“All right,” he muttered, pushing at the sand with his poor sore toes. I could see I had impressed him. He was a lot younger than Duck.
“Good,” I said. “Off you go, then.”
He was gone, in a shower of sand, before I finished saying it. He never said thank you. He was a very ungrateful, very Heathen brat.
I knelt beside the stream for a while, playing with its peculiarities. I have since learned that such streams are common at the Rivermouth, but I had never seen anything like it. Dig as I might, I could not find where it came from. Then I noticed that I was freezing cold and that I had no way of carrying the water. I got up and went lumbering on my frozen legs until I could see our island.
It was some way up the shore from me. I could see Duck and Hern bending anxiously over the plowed place where I had gone into the channel.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Where’s the water jar?”
Both their heads jerked up. I laughed. They looked out to sea first, expecting me to be there. That was really stupid of them because while I had been digging at the stream, the tide had turned and the water in the channel was rushing inland again. The whole channel was smaller, shallower, and more gentle.
Duck ran away to fetch the jar. Hern tried to yell at me about how I had crossed the channel, and I tried to shriek back about the Heathen brat, but neither of us heard much for the wind. Then Duck came galloping back down the island with the water jar and galloped straight to the water. I suddenly saw he was going to try to cross it.
“Stop!” I screamed at him, remembering the sinking bottom. “I’m wet already.” If I had told him about the mud and the current, that would not have stopped him. I ran into the channel myself instead. My feet sank, but nothing like as badly as they had done before. The water came up to my knees—I was so cold by then that it felt warm—and then up to my waist, but that was all. The current was not fierce at all. I could hardly believe it.
“What was the fuss about? I could have come over easily,” Duck pointed out when I got to the other side.
“I told you—I’m wet already,” I said. I took the jar and waded back. This time the water hardly reached the top of my legs. I shall never understand tides, I said to myself.
When I came back with the full jar, the channel had narrowed again. It was a brisk stream of salt water, which came just to my knees in the middle. On either side of it were wide places of brown sand, but I did not sink in them above my ankles. I could hear it, trickle-trickle, smicker-smicker, as the water drained from it, and worms were wriggling up under my toes.
Hern took the jar from me. “Lucky the tide’s running out.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s running up-River.”
“Then why is it so low?” said Duck.
At that we all said at once, “The floods are going down!” It was a great relief to find Tanamil had not made us miss the One’s fire after all.
“What a shame Robin’s ill for it,” said Duck.
“There are Heathen near,” I said. “Should we make a fire? I pulled a Heathen brat out of the water.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Hern. His head went pecking forward, as it does when he is determined. “I’m not going to let any Heathen, magicians or otherwise, interfere with what the One thinks is due to him. Let’s get some firewood.”
It has to be a special fire for the One, newly kindled from our hearth. Usually we do it on the bank of the River near our house. As I went shivering to the camp with the water, I hoped the One would not find it too strange when he came out of his fire on this miserable island. Usually, too, we celebrate with a feast, but I knew there was no question of feasting this time, even before I saw Robin.
Robin was worse. She was shivering as badly as I was, but she had thrown off the blankets and taken off most of her clothes. She said she was too hot. “I’m so thirsty!” she said.
I gave her a long drink and made her get under the blankets again. She would not put on her clothes. She had thrown them up the hill and the cats were lying on them. “Well, if you won’t wear them,” I said, “I will. I’m soaked.” I was so frozen by then that I could not bear to unpack all the lockers in the boat to find my own clothes. I put on Robin’s underclothes and her awful blue skirt. My rugcoat was dry, of course, so I put that on, and my shoes. The cats came and sat on the skirt again, with me in it, which helped me to get warm. But Robin still shivered. She looked uglier than ever.
“I’m sore all over,” she said.
“You’ve got the River fever again,” I said. “It won’t last long.”
“Where are the boys?” she said.
“Gull’s in the boat,” I said. “Hern and Duck are getting wood for the One. The floods are going down.”
Robin sprang up again. “Oh, I must see to it! They’ll never get it right!”
“Lie down,” I said. “They can do it here where you can see them, and you can tell them what to do. But I’ll tell them not to do it at all if you get up.” I am like that with Robin all the time—not kind. I try to be patient, but she is far more annoying ill than well.
Hern and Duck came back with loads of wood. They had pulled up the thick-branched prickle bushes from all over the island. They were determined to make it a good fire, in spite of the situation. They dug a flat shelf out of the sand above the camp and built the wood up there as Robin told them. We took a long time and did it really well.
When it was ready, Hern, as head of the family, took the One from the boat and put him in the niche we had made in the center of the wood. The One looked just as usual, dark and rigid, and covered with small glisters. It was hard to believe that he knew what was happening. Robin sat up between Duck and me while Hern lit the wood with a coal from our firepot.