The Spellcoats (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  The shadow shook its head and bent across two shelves. “But he is, lad. That’s the trouble. They’re frightened. The Heathen beat them. They want to blame someone. And spells have been cast by the Heathen. Hear the River now!”

  We could all hear. I had never heard such rushing. The house shook with it.

  Uncle Kestrel said softly, “He’s coming down like that to fight the Heathen at the Rivermouth. That’s where they set their spells, I heard.”

  “Oh!” said Hern. He was going to be rude.

  “I understand,” Duck said just then. “Zwitt wants to kill us, doesn’t he?”

  “Now, Duck!” Robin protested. “What a silly idea! As if—” She looked at Uncle Kestrel. “It’s not true!”

  The shadow on the wall shook. I thought it was laughing. I looked at Uncle Kestrel. He was serious – just shaking in that new old-man way of his. “It is true, my Robin,” he said. “Zwitt was at my house to blame me cruelly for not killing young Gull while I had him. Gull carries the Heathen spells for you, it seems.”

  Nobody said anything except the River for a moment, and that rushed like thunder. In the midst of it Robin whispered, “Thank you, Uncle Kestrel.”

  “How are they going to kill us?” Hern said. “When?”

  “They’re meeting to decide that now,” said Uncle Kestrel. “Some want to throw you to the River, I hear, but Zwitt favours cold steel. They often do who haven’t seen it used.” He stood up to go, and to my relief the huge shadow rose until it was too big for the wall to hold it. “I’ll be off,” he said, “now you understand. If Zara knew I was here, she’d turn me out.”

  “Where is Aunt Zara?” I asked.

  “At the meeting,” said Uncle Kestrel. He may have seen me look. As he limped to the door, he made me come with him while he explained. “Zara’s not in an easy position. You must understand. She’s afraid for her life of being called one of you. She had to go. It’s different for me, you know.” I still do not see why it should be different for Uncle Kestrel. Even Robin does not see.

  I opened the door for him on such a blast of noise from the River that I put my hands to my ears. It was louder than the worst storm I have known. Yet there was barely any wind and only a few warm drops of rain. The noise was all the River. The lamplight showed black silk water and staring bubbles halfway to the back door.

  Uncle Kestrel bawled something to me that I did not hear as he limped away. I slammed the door shut, and then Hern and I barricaded the doors and windows. We did not need to discuss it. We just ran about feverishly wedging the heaviest chairs against the doors and jamming benches and shelves across the shutters. We wedged the woodshed door by pushing the boat against it. We made rather a noise blocking the window just over Gull’s bed, but Gull did not move.

  All this while Duck was standing leaning his head against the niches of the Undying, and Robin was still sitting over supper. “I can’t believe this!” she said. Another time we went by, she said, “We’ve only dear old Uncle Kestrel’s word for it. He’s not what he was. He may have misunderstood Zwitt. We’ve lived in Shelling all our lives. They wouldn’t—”

  “Yes, they would,” Duck said from the niches. “We’ve got to leave here.”

  Robin wrung her hands. She will be ladylike. “But how can we leave, with the River in flood and Gull like this? Where should we go?”

  I could see she had gone helpless. It annoys me when she does. “We can go away down the River and find somewhere better to live,” I said. It was the most exciting thing I have ever said. I had always wanted to see the rest of the River.

  “Yes. You can’t pretend you’ve enjoyed living here this winter,” Hern said. “Let’s do that.”

  “But the Heathen!” Robin said, wringing away. I could have hit her.

  “We look like the Heathen,” I said. “Remember? We might as well make some use of it. We’ve suffered for it enough. I suppose Aunt Zara thought we were Heathen when she told us to go away.”

  “No,” said Robin, being fair as well as helpless. It makes a maddening combination. “No, she couldn’t have. She just meant we look different. We have yellow, wriggly hair, and everyone else in Shelling has straight black hair.”

  “Different is dead tonight,” Hern said. Clever, clever.

  “We’ve only Uncle Kestrel’s word,” said Robin again. “Besides, Gull’s asleep.”

