The Changes Trilogy (10 page)

Nicky asked the giant one day if he could pay for the next big load with a horse, but he stared at her angrily and shook his head.

“I hear as they're carrying swords now,” he purred suspiciously; the huge hand crept to the pommel of his cutlass.

“Yes,” said Nicky. “It's part of their religion. They were soldiers ages ago, and they've always carried swords. My friends used to wear a little toy sword before … before … you know; now they've made themselves proper ones again, in case they have to fight somebody.”

“And now they're wanting horses too,” said the giant. Suddenly Nicky saw what was worrying him.

“But they don't want horses for fighting on,” she said. “They don't want to fight anybody. They'd like horses for plowing and pulling carts and so on.”

“That's as may be,” said the giant. “But I'm not sparing any horses. I've given you a fair price for the work so far, haven't I?”

“Oh yes,” said Nicky, and looked at a crate of baffled hens which was balanced across one of the barrows. “The Sikhs are very pleased.”

“And so they ought to be,” said the giant. “Well, if they're making swords for themselves, they can make 'em for me too.”

“I'll ask,” said Nicky doubtfully.

“You do that,” said the giant, and sauntered down the hill. He moved nowadays with a slow and lordly gait which seemed to imply that all the wide landscape belonged to him, and every creature in it.

But Uncle Jagindar refused to make weapons for anybody except his own people, and the Sikh council (though they argued the question around for twenty minutes) all agreed with him. When he heard the news the giant became surlier than ever with Nicky, and the villagers copied him. Partly, Nicky decided, this was because they just did whatever
he
did out of sheer awe for him; but it was also partly because of the way they had built up a whole network of myths and imaginings around the Sikhs. One or two things that Maxie said, or that Mr. Tom said when he was talking over smithwork to be done, showed that their heads were full of crazy notions. They stopped looking her in the face when they spoke to her, as though they were afraid of some power that might rest in her eye. Also, if there were children in the Borough when she came past, mothers' voices would yell a warning and little legs would scuttle for doorways. Once Nicky even saw a soapy arm reach through a window and grab a baby by the leg from where it was sleeping in a sort of wooden pram.

The giant still looked her straight in the eye, and raged in his purring voice if he heard anyone suggest or hint that the Devil's Children were other than human flesh, but the scary whisperings went on behind his back. Nicky first realized how strong these dotty beliefs had become when she found the lost boy.

August had been a furiously busy month. The smithy furnace still roared all day, eating charcoal by the sackful. Ajeet and Nicky were officially in charge of the chickens, but that didn't excuse them from any other work that needed doing—looking after babies, or chasing escaped sheep, or dreary milling, or binding and stooking the untidy sheaves as the first wheat was reaped, and there were six scythes now to do the reaping. And then, a few days later, the dried sheaves were carried down to the lane and spread about for threshing; and that was woman's work, though after twenty minutes' drubbing at the gold mass with the clumsy threshing flail your neck and shoulders ached with sharp pain and your hands were all blisters.

But even threshing was better than plowing, which Mr. Surbans Singh insisted on making an experimental start on as soon as the sheaves were off the stubble.

“We're learning new sums,” whispered Ajeet. “Four children equal one horse.”

Nicky only grunted. She was trudging with six-inch steps through the shin-scratching stalks, leaning her weight right forward against the rope that led over the pad on her shoulder and back to the plow frame. Ajeet trudged beside her with another rope, and Gopal and his cousin Harpit just ahead; behind her Mr. Surbans Singh wrestled with the bucking plow handles as the blade surged in jolts and rushes through roots and flinty earth. It was very slow, very tiring, and turned only a wiggling, shallow furrow. When at last Mr. Surbans Singh called a halt, all four children sank groaning to the bristly stubble and watched while Mr. Surbans Singh and Uncle Jagindar and Mr. Wazir Singh (who had once been a farmer) scuffed at the turned earth with their feet, bent to trickle it through their fingers, and discussed the tilt and angle of the blade.

