The Wind Singer (12 page)

11

The mudnut harvest

W
hen they awoke, soft grey daylight was filtering into the burrow through the smoke-hole above the fire. Everybody had gone except for Pollum, who was sitting quietly by the fire waiting for them to wake. Mumpo was nowhere to be seen.

‘Your friend’s out on the lake,’ said Pollum. ‘Helping with the harvest.’

She had breakfast waiting for them: a plate of what looked like biscuits, but turned out to be fried sliced mudnuts.

‘Don’t you ever eat anything but mudnuts?’ asked Kestrel. But Pollum seemed not to understand the question.

While they ate, the twins talked over what they should do. They were lost, and frightened. They knew their mother would be sick with worry over them. But Kestrel also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she could not go back to Aramanth as it was.

‘They’ll send us to join the old children,’ she said. ‘I’d rather die.’

‘Then you know what we have to do.’

‘Yes.’

She took out the map the Emperor had given her, and they both studied it. Bowman traced the line called the Great Way.

‘We have to find this road.’

‘First we have to find the way out of here.’

They asked Pollum if there was a way to go ‘up yonder’, but she said no, she’d never heard of one. Again, the question itself seemed to puzzle her.

‘There must be a way,’ said Kestrel. ‘After all, the light gets in.’

‘Well,’ said Pollum, after some thought. ‘You can fall down, but you can’t fall up.’

‘The grown-ups’ll know. We’ll ask them. When are they coming back?’

‘Not till late. It’s harvest today.’

‘What kind of harvest?’

‘Mudnuts,’ said Pollum.

She got up and started to clear away the breakfast. Bowman and Kestrel talked in low voices.

‘What are we going to do about Mumpo?’ said Kestrel.

‘He’d better come with us,’ said Bowman. ‘He’s more use than I am.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Bo. You’ll start crying again.’

And indeed he was on the point of tears.

‘I’m sorry, Kess. I’m just not brave.’

‘Being brave’s not the only thing.’

‘Pa told me to look after you.’

‘We’ll look after each other,’ said Kestrel. ‘You’re the one who feels, and I’m the one who does.’

Bowman nodded slowly. It felt like that to him too, but he’d never put it to himself quite so clearly.

By now, Pollum had put all the dishes in a puddle of watery mud to soak. She said to them,

‘Time to go out on the lake. Harvest time, see. Everyone helps with the harvest.’

They decided to go with her, and to look for Willum. Somehow they had to find their way out.

The scene that met their eyes as they climbed out of the burrow was very different from the bleak Underlake of the previous night. There was light gleaming and bouncing everywhere, shafting down through the holes in the great salt-silver cavern roof, creating pools of sunshine so bright they hurt the eyes. From these brilliant pools, the light spread outwards, as if in ripples, softening as it went, making the sheen of watery mud glisten all the way into the hazy distance. And moving back and forth over this sheet of light there were hundreds of busy little people. They were working in lines and in columns, and on great flat rafts. They were gathered round immense open bonfires and round large winch-like contraptions. And wherever they were gathered, they sang. The songs wove in and out of each other like sea shanties; and like sea shanties, they were work songs. For the mudpeople were working, and working hard.

‘It doesn’t smell stinky any more,’ said Kestrel in surprise.

‘It does,’ said Bowman. ‘We’ve just got used to it.’

They looked round for any sign of the old children, but there was none. They looked too for someone they recognised, but all the mudpeople seemed the same to them: all very round, and all very muddy. Following Pollum, they made their way, a little fearfully, along a ridge towards the nearest of the great bonfires. As they went, they watched the people at work, and began to understand what it was they were doing.

The mudnuts grew in shallow fields below the surface of the lake, down in the soft mud. The harvesters were picking them by walking slowly across these fields, and stooping down, and plunging their arms into the mud. Long lines of mudpeople were snaking across the lake in a methodical fashion, all taking a step forward at the same time, all bending and plunging in an arm together. The nuts they pulled up, each one the size of an apple, they dropped into shallow wooden buckets that they drew behind them. As they moved and picked, they sang their song, and so the whole line was kept in time.