  So we sat about, with nothing decided. None of us went to bed. We could not have slept for the thousand noises of the flood, anyway. It made rillings and swirlings, rushings, gurglings and babblings. Shortly there was rain going blatter, blatter on the roof and spaah when it came down the chimney and fell on the fire. Behind that the River bayed and roared and beat like a drum, until my ears were so bemused that I thought I heard shrill voices screaming out across the floods.

  Then, around the middle of the night, I heard the real, desperate bellowing when our cow was swept away. Robin jumped up from the table, shouting for help.

  Hern sat up sleepily. Duck rolled on the hearthrug. I was the most awake, so I scrambled up and helped Robin unblock the back door. It came open as soon as we lifted the latch, and a wave of yellow water piled in on us.

  “Oh help!” said Robin. We heaved the door shut somehow. It left a pool on the floor, and I could see water dripping in underneath it. “Try the woodshed!” said Robin.

  We ran there, although I could tell that the cow’s bellows were going away slantwise down the River now. Water was coming in steadily under the woodshed door. We pulled the boat back easily, because it was floating, but when we opened the door, the wave of water that came in was not quite so steep. Robin insisted that we could wade through the garden to the cow. We hauled up our clothes and splashed outside, trying to see and to balance and to hold skirts all at once. The rain was pouring down. That hissed, the River hissed and gluck-glucked, and the water swirled so that I half fell down against the woodshed. I knew it was hopeless. The cow was faint in the distance. But Robin managed to stagger a few yards on, calling to the cow, until even she was convinced there was nothing we could do.

  “What shall we do for milk?” she said. “Poor cow!”

  We could not shut the woodshed door. I tied the boat to one of the beams, and we waded back to the main room and shut that door. The woodshed is a step down. Soon water began to trickle under that door, like dark crawling fingers.

  Robin sat by the hearth and I sat with her. “We shall drown if it comes much higher,” she said.

  “And Zwitt will say good riddance and the River punished us,” I said. I sat leaning against Robin, watching water drip off my hair. Each drop had to turn twenty corners because my hair hangs in springs when it is wet. And I saw we would really have to leave now. We had no cow. We had no father to plough our field. Poor Gull could not do it, and Hern is not strong enough for that yet. We had no money to buy food instead, because no one would take my weaving, and even if we had, the people in Shelling probably would not sell us any. Then I remembered they were going to kill us, anyway. I thought I would cry. But no. I watched the firelight squeeze a smile out of the Young One’s face, and Duck’s mouth open and shut on the hearthrug, and the water from the woodshed trickle into a pool. Robin was soft and warm. She is maddening, but she does try.

  “Robin,” I said. “Did Mother look like us? Was she a Heathen?”

  “I don’t know,” said Robin. “It’s all vague. I think she had hair like ours, but I may be making it up. I don’t remember. I don’t even remember her teaching me to weave.”

  That surprises me still, Robin not remembering. She was nearly eight when our mother died. I was much younger when Robin taught me to weave, and I remember that perfectly. I can recall how Robin did not know the patterns for all the words, so that she and I together had to make quite a number up. I am not sure that anyone except my family will be able to read much of this, even of those who know how to read weaving. To everyone else, my story will look like a particularly fine and curious rugcoat.
But it is for myself that I am weaving it. I shall understand our journey better when I have set it out. The difficulty is that I have to keep stopping because the clicking of my loom disturbs poor Robin.

  NOW THE THING that finally decided us to leave was this. It was around dawn, though there was no light coming in round the shutters as yet. My neck ached down one side, and my mouth tasted bad. The fire was very low, but I could see Duck rolling and stirring in front of it. Hern was sitting on the table.

  “The floor’s all wet,” he said.

  I put my hand on the hearthrug to move, and it was like a marsh. “Ugh!” I said. It is a noise there is no word for.

  At that, the door to the bedroom swung open, and there was Gull in his nightshirt, feeling at the frame of the door as he had done before. I heard his feet splash in the water on the floor. “Is it time?” Gull asked.

  “Time for what?” said Hern.

