The Ropemaker

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.

“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 to 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.

When it was over Da rose and stretched.

“Bed now,” he said. “Who’s sleeping in the attic?”

“Just Tahl,” said Meena. “Alnor and me are going out to the barn. And there’s no need to look like that, Selly—tales I could tell about when you were my age, and you always thought I didn’t know. Anyway, like I said, it isn’t that. There’s something we’ve laid on us to do, and we might as well get it over. Right, love?”

“It is decided,” said Alnor quietly. “It is for the Valley. Do you think we would not do otherwise if we had the choice?”

“And we’ll need the makings of a fire,” said Meena.

They had all heard the story. Only Anja didn’t understand what was happening. Somberly they helped pack rugs and firewood into two loads, but Meena and Alnor refused any help with carrying them out to the barn. Tilja was fighting with tears by the time they opened the door.

“Oh, cheer up, everyone,” said Meena, waving the lantern she was carrying to and fro like a dancer at the midwinter fire feast, and laughing as if she meant it. “Look at it this way. Suppose someone had come to us four months back and told us just you can be young again till you get home, d’you think we wouldn’t’ve jumped at the chance? This time we’ve been having, we wouldn’t’ve missed it for anything in the world! Right, love?”

She turned and staggered through the door under her load. Alnor paused in the doorway, smiled an odd, teasing smile, so that for a moment he looked just like Tahl, and followed her out into the darkness.

Tired though she was, Tilja woke from ancient habit when Da got up shortly before dawn to go and see to the animals. The little finger of her left hand was throbbing uncomfortably, and she realized that the Ropemaker’s hair must still be wound round it. Perhaps it was that that had told her so clearly in her sleep that there was something unfinished. As she slid out of bed her movement woke Anja, who, instead of snuggling complainingly back under the covers, sat straight up.

“Where are you going?”

“Shhh. Go back to sleep. There’s something I’ve got to do.”

“Magic?”

“Sort of.”

“I’m coming too. Please. I’ve got to be there.”

Tilja was on the point of telling her to lie down again when she realized that what Anja was saying might possibly be true.

“All right. Put some clothes on. We’re going outside.”

When she opened the door it was still dark, but the first gray light in the east outlined the roofs across the yard. Through the gap beside the barn she could see, close beneath the dark edge of the forest, a single orange spark, the glow of a fire. It was too bright to have been burning all night—the firewood Meena and Alnor had carried wouldn’t have lasted. Sighing, she took Anja’s hand and led her to the stables, where she left her by the door. Groping in the pitch black, she found a pannikin on the shelf, scooped it into the bin that contained the yellownut, carried it out and gave it to Anja, then led her up to the barn.

“Wait here,” she said, and again by touch went in and found and untied Calico’s tethers and led her out. She waited while Calico stretched and eased her wings with a tremendous rattle of plumes and then folded them along her flanks.

“Aren’t they beautiful!” said Anja.

“Yes, but I’m afraid I’ve got to take them away.”

“Oh, you mustn’t! I want to fly, too!”

“So do I, but it’s like Ma said. Magic doesn’t belong in the Valley, only in the forest and the mountains. If we let Calico keep her wings it will spoil everything. I don’t know how, but somehow or other it will, in the end. No more talking to the cedars, no more unicorns, no more Urlasdaughters at Woodbourne . . .”

“I suppose so.”

“All right. Now you give Calico the yellownut, a little at a time, just to keep her mind off what I’m doing. That’s right . . .”

As Calico nosed forward for the yellownut Tilja ran her bare hand along the spine of the great wing. For an instant she could feel the hardness of a bone as broad as her wrist beneath the silky plumage, then the flicker of numbness, and then just air. One golden feather wavered toward the ground. She picked it up, went round to the far side and picked up the other feather. That wing had already vanished with the first. She unwound the Ropemaker’s hair from her finger and rewound it round the quills of the feathers.

Calico was nuzzling into the pannikin for the last crumbs of yellownut. Realizing she’d had it all, she raised her head and gave her shoulders an irritable shake, then looked round, so obviously puzzled that Tilja laughed aloud.

“What’s that about?” said Anja.

“She’s wondering what happened to her wings. She knows something’s changed, but she can’t think what. These are for you.”

“Oh . . . what are they?”

“Let’s put her in her own stall and I’ll tell you there.”

They settled onto a pile of hay, close together, not just for warmth, but because they were long-parted sisters, with feelings for each other no one else could have, ever.

“Those are roc feathers,” said Tilja. “The roc gave them to me, so that the Ropemaker could use them to help me. He couldn’t have if I’d just found them, or stolen them somehow. That’s because a roc is a magical creature in its own right, like a unicorn, or the merman who towed us away from Faheel’s island. They aren’t made magic like the ring, or Dorn’s whip.

“Now I’m giving them to you, because someday someone is going to need them again. Not you, I hope, nor your daughter who can hear what the cedars are saying, when her time comes, nor many daughters’ daughters after that. But one day one of them is going to need to go to the Ropemaker and ask him to help the Valley, just as we went to look for Faheel.

“So you’ve got to keep the feathers safe, and pass them on to your daughter when the time comes, and tell her the story we told you last night. I’ll tell it to you again, because you were asleep some of the time, and if I can I’ll come and tell your daughter when she’s old enough to understand.

“I saw what the Ropemaker did, but I’ve no idea how he did it, so I can’t tell you how she must use the feathers—that daughter’s daughter who’s going to need them. Perhaps her hands will know, because the feathers will tell them, and that hair round them. That’s one of his. It’s full of his magic. I think she’d better go into the forest, because that’s where the magic is, and the forest is our friend. There’ll have to be a horse, and a man or a boy from Northbeck. And then—I don’t know—perhaps she must do the exact opposite of what I do, taking all the magic that’s in her, and all she can suck out of the forest, and passing it out through her hands into the feathers and the horse. And at the same time she must say the Ropemaker’s name. Ramdatta.

“It is a secret name. None of you, not you or your daughter or any of the daughters after, must ever tell anyone that name, except the one who’s going to have Woodbourne after you.”

“Ramdatta?”

“That’s right. Do you understand?”

“Of course I do. It’s important. It’s for the Valley.”

“That’s right.”

They sat for a while in silence, Tilja vaguely but deeply content at the completion of things with this homecoming, Anja turning the feathers over, studying them, stroking them gently with her fingertips. When they rose and left the stables, day had broken.

Crossing the yard, Tilja turned and looked east through the gap between the stable and the barn. Two figures were coming slowly along the track, a rather stout old woman and a slighter man. The woman was limping, leaning heavily on the man’s arm. He seemed to be staring in front of him, but from the way he carried his head it was at once obvious that he was blind.

Anja shouted, raced to the gate and climbed it. Twisting round on the top bar, she cupped her hands round her mouth and yelled.

“Wake up! Wake up, everybody! Meena’s come home!”

She swung herself down on the other side and raced to welcome her grandmother.