It was a remarkable sight, to see those swaying strands of people all over the lake, all linked in one great ebb and flow of motion, their chanting voices climbing to the high cavern roof and bouncing back again in deep muffly echoes. Round the tall bonfires the people were singing too, though in a more ragged and disorganised way, picking up the thread of one song here, another there. The task of the people by the fire was far less active; indeed, several of them appeared to be doing nothing at all, though they did it with a great deal of laughter. Some were roasting mudnuts, rolling them into the embers and raking them out again with long sticks; and some were scouring mudnuts, chipping the mud off the skins; and a considerable number were coming and going with buckets.

Pollum picked up three empty buckets, gave one each to Bowman and Kestrel, and said,

‘Follow me. I’ll show you what to do.’

She took it for granted they would help with the harvest, and as there was no sign of Willum, and everyone else was so hard at work, it seemed ungrateful to refuse. So they followed Pollum into the mudfield and did as she told them.

The children of the mudpeople had the job of emptying the wooden buckets as they became full. The mudnut pickers worked away in their lines, and as the buckets filled up they would cry, ‘Bucket up!’ and a child would dash forward with an empty bucket and haul the full one away. The mudnuts were piled up in great mounds round the bonfires, which were built on the ridges alongside the fields, so the children didn’t have all that far to go. Even so, as Bowman and Kestrel soon discovered, it was exhausting work. The full buckets were heavy, and had to be carried through squelchy mud that came halfway up their shins. By the time they reached the fire their arms and legs were aching, and they were sweating into their layer of mud. But in a while they found that there was a rhythm to it, and the singing of the lines of harvesters somehow lifted up their tired hearts. There was usually a moment of rest before the cry went out, ‘Bucket up!’ and the heaving struggle began again. As they approached the fire they felt its fierce exhilarating heat, and heard the laughter of the mudmen raking the nuts out of the embers. Then came the sweet moment when the bucket tipped and the load fell out, and suddenly their bodies felt light as air. The journey back over the lake was like flying, it was so effortless, like dancing among the sunbeams and the shadows that speckled the lake’s surface.

After they had been working for what felt like all of a long day, and the sunlight had faded in the sky-holes, the twins saw that the harvesters were straightening up and rubbing their sore backs, and turning to head for the bonfires.

‘Dinner,’ said Pollum.

The people gathered in large crowds round the fires, where there were big basinfuls of fresh-roasted mudnuts waiting for them, and tubs of water. They drank first, straight from the long-handled scoops, scoop after scoop to quench the thirst of a day’s labour. Then they sat down in little chattering clusters, and the basins were handed round, and they chewed away at the mudnuts as if they were apples.

The twins made no attempt to look for their friends. They were so hungry that they simply took themselves a big fat mudnut each and started to eat. They ate in silence for a few moments, and then their eyes met. They both knew they had never tasted anything so good in all their lives. Sweetly nutty, and yet somehow creamy at the same time; crisp towards the rind, tender in the middle; the skin singed by the embers to give it a smoky tang that crunched tastily in the mouth –

‘Nothing like it, eh?’

This was Willum, wandering up to them, grinning from ear to ear.

‘Fresh out of the mud, hot out of the fire. Life don’t come sweeter than a harvest mudnut.’

He winked at them, and then burst into laughter for no apparent reason.

‘Please, sir,’ said Kestrel, seeing that he was about to wander away again. ‘Could you help us?’

‘Help you, little skinny? Help you how?’

He stood there, rolling gently from side to side and chuckling.

‘We want to know the way out of the salt caves, and on to the plains.’

Willum blinked and frowned and then started to smile again.

‘Out of the salt caves? On to the plains? No, no, no, you don’t want any of that!’

And off he wobbled, laughing softly to himself.

The twins looked round and saw that several other mudpeople were acting like Willum, moving in a slow random sort of way and laughing. Here and there they were gathered in swaying groups, roaring with laughter.

‘I think it’s those leaves they chew,’ said Bowman.

‘So it is,’ said a familiar voice with a sigh. ‘All the menfolk’ll be in tixyland tonight.’

It was Jum, taking round a full basin of roasted mudnuts.

