The Spellcoats

Duck chuckled. “They’re a lot nicer than Uncle Kestrel’s lump of wood.”

I laughed too. Everyone in Shelling has such awful Undying. Most of them are supposed to be the River. Uncle Kestrel has a piece of driftwood that his father caught in his net one day. It looks like a man with one leg and unequal arms – you know how driftwood does – and he never lets it out of his sight. He took it to the war with him.

I remember this particularly. It was in the first part of the year after the shortest day, and there was a hard frost that night. It was the only frost that winter. I was cold. Right in the middle of the night I woke up out of a dream, freezing. In my dream my father was somewhere in the distance, trying to tell me something. “Wake up, Tanaqui,” he said, “and listen carefully.” But that was all he said, because I did wake up. It took hours to get back to sleep. I had to get in beside Robin in the end, I was so cold.

From what Uncle Kestrel said, I think that was the night my father died. It is hard to be sure, but I think so. I do not want to weave of this.

Before that came the terrible illness. Almost everyone in Shelling got it, and some of the smaller children died. The River smelt very bad. Even Hern admitted that this disease might have come from the River. It was much warmer than it should be for the time of year, and the River was very low and stagnant – a queer light greenish colour – and we could not get the smell out of our house. Robin burnt cloves on the edge of the hearth to hide it. We all had the disease, but not badly. When we were better, Robin and I went round to see if Aunt Zara was ill too. We had not seen her in her garden for days.

She was ill, but she would not let us into her house. “Keep away from me!” she screamed through the door. “I’m not having either of you near me!”

Robin was very patient, because Aunt Zara was ill. “Now, Aunt, don’t be so silly,” she said. “Why won’t you let us in?”

“Just look at yourselves!” screamed my aunt.

Robin and I stared at one another in great surprise. Robin had been very particular about our appearance, partly because she has grown fussy now she is old and partly to please Aunt Zara, who is even fussier. We both had our new winter rugcoats on, with bands of scarlet saying Fight for the King, which I had woven to remind us of the King’s messengers. The rest was a pattern of good browns and blue, which suit us both. My head was still sore from Robin’s combing, so I knew my hair was neat and not the usual white bush. Robin’s hair is silkier than mine, though just as curly. She had striven with it and put it into neat plaits, like a yellow rope on each shoulder. We could not see what was wrong with us.

While we looked, my aunt kept screaming. “I’m not going to have anything to do with you! I disown you! You’re none of my flesh and blood!”

“Aunt Zara,” Robin said, reasonably, “our father is your brother.”

“I hate him too!” screamed my aunt. “He brought you down on us! I’m not having the rest of Shelling saying it’s my fault. Get away from my house!”

I saw Robin’s face go red, then white. Her chin was a hard shape. “Come along, Tanaqui,” she said. “We’ll go back home.” And she went, with me trotting to keep up. I looked at her as I trotted, expecting her to be crying, but she was not. She did not speak about Aunt Zara again. I spoke, but only a little, when Hern asked me what had happened.

“She’s a selfish old hag anyway,” Hern said.

Aunt Zara recovered from the sickness, but she never came near us, and we did not go near her.

It was a long winter. The spring floods were late in coming. We were longing for them, to wash away the smell from the River. I was longing for them in a special way. After my dream I was very anxious for my father, but I hid my worry in a new fancy: that he would come home in floodtime, before the One had to go in his fire, and everything would be all right. Instead no floods came, but at last men began to come back to Shelling from the wars. That was a time I do not want to tell about. Only half came back who had set out, weary and thin. My father and Gull were not among them, and no one would speak to us. Everyone looked at us grimly.

“What are we supposed to have done now?” Hern demanded.

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UNCLE KESTREL CAME home among the last. He came to our house first, leading Gull. We were frightened when we looked at them. None of us could behave as if we were glad, though Robin tried. Uncle Kestrel had turned into a real old man. His head nodded and his hands shook, and his face was covered with scraggly white bristle. Gull was inches taller. I knew it must be Gull because of his fair hair and the rugcoat I had woven for him last autumn, though that was shiny with grease and almost in rags, but I would not have known him otherwise.

“Be easy on him,” Uncle Kestrel said when Robin threw her arms round Gull. Gull hardly moved. “He’s had a bad time. It was the Heathens in the Black Mountains did it. We were all in the siege there, and the slaughter.”

Gull did not show he had heard. His face was empty. Robin led him to a seat, where he sat and stared. Duck, Hern and I stood in a row looking at him. Only Robin remembered to ask Uncle Kestrel to come in. She bustled about for cake and drinks, and dug the three of us in our backs to make us help her. Duck fetched the cups. I pulled myself together and got out our best plum preserves, but my face kept turning to Gull, sitting staring, and then to Uncle Kestrel, so old. Hern just stood there staring at Gull as hard as Gull stared into space.

Uncle Kestrel is a very direct person. “Well,” he said as soon as he was sitting down, “your father’s dead, I’m afraid. Out on the plains, a long way from here.”

We were all expecting that. None of us, not even Robin, cried. We just went pale and slow, and sat down without wanting to eat to hear what Uncle Kestrel had to tell.

