t get a thing straight in my head, it offends me, like a piece of weaving that has gone wrong—like Robin’s awful blue skirt. This is why Hern and I are so much more horrified than Duck by our strange time with Tanamil.
6
I remember we had an excellent meal by that good fire. It was food such as I had only heard of before, lobster and fine white cakes and venison, with dried grapes afterward. Uncle Kestrel told us of grapes. They grow among the trees of the Black Mountains, on trailing creepers. When I first heard of the King, my father said he ate lobster and venison every day. I never thought to have them myself. We had wine, too, like our King. Wine is fine pink stuff with a sparkle to it. Tanamil said it was from the Black Mountains. Robin poured a little of hers in front of the dry statue of Gull. Tanamil laughed at her for doing it, and Robin went very pink. But Duck says she did it again at supper.
Now the odd thing is that I remember only that one meal. We must have had another, because we stayed the night. Indeed, I remember sitting out beneath the cliff in the hot sun, looking at both rivers and eating, not once but several times. Yet when I think, I only remember that one meal in front of the fire.
Hern and Duck got very merry. They romped and rolled and fought in the heaps of rugs. I think I did, too, but not all the time. I watched Robin dancing. Robin often used to dance in Shelling when she had time, but she never danced as she did then, when Tanamil played his pipe for her. I remember her dancing in the room, with whorls and wrinkles of sunlight sliding on the ceiling above her, and outside on the grass. I even seem to remember her up on the cliff opposite, across the second River, but that must be nonsense. What I do remember is that she took hold of Tanamil’s arm on several occasions, demanding that he pipe for her. That is quite unlike Robin. She is so shy and formal. But I know she did. And when she asked him, Tanamil smiled and piped for her again, clear and lovely music, like a dream of music. And Robin danced and danced.
Duck wanted to learn to pipe, too. Hern and I made an outcry at that. If you ever heard Duck sing! But Tanamil obligingly went out and cut hollow reeds for him. I remember his fingers flying as he cut holes in the reeds and bound them together. He made the mouthpieces from joints in the reeds, where the pith is solid. Then he put Duck’s fingers to the holes and told him to blow. Duck blew. Nothing happened.
“Silence! Thank goodness!” said Hern.
“Try saying Ptehwh! to it,” said Tanamil.
“Ptehwh!” said Duck, scarlet in the face. And all the pipes sounded a terrible squealing and braying, as if pigs had got among donkeys. We shrieked with laughter. Duck glowered at us and went outside through the second door, down beside the red River. Shortly we heard halting little tunes from among the rushes.
Hern raised his eyebrows at me. “Ye gods! I didn’t think he knew any tunes.”
Tanamil taught Hern things, too. I remember them squatting together in the dust, and Tanamil drawing things there with a pointed stick, and Hern nodding. At other times they were leaping on one another and wrestling. I liked the look of that. I pulled Tanamil’s arm, like Robin, and said, “Show me, too!”
He showed me. There were things I could not do, not being as strong as Hern, but he showed me the way to use a person’s own strength against him. I think that if a grown enemy—say, Zwitt—walked into this mill at the moment, I could throw him to the ground and maybe kill him. But I am not sure that I should use this knowledge. I think of who it was taught me.
Two things Tanamil taught me I have used. I forget how it came about, but I know I told him that there were many words I did not know how to weave. He said there was no harm in making your own patterns, provided you taught others what you meant. But he said, “You must use the right pattern for River. That is important,” and he showed me, weaving with rushes. He also showed me a more expressive way of twisting yarn. He had me twist rushes until I could do it. He said, “When you use yarn twisted this way, use it for the strongest parts of your story. Your meaning will leap from the cloth.” I have done this in several places. I do not mind that it was Tanamil who taught me. It works.
I asked Hern what Tanamil was showing him in the dust with the pointed stick, but he would not tell me.
Later on I remember Tanamil coming to us when the firelight was leaping on the ceiling and mixing with the ripples of sun there. “There’s a question you must all ask me,” he said. “Each of you ask.”
None of us could think what to say. I was reminded of the way Aunt Zara will say, “Tanaqui, there is a little word you should say to me. What is it?” And of course I can never think what she means, so I do not say it, and she calls me rude. If only she would say, “Tanaqui, you haven’t said please,” then I should know what she meant and say it. It was like that with Tanamil. He wanted us to say something particular, which was obvious to him, but not at all to us.
Hern said first, “Would you call yourself a magician?”
“In some ways, yes,” said Tanamil, “but that is not what I call myself.” And he turned to Duck.
“Do you believe in the Undying?” Duck asked. He had been thinking earnestly, and I could see he thought he was very clever asking this.
Tanamil was amused. He turned his face to the flickering roof and laughed. “Not as you do,” he said. “But they exist.” Then he turned to me, still laughing.
For a moment I thought I knew what he wanted me to ask, and then it was gone.
“No, no,” he said. “You must ask what you want to ask.”
This was like Aunt Zara saying I must say please because I wanted to—and who does? “Please,” I said, but that was not it, of course. “Where do you come from?” I said.
It was not the right question. He laughed again. “I suppose you would say I come from the Black Mountains.”
I puzzle over this more and more, because I know the Heathens come from the sea. While I puzzled then, Tanamil turned to Robin. And I do not know what Robin asked. I know she asked, and I think she asked right, and that Tanamil answered, but I have no memory of what was said. Duck says I do not remember because Robin was not there at the time. He says Tanamil came and asked each of us separately, and he says I do wrong to put it in here because it happened right at the beginning of our stay. But I remember it almost at the end, and I am weaving this story.
The next things happened in the night, and I know that was right at the end. We were all asleep among the rugs by the fire. It was more comfortable and warm than we had been since we left home, so I do not know why I woke up, unless it was that Robin and Tanamil were making such a noise with their argument. I only heard a few things they said. I kept falling asleep and waking again to hear them still heatedly at it. I will put what I heard.
Tanamil was saying, “But they’re bound to go. They all bound themselves, and I can’t keep them forever.”
“In that case,” Robin said, “I shall have to go, too.”
“But you never bound yourself,” Tanamil said. “Why should you go?”
Robin said, “I did. I promised my mother, years ago—”