The Islands of Chaldea

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “But when it does snow,” Ogo said, “what do the bards do?”

  “Oh, they get really busy,” Rees said, laughing. “They swarm around singing it all thick and white and picturesque, with beautiful icicles on every waterfall.”

  “Not on my farm, they don’t,” Bran said, and he and the priest exchanged slightly grim looks. I could see that he and the priest disagreed about the activities of the bards.

  All through the meal, Wenda had been looking at Aunt Beck in a deep, thoughtful way. “This is quite a strange spell she’s under,” she said to me. “But I’ll see what I can do.” And, when supper was done, she took Aunt Beck away somewhere else in the house. The Dominie and the priest left as if this were a signal and the rest of us helped the maidservants clear away. While these girls sat down for their supper, Bran sent Brent to bed and led all the rest of us into a small parlour. Someone had lit a fire there as if we were expected. Plug-Ugly padded after us and laid himself down in the warmth again.

  “Right, Rees,” Bran said. “Are you set on this?”

  “More than ever,” Rees replied. He had – somehow – come alight. I could see he had been holding himself in ever since we first saw him, and from probably before that.

  If Aunt Beck had been there and in her right mind, she would have said something like, He’s been hiding his light under a bushel, hasn’t he? Now he was himself. His eyes shone and he sat as if he were ready to leap out of his chair.

  “What I’m going to talk about is something very secret,” he said. “The priests would call it ungodly.”

  Finn shifted about as he sat. “Are we in a conspiracy then?” he asked. Green Greet leant down from Finn’s shoulder to stare into his face.

  “Yes, I think so,” Rees said. Blodred suddenly popped out from under his collar and stared at Finn too.

  Finn swallowed. “I see that this is important,” he said. “Would my goddess object?”

  Bran said, with a small chuckle, “Be easy, man. One thing I have learnt over the years is that what the priests say and what the gods think are quite often different things. We have a prophecy to guide us here.”

  “Ah,” said Finn.

  Rees leant forward eagerly. “This is something I’ve been wanting to do for years. I want to rescue my uncle who was stolen away with the High Prince. I’ve been working on the practical way to do it all this year.” He looked at me. “You want to see your father again, don’t you?”

  I felt as if a huge hand was squeezing my chest. I didn’t know if it was excitement or terror. I managed to gasp out, “How – how—?”

  “Now you are here, you can help,” Rees said. “I was going to take four people from the Pandy, besides Riannan to sing us on, but you four are perfect. Will you agree to come?”

  “Yes, but how are you planning to get through the barrier?” Ogo said. “Nobody else can.”

  Rees laughed. “We fly in,” he said. “Over the barrier.”

  “But,” I said, “but isn’t the barrier like a dome over the whole of Logra?”

  “It can’t be,” Rees declared. “If it was, Logra would have run out of air long ago and the fishermen have seen people alive there. But, if it is a dome, we just fly back here and think again. See, the wind sets from the west at dawn, which is when we’ll go, and it sets from the east at sunset, so it will bring us back to Gallis.”

  “What kind of wings do you plan to use to fly to Logra?” Finn asked. “It’s a fair way to go. We’d have to flap for miles.”

  “Over the sea too,” Ogo said. “Some of us could drown.”

  Rees laughed again. He was almost hugging himself with delight. “No wings,” he said. “I have made a balloon.”

  We all said, “What?” Even Ivar, who was in a corner with Riannan and not listening to a word up to then, came to himself and demanded to know what Rees was talking about.

  “It rises by hot air,” Rees explained, “and is made of silk. In Gallis, we float small silk balloons at Midsummer by lighting a candle underneath. That gave me the idea. But I put one of Bran’s floating carts under mine to help it fly. It will work.”

  “Have you tested it?” Ogo asked.

  “Only in miniature, unfortunately,” Bran told him. “You can just imagine what the bards and the priests would say if Rees went flying across Gallis without permission. We’d be turned out of the farm. But the small model worked like a dream. Flew like a kite. We told Gronn it was a kite.”

