The Wind Singer

by William Nicholson

  ‘Poor little mites.’

  Then she turned to Willum and said sharply,

  ‘Teeth!’

  Obediently, Willum bared his teeth. They were stained a yellowy-brown.

  ‘Tixy. I knew it.’

  ‘Only the smallest leaf, my dearest.’

  ‘And harvest tomorrow. For shame, Willum! You should lie down and die.’

  ‘Mudnuts, Jum,’ he said placatingly. Untying the long nut-socks, he fingered out a surprisingly large number of brown lumps.

  Jum stumped off back to the fire, refusing to acknowledge the fruit of his labours.

  ‘But, my love! My sweet bun! My sugar plum!’

  ‘Don’t you sugar me! You and your tixy!’

  The children, forgotten for the moment, stared at the room in which they now found themselves. It was a big round burrow, with a dome-shaped roof, at the top of which the smoke of the fire escaped through a hole. The fire was built in the middle of the room, on a platform of stone that raised it up to table height; and round it was a kind of wide-barred cage of iron rods. This arrangement allowed pots and kettles to be suspended over the fire on all sides, at various levels. A large kettle hung high up, steaming softly; a stew-pot lower down, popping and spitting.

  Beside the fire there was a wooden bench, on which sat the members of Willum’s immediate family, all as round and mud-covered as each other, so that apart from the differences in size there wasn’t much to distinguish them. They were in fact a child, an aunt, and a grandfather. All were staring curiously at the newcomers except for the grandfather, who kept looking at Willum and winking.

  The floor of the burrow was covered with a litter of soft rugs, mud-stained and rumpled, thrown one on top of the other like a huge unmade bed.

  ‘Pollum!’ said Jum, stirring the stew. ‘More bowls!’

  The mudchild jumped up and ran to a wall cupboard.

  ‘Good day, then, Willum?’ said the old man, winking.

  ‘Good enough,’ said Willum, winking back.

  ‘You’ll not be wanting your supper, then,’ said Jum, banging the stew-pot. ‘You’ll be in the land of tixy.’

  Willum went right up close behind her and put both his arms around her and hugged her tight.

  ‘Who loves his Jum?’ he said. ‘Who’s come home to his sweet Jum?’

  ‘Who stayed out all day?’ grumbled Jum.

  ‘Jum, Jum, my heart does hum!’

  ‘All right, all right!’ She put down her ladle and let him kiss her neck. ‘So what are we going to do with these skinnies of yours?’

  The silent aunt now spoke up.

  ‘Fill’um poor skinny little bellies,’ she declared.

  ‘That’s the way,’ said Willum. And he went and sat down by the old man, and fell to whispering with him.

  Pollum put bowls on a table, and Jum filled the bowls with thick hot stew from the stew-pot.

  ‘Sit’ee down, skinnies,’ she said, her voice more kindly now.

  So Bowman and Kestrel and Mumpo sat down at the table and looked at the stew. They were very hungry, but the stew looked so exactly like lumpy mud that they hesitated to eat it.

  ‘Nut stew,’ said Jum encouragingly. She popped a spoonful into her own mouth, as if to show them the way.

  ‘Please, ma’am,’ said Bowman. ‘What sort of nut?’

  ‘Why,’ said Jum, ‘mudnut, of course.’

  Mumpo started to eat. He seemed not to mind it, so Kestrel tried it. It was surprisingly good, like smoky potato. Soon all three were spooning it up. Jum watched with pleasure. Pollum twined herself round her mother’s stout legs and whispered to her.

  ‘What are they, mum?’

  ‘They’m skinnies. They live up yonder. Poor little things.’

  ‘Why are they here?’

  ‘They’m escaped. They’m run away.’

  As they ate, the children’s spirits revived, and they began to be curious about where exactly they were.

  ‘Are we in the Underlake?’ asked Kestrel.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Jum. ‘We’m under, that’s for sure. We’m all under.’

  ‘Is the mud – ? I mean, does it come from – ?’ There didn’t seem to be a polite way to ask the question, so she changed tack. ‘The mud doesn’t seem to smell so much down here.’

