We did not get on very well. The River turned, and the wind blew from the north, in gusts, straight in our faces. We had to tack from side to side against it. Often we found we were sailing right round a submerged roof, and nearly every one was burned or broken. We smelled burning the whole way. Up on the hills to either side were the burned ruins of more houses, burned haystacks, and burned woods. Where the trees were alive, they were not budding. It was like sailing back into winter. Just a few of the fields had been plowed in spite of the wars, and the earth was a curious red, as if the ground was wounded.
“The Heathens have been here,” Hern said. “Everyone’s run away.”
None of us answered him. I think we were all becoming more and more uneasy at the way Gull insisted on our going toward where the Heathens must be. I know I was. It seemed to me we were in danger from both sides, and I began to wonder at how thoughtlessly we had set off into this danger. True, Zwitt had left us no choice, but there was no reason to have gone down the River more than a mile or two. I wondered why we were going on, and I wished my father were there to tell us what to do.
Toward evening the River rushed again between steep hills of reddish earth that were covered in bare trees. Someone among the trees shot arrows at us. They all fell short as we raced with the flood, but after that we kept a blanket over us, and whichever of us was steering wrapped their head in a rugcoat. We did not dare think of landing until the River widened again and rushed past on either side of islands, long and boat-shaped and half submerged. The first islands were crowded with people who must have fled there from the Heathens. They were dark-haired, like Shelling people. As soon as they saw the boat, they crowded to the edge of the floods, shouting, “You can’t land here! No room!” Zwitt could hardly have been friendlier.
Duck was steering. He stood up and put his tongue out at them, the fool, and the rugcoat slipped off his head. Then they all screamed, “Heathen!” and threw sticks and stones after us. We kept clear of all the other islands until night came on.
As it grew dark, we could see fires here and there on the steep shores and the islands. But the last
island we came to was dark. It was very small, with only one patch of dry ground under the trees. Robin said we must land there. She was tired out. We were all scared of landing. We drew in as quietly as we dared and went ashore whispering, even though there was no one there. We lit our fire in a hole among the roots of a tree and prayed to our Undying that nobody would see it.
Gull would not eat again. He would not speak, and he was cold. But we were all cold that night. We pressed against one another in the boat, and every time I woke, the rest of them were shivering, too. I was woken by a dream I kept having. As far as I remember, it was just my mother’s voice, saying, “The watersmeet!” and with it a slight scent of tanaqui. But I find it hard to separate it in my head from the dream I have been having ever since I started weaving. In that dream I see my mother bending over me, just the shape of her, with fair hair as curly as Robin’s, but bushy like mine. “Wake up, Tanaqui,” she is saying. “Wake up and think!” There is a scent of tanaqui with that dream, too. And I do think I have been thinking, but nothing comes of it, except that I blame myself.
In the morning the boat, our blankets, the ground, and the bare trees were all covered with frost. It looked odd, the white frost on the bloodred earth. The River here ran pink among the yellow, because of the earth.
Gull would not eat again, and I thought of my dream. I found I was wringing my hands like Robin as I looked down at Gull lying in the frosty boat. I expect it was the cold. Now what is a watersmeet? I said to myself. It is where one river joins another. Hern may say what he likes, but if we do come to another river, I shall fall overboard, or pretend to die, or something, and make sure we stay there.
Then it turned out that Robin had come to a decision, too. “You know,” she said, “I don’t think we should go any farther. I think we should stay on this island and get Gull warm and well again. I think this is the safest place we’re going to find.”
Gull, for a wonder, said nothing. He seemed too weak to speak. But Duck said, “Oh, honestly, Robin! We’d starve here!”
Hern said, “We’d be much better off finding a deserted house somewhere. Gull needs shelter, Robin.”
“Or there must be some people who’ll believe we’re not Heathens,” I said, “and who’ll help us look after him. Let’s go on, please.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Robin said. “It seems to me we may be killing Gull, taking him on a journey like this.”
“He wanted to go,” Hern said.
“He doesn’t know what’s right for him,” Robin said. “Do let’s stay.”
We took no notice. Hern and Duck climbed over Gull in the boat and put the sail up. I poured water on the fire and put the firepot away.
Robin sighed and shook her head and looked about eighty. “Oh, I don’t know what to do for the best!” she said. “Promise me you’ll stop as soon as you see a good place.”
We all promised, easily and dishonestly. I meant only to stop at another river. I do not know what Hern and Duck meant to do, but I can tell when they are being dishonest.
As we sailed on, the sun came up over the hill at the right of the River, leaving it all dark and blue with frost and turning the left bank to gold. The slopes became higher and steeper as we swirled along, one blue, one gold, until the sun melted the red earth into sight again. There were low red cliffs to the left suddenly, which stopped like the wall of a red house. Beyond that the River was twice as wide or more than that. We could see a row of trees to either side, standing in water, and sheets of water beyond that, flaring in the sun. I think the trees marked the real low banks of the wide River.
I turned my head as we sailed past the end of the red cliff. And I saw more water there, winding back behind the cliffs, with red cliffs on the other side of it.
“The watersmeet!” I shouted. I jumped to the tiller and wrestled to get it out of Hern’s hand. Duck jumped with me.
“Don’t be idiots!” Hern shouted.
We went to and fro and the sail swung. The boat began going in circles. “What are you doing?” Robin shouted.
“We’re going to land. We want to land!” Duck yelled.
With three of us shouting and fighting round the tiller and the boat going in circles, we should have been a perfect mark for bowmen, Heathen or our own. But we were lucky. Hern gave in, though he kept shouting. We came surging round into a great bed of rushes under the first red cliff.
They were the tallest rushes I have ever seen. They must have been deep in the floods beneath, but they were high above our heads even so. They parted in front of the boat and closed behind, and the speed we had drove us on between them, still arguing, into a sort of green grove, until we grounded on a beach of dry shingle, hidden from both rivers.
“I suppose this seems safe enough,” Robin was saying when a Heathen man came swiftly down a small red path above us and stopped among the rushes when he saw us.
“Who was it called?” he said.