"Females larger, flat sh.e.l.ls underneath," said Basher succinctly. "Males undersh.e.l.ls curved concave. Makes sense. Think about it . . ."
But I was about to get a demonstration. Growch came panting back.
"Two females down there. Tell you what, don"t like bein" up-ended! Cursin"
like "Ell, they is!"
By the time we got there they had righted themselves again, their pale brown patched sh.e.l.ls disappearing into the undergrowth at speed. I put Basher down and immediately he was off, pausing only to eye the disappearing females with an experienced eye and turn in scurrying pursuit of the larger. A moment later there was a resonant tap-tapping noise, a pause, then a sort of triumphant mewing. Cats? No, just a tortoise enjoying himself; as I came nearer I could see him reared up at the back of the female, his mouth open on pointed pink tongue. "M-e-e-w! Oh, what bliss! How I"ve missed thiiiis! Hey-"
With several violent jerks from side to side, the female disengaged herself and charged off once again, Basher in pursuit. Then once again the tap- tapping, pause, and "M-e-w! Bliss . . ."
"Basher! Are you all right?"
"Couldn"t be better! Thanks for eeeeverything . . ."
"Basher, wait . . ." There was something wrong, something about him, about the female . . . Oh, G.o.d! They were a different species! He was black and gold with a sh.e.l.l that frilled out at the back, they were pale brown shaped in a perfect hump. . . . I ran after him. "Wait! They"re a different species! Come back, and we"ll go on further. . . ."
"No fear!" His voice was rapidly diminishing. "This"ll do me. Color isn"t everything. . . . Their parts are in the right place!" Tap-tap. "This is far better than freezing to death! May you all find what you seeeeek. . . ."
When I rejoined the others, my heart heavy, Gill was listening, his ears c.o.c.ked. "That tapping noise: reminds me of the cobbler mending my boots. . .
. Is he all right?"
"Yes," I said. "He has-what he wants." What he thinks he wants, I added to myself. But there would be no eggs to hatch into little black and gold tortoises: his would be sterile couplings. Why couldn"t he have waited till we found the right place? And yet, like Traveler, he seemed to be content with a subst.i.tute, and they had both said it was better than being dead. . . .
Were none of us to find what we really sought, I wondered?
"Half a loaf is better than none," said the Wimperling unexpectedly.
"Especially when you"re hungry."
"Talkin" of bein" hungry," said Growch: "Ain"t we stoppin" for lunch today?"
Chapter Twenty.Two.
We had come as far south as we could, without crossing into another country.
As one accommodating monk explained when next we sought food and lodging (overnight stay in the guesthouse, sleeping on straw; stew and ale for supper, bread and ale for breakfast and please leave a donation, however small), our country was a rough square, bounded to the northeast by one kingdom, the southeast by another and the south by a third. The other boundaries were sea, but there was still a lot of the square to explore. He drew everything in the dirt with a stick so I could understand.
Because he was a monk I told him a bit more of the truth than I had anyone else, and once he understood I was looking for Gill"s home he worked out roughly for me the way we had come, like the right-hand side of a tall triangle.
He suggested that I travel along the ways that led from east to west till I came to the sea, then either complete the triangle by going northeast, or bisect it by going straight up the middle.
That seemed good advice, but there was not only Gill to consider. The Wimperling contemplated for a moment, then said he had felt no tuggings of place so far, and was content to continue as I suggested. Growch scratched a lot-warmer weather-and said that as long as there was food and company he wasn"t bothered. But it was Mistral who was keenest on the idea. She said that the distance south seemed about right, and if there was a real sea to the west of us, that would be right too.
Not having told Gill about consulting the others, of course, he was happy enough to fall in with the idea, so we walked the many miles west during those spring days in a sort of dreamy vacuum. Mistral became more and more convinced we were heading in the right direction and I knew I wasn"t about to lose Gill, for he had suddenly recalled that he couldn"t see any mountains from his home-which was comforting to me, as we were leaving the highest ones I had ever seen to our left as we traveled. The range seemed endless, rearing purple, snow-fanged tips so high that the sun hid his face early behind them, the shadows stretching cold in our path.
But even the biggest mountains come to an end, and gradually they sank away the farther west we traveled. By now we looked like a band of gypsies, brown and weatherbeaten, our clothes comfortably ragged, although I tried to keep Gill as smart as possible by tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his hair and beard regularly, and I kept my hair in its plaits. Mistral was shedding her winter coat, and I could have stuffed a mattress with the brown hair that came out in handfuls when I tried to brush her. Growch evaded all attempts to wash, brush or trim anything.
But it was the Wimperling that was changing faster than anyone else-so much so that his name seemed too childish to fit the long-as-me-and-growing- longer animal that trotted away the miles beside us. He was taller, too, near up to my waist, and his k.n.o.bs and protuberances were growing more p.r.o.nounced as well. The claws on his hooves were real claws, the tip of his tail more like a spade than ever and his wings were bigger as well.