  ‘Smell?’ said Jum. ‘I should hope it does smell. The smell of the sweet sweet earth.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘All? Why, little skinny, that’s all and everything.’

  There came a sudden chuckle from the aunt by the fire.

  ‘Squotch!’ she exclaimed. ‘They’m thinking our mud is squotch!’

  ‘No-o,’ said Jum. ‘They’m not daft.’

  ‘Ask’ee,’ said the aunt. ‘You do ask’ee.’

  ‘You’m not thinking our mud is squotch, little skinnies?’

  ‘What’s squotch?’ said Bowman.

  ‘What’s squotch?’ Jum was baffled. Pollum started to giggle. ‘Why, it’s – squotch.’

  Willum now entered the discussion.

  ‘Why, so it is squotch,’ he said. ‘And why not? Everything goes into the sweet earth, and makes for the flavour. One great big stew-pot, that’s what it is.’

  He dipped the ladle into the stew-pot and drew out a spoonful of thick stew.

  ‘One day I shall lay my body down, and the sweet earth will take it, and make it good again, and give it back. Don’t you mind about squotch, little skinnies. We’m all squotch, if you only see it aright. We’m all part of the sweet earth.’

  He consumed the stew straight from the ladle. Jum watched him, nodding with approval.

  ‘Sometimes you do surprise me, Willum,’ she said.

  Mumpo finished his stew first. As soon as he was done, he lay down on the rug-covered floor, curled himself up into a tight ball, and went to sleep.

  ‘That’s the way, little skinny,’ said Jum, pulling a rug over the top of him.

  Bowman and Kestrel wanted to go to sleep too, but first they wanted to remove the mud that was caked hard all over them.

  ‘Please, ma’am,’ said Bowman. ‘Where can I wash?’

  ‘A bath is it you’re wanting?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Pollum! Get the bath ready!’

  Pollum went to the fire and unhooked the steaming kettle. She heaved it over to one side of the burrow, where there was a saucer-shaped depression in the earth floor. There she poured the hot water from the kettle in a swirling stream straight on to the ground. It slicked the sides of the hollow, and gathered in a shallow steaming puddle at the bottom.

  ‘Who’s go first?’ said Jum.

  Bowman and Kestrel stared.

  ‘Show’ee, Pollum,’ called out the aunt. ‘No baths up yonder. Poor little things.’

  It wasn’t often Pollum was allowed first roll in the bath, when the water was new, so she jumped in without waiting to be told twice. Down on to her back, splayed out like a crab, and then over and over, wriggling and turning, covering herself with a fresh coat of warm slime. She giggled as she writhed about, obviously loving it.

  ‘That’s enough, Pollum. Leave some for the skinnies.’

  Bowman and Kestrel said it was very kind of them, but they were too tired to have a bath after all. So Jum made them up nests on the floor among the piles of rugs, and they curled up as Mumpo had done. Bowman, worn out by the terrors of the day, was soon deeply asleep, but Kestrel’s eyes stayed open a little longer, and she lay there watching the mudpeople and listening to what they were saying. Willum had taken something out of his bag and was giving it to the old man, and they were chuckling together softly in the corner. Jum was cooking by the fire, making what seemed to be an enormous amount of stew. Pollumwas asking questions.

  ‘Why are they so thin, mum?’

  ‘Not enough to eat. No mudnuts up yonder, see.’

  ‘No mudnuts!’

  ‘They don’t have the mud for it.’

  ‘No mud!’


  ‘Don’t’ee forget, Pollum. You’m a lucky girl.’

  Kestrel tried to listen, but the voices seemed to be getting softer and fuzzier all the time, and the flame-shadows flickering on the domed ceiling softened into a warm blur. She snuggled deeper into her cosy nest, and thought how much her legs ached, and how good it was to be in bed, and her eyes felt so heavy she closed them properly, and a moment later she was fast asleep.

  11

  The mudnut harvest

  When 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.’