The Ropemaker (4 page)

When the news of this came to far-off Talak it threw the Emperor into a rage. He gave orders for an army to be sent to punish the Valley, every house burnt and razed, every man killed, every woman and child enslaved. But by now it was almost winter in those northern hills, so it was decided to hold back the punishment until spring.

Dirna reaped a good crop of barley from the field, better than anything else on the farm, and stored it separately in the stone barn. When the first snows fell she loaded two sacks of the seed onto a sledge, harnessed a pony to it, and hauled it out to a long, narrow lake, deep in the forest. Here she doled the barley out into piles beneath the branches of the cedar trees that grew all around the lake. As she did so she found that she was already singing. Words and notes, soft and lulling, seemed to reach her, not through her ears, but from somewhere beneath the soft whisper of the wind among the cedars. When she had finished she looked around, but saw and felt no change, so she led her pony home.

A short time after this Dirna’s brother went into the forest one morning to set traps, and did not return for his midday meal. Worried, she followed his footprints in the snow and found him only a few hundred paces in, lying facedown and breathing harshly through his mouth. Unable to wake him, she fetched the pony and dragged him home, where she warmed his body and put him to bed, but it was three more days before he opened his eyes, and then he could remember nothing since leaving the farm.

Much the same happened to other men who went into the forest, to hunt or trap or gather firewood. If they turned back soon enough they merely staggered and felt stupid and sick, but if they went too far they fell down and lost consciousness, and unless they were found within a morning or so they died. Women, strangely, felt no such effects, so before the winter was over it was they who were doing the hunting and trapping and wood gathering, while the men stayed home to tend the animals.

At each full moon throughout that winter Dirna took fresh barley out to the lake, but thanks to the continuing snowfalls she could not tell whether the earlier piles had been eaten, or see the tracks of what might have taken it. When the snows finally melted the barn was empty.

By then, everyone was afraid because of what they had done to the Emperor’s officials. They looked for hiding places in the mountains for the men, and they got ready to send the women and girls into the forest, because the sickness there might prevent the soldiers from following them, though they did not truly believe that either of these measures would prevail against the might of the Emperor.

They were wrong. In early summer horses began to come up the road through the forest, in harness, but mostly riderless. In a few cases armored men sprawled in the saddles because they had been lashed there, but all but one of these were dead. This one man was unconscious, and his horse was lathered with hard riding. When he woke some days later, he could remember nothing of his ride, but he told that the army had indeed marched north in the spring to punish the Valley and the advance scouts had discovered the sickness, some dying, some turning back in time. Magicians were sent for, who tried their different powers against the enchantment, for all agreed that the sickness was indeed of magical origin. The wiser ones withdrew almost at once. Those who persisted lost what powers they had had, and some went mad.

Finally, some of the cavalry had tied themselves into their saddles and set their horses to a full gallop, hoping to pass clean through the forest before they were overcome. This man had been one of those. His horse was a headstrong mare, and, he swore, the swiftest horse in the army. He alone had come through, though he had been unconscious for much of the way. Since there was no way back he stayed in the Valley, but unlike the deserter Sonnam he did not prosper or marry, and died in a brawl that he had provoked.

This, then, is the story that is told in the Valley. Or rather it is the version of it that has been passed down in Dirna’s family, the Urlasdaughters, who still farm the same land at Woodbourne that Dirna and her brother farmed. Though different versions of the story are told elsewhere in the Valley, with different names for some of the people involved, and different adventures—the tellers feeling free to add or alter as they choose—what does it matter, since it is only a story?—the Urlasdaughters do not change theirs at all, and do not talk about theirs outside the family, because to them it is true, and they don’t care to be mocked for their beliefs, and their insistence, year upon year, on setting one small field aside to be sown with barley, which is then harvested and stored in a particular barn, and in winter carried deep into the forest and left for the wild animals to eat.

The Ortahlsons, up in the mountains, still sing to the snows year after year, and take much the same line, keeping their version of the story to themselves. For everyone else, yes, of course there is a strange sickness in the forest, affecting only men, but there is presumably a natural explanation for that. And yes, there is a glacier in the mountains, where there used to be a road, but all that shows is that winters were once milder than they now are. Is that anything to be surprised about? And besides, the story didn’t say anything about the great desert that closed the Valley off to the east, just as it always had done, since long before the time of Asarta. (Though perhaps, if the story had all been lies, somebody might have invented a reason for that.)