He was shy of showing them off, preferring to flex them behind a tree or large rock or in a dell, but I saw them once or twice. They resembled bat"s wings more than anything else, but they were proper wings, not extended hands and fingers like the night-flyers. I began to feel embarra.s.sed in villages or with our fellow travelers, for fear they would think him some sort of monster and stone him to death, but for some peculiar reason they seemed to see him as just another rather largish pig: they even looked at him as if he were much smaller, their eyes seeming to span him from halfway down and halfway across. It was most peculiar, but the Wimperling merely said: "They see what they expect to see. . . ."
"But why don"t I see you like that?"
"You wear the Ring." And quiet it was now, almost transparent, with tiny flecks of gold in its depths.
As he had no objection, every now and again the pig gave a simple performance in a village square, to augment our dwindling moneys-nothing fancy, just a bit of tapping out numbers, no flying, and Gill and I would sometimes literally sing for our suppers.
Growch disappeared a couple of times-I caught a glimpse of him once on the skyline at the very tail end of a procession of dogs (five hounds, two terriers, three other mongrels), following some b.i.t.c.h in season, but he had little success, I gathered, spending more time fighting for a place in the queue than actually performing. Being so small, he was a master of infighting, but he would have needed a pair of steps to most of the females he coveted. He remembered with nostalgia the two little b.i.t.c.hes with plumed tails he had successfully seduced way back.
"Don"t make them like that round here. Some day, p"raps . . ."
I hoped so. Fervently. Then perhaps we would all get some peace.
The terrain became flatter, more wooded, and every day I peered ahead to try for my first glimpse of the sea. Now and again I thought I caught a teasing reminder of that evocative sea smell, and Mistral was forever throwing up her head and snuffing the breeze. Now she had shed her winter coat she was a different creature. Her coat was creamy white, her mane and tail long and flowing, and the sharp bones of haunch and rib were now covered with flesh.
Her step was jauntier, her chest deeper, her head held high and proud; she was no longer just a beast of burden, and sometimes in the mornings when I loaded her up I felt a little guilty, as though I were asking a lady to do the tasks of a servant.
At last one morning she sniffed the air for a full five minutes, and she was trembling. "It is here," she said. "Over the next ridge, you will see . . ."
And there, glittering in the morning light, some five miles or so distant across flat, marshy land, was her ocean.
"You are sure?"
"I am certain. This is the place. This is where I came from."
I looked more carefully and there, sure enough, some two miles away, were other horses, mostly white, some with half-grown brown colts, grazing almost belly-deep in gra.s.s. Perhaps because we were not as high as when we had seen Basher"s Great Water, this sea seemed different: steely, clear, sharp against the horizon. And the smell was subtly different, too; colder and saltier.
"Right," I said, my heart strangely heavy. "Let"s go and find your people, Princess." And taking Gill"s hand I followed the sure-footed Mistral towards the sh.o.r.e. As we drew nearer the sands, I could see that the gra.s.sy stretches I had taken for meadows were in fact only wide strips of green, full also of daisies, dent-de-lions, b.u.t.tercups and sedge, bisected by narrow channels of water, so that the ground was sometimes treacherous underfoot and we had to take a circuitous path.
Growch took a flying leap into the first channel we came to, after what looked like a bank vole, which disappeared long before we hit the water, and we had to spend the next five minutes or so fishing him out, as the banks were too high for a scramble. When he finally landed he was soaking wet and, choking and hawking and spitting, he managed to let us know that the water was: "salty as dried "erring, and twice as nasty!"
Now we were in a marshy bit-it didn"t seem to bother Mistral, and for the first time I noted that her hooves were wider than usual in a horse-and Gill and I took off our shoes and boots, squelching with every step. The Wimperling and Growch were even worse off, and when the horse noticed our difficulty she led us off to the right and firmer ground, through a thicket of bamboo twice as tall as Gill.
At last we emerged on a firm stretch of sand and there in front of us was the sea, stretching on right and left as far as the eye could see. From here I could see whitecapped waves that looked like the fancy smocking on a shirt, but moving towards us all the time, like never-ending sewing. A cool breeze lifted the hair from my hot forehead and flared Mistral"s tail and mane.
I lifted the packs from her back, undid the straps and took off the bridle, laying them down on the sand. Strange: I had never thought how we were to manage our burdens when she was gone; share them out, I supposed now. I looked at the pile with growing dismay-we had taken her bearing of our goods so much for granted.
"There you are," I said. "You"re free now. . . ."
