Читать книгу Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 21

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.

“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.

But the others were still singing. And Aunt Beck, instead of stopping at the end of the Hymn, simply went back to the beginning again.

“I am the salmon leaping the fall …”

I hurriedly joined in. We went through the whole Hymn twice more before we were somehow hauling ourselves into the sky again and no longer being drenched with sea spray. Almost without our realising it, we were up into dazzling sun. Out of the dazzle I could see a grey-blue misty hump. We were nearly at Logra, it seemed. And we were going higher and higher yet.

“Right, everyone,” Rees said. “Stop now. Phew!” He sat down on the wickerwork with a crunch.

And – I am fairly sure – we went on upwards. My ears felt strange.

“Going deaf,” Aunt Beck announced. “Ears cracking.”

“Not really,” Riannan said soothingly. “This happens on high mountains too. Your ears pop.”

Now I could see a whole golden curve of landscape on the horizon. If I looked up, I could see a red slice of Blodred’s left wing, flapping us steadily onwards. Looking forward again, I could pick out a line of white foam where the barrier must be, although the barrier was of course invisible.

“What do we do,” I said, “if the barrier turns out to be a dome over Logra and we can’t get through?”

“Then we’ll land on top of it and wait for evening,” Rees said, “when the wind turns the other way. We’ll just have to hope it doesn’t blow us back to some part of Gallis where the priests can see us. We’d be in real trouble then.”

“Would the priests really object to the balloon?” Ivar asked. “Gronn struck me as a very easy-going man.”

Finn chuckled a little. “Then you don’t know priests, lad.”

“The very least that would happen,” Rees said, “was that we would all be put in prison for years, while they decided exactly how unholy we’ve been.”

To my surprise, this seemed to register with Aunt Beck. “Now he tells us!” she said.

Rees looked a little rueful. “I wanted you all to come,” he said.

“And we have,” I said. It surprises me now that even then I didn’t realise what little planning we had done and how we all seemed to think it was going to be easy once we got to Logra. Everyone was staring forward at the steadily growing curve of land. It was coming up fast, but I still couldn’t tell if the barrier covered it or not.

Soon we were above the white line of surf. It was obvious the breakers were huge. The wind must have been really strong. There was a gap of calm sea, and then we were rushing across what ought to have been land. But it was a marshy mix of mud and water. I thought I saw submerged houses and then a straggling of tents where the people from the houses seemed to be camping out.

“You know,” Rees said, “it looks as if the barrier has made the rivers back up into floods.”

We had no time to consider this. A great wind suddenly sprang up. It hit me in the back like a hard hand and I know I yelped. Finn grabbed Green Greet to him by the tips of his one hand. Then we were riding with the wind, speeding over swollen rivers and lakes with trees standing out of them; then over inundated fields, winding roads, villages and a small town. I saw Blodred’s wing retreat to the top of the balloon. Shortly, she came sliding down a rope to Rees’s shoulder, a small lizard again. And still we hurtled on.

Logra is enormous. It is by far the largest of the islands. We rushed across it, over field after field, village after town, for a good hour to judge by the steadily climbing sun, and the other coast of it was still not in sight. At first, I thought the place was even flatter than Bernica, but we drifted lower as we went and then I could see that there were plenty of hills and valleys, just lower than I was used to and all seeming splendidly fertile. Now we could see people on the roads, riding horses or walking. Most of them were looking up at us and pointing. Others ran out of houses to look and point too.

“I wish I could have made us invisible,” Rees said uneasily.

“We’re attracting a lot of notice,” Finn agreed.

“I think we should go higher,” Rees said. “Everyone to the pumps again.”

So we all crowded to the bellows, except Aunt Beck, and became too hot and breathless for a while to see if people were seeing us or not. When I did get a chance to look, we were high, high again and passing over some quite large towns.

“I don’t think the barrier is a dome,” I said. “There must be thousands of people down there. Surely they would have run out of air after ten years.”

“We must give thought to where we need to land,” Finn suggested.

“Need to land,” Green Greet said.

“I was hoping we could come down somewhere near whatsit. The capital city,” Rees said. “It’s nearly opposite the Pandy. What’s its name again?”

“Haranded,” Riannan and Ogo said together.

This made me realise that Ogo had hardly said a word for hours. I looked at him and I could see he was full of strange feelings.

“Do you remember any of this?” I asked him.

“Not really,” he said. “Just the colours. The towns are red and the fields are yellow and green. And there’s a smell coming up that I know.” He pulled his lips in hard against his teeth and I could see he was struggling not to cry. I knew better than to make him talk any more.

I considered the smell. Logra smelt of hay and spices and smoke. Gallis had smelled of heather and incense, Bernica of damp farmyards. I remembered, like biting on a sore tooth, the scents of Skarr – stone, lichen, gorse and bracken – and I felt like crying too for a moment.

Meanwhile, the others were arguing about how we were to recognise Haranded if we came to it.

“It must be a big city,” Rees said. “We can damp down the fire when we see it – no problem there.”

“It would be simpler to take the spell off the raft,” Riannan said.

“But we have to be sure where we are,” Rees insisted.

“Won’t there be large buildings?” Finn said.

“Yes, fine large ones. It’ll be where the king lives,” Ivar said. “But we just went over a place with a golden dome. Have we overshot?”

Here Ogo conquered his emotions and said, very definitely, “The king’s palace is on a hill in the middle of Haranded. It’s white. It has big towers with blue roofs.”

Everyone relaxed a little at this. Rees said, “Warn me when you see it. We don’t want to land on its roof.”

Nothing like that happened. We had time to eat our provisions, and Rees was beginning to watch our fuel anxiously and say he hoped we would have enough left to get us aloft again, when we began to discern the outline of a large city, over to our left and a good many miles off.

“We’re going to miss it,” Ivar said. “We’re miles to the south of it.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Plug-Ugly reared up beside me out of nowhere and threw himself hard against me. I went down with a wallop into the bottom of the boat. Winds hit us from all quarters as I fell. I lay on my back with Plug-Ugly crouching on my stomach and saw the fire streaming just above me, roaring. I would have been burnt but for Plug-Ugly. Next second, the fire was streaming another way. I had jumbled sights of everyone throwing themselves flat and the balloon above us blatting this way, then that way. I could feel us lurching and spinning. The fire roared and bellied around in a stream, and I watched, feeling it inevitable, the flames bite into the great silken patchwork and set it burning over our heads.

Rees howled out the words of a quenching spell. Riannan broke into song. The flames went out in gusts of beastly-smelling smoke, but the damage was done. With a third of the great balloon missing, we went down and sideways. I could feel us doing it. When I scrambled to my knees and looked over the side, I could see the ground rushing underneath us and ourselves no higher than a house. I was truly terrified.

But the winds had left us by then. We slowed, and slowed more, and went down until we skimmed hedges. I saw a horseman duck as we sailed over him. I saw the city that had seemed so far off now only a mile or so away. I saw Rees standing up, swinging the anchor on its rope, and Finn beside him, bleeding from one arm where Green Greet had frantically clung on to him.

“That field there,” Finn said. “No one will get hurt there.”

We missed the field. We came down in a road with a mighty grinding and a whoosh as the hot air left the silk and the burnt patchwork flopped down half across us.

Next moment we were surrounded by people. “Kill them!” they yelled. “Kill them! They put that damned barrier up!”