Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection

“Then move the cart,” she snapped back. “We can’t stay here. Gran will find out.”

Moe seemed to share my aunt’s opinion. Her ears were flopping in protest at the music and it looked as if she was working up to start braying. And when a donkey brays you can hear little else.

I hurriedly got her moving again. “Did your grandmother really forbid dancing?” I said.

“Of course she does,” Aunt Beck replied. “It’s sinful and harmful. And,” she added, thinking about it in her new strange, childish way, “it’s most undignified as well!”

Well, I knew my great-grandmother had had a name for being the most joyless woman in Skarr, but I had always thought this meant that she moaned and complained. But forbidding people to dance! That was ridiculous. “And did she forbid singing too?” I asked.

“Always,” said my aunt. “Singing is unnatural. Will you hurry up, Barbary, and get us away from this wicked place!” She half stood up, angry and anxious.

It was quite clear Aunt Beck would run away if I didn’t take her away. Between her and Moe, I seemed to have no choice but to leave all the fun.

As Moe picked up speed, Finn came trotting after us with one hand up to keep Green Greet steady on his shoulder. “What should we be doing, Young Wisdom?”

So I was Young Wisdom now, I thought. That put me horribly in charge. I tugged a fistful of coins out of the purse and shoved them into Finn’s chubby hand. “Share that three ways,” I said, “so that you and Ivar and Ogo can go to the fair. I’m going down to the harbour to ask about the ferry. Meet me there in two hours.” As I said it, Moe fairly scampered away, before it occurred to me that none of us had a timepiece of any kind. While we rattled into the first streets of Charkpool, I saw myself waiting and waiting beside the sea and the ferry long gone for the day. Still, there was nothing I could do now, so I drove on with Aunt Beck sitting like a doll in the cart behind me.

Charkpool was a very orderly place. Not what I was used to in Bernica. It was all grey stone houses and quiet, straight streets. I had no trouble finding our way to the harbour. There was a gate there and people were streaming through it, all looking as if they were coming off the ferry and on their way to the fair. I must say I was so glad to see the sea quietly lapping at the stone quayside that I did nothing for a minute but sit and stare at it, and at Gallis in the blue distance beyond, and breathe great breaths of the smell of it.

The man on the gate must have thought I was lost. “Was there something you were wanting, little lady?” he asked politely.

I think I jumped. “Oh,” I said, still staring at the sea. It was blue-green here. “I was needing to take places on the ferry to Gallis for five people and this donkey and cart. Can you tell me where to do that?”

“Yes indeed,” he said. I could see him looking to see what I was staring at. “Those ships are all out of commission these days, you know. There is no trade with Logra since the barrier went up.”

This made me feel foolish. There was quite a line of tall ships almost in front of me, which I had been seeing without seeing, if you take my meaning, while I stared at the sea beyond. Now I looked at the ships, I could see that they were all but derelict, with green slime growing up their sides and most of their rigging gone. “I was wondering why they were so rotten-seeming,” I said, to cover my foolish feeling. “Was there a lot of trade with Logra?”

“Day and night, little lady,” he told me sadly. “Ten years ago, every tide brought some dozens of ships into port, loaded with everything you could imagine. The barrier made for a lot of hardship. There’s men I know, good sailors, who still have no work – though most of them have taken to fishing. It’s a living of sorts. But the shops have gone and the dock workers. We’re all too quiet now.”

“That’s very sad,” I said.

“It is and all,” he agreed. He was looking into the cart now at Aunt Beck. He was a nosy fellow. “Is your mother quite well in there? She’s as quiet as Charkpool with the tide out.”

“She’s my aunt,” I said. “And she’s had a – had a stroke of—”

I was going to say “misfortune”, but he misunderstood me. “Ah, a stroke, is it!” he said. “My cousin had one of those. Right as rain one moment, and the next he could hardly move a finger on his right side. Couldn’t speak either. Is that why you have the beast in the cart, to guard her?”

I looked where he was looking and Plug-Ugly looked back at me, plain to see in every spot. “Yes,” I said. “Perhaps you could direct me to the ferry?” I was beginning to think I’d never get there.

“Of course, of course,” he said at once. “Just let me open the gate for you.” He opened the gate, telling me all the while which bits of his cousin couldn’t move, and then went with me down to the dockside to show me the ferry. On the way, he told at least six people that there was a poor lady in the cart who’d had a stroke and needed to get to Gallis. The result was that I sat in the cart for the next couple of hours, staring at the big bargelike ferry, while person after person came up and told me of parents, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts and friends who had suffered from strokes and what this had done to them.

The really encouraging thing was that they nearly all said that the sufferer had gone on the ferry to Gallis and found a healer there to cure them. I realised it was true, as I had heard in Skarr, that the magics of Gallis were very potent. I began to hope someone there could lift Lady Loma’s spell. So I sat clutching the big bronze disc that was our ticket for the ferry, nodding and smiling eagerly at each person, and meanwhile getting very impatient indeed. The ferry was due to leave half an hour after midday and I just could not see Ivar and Ogo tearing themselves away from the fair in time.

But they did. It was Finn who achieved it somehow. They all arrived soon after noon, when passengers were already trickling aboard the ferry, all very pleased with themselves. Finn had been at his monkly cadging. He had an armload of food and a charm bracelet which he said would cure Aunt Beck. He insisted on fastening it around her wrist, in spite of her saying, “I won’t wear that. It’s unseemly.”