One other thing. When the Valley had settled into peace again, Dirna planted the stone of the peach that Faheel had given her. A tree grew, and stood for many years against the south wall of a barn at Woodbourne. There seemed to be nothing magical about it, but it thrived despite the climate and bore delicious peaches, so that other families begged grafts, which grew well. When, eight generations after Dirna’s time, the barn blew down in a gale, taking the tree with it, the timber of the trunk was seasoned and used for carving small objects, particularly the elaborate wooden spoons which the men liked to whittle on winter evenings, while the women were at their spinning wheels. A tradition grew up that spoons from the original tree could be used for fortune-telling, by studying the grain of the wood, with its innumerable knots and whorls from all those years of training and pruning. The best of these spoons became heirlooms, with their own names, like the swords of heroes, but that didn’t mean that anyone actually believed in the fortunes they told, any more than they believed in the story about Asarta.

3

The Gathering

Tilja slept almost till noon. She must have fallen asleep at the table and been carried to bed by Da. Now she stirred, feeling strange and lost until the memories of yesterday came flooding back.

“Someone’s deigning to move at last, then?” snarled Meena’s voice from the far side of the stove.

Tilja heaved herself up. She seemed to be still in her underclothes.

“Where’s Ma?” she whispered. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know about all right. She’s here and warm and breathing, that’s all I can say.”

Tilja scrambled up and staggered round past the stove. Ma was lying on her back with her mouth slightly open and her eyes closed. Even in the dim light Tilja could see that her face was not quite ashen; and there was warmth in her hand, but her fingers didn’t move to return Tilja’s grasp. Meena was sitting with her back to the wall between the bed and the stove.

“And I don’t know what that mark on her is, neither,” she said. “Only I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Tilja peered. The dark round patch on Ma’s forehead was about as large as her thumbnail, and seen close was nothing like a bruise, sharp edged and all the same blue-purple shade, without scar or swelling. It didn’t look like a hurt or wound, but more like part of one of the patterns with which the apple pickers painted their faces for the cider feast each fall.

“Do you think . . . ?”

“Not if I can help it,” snapped Meena. “You can hope if you want to. I don’t know that hoping ever did much harm.”

Tilja looked at her and realized that after yesterday her feelings about her grandmother had changed. Though Meena sounded as cross as ever—crosser—really she was worried sick about her daughter but she wasn’t going to admit it to anyone, so she covered up by snarling. Now she was glaring at Tilja, her pale blue eyes glinting with seeming rage. Tilja smiled back.

“Glad somebody’s got something to laugh about,” said Meena. “What’s so funny, then?”

“You, Meena,” said Tilja. “You were wonderful yesterday. That must all have hurt horribly, but you never said anything.”

“No point, was there? I don’t mind bearing provided nobody asks me to grin. And while we’re throwing posies around I may as well tell you you didn’t do so badly yourself.”

“Is your hip sore today?”

“Been better. Tickled it up a bit with all that banging around. But I’ll do.”

“Meena, that thing that bellowed at us when we were coming away from the lake—do you think . . . ?”

“No I don’t. I’ve told you already. And that’s enough of that.”

This time Meena’s snarl was genuine. Her glare was stony. With a gulp Tilja changed the subject.

“Where’s Da? And Anja?”

“Feeding the beasts. They’ll be starving by the time they’ve done, so you get a move on and get yourself washed and all, and then you can finish seeing to their dinner. After that you can run down to my place and get the cat fed, or I’ll never hear the last of it from him. I’ll be staying on here awhile, till I’ve some idea how your mother’s doing.”

Ma didn’t stir for the next five days. The only change in her that they could see was that the mark on her forehead faded from its dark blue-purple to a deep red and then a fiery orange and a softer yellow, until on the sixth morning it was almost gone.

Meanwhile Tilja had her hands and mind full with helping on the farm, doing all the endless things that Ma usually dealt with, while Anja did her best to take over some of Tilja’s tasks, and did them very well, provided someone kept telling her she was doing them marvelously. Tilja was glad to be kept too busy to brood. She didn’t want to think about the adventure in the forest, or to puzzle about the “little wretches” that Meena had seen by the lake, or the invisible great creature that had bellowed its challenge at them as they were leaving. The whole episode had been terrifying, but now it was over, that momentary fear was replaced by another, far deeper and more enduring. What had happened in the forest had been something new, something that had never happened before. To Tilja it seemed a sign that her world was changing, a sign, perhaps, that everything she loved—Ma, Da and Anja, Brando and the animals, Woodbourne, the whole Valley—was somehow going to be taken from her.

