, memories, loves, hopes, dreams, terrors, was draining away through the hand that held Moonfist’s finger, into him, becoming part of him.

No, I will not, she thought. I am Tilja, Tilja, Tilja, Tilja. There was nothing to hold to, nothing to stop the awful slither of herself into the man’s otherness. She had to have something to hold to. Her free hand clutched uselessly at her own body, as though that would do, and brushed against the roc feathers in the pocket of her blouse. Yes, there! Not the actual feathers, not the memory of the roc, but the place, Faheel’s island, where, while his unseen friends had danced their dance of farewell, she had discovered who and what she was, the innermost Tilja, her true self.

She seized the moment and clung to it, as she might have clung to a rock in a raging torrent. The outflow faltered, ceased. Moonfist turned toward her. She felt him summoning up further powers and knew that this was the end.

Everything changed. The finger she was grasping melted from her hand. With a shudder the chasm below the lake sealed itself shut. She felt warmth, heard the mutter of a human voice, opened her eyes and found herself swaying with exhaustion by the fire in front of the hut. Hands took her by the shoulders before she could fall and lowered her to the ground, where she crouched, shivering, her whole body bathed in sweat.

“Near thing,” said the Ropemaker’s voice. “Did it between us, just.”

He was standing beside her, much as she remembered him, a skinny, gawky figure topped by his immense turban. A body lay at his feet. The head was away from her but she recognized the silver links of the belt chain. The hand that protruded from the sleeve beside it was fleshless bone.

Meena, she thought. Alnor. Tahl.

She looked toward the fire. Moonfist’s staff lay half across it. The end to which the bag had been fastened was blackened embers.

Numbly, through her sobs, she was aware of being lifted, carried, set down. A voice spoke. She didn’t take it in. She must stay where she was. He was going to do something. She was alone with her horror and grief, and the knowledge of failure. All useless. Alnor dead. Tahl dead. Meena, whom she loved more than anyone in the world, dead, horribly, horribly dead. Nothing else mattered. Nothing ever would.

Something changed. She didn’t feel or hear or smell the change, but there was a sort of inward flicker, and the world was different, just as it had been when Alnor had spoken Faheel’s name in Lananeth’s warded room. She looked up. Through the gray blur of her tears she could see the entrance of the hut, but nothing beyond. She wiped her eyes. There was nothing beyond. The hut floated in grayness, lit by a vague light that came from nowhere. As she stared the grayness changed, becoming paler at the center and darker to either side. Faint shadows appeared in it, acquired dim shapes, five people standing in a group. The man on the left moved his arm and touched one of the others on the shoulder. That figure vanished. The man moved his hand and did something at the top of the staff he was carrying, then moved it back to touch the next figure. And the next. Now the girl on the right faced him alone, and Tilja understood that she was looking back out of one time into another, watching herself a little while ago confronting the magician she called Moonfist.

They stayed motionless. Tilja knew what they were saying, but could not hear the murmur of their voices. As the time she was watching came nearer to the time in which she watched, the figures became clearer. She couldn’t breathe for the sudden intense hope and intense fear. Now, as Moonfist swung his staff toward the fire, she could see the transparent globe at its end. The movement paused. The girl moved her arms to draw something from under her clothing and offer it to the man. He reached to take it.

She saw the spasm of violent action, her own grab at his hand, her other arm flinging the ring into the darkness; heard, like a far whisper, her own cry, Ramdatta!; saw the staff toppling into the flame . . .

Now, Ropemaker! Now!

At the edge of the darkness on the right the Ropemaker exploded into his shape. His arm moved, flicking something toward the fire. The staff was twitched clear. The Ropemaker was bending, picking the ring up, sliding it onto his finger . . .

For a long moment he stood rigid, then turned and strode toward the motionless pair by the fire, locked in their desperate inward conflict. He seemed larger than he had been, no longer gawky and misshapen in his monstrous turban, but all of a piece, commanding, magnificent. Briefly he considered the magician, then raised his hands in a firm gesture and held them over the magician’s face. Something invisible grasped Moonfist’s body and battered him violently from side to side, like a terrier killing a rat. It let go. He collapsed and lay still.

The Ropemaker turned to the girl and far more gently made the same gesture. The invisible hands caught her as she crumpled and lowered her to the ground, where she crouched, hiding her face in her hands.

Tilja understood what she must now do. Sobbing with relief, she huddled down into the same posture as the girl. She heard the pad of the Ropemaker’s feet on the hut floor, felt herself lifted and carried. The Ropemaker waited for the exact instant at which the time that he was in caught up with the stilled moment from which Tilja had been watching. When the two times became one he lowered her into herself.

She let her sobs die, rose and looked. The staff was lying beside the fire. The cord that the Ropemaker had used to twitch it clear was still wrapped round its shank. The globe lay well away from the embers. The three mannikins were standing up, waiting to be released.

“Got that box?” said the Ropemaker.

She drew it out and handed it to him. As he slid the ring off his finger and put it away he changed, shrinking to the odd, slightly clownish figure she was used to, but sagging with weariness. She looked at the globe.

“What about the others?” she asked. “Can you . . . ?”

“Your turn,” he muttered. “I’m done for.”

Uncertainly, feeling that all her powers were exhausted, she bent to pick up the globe. It vanished at her touch. She held out her spread hand to the mannikins. Each reached and grasped a fingertip. Between instant and instant they rose to their true size.

“Don’t ask me to go through that again,” said Meena, with a shuddering half laugh. “I really thought we were down to be toast. My, was I cross about it!”