Celandine (35 page)

Yet if she imagined that she might simply dream away her time among the sheltering shadows at the mouth of the cave, she was wrong. There was too much to be done.

Elina gave her a large square piece of cloth and showed her how to tie the four corners together in order to make a kind of bag. In this she was expected to collect food – wild mushrooms, hawthorn leaves, rapunzel, birds’ eggs – whatever she could find. From Elina she learned how to dig up the tuberous roots of the cat-tails that grew beside the stream, and the most likely places to hunt for the winter stores of hazelnuts that the squirrels had forgotten. She also learned, to her surprise, that the buds, stalks, leaves and roots of her namesake – the celandine – were edible, as were the roots and leaves of dandelions. All these things were food to the woodlanders, even nettles.

Pretty Mab, the grown-up daughter of Micas and
Elina,
showed her how to pick nettle leaves without stinging her hands.

‘Look close,’ she said. ‘See they little hairs, how they do point towards ’ee? Thee’ve to catch ’em firm. Come at ’em from behind, then they can’t hurt ’ee.’

Mab demonstrated, plucking each nettle leaf as she brought her hand towards her so that her finger and thumb flattened the stinging hairs and rendered them harmless.

But Celandine was still nervous of trying.

‘Don’t ’ee be afeared o’ it,’ said Mab. ‘You show ’un who be maister, and ’twill do ’ee no harm.’

Finally Celandine plucked up the courage to do it. She grasped the nettle leaf between finger and thumb, making sure that her grip followed the direction of the wicked little hairs. To her amazement, it worked. The nettle did not sting her, and she pulled the leaf from its stem feeling as though she had worked a true miracle.

‘See?’ said Mab. ‘Now thee knows as it
can
be done, thee can do it so again – and every time. And there s’ll always be nettle broth for ’ee, though there med be naught else.’

Her clothing was unsuitable, and something would have to be done about it. The calico dress that she had brought was all very well for work in the school garden, but here it was a hopeless encumbrance – forever getting caught up on brambles and bushes. And her heavy walking shoes would not do at all. But what was the alternative?

She laid down the bunch of celandines that she
had
picked and wandered up to the high ridge, looking for more. It was best not to handle the flowers too much, but rather to tie them in bundles and put them in the shade to be collected later – otherwise they became bruised and damaged.

Some of the Naiad were working in the main clearing, and Celandine watched them for a while. Their backs were bent as they tended to the neat patches of plants that were laid out across the open ground. They looked almost oriental with their wide-brimmed grass hats, their plain smocks and short leggings. The Naiad lived a different kind of life to the Tinklers and Troggles – growing their own food upon small allotments, rather than foraging for it in the wild. Perhaps it was better that way. She would very much like a potato for a change. She would also like a smock, and some leggings.

One of the figures straightened up, then slowly turned to look directly at her. It was as though he had sensed that he was being watched. He made no gesture, said nothing that Celandine could hear, but almost immediately the rest of the fieldworkers followed suit – raising their heads and looking her way, like a herd of deer, alert to every whiff of danger. They regarded her calmly for a few moments, then returned to their work – tolerating her presence, yet careful, now, not to turn their backs to her. Celandine knew that those eyes were still upon her, mistrustful beneath the dappled shadows of their grass hats. They would not feel comfortable until she had moved on.

Had she enough celandines? She began to make
her
way back down through the wood, and in doing so startled a group of Naiad horses that were coming along one of the narrow pathways. They were being herded by Pato. Celandine waited for the horses to pass, turning her face from the dust that they kicked up. They were odd-looking little things, with their spiky manes and tufted tails – more like donkeys than horses. Or like miniature zebras, without the stripes. They had quite a strong smell about them, and that too reminded her of donkeys – the ones that she had once seen on a trip to Weymouth sands. Astonishing creatures they had seemed to her at first, but she had soon grown used to them, and now they appeared no more exotic or out of place than the peacocks that wandered the vicarage lawn.

The little red bridle that Pato had given her had led Celandine to assume that the horses were ridden, but she had never seen this happen.