Tilja was by Ma’s bed, feeding the stove, when Ma woke. Tilja heard the rustle of bedclothes and looked up. Ma’s eyes were open and she had raised an arm and with her fingertips was caressing the place on her forehead where the mark had been.

“It touched me with its horn,” she murmured.

Her eyes closed, her arm fell away, and she was asleep again. When she finally woke that evening she couldn’t remember even that. She could recall riding Tiddykin out through the forest in the dawn light, reaching the lake, heaving the barley sacks out of the panniers and spilling the seed in heaps beneath the cedar branches at the top of the meadow, where the snow wouldn’t at once bury it. Then she was walking back down to the shore of the lake to start her singing. After that, nothing.

It was a long while before she had her strength back, but in a few days she was up and doing what she could around the farm. It was hard to say whether she was more silent than before, because unlike her mother and daughters she had never been much of a talker, but silent she certainly was, and sometimes Tilja would find her halfway through some task, standing stock-still, with a blank, lost look on her face. At the interruption she would sigh and shake herself and go on with what she’d been doing.

But it was all clearly an effort for her, and Tilja and Anja had to do as much as they could to make up. One day they were up in the forest inspecting and resetting traps, and collecting firewood, when Tilja needed the hand ax and found it was gone, though she was certain that last time she’d used it she’d slotted it back into its notch on the logging sled just as carefully as Ma would have done.

This was a disaster. Metal was scarce in the Valley. For small coins they used counters made from the hard, dark wood of a tree that grew only in one narrow glen in the foothills. Mostly they traded by barter and cooked in clay pots. In the old days iron had been brought in from the Empire, but when the Valley was closed off they could only use and reforge and use again the things they already had, hoarding every scrap. Iron still became increasingly scarce, and now was used almost solely for working tools. Even a small hand ax would be hard to replace.

Tilja tethered Calico to a tree and they started to work back along the way they’d come, scuffling the fallen leaves aside with their feet, but there were long stretches where the sled had left no traces on the leaf litter, and soon Tilja couldn’t be sure they were still on their track. She was already miserable and furious with herself when Anja caught her arm. Tilja shook her off.

“No, please,” said Anja. “Stop. I want to listen.”

With an angry sigh Tilja stood and stared around. No, this was wrong. They hadn’t come past this cedar. It must be over there. . . .

“This way,” said Anja, and scampered off between the trees. It was the direction Tilja had decided on anyway, so she followed more slowly, scanning the ground for runner marks. Anja had stopped and was standing by another cedar with her head tilted to one side, listening. Before Tilja came up with her she was off again.

And there were the sled marks! Tilja followed them slowly, searching beside the left-hand runner, where the ax notch was. There would need to have been a stump or a root or something to jolt the ax loose. . . . She almost bumped into Anja hurrying to meet her with the ax in her hand. Her whole body flooded with relief.

“It had hooked itself onto a holly branch,” said Anja. “The cedars told me.”

“That was nice of them,” said Tilja, humoring her. Then her heart seemed to stand still. She remembered her visit to the lake last summer. And something Anja had said that day when Ma hadn’t come back from singing to the cedars . . .

“Anja,” she asked. “Do you know where the lake is?”

“Oh yes. It’s over there. But it’s too far to go before dinner. Do you want to?”

Anja, who could barely be trusted to find her way down to Meena’s cottage, let alone know how long it would take to get there . . .

“How do you know?”

“I just know. It’s in my head. It’s always been. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Only you can hear what the cedars say. I can’t. And you know the way to the lake. Not me. And one day it’ll be you singing to the cedars, like Ma does. Not me. And Woodbourne will be your farm. Not mine.”

Anja was staring at her. Of course she’d known she could do those things, but she hadn’t known what it meant, hadn’t understood. She was too young.

“But you’re eldest,” she said.

“Aunt Grayne’s older than Ma,” said Tilja. “I’d never thought about it. Well, at least at first snowfall I’ll be able to lie snug in my bed and think of you having to get up and trudge out into the forest and sing to the cedars.”

She did her best to smile. Anja didn’t try.

“It isn’t going to be like that,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Singing to the cedars. Something’s happening. The cedars keep talking about it, only . . . oh, Til, I’m not allowed . . .”