‘The womenfolk have too much sense, see. And too much to do.’

‘Please, ma’am,’ said Kestrel. ‘Do you know the way out of here?’

‘The way out? Well, now. That depends on where you want to go.’

‘To the north. To the mountains.’

‘The mountains?’ Jum wrinkled up her brow. ‘What would you be’m wanting with the mountains?’

‘We’re going to the Halls of the Morah.’

A sudden silence fell all round her. People began to get up and shuffle away, glancing nervously back at the twins as they went.

‘We don’t talk of such things here,’ said Jum. ‘Nor even give them a name.’

‘Why not?’

Jum shook her round head.

‘There’s none of that here, and we don’t want any, neither. There’s enough of that up yonder.’

She turned her eyes up to the cave roof.

‘In Aramanth?’

‘Up yonder,’ said Jum, ‘live the people of the one we don’t name. But you know that, little skinny. That’s why you’m running away.’

‘No – ’ said Kestrel. But her brother cut her off.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We know that.’

Kestrel stared at him.

‘Do we?’

‘Yes,’ said her brother; though he hardly knew how to explain what it was he had just realised. Indistinctly, he was sensing that the world he knew so well, the only world he had ever known until now, was a sort of prison, and that its people, his people, were trapped within its high walls.

‘Up yonder is the world of the one we don’t name,’ said Jum again. ‘One way or t’other, they’m all belong to the one. Only here in the sweet earth, they do let us alone.’

‘But when the wind singer sings again,’ said Bowman, ‘we won’t belong to – to the one you don’t name – not any more.’

‘Ah, the wind singer, is it?’

‘Do you know about it?’

‘They’m be stories. Old stories. I should like to hear that wind singer, I should. We do take pleasure in song.’

‘Then please help us find our way.’

‘Well,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘You’m best talk with the Old Queen. She’ll know what to tell you.’

She pointed with a stubby finger to a mound that rose up out of the lake, someway off. On the top of the mound was a low timber stockade.

‘You’ll find her in the palace, over yonder.’

‘Will they let us in to talk to her?’

Jum looked surprised.

‘Why wouldn’t they?’ she said. ‘Yes, you talk with the Old Queen.’

So the twins thanked her and set off along the ridge towards the palace. All round them the mudmen were in high spirits, laughing and singing, even dancing in a roly-poly fashion. The tixa leaves evidently filled them with affection for all mankind, for as the twins passed they were forever receiving waves and smiles, and even hugs.

In a little while they passed a region of mudfields where the mud was too deep to be harvested on foot, and the mudnuts were reached by rafts. These long wooden frames were designed to lie on the lake’s surface, over which they were slowly pulled by ropes wound round great winches. During the harvest, the pickers lay prone all round the edges of the raft, reaching their arms into the mud below. Now that work had stopped for the day, the rafts had come to rest, and the winches were unmanned. This was the opportunity for the bolder young men to compete in the sport of mud-diving.

Bowman and Kestrel paused to watch them, amazed at the sight. At the corners of one of the rafts, tall slender poles had been fixed, rising up about twenty feet into the air. The mud-divers tied ropes round their waists and shinned up these poles like monkeys. They hung on at the top, swaying back and forth, throwing out first one hand, then the other, in a display of daring. Then, with a loud cry, they leaped from the pole into the mud, the rope snaking out behind them. The mud was so liquid here that they disappeared at once below the surface. For a few heart-stopping moments, nothing at all happened. Then the rope began to twitch and jerk, and there was a surge in the mud, and up would pop the mud-diver, to wild cheers. The ones who were cheered the loudest were those who stayed under the longest.

Kestrel was watching the mud-divers with admiration, when she saw a familiar figure shinning up one of the poles.

‘That’s Mumpo!’

And so it was. He looked thin and fragile alongside the others, but he was the most daring of them all. He swung himself about on top of the pole, and swooped and sprang back again, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. And when he dived, he flung himself farther than any of them, and stayed beneath the mud longer than any of them, and surfaced to the grandest cheer of all.

The twins were astounded.

‘How did he learn to do that?’

‘Mumpo!’ cried Kestrel. ‘Mumpo! We’re over here!’