In a moment she was flying across the ribbed sand away from us and towards the foam-fringed edges of the sea, then turning and galloping along the sh.o.r.eline, her hooves sending up great gouts of water until she was soaked and streaming. Then she came thundering back and wheeled round us, her hooves whitening the sand as they drove out the water, the prints hesitating before they darkened again into hoof-shaped pools.
"This is wonderful," she neighed. "It"s been so long, so long. . . . And now I"m free, free, free!" and away she galloped again, until she was only a speck on the horizon.
I sighed. Was that the last we would see of her?
"Let"s walk down to the sea," I said to the others. "I have a fancy to paddle.
And I want to taste it, too. I"ve never done either."
It was farther than I thought, nearer a mile than a half, but the long walk was worth it once I got there, for it entranced all my senses. The regular shush, shush, shush as the waves broke on the sh.o.r.e like a slow-beating heart, the faraway scream of a sea bird; the limitless horizon seeming to curve down at either side as if the world were round; the unutterably strange and pleasurable feeling of walking along the water"s edge, the yielding sand spurting up between my toes, the sharp taste of salt on my tongue, the smell of water and mud and weed . . .
I stepped into the water and it lapped around my ankles like the warm tongue of a calf or pup. I had been so certain it would be cold that I threw away all caution and kilted up my skirt till my behind was bare and waded further in, until the water was round my knees, up to my thighs. I lifted my skirts higher, and now it was round my waist, but also noticeably colder, too.
Suddenly I began to feel the power of the sea. What at first had been a gentle push against my knees, my thighs, now became a more insistent thrust against the whole of my body. At first the sensation was pleasurable, then a stronger wave actually lifted me from my feet, knocked me off balance, and I tipped back into the water.
Help! I was drowning! There was a roaring in my ears, my hair was floating round my face, I swallowed a mouthful of water, I couldn"t breathe, I didn"t know which way was up. Desperately I flailed with my arms, paddled with my legs and, perhaps five seconds later, though it felt like forever, I was once more standing upright. I coughed and choked, dribble running from my mouth and nose, my eyes stinging, my ears still bubbling and popping.
As soon as I had pulled myself together I turned to wade back to the others- but they were miles away! Surely they had been nearer than that? Now I could see Gill waving, apparently calling my name, saw Growch shaking with barks, the Wimperling running up and down the sh.o.r.eline anxiously, but I could hear nothing for the freshening breeze, which was whistling in my ears and making the waves angry, so that they swished past me with foam on their tips.
I set off towards the others as fast as I could, but I was now hampered with the drag of wet clothes, and fast as I tried to go the sea seemed to beat me, and I could see the others retreating even as I watched. The water was definitely pushing hard at me now, even when I was only thigh and knee deep, and twice I nearly stumbled and fell, but at last it was only round my calves, and I thought I was safe. But then came another hazard; as I reached the sh.o.r.eline the waves no longer pushed, they pulled, scooping back from where they broke and drawing the sand with them so that I almost lost my feet again.
At last I stood on firm sand, chilled to the bone and shivering violently.
Gill groped towards the sound of my heavy breathing. "Are you all right? You were gone such a long time. . . ."
"Look just like a drowned rat," said Growch, with relish.
"I can"t swim," said the Wimperling, "else I would have come in after you.
Come on, we"d better get going: the tide"s coming in fast."
"What"s that?" I asked, wringing the water from my hair and skirt as best I could.
"The very thing that means you were on dry sand a moment ago and now are standing in water again," he said, retreating as the water washed over his hooves. "Twice a day the sea comes in, twice a day it goes out. That is a tide.
Hurry, there"s a way to go till we"re safe."
We set off at a brisk walk, the sun and breeze soon drying my exposed skin, though my bodice was damp and my skirt flapped in dismal, wet folds, irritating skin already chapped by salt and sand. The latter had even got between my teeth, making them grind unpleasantly together.
The Wimperling was right: the tide was coming in very fast, and the haven of the fields ahead was still a long way away. We trudged on through sand that seemed to drag at our feet like mud, till my legs were aching and Growch was whimpering away to himself, lifting his feet more and more reluctantly. At last I picked him up and tucked him under my arm, only to have him grumble about my wet clothes.
"Shut up, or I"ll put you down!" I threatened. Turning round I glanced back at the sea, to comfort myself that it was at least as far behind us as the fields were ahead, meaning we had come at least half way. To my horror the creeping water was only some twenty yards behind us, creaming forward inexorably like a brown flood. Surely we had not stood still? Even as I watched the next wave spread within a few yards of us. The tide . . .
"Run!" I yelled. "Run!" and I grabbed Gill with my free hand. As we stumbled along I saw we were at last keeping pace with the sea, it was no longer gaining on us, thank G.o.d! But now, on either side of us I could see arms of water creeping to surround us; with relief I realized the fields were much nearer, I could see the shrubs tossing in the wind, the heap of our belongings. . . . I slackened speed nearly there.