‘What do you do with them,’ she said to Pato, as he drew level with her, ‘the horses, I mean?’

‘Do wi’ em?’ Pato came to a halt and looked up at her as though she might be making fun of him. He removed the chewed end of a willow stick from his mouth. ‘We milks ’em, o’ course.’

‘You
milk
them?’ Celandine thought that he must be joking in turn. ‘Horses can’t be milked!’

‘Oh, can ’em not? Well drat ’em, then, I says. For they’m no use to we if they casn’t be milked. I’d best catch up and give ’em the tidings.’ Pato put his chewing-stick back in his mouth and sauntered off into the dust-cloud with a chuckle.

Celandine stared after him and shook her head. What on earth did horse’s milk taste like, she wondered? She wasn’t sure that she wanted to know.

She sighed. It was time to get back to the matter in hand. What
was
she going to do about her clothing? Celandine tried to brush some of the dust from her dress. Then a thought came to her. She could go back to Mill Farm, and find something more suitable there. Could she? Yes, and she could collect more books as well. And some scissors . . .

Celandine stood still, among the sunlit trees, and explored the idea.

There was a chest full of old clothes on the landing, outside Freddie’s room – and there were the canvas boots that he used for fishing. Freddie wouldn’t mind if she took them. Not now . . .

She had tried to think of Freddie so many times, but something wouldn’t let her. The fog came down, so that her thoughts could never quite reach him. But this time her vision became a starry blur and she had to wipe her eyes. A quick flicker of colour danced through her tears, puzzling for a moment, then shocking as she realized what it was. There was someone coming – a figure walking along the woodland path. Celandine quickly dodged back among the trees, blinking, trying to focus. Still there.

It was the girl in the window – that extraordinary child – coming her way. Again the strangest clothes . . . green trouser things, with a bib, like overalls . . . a yellow shirt with no sleeves and no collar . . . pink
boots,
made of . . . canvas? And now she carried before her a bunch of flowers. Celandines.

Who
was
this person, and how on earth could she possibly be here? And was that
her
bunch of celandines that she was holding? The figure drew closer, about to pass by. Celandine decided find out once and for all. She wasn’t frightened.

‘Hallo?’ The twigs crackled beneath her feet as she stepped forward, but the girl seemed to have heard nothing.

‘Hallo?’ Celandine called out again, but still the girl kept walking – no turn of the head, no falter in that boyish stride. The grass did not move beneath those footsteps, nor was there any sound. The blonde hair rose and fell, cool and comfortable, as if in a breeze. And yet the air was still.

Celandine watched sadly as the child continued on her way. There was no point in chasing after her, no point in saying more. She knew that she was seeing something that wasn’t really there – and yet she also knew that she was seeing something that she could not have invented, or dreamed up. That hair, those clothes; her imagination could never have pictured them. If the girl wasn’t real now, then she once had been, or someday would be . . .

There was a distant bend in the pathway, and Celandine waited for the figure to turn the corner. But then, just before reaching this point, the child simply faded away, dissolving like the passing of a rainbow. She was gone, whoever she was.

Gradually the busy sounds of the forest came back
into
focus – the whirr of a dragonfly, the noisy cooing of the pigeons in the tall cedars. Celandine examined the bunch of flowers she was still holding, limp and spoiled now, in her hot sticky hands. She supposed that she had better go and find some more.

Chapter Fifteen

UNA STOOD AT
the fringe of the high woods, and looked out over the wetlands below. To have come so far –
so
far – only to be struck down at the last was too hard to bear. The sickness that gripped the Ickri tribe was the worst they had ever known. One of the Elders, old Maris, had already died of it, and one newborn also. Many more lay ill – including Avlon himself. What would she do if he left her?

In vain she collected bunches of holly and wolfsbane, sweet violet, feverfew. Her infusions and poultices did little good. This was some Gorji plague, a sweating, aching fever that was beyond her power to heal. But where was the cause of it? For almost a moon the tribe had been laid low in these woods – for as one recovered so another fell sick. Now her father was ill. She had done what she could to help him, but had little faith that it would be enough.