“Not bad,” said Mr. Surbans Singh at last. “We cannot plow all these acres. The next thing is to take sharp poles and search for the best patches of earth.”

“You can run away and play now, children,” said Mr. Wazir Singh, who was one of those people who always manage to talk to children as though they are small and stupid and anything they do, even when they've been helping for all they're worth, is of no interest or importance.

“Thank you, Nicky,” said Mr. Surbans Singh with his brilliant smile. She could see where broad streams of sweat had runneled through the dust on his face, and realized that he must have been toiling twice as hard as any of them.

“Thank you, Ajeet and Gopal and Harpit,” he went on. “Ask your Aunt Mohindar to give you each an apple.”

The apples in the artist's cottage garden weren't ready for eating yet, but the village had paid for some of the last lot of work with a sack of James Grieves. The children sat on the wall around the well and bit into the white flesh, so juicy that there was no way of stopping the sweet liquid flowing down the outside of their chins in wasteful dribbles. Nicky looked over the wide gold landscape, where the swifts hurtled and wheeled above wheat that would never be harvested, and felt the wanderlust on her. Suddenly the close community, busy with its ceaseless effort for survival, seemed stifling.

Usually she would have gone for rest and calm to sit by the old lady's cart under the wych elm and watch the babies playing. Even when Ajeet came to translate, she and the old lady did not speak much, though sometimes the old lady would tell her of extraordinary things she had seen and done in that other life before she came to England—not really as though she was trying to entertain Nicky, more to teach her, to instruct, to pass on precious knowledge. And when they didn't speak, it still was soothing to be near her, in a way that Nicky couldn't explain; she guessed that the old lady felt the same, but there was no way of asking.

But today the old lady had one of her little illnesses and had stayed in bed, not wanting to see anybody except her daughters, and then only to complain to them about something. So now Nicky longed to be out of earshot of the clang of the forge and the thud of the flails, away from the pricking and clotting dust which all this hard work stirred into the air, somewhere else.

“I'm going for a walk,” she said as she threw her core away.

Harpit groaned. Gopal sighed.

“So I shall have to come with you,” he said, “to slaughter your enemies.”

He patted the three-quarter-size sword that swung against his hip. He was very proud of it because Uncle Jagindar said it was the best blade he'd made. One corner of the forge held a pile of snapped blades which hadn't stood up to the cruel testing the smiths gave them. (“What use is a sword,” Uncle Chacha had asked, “if you strike with it once and then there is nothing left in your hand but the hilt?”) Gopal joined the adults for fencing practice these days.

Now he patted his sword like a warrior and stood up.

“I'm afraid I haven't got any enemies for you,” said Nicky as she stood too.

“Not even the bad baron?” said Harpit. That was what the children called the giant down in the village. It was funny to think that Nicky was the only one who'd ever seen him.

“No, he's not my enemy,” said Nicky. “He's all right—in fact he's a hero, sort of.”

“I must tell my mother where we're going,” whispered Ajeet.

“I'll tell her,” said Harpit, “and that means I needn't come on this idiot expedition. Where are you going, Nicky?”

“Up to the common.”

Despite Gopal's sword, Nicky was the one who led the way down the curving line of elms and oaks that had been allowed to stay on the boundary between one farm and the next; the ripe barley brushed against their left shoulders; they dipped into the place where the line of trees became a farm track, whose slope took them down to join a magical and haunted lane, untarred, running nearly fifteen feet below the level of the surrounding fields. The hedge trees at the top of the banks on either side met far above their heads, so that the children walked in a cool green silence and looked up into the caverns where the earth had been washed away from between blanched tree roots. In that convenient dark the animals of the night laired. It was a street of foxes.

Then, too soon, they were out into the broad evening sun and turning left up the grassy track to the common. Swayne's farm, deserted now, stood silent on the corner—mainly a long wall of windowless brick, with gates opening into yards where cattle had once mooched and scuffled. Gopal, driven by some impulse to assert himself against the brooding stillness, drew the gray curved blade from his belt and lunged at imaginary foes; with each lunge he gave a grunting cry. The echo bounced off the brick wall on the far side of the farmyard, and died into stillness.

