The Spellcoats (The Dalemark Quartet 3)

Hern laughed. “Look! A line of baby brothers!” He pointed to a row of ducklings plodding after their mother among the willows. Duck flounced round with his back to Hern and fell into a deep sulk. Which Hern must have known he would do. My brothers are maddening.

We got out,

lit a smoky fire, and ate. Gull would not eat. He just sat with food in his hand. Robin tried thrusting bread in his mouth, but he just sat with it there.

“Oh, I don’t know what to do with you, Gull!” Robin cried out. Soon after that she fell asleep, leaning on a willow with the Young One in her lap and Gull sitting sightlessly beside her. Duck was still sulking. Hern and I got up and wandered over the island, but not together. He was at one end, and I was at the other, and I felt I did not care whether I ever saw him again.

I hated that island. The boughs of the willows rattled in the wind, like teeth chattering. They had bright yellow buds on, and the color looked thoroughly dreary against the gray water. The gray water went crush, crush, crush, among the tops of the rushes, bringing their scent in ripples. I looked down at the oily sort of peat under my feet, and I looked out across the gray miles of water to the purple line of land beyond, and I felt truly miserable.

Then I thought I heard my mother’s voice behind me. “Tanaqui, for goodness’ sake pull yourself together, child!” she said. “Are you too cross to think?”

Naturally I turned round. There was only the empty grove of willows, with Hern’s back beyond them, and the other purple shore much nearer but quite as melancholy.

And my mother’s voice spoke behind me again, by which I knew I was imagining it, because she would have had to be standing in the water, among the tips of the rushes. “You mustn’t let Gull go to the sea, Tanaqui,” she said. “Can’t you see that? Promise me to stop him.”

I turned round again, and of course there was nothing. “Might as well try to stop the River, the way he carries on,” I said, just in case she could hear me. Then I thought what a fool I was. I did almost cry, but not quite. I went back to the fire instead.

Gull was not there. I was quite horrified for a moment. Then I found he had got back into the boat and was lying there, staring up at the gray sky. “You’d better stay there,” I said to him. I went and looked at Robin, still asleep. I had a feeling, from what Uncle Kestrel said, that my mother had looked a little like Robin. If you look at Robin that way, not just as a person you know very well, she is very pretty. Her face is longish, but round and even, and her eyebrows are quite dark. She always calls her hair yellow and wriggly, but I think that is what people mean when they talk about golden curls. Her eyes are large and blue. Even with her eyes shut, and mauve shadows under them, she was pretty.

She woke up as I looked. “Why are you staring? What’s the matter?”

“Gull’s gone back to the boat,” I said.

“By himself?” said Robin. “Oh, dear, what is the matter with him, Tanaqui?”

“He had a bad time in the wars,” I said.

Duck came marching across from somewhere, carrying the Lady by her head as usual. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “Uncle Kestrel told you. The Heathens put spells on him, and now they want him to go to the sea.”

“I don’t think it’s quite like that, Duck, love,” Robin said, looking worried. “Tanaqui, I had a dream—”

But I have not heard to this day what Robin’s dream was because Hern came rushing back just then, full of brisk talk about getting to the end of the lake by nightfall, and Robin must have forgotten her dream. Whatever it was, it made her happier. She was nothing like so scared of the lake after that.

That lake is huge. We sailed in it all that day and half the next. Beyond the island it became wider yet, until we could barely see the other shore. There were more islands scattered on it, and we learned not to sail too near them, because our keel got tangled with any trees or bushes that grew at their edges before the floods came. We had one lucky escape from a bush and another from a great torn bough, moving on the flood, which I did not see behind the sail.

I think the banks of the lake must have been quite crowded with people before the Heathen came. We saw planks floating and logs cut for winter, hen coops, barrels, and chairs. Duck saw two drowned cats, and I saw a dog. We all saw the corpse except Gull. That was horrible. We came quite near, because Robin insisted the person was alive, until we saw it was only the waves moving her. We thought it was a girl, but she was so small and the clothes so strange that it was hard to be sure. The long hair was browned with the water, but we could see it had been fair and curly.

“It’s a Heathen,” Duck said. He took the pole and turned her. Her throat was cut. Duck pushed her away with the pole quickly, and then he was sick. We all felt terrible. We none of us said anything, but we knew we did not dare to go near any of our own people. That corpse looked just like us.

We met no one living all the length of that lake. Once or twice we thought we saw other corpses, but we did not go near them. Nobody was sailing except us. Later in the day it rained. A big purple cloud hung over us, lower than the rest of the sky, and rain soused down on us out of it. Behind us the lake was silver with sun, and in front of us a mighty rainbow came down across some dark green pine trees growing on a point of land and buried itself in the lake at their roots. We saw the trees sunlit through the colors of the rainbow. But the rain cloud hung above us. “Just like our bad luck does,” Duck said gloomily.

That point of land was a long way off. By the time we reached it, night was coming on and we decided to tie up there. Gull protested, but we were getting used to that.

“I’m sorry, Gull,” Robin said. “We have to stop for the night.” From Robin, that is steely firmness.

Gull would not get out of the boat. We all pulled and pushed at him, but he would not move. In the end we had to pole the boat round the point, where it was sheltered from the wind, and pull it up out of the water with Gull still in it. We did that because we did not trust him not to sail away while we were getting supper. In that place the land fell back and a marshy stream came down to meet the lake. The lake had come up to meet the stream a long way. Nowhere was dry. Rushes of all sorts grew there, and the flag irises were green already, with brown water round their roots. The evening filled with the scent of tall tanaqui and the smell of damp smoke. Robin could not get the fire to go.

“Look,” said Duck, pointing down to where the reeds grew away under the water. A heron was standing there, with its head bent, looking for fish. “Look, a big brother, with long legs like sticks.” Trust Duck to remember Hern’s insult.

Hern roared with rage and dived at Duck.

Duck fled down among the tall rushes, hugging the Lady. “And a long nose!” he screamed back. Hern went galloping and squelching and roaring after him.

“Oh, go and stop them, Tanaqui!” Robin said. She was crouching over the fire, blowing it.

I went down among the rushes after my brothers, grumbling. I think it was too bad of them still. I could see where Hern had gone, from the path of trodden rushes and deep footprints filling with oily water, but even though it was getting dark, I was fairly sure that Duck had doubled back and was lying low uphill somewhere. When I came to the lake, all the light was in the water, and Hern was an angry shadow against it, with his head bent, glaring for Duck along the sopping shore. We were facing the pine trees on the point there, looking across the bay of muddy water from the stream and the lake.

Hern looked so like a heron, standing there, that I nearly laughed as I said, “Duck didn’t come this way.”