The weather, at least, had been kinder than fortune. Out over the moors, the bright evening sunshine glinted upon the waters and warmed the greening willows, still stranded, some of them, in
the
remains of the winter floods. It would not be a hard land to cross, compared to some that they had seen.

And they were so close, now, Una was certain of it. Indeed, she had come to believe that she could see their destination from this very ridge. A mysterious hill rose from the sunny landscape – separate from its line of brothers beyond – and even without the aid of the Touchstone her eye was drawn constantly to it. The long crest of the hill was thickly crowned with dense foliage, and it seemed to Una that there was a tense stillness about it, as of a crouching animal caught in the open whose best hope of going unseen is to remain motionless.

This evening she carried the Touchstone with her, and the pull of it was stronger than ever, the direction clear and unwavering. She was sure that she was looking at their journey’s end . . .

‘What does it tell thee, child . . .?’

Una flinched at the deep voice, and spun around.

‘ . . . That which we would hear?’

It was Corben.

Her father’s brother had taken more notice of her of late. His words had become friendlier, and his eye seemed to be often upon her.

‘Aye.’ Una turned to look at the hill once more, and nodded. ‘’Tis not so far, no.’

Corben stood beside her and followed the direction of her gaze.

‘The wooded hill?
There
, reckon ye? Then we be close indeed. And what of the Naiad – do they yet dwell here?’

‘The Touchstone seeks the Orbis. It would not have brought us here if there were naught to find. Aye. The Naiad be close by.’ Una was talking as if to herself, and as if seeing something that only she could see.

There was a long silence, and when Una glanced up she realized that Corben was no longer staring at the landscape but at her. What was there in that cool regard that made her mistrust him so?

‘Ye have a great power, Una. We should not to have come so far but for thee – and Avlon be justly proud of thee. Our one desire be to see him well again, and all our tribe. But more shall die, I fear, before this scourge be over. Even now I have come from the King’s side, and it pains me to see him ailing so – my poor brother.’

Una felt reproached then, and said, ‘I should be there also. I’ll go to him.’

She knelt inside the arbour of woven hazel and willow branches that they had made for her father – and wondered what more she could do. Maven had helped her in the mixing of healing potions, but no physic seemed able to quiet that rattling breath, no poultice could draw out the fire that burned within him.

The heat seemed to rise from his very being, so that when she passed her hand above his forehead she could feel a prickle of warmth against her palm. She thought of how her empty fingers had once brought the Touchstone from a giant’s garb, and wondered if she could bring out this pestilence
likewise.
What harm could come of trying? Una placed the Touchstone at her father’s side, then closed her eyes and let her hand hover above the streaming brow. The night closed in about her and she floated away on the failing rhythm of her father’s breath. Breathe in . . . breathe out . . .

She saw herself kneeling beside dark waters, the star-forsaken pools of the woodlands, known only to the brocks and toads – and to one lost tribe. Spiny-fish there were, down there, and deeper creatures, warty and blind. The murky pools that she saw in her vision were connected to the troubled darkness that lay beneath her outstretched hand. Whatever evil lurked in those depths, she felt it now against her palm. Here she must fish, with charms and webs, delving and dipping into the brackish swirl until she found the gulping sickness that lay in wait for those who would foolishly drink therefrom. Aye. Those who would foolishly
drink
therefrom . . . Now she understood.
This
was the source of all their ill, the very water they daily collected. She saw it now . . . breathe out . . . breathe in . . . some Gorji poison buried there. She must draw it out, the poison, the knowledge of it, and lift it from her father’s frame. Raise it high in all its ugliness, and fling it to the heavens . . .

Get out. Be gone. Leave him.

For a long time Una waited, her eyes still closed, until she had the strength to lift her head once more.

Already there was a change. She could feel it. The breathing was calmer, and the brow cooler. She wiped a hand across her own forehead, exhausted now.

‘Come, child, thee’ve done as much as thee are able. I will sit with him through the night.’