‘I’m going to ask the mist-ravens to find an old friend of mine,’ she said. ‘Maybe she can get through to Ànemos in his time of trouble. Her herd wasn’t far from here when I last heard from her.’
‘Herd?’ asked Guinevere.
‘Yes, Raskervint is a centaur,’ replied Vita. ‘They’re more like Pegasi than people think. Though of course that doesn’t mean she can help us. However, there’s always hope, and often that’s all we have, right?’
Yes, that was only too true. Another reason to hope was that they hadn’t heard from Ben and her father for two days, because Hothbrodd, like all trolls, disrupted radio communication. They must be doing fine, she was sure of that! And they would find the feather. And get back here in time. She hoped. Guinevere only wished there was more she could have done. By now, even finding the feather of a griffin seemed easier than this helpless waiting.
‘I didn’t know you were friends with a centaur,’ she said to her mother.
‘Why does that surprise you, Guinevere Greenbloom?’ retorted Vita. ‘When your father and I met, we had a bet to see which of us had met more fabulous creatures. And who do you think won? Although,’ she added with a smile, ‘Barnabas has caught up with me now.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Me-Rah Tells Her Story
‘Animals don’t
behave like men,’ he said. ‘If they have
to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill.
But they don’t sit down and set their wits to work
to devise ways of spoiling other creatures’ lives and
hurting them. They have dignity and animality.’
Richard Adams, Watership Down
This world looks rather different to all its inhabitants. To Me-Rah, it consisted of leaves, fruits, seeds and clouds, of snakes who stole eggs, apes and pine martens. She could tell Hothbrodd that it would take them six days to fly over the island that was her home from east to west, and three days to cross it from south to north, but of course she did not give animals and plants, or the four points of the compass, their human names. She spoke of where the sun is born from the sea, and where it goes to its nest in the mountains in the evening, she told them about long and short shadows, about the place where the swimming toads with horny shells bred (Twigleg translated those as turtles), or the direction in which the scentless wax flowers (orchids, Twigleg translated) turned their blossoms at noon.
Me-Rah knew a very great deal about her world.
‘Because she’s still at one with it,’ Barnabas whispered to Ben after the homesick chattering lory had spent over an hour describing her island, with longing in her husky voice (and a slight Indonesian accent). ‘It’s a sense for which I deeply envy every animal. I think I’d like to be reborn as a parrot. Although not in a cage and with clipped wings.’
Me-Rah’s wing feathers had grown back since her escape, but she still couldn’t fly with as much certainty and stamina as before her imprisonment. Ben hoped very much that wouldn’t endanger her in the wild. Hothbrodd was still watching Me-Rah with the utmost suspicion, and jumped every time she turned her beak to gnaw the tree-perch he had made for her. Lola, on the other hand, was soon talking shop with Me-Rah about upwinds and turbulence, maybe because they were both among the smaller denizens of the world.
Me-Rah assured them that there were no human settlements on her island home. The birdcatchers whose victim she herself had been came in boats, like the hunters in pursuit of monkeys, wildcats, or sun bears. But it was very unusual for any of them to reach the heart of the island.
‘For fear of the lion-birds, I suppose?’ commented Barnabas.
‘Oh no, fully-grown Greenbloom!’ replied Me-Rah. (She called Ben ‘still-growing Greenbloom’.) ‘The lion-birds even do business with the poachers.’
That was certainly a surprise.
‘May I ask what kind of business?’ asked Barnabas.
‘They allow only people who pay them to hunt in their kingdom, as they call it,’ squawked Me-Rah. ‘They eat the others.’
Twigleg cast Ben a horrified glance, but Ben himself seemed to like Me-Rah’s information.
‘They eat poachers! So what?’ was all he said. ‘I sometimes wish all animals would do the same! Anyway, we’re not poachers, so where’s the problem?’
Twigleg thought that was a very optimistic attitude.
‘May… may I ask how many lion-birds we’re talking about, Me-Rah?’ he asked in what he considered an admirably casual tone of voice.
Me-Rah lapsed into her dialect of Parrot.