Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection

“Dress warm,” she whispered. “It may be cold over the sea.”

I put on my thickest good dress and took my coat with me down to the kitchen. Everyone was there, including Bran, to see us off. We ate bread and cheese while Wenda packed us a mighty bag of provisions. Blodred came out of Rees’s sleeve to nibble some bread, and Green Greet stepped about on the table, pecking up anything anyone dropped. I could see he was making sure he was well fed for the journey. But there was no sign of Plug-Ugly. At first, I thought, Oh, he’s invisible again. I felt about, but I couldn’t discover him anywhere, either under the table or by the dead fire.

There was a moment then when my confidence wavered. I thought, If Plug-Ugly won’t trust himself to this balloon-thing … But I was too excited to let it last. We were going to fulfil our mission. And I ached to see my father again.

It was still blue-dark when we went out, down the track to the shed we had noticed on the way to the Pandy. Riannan raced down to the boulder and began unwinding the rope from it. Rees and Bran together took hold of the sides of the shed and lifted them away. Inside, I could dimly see a great heap of many-coloured silk, which Rees carefully dragged across the hillside until it was spread into a vast billowing round. It was attached by more ropes to a boat-shaped thing made of woven willow-wands.

Someone was sitting in the boat. We peered. It was Aunt Beck.

Yes, there she was, very upright, calmly eating bread and cheese. Beside her was Plug-Ugly, chewing at a lump of meat.

“Beck!” we all exclaimed.

“High time you all came,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

“But Beck,” I said, “I don’t think you should come with us.”

“And there we were tiptoeing and whispering not to disturb you!” Ivar said disgustedly. “What are you doing here?”

Aunt Beck looked at him severely. “I have to get away from that donkey,” she said.

Mad! I thought. But Wenda, who was helping Riannan fix the anchor to a hole in the hillside, stood up and called out, “Oh, now I understand! That spell somehow tied her to that donkey of yours! She’d better go with you. It’s the best way to break the connection.”

So that was why Moe had been acting up! I thought, while Bran said anxiously, “Will this make the boat too heavy, do you think?”

“Not really,” Rees said. “She’s very skinny. She and Aileen together must weigh less than Pugh, who I was going to take. Pugh’s husky. Light the fire, Dad. I want to catch the dawn wind.”

Actually, I thought we’d never get off. The fire was in a sort of metal box in the middle of the boat. After Bran had lit the packed charcoal in it with – to my envy and admiration – a word and a flick of his fingers, Rees set Ogo and Ivar to working the foot pumps fastened to bellows under the box. The fire roared and went from blue, to red, to white. Riannan, Rees, Finn and I had to hold the heavy silk up so that the heated air could get inside the balloon. It was oiled silk in many layers.

I was amazed at the work it must have taken. Silk was not easy to come by in Gallis. Rees told me that most of it came from Logra long ago. They had to collect it in a thousand small pieces and sew those pieces together. The balloon, when it finally began to bulge and lift a little, was a mad patchwork of raw parchment colour, bardic blue, floral scarves, petticoat pink and red wedding dresses, with even some embroidered drawers in there somewhere.

“Oh yes,” Riannan told me, with sweat from the fire rolling down her fine fair hair, “it took us a whole year, sewing madly. Mother sewed, I sewed, Rees sewed. Rees was mad to get it finished before the priest noticed, see.”

The envelope, as the crazy patchwork was called, took so long to fill that Wenda had plenty of time to go around and hug us all, before she had to stand by the anchor to unhook it from the hillside. Bran irritated Rees by hovering over the little lever that sent the wheelless cart up into the air underneath the boat. “Is it time to switch it?” he kept saying. “Just say the word, son.”

“Not yet!” Rees kept snapping. “Don’t waste the spell.”

Aunt Beck irritated everyone by saying, over and over, “Hurry up. Let’s get going.”

Even Finn, all pink and sweaty, bared his teeth at her and said, “Will you hold your noise, Wisdom, or I shall find myself getting Green Greet to peck you.”

But at last, at long last, the patchwork billows swelled themselves into a great ball-shape and came upright off the hillside to float above the boat.

“Keep pumping!” Rees yelled at Ivar and Ogo, who both looked as though they might expire. Then he shouted to his parents, “Lever, Dad, now! Anchor, Mum. Oh. For Gallis’s sake, move, both of you!”