Uncle Kestrel was glad of the good food. He beamed at Robin and ate a great deal. Whatever war had done to Gull, Uncle Kestrel came out of it completely natural. In the most natural way he broke off a big lump of cake, put it in Gull’s hand, and closed Gull’s fingers round it. “Here you are. Eat it, boy.” Gull obediently ate the cake without looking at it – without looking at anything. “You’ll find you have to do that,” Uncle Kestrel explained to us. “He’ll drink the same way. Now, to the sad news.”

He told us how Father had died of wounds in the middle of winter, a long way off. I think, from the way he said it, that my father had dragged himself along pretending to be well for Gull’s sake, because Gull had needed looking after even then. The fighting had been terrible. Our people were not used to it, and few of them had real weapons. The Heathen had good weapons, spears, and bows that could send an iron bolt through two men at once. “Besides being trained from their cradles to fight like devils,” Uncle Kestrel said. “And they have enchanters in their midst, who conquer us with spells. They can draw the strength from you like sucking an egg.”

Hern stared. “Piffle.”

“You haven’t seen them, lad,” said Uncle Kestrel. “I have. You know them by their long coats. They’ve set their spells on the very River himself, knowing him to be our strength and our lifeblood. Take a look outside, if you don’t believe me. Have you ever known him that colour and smelling like he does?”

“No,” Hern admitted.

“So, by fair means and foul,” Uncle Kestrel said, “the Heathen have beaten us. They’ve brought their women and their children, and they mean to stay. The land is full of them. Our King is in hiding, bless him.”

“What will we all do?” Duck asked in an awed whisper.

“Run away to the mountains, I suppose,” said Uncle Kestrel. He looked worn out at the idea. “I’ve run from them for months now. But you five might stay if you wished, I think. This is a funny thing—” He glanced at Gull and began to whisper. I do not think Gull was listening, but it was so hard to tell. “The Heathen look almost like you do – the fair hair. He’s had a deal to bear – Gull – from our side saying he was a Heathen changeling and bringing bad luck, and from the time the Heathen took him, thinking he was one of them.” We all stared at Gull. “Be easy on him,” said Uncle Kestrel. “As you see, they gave him back – this was in the Black Mountains – but he was not himself after that. Our men said he carried the Heathen’s spells, and they might have killed him but for your father.”

“How awful!” Robin said in a very high voice, like a sneeze or an explosion.

“True,” said Uncle Kestrel. “But we had our good times.” Then for quite a while he sat and told us jokes about people we did not know and things we did not understand, to do with the fighting. I am sure he meant to cheer us up. “That’s what kept me sane, seeing the jokes,” he said. “Now I suppose I’d better be off to see Zara.” He got up and limped away. He did not behave much as if he was looking forward to seeing my aunt. Nor would I, in his shoes.

Robin cleared the cups away. She kept looking at Gull, and Gull just sat. “I don’t know what to do with him,” she whispered to me.

I went away outside, in spite of the smell from the River. I was hoping to be able to cry. But Hern was sitting in the boat, on the mud below the Riverbank, and he was crying.

“Just think of Gull like that!” he said to me. “He’d be better dead. I wish I’d gone after the army.”

“What good would it have done?” I said.

“Don’t you see!” Hern jumped up, so that the boat squelched about. “Gull had nobody to talk to. That’s why he got like that. Why was I such a coward?”

“You swore to the Undying,” I reminded him.

“Oh that!” said Hern. He was very fierce and contemptuous. The boat kept squelching. “And I swore to fight the Heathen. I could swear to a million things, and it wouldn’t do any good. I just wish—”

“Stand still,” I said. It suddenly seemed to me that it was not only Hern’s angry movements that were making the squelching round the boat. Hern knew too. He stood bolt upright with his face all tear-stained, staring at me. We felt the small shiver run along the banks of the River. The mud clucked quietly, and a little soft lapping ran through the low green water. There were yards of bare mud on both sides of the River, but in a way that I do not know how to describe, it looked different to us. The trees on the other bank were stirring and lifting and expecting something.

“The floods are coming down,” said Hern.

If you are born by the River, you know its ways. “Yes,” I said, “and they’re going to be huge this time.”

Before we could say more, the back door crashed open and Gull came out. He came out stumbling, feeling both sides of the door and not seeming to know quite where he was.

“The River,” he said. “I felt the River.” He stumbled over to the bank. I put out both hands to catch him because it looked as if he were going to walk right over the edge. But he stopped on the bank and swayed about a little. “I can hear it,” he said. “I’ve dreamt about it. The floods are coming.” He began to cry, like Robin sometimes does, without making a sound. Tears rolled down his face.

I looked at Hern, and Hern looked at me, and we did not know what to do. Robin settled it by racing out of the back door and grabbing Gull in both arms. She hauled him away inside, saying, “I’m going to put him to bed. It’s frightening.”

“The floods are coming down,” I said.

“I know,” Robin called over her shoulder. “I can feel them. I’ll send Duck out.” She pushed Gull through the door and slammed it.

Hern and I pulled the boat up. It was horribly hard work because it was stuck a long way down in the mud. Luckily Hern is far stronger than he looks. We got it up over the edge of the bank in the end. By that time the sick green water was racing in swelling snatches, some of them so high that they slopped into the grooves the boat had left.

“I think this is going to be the highest ever,” Hern said. “I don’t think we should leave it here, do you?”