She reached over and picked up a stone paperweight from her desk. ‘Energy isn’t lost, Mike.’ She tossed the stone in the air and caught it again. ‘The stone goes up . . . and comes down. You came here . . . you’ll go back.’
‘What happened to the bodies? Of the two from my time who got killed here?’ He had to know.
‘Vanished. So the stories said. Drawn back to their own time perhaps?’
‘But I belong here! With Katrin! And . . . and the others.’ He belonged here with Katrin. With Kinship. With adult responsibilities, with adult work.
‘I understand.’
‘You don’t. You couldn’t. You live in a group here. You belong. I come from a time when everyone’s solo. All single units. Sure, it gets rough here, but everyone’s got a place! And I’ve found mine, and I’m staying!’
‘We didn’t invent Kinship, Mike.’ Her voice was gentle, but firm. ‘It’s there in your own time if you can find it. It’s simply easier to see here. We need it more, just to survive.’
‘You don’t understand! You don’t know! And I’m staying!’ He shouted it, and moved to the door and went out before she could answer him in that quiet strong certain voice of hers.
Teresa had sadness for him in her eyes. She tossed the stone in the air again.
And watched it return.
CHAPTER 19
ANCIENT THINGS
Mike walked in the garden. It spread out around the stone house, and included vegetable gardens, an orchard, flower beds, and, tucked into one comer, a fowl-run with hens.
Beyond the garden wall there were more plantings, some of which appeared to be grape-vines. Some more of the sisters were working among them.
He walked for perhaps an hour, trying to sort out the experiences he had been through in the days since he had come into this time.
Everything seemed to have been moving too fast for Mike to think of what it all might mean. Now he had time, as he waited for Katrin to regain consciousness, and he still could not work out what he should do. He knew one thing. He did not want to go back. There was a colour, and a richness in the life he was living now which made up for its dangers.
He returned to the stone house and sat down on a bench in the sun. He must have dozed off. When he woke, Mother Teresa was sitting alongside him. He looked at her in surprise.
She smiled. ‘There are beds inside if you want to sleep.’
‘I’m all right!’ His answer sounded harsh in his own ears, and he was ashamed of his rudeness to this woman who had shown them nothing but kindness. To make amends, he asked, more politely, ‘Why do you all live on this island?’
‘For safety. You may have noticed that it’s a rough life on the mainland. A community of women . . . living by themselves . . . the sea protects us.’
‘But people come here?’
‘Yes. The fisher people from the bay to the south bring people here. We trade for some things. . .’
‘What do you trade?’
‘Wine and medicines for wheat and books.’
‘You make wine and medicines . . .’
‘And we trade them for wheat and books. Yes. Some of the wheat we eat. Some we experiment with. Developing new strains. We’ve had some success in breeding wheat which can grow in the Bad Lands where the worst scars of the Fire War remain.’
‘And the books?’
‘Old books. The Little People turn them up sometimes when they’re mining the metal out of buried buildings. We collect the old wisdom here, and preserve it.’
‘I see.’
‘I wish you could stay. And help us.’
‘I don’t know much. I’m still at school.’
‘You know your own time. You could help us so much . . .’
Her eyes showed a deep sadness, and he wanted to help her. ‘How?’
‘Just telling us what some words meant, what some tools were used for, identifying people in pictures. If we could only keep you here for a year!’
‘I have to go back. The Clan Murray is dying. I have to go back to them.’
‘Yes, you do. Back to the Murrays, and back to your own time.’
‘No! I’m not needed there!’
She turned on him, and her face and voice were sharp. ‘Who are you to say that? What about the work you might do? The children you might have? And what about their children? And theirs! If you stay here, you change the future.’
‘So?’
‘The different future you cause might be one in which Katrin was never born.’
‘But I’m here already. And she was born.’
‘I can only tell you, Mike, that no one has ever come through a Discontinuity and stayed here.’
There was silence between them. Finally he spoke the thought which had pursued him since being told he would go back. ‘So I go back, knowing there’ll be a nuclear war in my own lifetime.’
‘Probably.’
‘When? What year?’
She looked at him then with a bleak compassion. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘You could at least tell me where I’d be safe.’
She paused, and then shrugged. ‘A lot of the history of that period has been lost. I don’t think anywhere was safe. It wasn’t just the bombs and lasers. There was the Great Darkness, the Plague Years, the Folk Wanderings . . .’ her voice trailed off. She was seeing a past more terrible than the dark age in which she lived.
Mike managed a half smile. ‘Sounds grim.’
‘All history sounds grim, Mike. Things like peace and joy and love . . . the historians find them boring.’
He stood. There was no use agonizing about that past which was his future. Some people had survived. Perhaps he would be one of them. ‘I need to get back to the Clan with the medicine.’
‘Katrin can go with you. She’ll be able to travel tomorrow.’
He looked at her in amazement. ‘So soon? Can I see her?’
She shook her head. ‘She needs rest.’ She paused. ‘I’d be grateful for an hour of your time in the museum, though.’
The museum was like any museum. There were glass cases, objects lying about and shelves of leatherbound books.