Anja burst into tears, and wouldn’t be comforted. All Tilja could make out was that the cedars had told her something and said she mustn’t tell anyone else except Ma.

Next morning, when they were out in the freezing scullery washing themselves before getting dressed, Anja said, “It doesn’t mean anything, Til. I won’t let it. This is your home too.”

“No it isn’t!” Tilja snarled. “Not anymore! Don’t talk about it!”

She knew it was unfair. Anja was doing her best, and it wasn’t her fault, but Tilja couldn’t help it, and when Anja started to cry she just stood there, scowling.

Then Ma came in to see what the trouble was, and though Tilja, in her hurt and pride, had made Anja promise to say nothing about what had happened in the wood, she blurted it out. Ma knelt between them, hugging one in each arm, trying to comfort them both, but stiffly and awkwardly, because she wasn’t good at this sort of thing. Almost at once Tilja wrenched herself away and shoved her clothes on and went out on an empty stomach to look for a horse to groom. She chose Calico, because she was sure to be in just as bad a mood as Tilja herself, and Tilja could curse and slap her much more satisfactorily than she could have done sweet and amenable Tiddykin.

Still no true snow fell, and despite the incessant gales it was far warmer than it should have been. All winters in the Valley, since anyone could remember and long before, had begun with two weeks of steady, settling snow, followed by almost three months of clear skies and hard frosts, with just a day and a night of more snow now and again. This winter the ponds barely froze, but there was day after day of lashing rain and sleet, and if you saw the sun once a week for half a morning or so you thought you were lucky, and all the lanes were mire, and the animals stood hock deep in the paddocks and got mud fever and worse—a miserable time.

Meena had gone back to her cottage and Tilja plodded down to visit her most days, which she’d never willingly done before. She didn’t expect any kind of welcome, and didn’t get one, but she knew Meena was glad to see her, and if for some reason Tilja missed a visit she sulked like a child at the next.

Tilja told herself she went because she’d become fond of Meena, but there was another reason she didn’t want to think about. While she was at the farm, everything that she saw or felt or heard or smelled reminded her again that it would never be hers. It would be Anja’s, and she, Tilja, would have to leave it. Go away and live somewhere else, like Aunt Grayne.

Of course her parents knew how unhappy she was, and did what they could. Ma didn’t try hugging her again, but made a point of doing household chores with her instead of sending her off on her own, and Da would sometimes take her with him when there was a job she could help with, and even let her manage Dusty once or twice. But neither of them tried to talk to her about what had happened. It wasn’t their way. They weren’t talkers.

Meena was different. Tilja got no sympathy from Meena, who only said, “Well, you’ll have to make a life of your own like most people do. No point moping about it. Sooner you get used to the idea, the better you’ll be.”

Despite that, Tilja felt that Meena understood how she was feeling better than any of the others.

One afternoon late in the year, when Tilja was wrapping up to plod back to the farm, Meena said, “And by the by, you can tell that father of yours we’ll need one of the horses to take us to the winter Gathering. And not that rackety brute, Calico, tell him.”

Tilja was startled. One of her parents went to the midsummer Gathering most years, to trade and gossip, and last year Da had taken both her and Anja with him. But no one had been to the winter Gathering since she could remember, and there’d been no question of Meena going even to the midsummer one because of her hip.

“I’ll ask him, if you like,” said Tilja.

“You’ll do no such thing. You’ll tell him. From me.”

Tilja grinned at her and got a scowl back, but that evening at supper she said, “Meena wants me to go with her to the Gathering.”

“Me too,” said Anja.

Da frowned, and was starting to shake his head when Ma said, with sudden, unusual firmness, “Yes, they must go. They’ll need a horse.”

“Not Calico,” said Tilja quickly.

“I can spare Tiddykin for a day or two,” said Ma. “She’s not up to carrying the pair of you, so—”

“Three of us,” interrupted Anja, perfectly aware there wasn’t any question of her going, but characteristically not missing the chance of a bit of spoiling and petting to make up for it. This time, though, she’d misjudged the mood.

“Anja, be quiet,” said Ma. “You’ll have to walk the whole way, Tilja, but you won’t get there and back in a day, this time of year, anyway, so you can stay with Grayne, and you won’t get too tired. All right, my dear?”

Tilja glanced anxiously at Da. She’d scarcely ever heard Ma take charge like this before—that was his job. He didn’t look surprised or put out, though, but simply nodded and that was that.