The Wimperling and Growch had galloped ahead as Gill and I caught our breath, but now I saw them come to a sudden stop, Growch running from side to side and barking hysterically. I pulled Gill forward again and my heart gave a sudden lurch of fear: ahead of us, cutting us off from safety, a swirling ma.s.s of water frothed and bubbled and roiled, growing wider and deeper by the second. To either side the arms of water encircled us and behind the tide raced to catch us up.
We were trapped!
Chapter Twenty.Three.
I was riveted with fear and panic, terrified of coming into contact with that suffocating water again.
"Gill, we"re cut off by the tide: can you swim?" I was unable to keep the panic from my voice.
He shook his head. "I don"t think so. . . . Is it that bad?"
"Yes, and getting worse every minute!" I glanced back: the water was flooding towards us, and now we had to retreat a step or two from the flood in front as it bubbled and frothed. Without being asked Growch and the Wimperling dashed off in different directions to see if there was any escape to left or right, but returned within a few moments to report we were entirely cut off.
Now we were marooned on a strip of sand some hundred yards long and twenty wide, and it was getting smaller by the second.
"We shall have to try and wade across," I said firmly, twisting the ring on my finger to give me courage: strangely enough it was not emitting any warning signals; a little bit warmer than usual, with a light throbbing, that was all. We must be all right: we would be all right, please G.o.d! "The water can"t be all that deep. Dogs can swim, Growch, so you"ll be all right. Now"s the time to find if you can paddle as well as you can fly, pig dear." I tried to smile, but it was difficult. "Right, Gill: keep tight hold. Off we go!"
The animals plunged in ahead of us gamely enough, Growch"s legs going like a centipede, but the swirling currents were making a nonsense of him swimming in anything but circles, until I saw the Wimperling, who had floundered a couple of times, suddenly spread his wings and float like a raft.
He came up alongside the dog, who grabbed his tail in its teeth and then they headed in the right direction.
I pulled Gill into the water, but as soon I did so I knew we had no chance. The water deepened after less than a couple of steps and the swirling water clutched at our legs, so that we had to lean sideways as if in a great subterranean wind. We couldn"t swim and we couldn"t float, and as soon as we took another step we were immersed up to our shoulders, our legs flailing helplessly in the water. I lost hold of Gill and we were swept apart, choking and gasping. I grasped his tunic and we were swept together again and somehow we managed to scramble back to our "island" again, now half its size.
I clutched the ring on my finger, shaking so hard it nearly slipped from my fingers. "Help us, please help us. . . ."
Across the widening stretch of water I saw the dog and the pig struggle out of the water and flop down on the sand, completely exhausted. Thank G.o.d, they at least were safe. Gill was muttering a prayer, but prayers were a last resort: surely there must be something we could do? If only there was something we could cling to and paddle across, if only the tide would suddenly turn- I gazed around wildly, and suddenly saw what seemed like an apparition racing through the water towards us from our left, throwing up great clouds of spray as it came.
"Mistral! Gill, it"s all right, it"s all right! Mistral"s coming!"
She arrived with a snort and a skid of hooves, her body flowing with water.
"I heard your call. . . ." The ring on my finger gave a sudden throb. "I should have warned you about the tides. Quick, follow me: it"s shallower this way."
She led us at a trot to a place where the water was wider, but I could see none of the eddies and swirls of deep currents. "It will only be a short swim this way; wade out as far as you can, one on either side of me, and then hold fast to my mane when I tell you." I told Gill what we were going to do, guided his hand to her neck, and after that it was easy, taking only a few minutes to cross what had once seemed impossible, her warmth and steadiness against me giving me back all my confidence, so that once we were safe I flung my arms about her neck and gave her a big hug.
"Thanks, Princess Mistral, thanks a million times!" Once the word "princess"
applied to the tatty, broken-down horse I had first known was nothing more than a joke, but now it was nothing more or less than the truth. She was utterly changed from the swaybacked skinny creature who had trudged the roads with us, head down: now she was white as the foam of the sea, sleek as the waves; her eyes were bright, her neck arched, her long mane and tail like curtains of mist. "You are so beautiful now. . . ."
"Thanks to you."
"I did nothing. . . ."
"You rescued me, healed my hurts, fed me, talked to me and burdened me but lightly. I am grateful to you. And now . . ."
"And now you must go and join your kin. We shall miss you." I had seen out of the corner of my eye a mixed herd of horses, colts and foals, led by a great white stallion, moving across the fields to the reeds and shallows. She neighed once and the stallion flung up his head. She turned to me. "Make for that clump of trees; keep to the higher ground. You will be safe now.
Remember me: and may you all find what you seek!" And she was gone, cantering up to the other horses and wheeling into the middle of the herd.