Mother Teresa showed Mike things for what seemed like hours. He identified, or failed to identify, photographs in fragments of newspapers and books. There were politicians, tennis players, pop stars. Sister Clair took notes all the time. Mike was exhausted. Some of the things Teresa wanted to know, he knew. Some he did not.
Now he was looking at a box full of metal objects.
‘Could you tell us what they are?’
He took out a blade from a lawn mower. He explained what it was. Then he had to explain what a lawn mower was. Then he had to explain what a lawn was. Then he tried to explain why anyone would want one.
Next came part of an egg beater. That was simpler. Everyone knew about eggs.
The next piece of metal he did not recognize. It was roughly triangular and drilled for bolts, but he had never seen anything like it.
Next there was the rusted magazine from a rifle, then half a plastic slide fastener. Blushing, he had to demonstrate how the one on his trousers worked. It went on and on. Their curiosity was as inexhaustable as their supply of junk.
They pulled out one last crate. Inwardly, he groaned, but outwardly he strove to conceal his boredom. He owed these women Katrin’s life. If he had to stay up all night, he would try and help them.
CHAPTER 20
PARTINGS AND MEETINGS
For what remained of the night Mike slept in the wooden chair by Katrin’s bed. At some stage he woke to the sound of singing. It was a low sweet blend of women’s voices which moved from singing into a kind of chant and then returned to singing once more.
He went to sleep again, and the next time he woke, it was to silence.
Again, he slept.
When he woke this time, it was because Katrin was punching him.
‘Mmmm?’ He blinked himself awake. Katrin was sitting up in the bed and thum
ping him with both fists. From the force of the blows, he knew she was well on the way to full health.
‘You called me coward!’
‘Katrin!’ He was smiling, delighted to see her awake and well and scowling at him. It was just like old times.
‘You called me coward!’
‘I was trying to save both our lives!’
‘That’s no excuse! I should challenge you!’
Mike burst out laughing. ‘Challenge me? To a duel? You’d win every time!’ He took her hand, and he said what he had thought for all their time together. ‘You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.’
She could hear the sincerity, and her anger fled. She smiled.
‘Also the most foolhardy, aggressive, stupidest . . .’
She punched him again.
‘Loveliest . . .’ He ran out of words. So he leaned forward and kissed her.
She stared at him and for a moment he was not sure what her reaction would be. He had the sudden thought that he had a good chance of being cut up for cats’ meat. She frowned, as if trying to assess what had happened. Then she said, ‘That was nice,’ and kissed him back hard, and pushed him away. ‘Now get out. I have to get out of this stupid dress they’ve put me in and put on some real clothes.’
When he got to the door, he turned. ‘The head sister here . . . the head wise woman . . . she says that I’ll probably be pulled back to my own time. If it happens, I want you to know it’s against my will. I want to stay here.’
She looked at him in that solemn way of hers. ‘If it happens, I shall be sad. Now get out.’
He got out.
The wind blew from the channel, buffeting them on the Island’s clifftop. Mike was roped into his side of the hang-glider, and Katrin strapped into her side. She looked at the water below, and Mike saw, with a slightly smug feeling, that she was afraid.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he said to her.
‘Don’t talk down to me!’ was all the answer he got.
Mother Teresa and Sister Clair and others of the sisters were with them.
‘You could stay here, Mike, if you liked,’ Teresa said. ‘After you get Katrin to the mainland, you could return and work with us.’
He shook his head. ‘She needs me to look after her,’ he said, his face deadpan.
Katrin kicked him in the shin. ‘You’re free to stay.’
‘I couldn’t do that to you,’ he answered, still deadpan.
‘One more remark like that. . .’ she began.
He joined in with her,’. . . and I’ll challenge!’
And then they were laughing together.
Mike turned to Teresa. ‘Goodbye. Thank you.’ He looked at the other sisters. ‘Goodbye sisters.’ Then he turned to Katrin and nodded. She swallowed hard, and they began to move down the slope into the wind.
The great hand of the air caught them up, and they were airborne.
The raging channel slipped away beneath them.
They fought the gusts, and rode the air, and suddenly, through the roaring of the wind in the nylon, Mike heard Katrin laughing. He looked at her. She was loving it.
The cliffs of the mainland were coming toward them as they rode the air.
And then, on the clifftop, they saw an extraordinary figure, a stocky little man with a big beard, dressed in armour, and waving.
Woodcat!
Beyond him, the four ponies grazed at the rough grass on the clifftop.
They swooped in, and caught at the ground with their feet and were running to a perfect landing.
As they got clear of the glider, Woodcat ran up to them. ‘Greetings!’ he yelled.
They were still amazed at his escape. Katrin, laughing, asked, ‘Did you beat the Patchies off? Did you slay them?’
Woodcat shuffled, as if embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘not exactly.’
‘What then?’ asked Mike.
‘I thought of Isolde at home. The poor woman loves me passionately, you know. And I knew she would be inconsolable at my loss. So I took off my helmet and showed that I was of the Little People. And invoked the Covenant.’ He smiled at Mike. ‘We’re protected you know. We’re very important people.’