I think Wenda and Bran had waited so long that they hardly believed the time had come. But they shook their heads and did their bit, while Rees hauled in the anchor and looped the rope to the side of the boat.

And, unbelievably, we came up off the hillside and stood away into the air.

For a while, we seemed to move really fast. Wenda and Bran turned from normal-size people, waving us goodbye, to tiny distant dolls in no time at all. We went up and up, and were in a golden dawn sky next moment, with sharp mountains beneath us; then we were high, high above green hillside reaching into wavy coastline outlined in white; after that, we were over the sea. Rees allowed the boys to stop pumping and they collapsed on to the creaking wickerwork sides.

I hung on to a rope and stared back at a glorious view of Gallis as a misty crescent trailing into the distance to the south, all blue peaks and green or gold plains. Then it was too misty to see and there was only water below. Sea from high up is oddly regular. I saw it as a greyness with white ripples crossing each other like the pattern of a plaid. It was very empty. I looked ahead and wondered where Logra was. There was nothing on the horizon but mist.

Riannan had been right. It was cold up there. Ivar and Ogo wrapped themselves in their plaids. Everyone else except Finn and Aunt Beck put coats on. Finn said cheerfully that he was used to worse in Bernica. Aunt Beck pronounced that Skarr was much colder. We laughed. We were all surprisingly happy. Plug-Ugly lay on my feet and purred. Green Greet flapped himself to a rope, where he hung sideways, staring around. Blodred was even more enterprising. She scrambled over Rees’s head on to another rope and went climbing out over the tight patchwork until we lost sight of her.

“Will she be all right?” Riannan asked anxiously.

“I hope so,” said Rees, craning his head after her just as anxiously. “She’s usually pretty sensible.”

We must have sailed for an hour, apparently standing still in the air, until things started to go wrong.

Ogo said, “The sea seems very near.”

He was right. When I looked down, I could see waves climbing and smashing in sprays of white. It was no longer possible to make out the neat plaid pattern. It was just grey, angry water to the far horizon.

Rees, who had been feeding another bag of charcoal on to the fire, jumped up and looked. “Gallis! We’re far too low! Ivar, Ogo, start pumping.” He hurriedly hitched two more wooden treadles to the bellows and began treading away at one furiously.

“Will we sink?” Ivar asked as he climbed towards the nearest treadle.

“Shouldn’t do,” Rees said. “Not with the wheelless cart underneath. Finn, would you pump too, please?”

The four of them began treadling hard, puffing and red in their faces. The fire roared and made its change from bluish to red and then to yellow-white. And the sea still came nearer. Shortly, I could hear the waves crashing. Salty spray came aboard and spattered our faces. Aunt Beck calmly licked her lips, but I panicked.

“Rees, we’re right down!” I yelled. A spout of water came aboard and hissed on the fire.

“Damnation of the gods!” Rees panted. “I think the wheelless spell’s run out. Riannan, start singing the spell. Sing for your life!”

Riannan stood up, holding on to one of the ropes, and sang, lovely clean notes and strange words. It was a tune I knew from Skarr. It made your heart lift, that song, but it did nothing for the balloon. We came so low that the wicker boat began pitching and tossing like a real boat. Foamy water swirled up through the chinks.

“Everyone sing!” Rees gasped, still pumping. “Come on! All of you!”

He began to sing too, in gasps, the same song. Finn, Ivar and Ogo joined in, in jerks. Finn knew one set of words, Ivar and Ogo another, and they all roared them out regardless, song of Skarr muddled with words of Bernica. Green Greet flapped down on to Finn’s heaving shoulders and seemed to be croaking out the song too.

I looked down and met Plug-Ugly’s wide accusing eyes. He thought I should sing too. “But you must know I can’t sing!” I wailed.

He went on looking, the way only a cat can.

“All right,” I said. “All right!” And I did the only thing I could think of, which was to intone the ‘Hymn of the Wise Women’. The words of it had never made sense to me. Aunt Beck had once confessed that she couldn’t understand them either. But I boomed them out.

“I am the salmon leaping the fall,

I am the thunder of the bull that gores,”

I boomed, all on one note.

“Ha galla ferrin magonellanebry!” Riannan’s sweet voice carolled.

“The sun spearing the lake is me,” I boomed grimly on.