  “So,” Rees said, “my very first flight will be tomorrow at dawn. Are you all willing to come along? I need two pairs of people, see, to man the bellows to keep the hot air going.”

  Bran sighed a little. “And he needs his dad to stay at home and pretend Rees and Riannan are walking to the coast with you all. You are all going, aren’t you?” I could tell he was itching to fly too and knew that he couldn’t. He was as enthusiastic as Rees about the plan.

  So were we all. Rees had carried us away with him somehow. When I look back, I see it was a crazy idea. We didn’t even know if this balloon-thing would work, let alone if we could get all the way to Logra in it. But I was on fire with the thought of seeing my father again and I could see Ogo ached to fly home to Logra. But why should Finn agree? Or Ivar? And they both did. Riannan I could understand. She admired her brother so, and I think she wanted to prove that she could sing magically enough to soar through the skies.

  “What are our plans when we get to Logra?” Ivar asked, just as if he were a practical person.

  “Land in a field somewhere near the main city. What’s it called?” Rees said.

  “Haranded,” Ogo put in.

  “Yes, Haranded,” Rees said. “And go in on foot to find Gareth and – what’s that prince called?”

  “Alasdair,” I said.

  “Alasdair, yes,” Rees said. “I can’t imagine they’ll be guarded very closely after all this time. Then we take them back to the balloon at dusk and fly away. I’ve laid in enough fuel for the return journey, see.”

  And that was all our plans. We had got this far when Wenda came in, bringing my aunt with her.

  “So you have truly decided to risk it?” she said, looking sadly around at our faces. “Ah well. Beck can stay here with me. I’ve done what I can for her for the moment, but it’s going to be a long job, I think. And of course we’ll look after your donkey while you’re gone. But, if you change your minds in the morning, we shan’t think the worse of you.”

  I thought I would be too excited to sleep that night, but in fact I slept very well. Aunt Beck, though she looked no different, actually put herself to bed in the little room next to mine without my having to shout at her once. This was such a relief that I suddenly found myself quite exhausted. I fell among the soft covers of my bed and knew nothing until Riannan woke me before sunrise.

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

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

  “I am the note of the bird.”

  “And let the soft rain fall on me!” Finn roared, pumping.

  “We men of Skarr shall triumph all the way!” Ivar and Ogo yelled, pumping too.

  “Verily the cunning of the cat is in me,” I persevered.

  “Ha galla fenin hiraya delbar,” Rees sang along with Riannan.

  We must have sounded like the maddest choir ever assembled. I looked across at Aunt Beck and found she was chanting our Hymn too. She seemed not to notice she was being showered with spray as she did so.

  “And the power of running is mine to claim,

  The fire is in me that gives the dragon wings

  And this I will use when the purpose merits,

  When the light needs to lance to the target

  And the growth comes with the turn of the year …”

  I had got so far when I noticed Riannan pointing upwards, looking amazed as she sang. I looked up too and was so astonished that I nearly forgot to go on chanting. Beyond the large patchwork curve of the balloon I could see a great red wing beating, and if I leant backwards I had just a glimpse of a long whisking lizard tail. Blodred. That’s Blodred! I thought. She’s grown huge. She’s helping!

  But it was an absolute rule that you did not stop chanting the Hymn once you had started, so I went on to:

  “When the moon changes from full to crescent …”

  And, as I chanted on, I saw Rees pause in his song – though not in his pumping – to point upwards too. I think he said something like, “I knew Blodred was special!” But the Hymn was not finished, so I went grimly on.

  “I am the moon and the changes of the moon.

  Indeed, I am all things changing and living

  And burn like a spark in the mind’s eye.”

  As I chanted, I imagined seeing Blodred above us on top of the balloon, clutching the many-coloured fabric with her lizardly hands and working her webbed wings to take us along. Rees had been wrong to say they were not really wings, I thought. They were wings. And I thought the sea might be getting a little further away.