  “Time to leave,” said Gull. “We have to go away down the River.”

  Robin, I swear, had been asleep up to then, but she was on her feet, splashing about, trying to soothe Gull back to bed before he had finished speaking. “Yes, yes. We’re leaving,” she said. “It’s not quite time yet. Go back to bed till we’re ready.”

  “You won’t go without me?” Gull said as she shoved him back through the door.

  “Of course not,” said Robin. “But we haven’t packed the boat yet. You rest while we do that, and I’ll call you as soon as breakfast’s ready.”

  While she put Gull back to bed, Hern and I splashed about in an angry sort of way, filling the lamp and lighting it again and putting the last logs on the fire. Duck woke up.

  “Are we really leaving?” he said when Robin came back.

  Hern and I thought Robin had just been soothing Gull, but she said, “I think we must. I think Gull knows best what the Undying want.”

  “You mean, the Undying told him we must go?” I said. Early though it was, my back pricked all the way down with awe. Usually I only get that in the evenings.

  “Gull must have heard us talking,” said Hern. “That explains it just as well. But I’m glad something made up your stupid minds for you. Let’s get the boat loaded.”

  Then I did not want to go at all. Shelling was the place I knew. Everywhere beyond was an emptiness. People came out of the emptiness and said things about Heathens with spells, the King and war, but I did not believe in anywhere but Shelling really. I did not want to go into the nowhere beyond it. I think Hern felt the same at heart. We went slowly into the woodshed with the lamp, to push the boat out ready to load.

  Water rolled in from the woodshed as soon as we opened the door. It came round our ankles like yellow silk, lazy and strong and smooth, and made ripples in the living room. Inside the shed the boat was floating level with the step. The lamp shone up from our startled reflections underneath it.

  “You know,” said Hern, “we can load it in here and just row out through the door.”

  I looked towards the door, dazzled by the lamp. I looked too low, where the land usually slopes towards the River, and I had one of those times when you do not know what you see. There was a long, bright streak, and in that streak, a smooth sliding. I thought I had been taken out of my head and put somewhere in a racing emptiness. There I was, upside down under my own feet – a bush of hair and staring eyes, wild and peculiar. I wonder if this is how Gull feels, I thought.

  Duck did not like it either. “There’s water high up, where the air usually is!” he said, and he waded over and tried to shut the door.

  Hern was the only one of us who could shut the door against the force of the water. I always forget how strong Hern is. You would not think he was, to look at him. He is long and thin, with a stoop to his shoulders, very like the heron he was named for.

  We argued a great deal over loading the boat and trailed up and down the ladder to the loft a great deal too often at first. Robin said we should take the apples. Hern said he hated last year’s fruit. It was because none of us wanted to leave. Gradually, though, we grew excited, and the loading went quicker and quicker. Hern packed things in the lockers, shouting orders, and the rest of us ran to and fro remembering things. We packed so many pots and pans that there was nothing to cook breakfast in and almost nothing left to eat. We had to have bread and cheese.

  Robin got Gull up and dressed him in warm clothes. The rest of us were in our thick old waterproof rugcoats, which I only make when they are truly needed, because it is double weave and takes weeks. My everyday skirt was soaked, and I did not want to spoil my good one. Besides, I had had enough of splashing about in a skirt in the night. I wore Hern’s old clothes. I tried to persuade Robin to wear some of Gull’s. A year ago she would have agreed. But now she insisted on being ladylike and wearing her awful old blue skirt – the one I made a mistake in, so that the pattern does not match.

  The only warm rugcoat we could find which fitted Gull was my father’s that my mother had woven him before they were married. My mother was mistress of weaving. The coat tells the story of Halian Tan Haleth, Lord of Mountain Rivers, and it is so beautiful that I had to look away when Robin led Gull to the table. The contrast between Mother’s weaving and Robin’s blue skirt was too painful.

  It occurred to me while we were dressing Gull that there was not so much wrong with him as I had thought. He smiled once or twice and asked, quite reasonably, whether we had remembered fishing tackle and spare pegs for the mast. It was just that he stared so at nothing and did not seem to be able to dress himself. I wonder if he’s blind, I thought. It did seem so.