“Please stop it,” said Ajeet. Gopal sheathed his sword, grinning.

The echo continued. It said “Help!”

Nicky climbed the gate into the farmyard. The dry litter rustled under her feet.

“Where are you?” she called.

“Here,” said the faint voice. “Help! I'm stuck!”

They found him in the loft over a hay barn. A ladder lay on the floor of the barn, and in the square black hole in the ceiling a wan face floated. Nicky and Gopal lifted the fallen ladder back into place.

“I can't climb down,” said the face. “I've hurt my foot.” It began to sob.

“I'll come up and help you,” said Gopal. “Don't worry. It's all right.”

“Not you!” wailed the face. “I've got a brick. I'll hit you!”

Gopal took his hand off the rung and shrugged.

Nicky climbed slowly up the ladder. The face shifted in the square, and in the dimness behind she saw an arm move upward. She stopped climbing.

“It's quite all right,” she said. “I won't hurt you. My name's Nicky Gore. What's yours?”

“Shan't tell you.”

The arm with the brick wavered uncertainly. Nicky flinched.

“Look,” she said, “if I'd got magic, your brick wouldn't hurt me, but if I haven't got magic, then you'd be hurting somebody just like yourself, somebody who's trying to help you.”

“What about him?” said the boy, still panting with sobs.

“He wants to help you too. His name's Gopal. He's my friend. And the other one's Ajeet—she tells wonderful stories.”

“Tell 'em to go away.”

Nicky looked over her shoulder. Ajeet was already floating out like a shadow. Gopal shrugged again, tested the bottom of the ladder, and went to the door.

“Be careful,” he said. “I
think
it's steady, but not if you start fighting on it.”

Nicky managed a sort of laugh as she climbed into the darkness.

“How long have you been here?” she said.

“I been here all day. I was looking for treasure. There's a heap of treasure buried up on the common, folk say, but when I come to the farm I thought the farm folk might have found some, so I started looking here, and then I knocked the ladder down, and then I trod on a bit o' glass and it come clean through my foot.…”

He was about eight, very dirty, the dirt on his face all streaked with blubbering.

“Wriggle it around over the hole,” said Nicky, “and I'll have a look.”

He did so, with slow care; his groans sounded like acting, but the foot really did look horrid; the worn sneaker was covered with dried blood and the foot seemed to bulge unnaturally inside the canvas. The laces were taut and too knotted to undo, so Nicky drew her hunting knife (which Uncle Chacha had honed for her to a desperate sharpness) and sliced them delicately through. The boy cried aloud as the pressure altered, then sat sobbing. Nicky realized that she'd probably done the wrong thing. They must get him to an adult as soon as possible.

“Look,” she said, “if I go down the ladder the wrong way around, then you can get yourself further over the hole, and I'll come back up until you're sitting on my shoulders. Then I can give you a piggyback down.”

The boy nodded dully. Nicky stepped onto the ladder and went down until her head was below floor level. There she turned so that her heels were on the rungs.

“Now,” she said, “see if you can wriggle your bottom along until your good leg is right over this side. A bit further. Now I'm coming up a rung. I'll hold your bad leg so that it doesn't bang anything.”

“It hurts frightful when I drop it,” groaned the boy.

“All right, I'll hold it up. Now you take hold of the ladder, lean forward against my head, and see if you can lift your bottom across so that you're sitting on the rung. Well done! Now let yourself slide down onto my shoulders; hold on to my forehead. Higher, you're covering my eyes. Hold tight. Down we go!”

The ladder creaked beneath the double weight. Nicky moved one heel carefully to the next rung, bending her knee out steadily so as to lower the two of them without a jolt. The wounded foot came through the opening with an inch to spare. Each rung seemed to take ages, as the thigh muscles above her bending knee were stretched to aching iron. She'd done five and was resting for the next when the grip on her forehead suddenly gave way.

“Hold tight!” she cried, and flung up her hand from the ladder to catch the slipping arm.

“Are you all right?” she said.