Ivar was waving a pottery plaque with a blurred green bird on it. He had won a swordfight competition and was highly delighted with himself. “I beat ten other fellows!” he kept saying. “Beat them hollow!” But the real reason for his joy was that he had had his fortune told. “So I’ll be coming with you to Gallis after all,” he said, but he wouldn’t tell me why.

“I thought it was settled that you were coming anyway,” I said.

“Not to me, it wasn’t,” he said. “Not until I heard what this seer had to say.”

Ogo had had his fortune told too, it seemed. “But it was all nonsense,” he told me. And he whispered, “Ivar won because the other swordsmen were so bad actually, but don’t tell him. Even I could have won if I’d gone in for it.”

“What did you do instead?” I asked.

“Danced a bit. Went around the stalls,” Ogo said. “They had a calf with two heads and a bird like Green Greet that sort of sang. Some of the things they were selling were really good. Like this. Look.” He pulled out a rainbow scarf that seemed to be made of cobwebs and wrapped it tenderly around Aunt Beck’s neck.

Aunt Beck blinked a bit and, to my surprise, she said, “Thank you kindly, young sir.” She didn’t seem to know it was Ogo.

“And this is for you,” Ogo said, proud but embarrassed. And he passed me a flat wooden box.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have spent your money on me,” I said as I opened the box. “Oh!” Inside was a necklace of copper plaited with silver, with big green stones in it every so often. It was quite lovely. “It’s beautiful!” I said.

“It wasn’t expensive,” Ogo said, rather pink. “I watched the woman make it. She was ever so clever. And I thought you needed something to make up for missing the fair.”

“It’s the most splendid thing I’ve ever had!” I said. “Thank you, Ogo.” And I put it around my neck. It was perfect, as if I’d had it always. I felt like a queen in it.

Then we had to board the ferry. They put a wide gangplank out because there were two more carts and a pony trap beside ours, and all three of these went up with no trouble at all. Moe refused. She braced all four hooves and went stiff. Ivar smacked her on the rump and it made no difference at all. In the end, Ogo and I had to walk backwards on either side of her, hauling her bridle, with Finn and Ivar awkwardly leaning across the shafts to push on her rear. Like that, we inched on to the ferry. The sailors were fussing about the tide and the wind by the time we got her aboard. She really did not want to go. This surprised me. Up to then Moe had been such a good donkey.

They may call donkeys stupid, but in actual fact they are quite clever. Moe had stood and looked at the sea, and the ferry, and put two and two together. She must have known we were taking her away from the country of her birth. At all events, when they cast off the ropes and the sails filled and the ferry went rocking out into the wider water, the other two donkeys and the pony were given their nosebags and seemed quite content. Moe refused hers. She shook all over. Then she started to bray. Now the bray of a donkey, as I said before, is one of the loudest things in nature. It is a sort of roar, followed by a shriek of indrawn breath, followed by another roar. But the worst of it is that it sounds so sad. Poor Moe sounded heartbroken.

“Will you shut that donkey up!” the other passengers said.

“She really is heartbroken,” I said. Ogo and I tried everything we knew to comfort her. We pulled her ears and petted her and murmured consoling things, but she brayed on and on.

Finally, Finn said, with his hands over his ears, “She’s afraid of the sea, so she is. Green Greet, can you settle her?”

“Can try,” Green Greet said. And he flew up off Finn’s shoulder and landed on Moe’s head. She shook her head and flopped her ears, but he stayed on her. He started talking to her in a low, warbling murmur. It didn’t have words. It was sort of animal talk. And after a bit Moe stopped yelling in order to listen. By the time we could see Gallis properly, all lit by the sun, Green Greet had got Moe almost as quiet as the pony. He moved down her back and went on warbling to her, while the rest of us stared out at Gallis.

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Gallis is very beautiful. The blue peaks and sunlit rifts full of trees assured us of this, but, when the ferry swung into a glassy bay under the nearest blue peak, none of us could really attend to the scenery. Or perhaps Aunt Beck could, jolted this way and that as she sat in the cart we all tugged and pushed. Moe did not want to get off the boat. It was exasperating.

“Typical donkey,” Ivar growled. “Shall I twist her tail?”

“No!” Ogo and I said together.

“She’s a Bernica donkey,” I said. “She knows Gallis is a foreign country.”

“Well, if you two want to be soft, slushy idiots, I’m not helping you any more,” Ivar said, and he went marching away down the gangplank. We could see him striding ahead up the rocky way that curved around the great mountain. Ogo and I exchanged looks. Both of us were hot and angry by then.

“Peace!” said Finn – which irritated me almost as much. “Let Green Greet guide Moe.”

He shoved the bird off Moe’s back quite unceremoniously. Green Greet, after an indignant squawk, flapped up ahead of Moe. He left a green feather which Ogo picked up and put in his belt for luck. And Moe took off after Green Greet in a rush. Aunt Beck swayed about in the cart as it rattled down the gangplank, and we trotted after.

There was no real jetty, just a shelf of rock with a couple of bollards on it that the ferry tied up to. Everyone had gone streaming up the rocky path, so we followed, uphill and around the mountain. It reminded me of Skarr. Most of our bays are like this, except where the towns are. The difference was that Gallis was almost violently beautiful. The path led through a mighty gorge overhung with splendid trees, where a great white waterfall dashed down the cliffs to the left. On a ledge beside the waterfall we saw the distant figure of a man in blue clothes.

“What’s he doing up there? It’s not safe!” Aunt Beck said.