Mike and Katrin were both laughing, not so much at Woodcat, but with relief at his escape.
‘You must not tell this around!’ the little man said.
‘Oh, Woodcat Patchie-slayer,’ Katrin said, embracing him, ‘your secret is safe with us!’
They pushed the ponies hard, and by nightfall had reached the middenlands where Woodcat had his home. As they came close, they saw Isolde standing on top of the highest midden, watching anxiously.
As soon as she saw them, she hurried down and went to their house and slammed the door.
Woodcat had to plead with her to open it. When she did, she rushed out at him in a rage. ‘You’ve been having adventures!’ She turned on Katrin and Mike. ‘You’ve been letting him have adventures!’
‘There were no adventures, my dear, I assure you!’
‘The day you left, there were Patchies through, and I’ve been worried sick that they’d eat you and the poor things’d get indigestion!’ She looked at Woodcat with terrible scorn. ‘Having adventures at your age with a plough to mend and a wheel to rim!’
‘You’re right, my dear. You’re right. Indeed,’ he said, ‘I did meet Patchies . . .’
‘You did?’ She was immediately caring and anxious.
‘I did, but told them if they harmed me, they’d have Isolde to deal with. And they turned tail and ran!’
She embraced him, and looked at Katrin and Mike, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘He’s a terrible man, this. A most terrible man, and I rue the day I married him!’ Then she kissed Woodcat soundly and pushed him through the round doorway into his house.
CHAPTER 21
CAPTURED!
The ambush happened within an hour of their leaving the Little People. Isolde had abused them roundly several more times, fed them a huge meal, and sent them off on two of the ponies, leading the third, on which were the hang-glider and the pack containing the precious medicine.
‘There’s another ford across the river, west of the one the Yobbies are guarding,’ Woodcat had told them, and it was toward this ford that they were heading when it happened.
The Patchies must have spied them far off, for they were in position and waiting for them. One moment, Katrin and Mike were pushing their ponies at a canter down a deserted road. The next moment, two squat, bow-legged figures had stood up from a concealing fold in the grassland, their bowstrings drawn back to their ears, an arrow aimed at each rider’s heart.
Katrin did not hesitate. Her hand went, not to her bow, but to her shortsword, either to attack the Patchies or to end her life, but as she did so, a rope with a running noose dropped over her chest and drew tight, pinioning both arms to her sides.
The rope had come from behind, and Mike turned in the saddle to look. There was a third Patchie behind them, holding the end of the lasso. With an easy movement, the Patchie jerked Katrin from the saddle, and in the same moment one of the two bowman had lassoed Mike and dragged him to the ground.
It took the Patchies only seconds to tie their ankles and wrists with untanned leather thongs, and hang them over their ponies. Moments after the ambush happened, the Patchies had retrieved their own horses, and they were on their way again, heading north, with Katrin and Mike as their prisoners.
‘It could be worse,’ Katrin’s upside-down head said to Mike’s upside-down head as they bobbed along.
‘How?’
‘We’re still alive, and we’re heading north. They could have taken us south to sell at the Vickharn border.’
‘I thought it was better to die than have the Patchies take you prisoner?’
‘Well, yes, there is that,’ she replied. ‘But since we’re alive, it’s better to be sold anywhere than Vickharn.’ Her face turned grim. ‘Unless they mean to keep us for their own use.’
‘What, ah . .
. what kind of use?’
She shook her head. It seemed she thought it better that he not know. He did not press the point. He was not at all anxious to be informed on the question.
The Patchies kept a fast pace, and toward nightfall they reached the river ford guarded by the Yobbies.
Mike tried to see if the Yobbies were the ones they had stolen the boat from. If their luck was in, they would not be the same men.
Their luck was out. The two Yobbies who had not blundered into the forest were alive and well and looking at them longingly.
The biggest of the Yobbies, the one they had snared and hung in a tree, strolled up alongside them and looked at Mike and Katrin with a keen interest. Then he looked up into the tattooed face of the Patchie leader.
‘We would like to buy them.’
The Patchie shook his head.
‘How much?’
The Patchie shook his head again.
‘We have a religious reason,’ the big Yobby said. ‘Our lord Grym wishes to drink their Murray blood and spit them into the hall of their Dark Father.’
And once more, the Patchie shook his head.
‘You will sell them or we will take them.’ The Yobby’s hand moved to his sword hilt.
Mike now understood why Yobbies were thought to be dumb. The big Yobby putting his hand on his sword hilt was the dumbest action Mike had ever seen.
The movement was answered by a thrumming sound followed by choking cries as the other two Patchies’ bows seemed to leap into their hands, and arrow after arrow cut down every Yobby in sight. It was a death-dealing so brutally calm that Mike scarcely believed he had witnessed it.
Then the Patchies clapped their heels into their horses’ flanks, and urged them across the ford, leaving the Yobbies’ camp to a silence broken only by the harsh moaning of one who still lived.
As they cleared the other side of the river, Katrin spoke. ‘You’ll never see better work with a bow than that.’
‘Is that all you’ve got to say? They just killed all those guys back there!’
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