  I tested it at breakfast by pushing a slice of bread at Gull’s face. Gull blinked and moved his head back from it. He did not tell me not to or ask what I thought I was doing, as Hern or Duck would have done, but he must have seen the bread. I put it in his hand, and he ate it, still staring.

  “I tried that last night,” Duck whispered. “He can see all right. It’s not that.”

  We were sitting round the table with our feet hooked on the chair rungs because water was coming in from all the doors, even the front door, and most of the floor was a pool. There was a hill in the corner where my loom and spinning wheel stood, so that was dry, and so was the scullery, except for a dip in the middle. We laughed about it, but I did wish I could have taken my loom. The boat was so loaded by then that there was no point even suggesting it.

  As I put the last slice of bread in Gull’s hand, there was an explosion of sizzling steam from the hearth.

  “Oh, good gracious!” Robin shouted. She soaked us all by racing to the hearth. Water was spilling gently across the hearthstones and running in among the embers. Amid cloud upon cloud of steam, Robin snatched up the shovel and scooped up what was still alight. She turned round, coughing, waving one hand and holding up the red-hot shovelful. “The pot, the firepot, quickly! Oh, why do none of you ever help me?”

  That fire has never been out in my lifetime. I could not think how we were to light it again if it did go out. At Robin’s shriek, even Gull made a small bewildered movement. Hern splashed away for the big firepot we use in the boat, and I fetched the small one we take to the field. Duck took a breakfast cup and tried to scoop up more embers in that. He had only rescued half a cupful before the water swilled to the back of the fireplace and made it simply a black, steaming puddle.

  “I think we’ve got just enough,” Robin said hopefully, putting the lids on the pots.

  Everything was telling us to leave, I thought as I waded with Hern to the woodshed to put the pots in the boat. The River had swung the outer door open again. It was light out there. Outside was nothing but yellow-brown River, streaming past so full and quiet that it seemed stealthy. There was no bank on the other side. The brown water ran between the tree trunks as strongly as it ran past the woodshed door. It was all so smooth and quiet that I did not realise at first how fast the River was flowing. Then a torn branch came past the door. And was gone. Just like that. I have never been so near thinking
the River a god as then.

  “I wonder if there’s water all round the house,” said Hern. We put the pots in the boat and waded back to see.

  This was very foolish. It was as if, among all the other things, we had forgotten what Uncle Kestrel had told us. We climbed the slope beside my loom and took the plank off the shutters there. Luckily we only opened the shutter a crack. Outside was a tract of yellow, rushing water as wide as our garden, and not deep. On the further edge of it, in a grim line, stood most of the men of Shelling. Zwitt was there, leaning on his sword, which looked new and clean because he had not been to the war. The swords of the others were notched and brown, and more frightening for that. I remember noticing, all the same, that behind them the yellow water had almost reached Aunt Zara’s house. Where they were standing was a point of higher ground between the two houses.

  “Look!” we called out, and Duck and Robin crowded to the open crack.

  “Thank the Undying!” said Robin. “The River’s saved our lives!”

  “They’re making up their minds to cross over,” said Duck.

  They were calling to one another up and down the line. Zwitt kept pointing to our house. We did not realise why until Korib, the miller’s son, came past the line with his longbow and knelt to take aim. Korib is a good shot. Hern banged the shutter to just in time. The arrow met it thock a fraction after, and burst it open. Hern banged it shut again and heaved the plank across. “Phew!” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “But they’ll see us. They’ll shoot!” I said. I hardly knew what to do. I nearly wrung my hands like Robin.

  “Come along,” Hern said. He and Robin took hold of Gull and guided him to the woodshed.

  “Just a minute,” Duck said. He splashed over to the black pool of the hearth and gathered the Undying down out of their niches. It shocks me even now when I think of Duck picking them up by their heads and bundling them into his arms as if they were dolls.

  “No, Duck,” said Robin. “Their place is by this hearth. You heard your father say so.”