Drowned Ammet

17

There were sounds of heaving and stumbling inside. To Mitt’s disgust, it was Al who appeared, blinking and rubbing his bristly chin. Al glanced at the island. Then he calmly opened the locker and helped himself to the last hunk of cheesecake. Munching it, he surveyed the island again. Ynen and Hildy came out into the well. They looked first at the vanishing cheesecake, then at the island.

“That’s Tulfa Island,” Al said, with his mouth full.

“Are you sure?” asked Ynen. “I thought it was bigger than this.” The island was no more than a great rock, surrounded by drifting seabirds that kept up a long, melancholy crying.

“Positive,” said Al. “You want to turn into that mist there.”

“I’ll try,” Mitt said doubtfully. There was little wind now, and that fitful. He put the tiller over and hauled in the mainsail. Wind’s Road went dipping and swinging gently toward the mist that hid the land.

“Watch out!” said Ynen. “The land’s awfully close!” It was, too, Mitt realised. It was a low green hump in the mist, only about a hundred yards off. He put the tiller hard over again. Wind’s Road turned elegantly and leaned along outside the mist.”This must be wrong!“ Mitt said angrily to Al.”There’s no land this close to Tulfa. Do you know where we are or not?”

“I’ve a fair idea,” said Al. “Turn round again.” To do that would mean tacking. Besides, Mitt did not trust Al in the least. He hesitated, and looked over his shoulder, beyond Libby Beer. And he saw a tall ship gliding out of the mist. The sun was just catching her topsails and the gold on her many pennants. Mitt turned back again. “What the—?”

The silence of Ynen and Hildy almost warned him. Al had Hobin’s gun in his hand again. Mitt found himself looking into its six deadly black little muzzles. “You do what I say,” said Al. He came a step closer. Mitt resigned himself to being shot. He felt, very fiercely, that it was a pity. He would never be able to sort himself out now. On the other hand, he supposed he deserved it. He was afraid it would hurt.

Then, most unexpectedly, Al hit him instead. A great blow caught Mitt hard in the stomach, and he sat down, hawking and gasping, hard on the lockers, feeling very angry, rather foolish, and quite helpless. Wind’s Road yawed about in the douce breeze. Ynen put his hand out for the tiller and took it back again when the fat little gun pointed his way. There was no danger. Wind’s Road simply swung and creaked and drooped, rather as Mitt was doing.

The tall ship came gliding closer. They could hear the ropes of her many sails creaking, see the dew from the mist shining in drops on her canvas, and pick out every grain in the wheatsheaf carved on her prow. She stood over Wind’s Road like a house and took the last of the wind from her sails. Al grinned up at her tall side, highly pleased with himself.

“This has worked out wonderful,” he said. He jumped up on the cabin and ran along, shouting, “Hey, Wheatsheaf! Hey, there! Bence! Is Bence aboard that thing?”

The tall ship turned. Her creaking sails flapped gently against the wind, until she and Wind’s Road floated a yard or so apart. Mitt, holding his aching stomach, looked up to see a row of heads watching them, and a man on the highest part leaning over the rail to shout to Al.

“Al! Where did you take off to? There’s been no end of askings and botherings and wanting to know where you were. Want to come aboard?”

Al laughed heartily. “What do you think, Bence? I’m sick of this tub. See it gets stowed in harbor, will you, and throw us a rope.”

“What about them?” Bence asked, moving his head toward Hildy, Ynen, and Mitt.

“They can come with their tub,” said Al.

Orders were shouted high above Wind’s Road. Two small, agile men came over the side of the tall ship and descended on ropes like two rapid white headed spiders, until they landed lightly on Wind’s Road. While she was still dipping and swinging, they handed their ropes to Al. He took hold of them and was hauled up, with a heavy scramble or so, until he reached the ship’s rail, where a mass of hands reached out to pull him aboard. The tall ship turned at the same moment. Her sails creaked and filled. The air was loud with rippling for the few seconds it took her to vanish into the mist as quickly as she had come.

Hildy, Ynen, and Mitt were left bobbing in Wind’s Road with the two small brown sailors. But they seemed to be rid of Al. They gave long breaths of relief about that, even while they were looking dubiously at the sailors. Ynen hurriedly took hold of the tiller. Wind’s Road was his.

The sailors seemed in no hurry. They stood together by the mast, looking over Wind’s Road, down at Old Ammet, up at the poor tattered pennant, over beyond Ynen to Libby Beer, and exchanging small singing murmurs. Quite suddenly, they came briskly to the well and swung themselves down into it.

“Will you move out and give us some room, little ones?” one of them asked cheerfully. He had a soft singsong accent, the like of which none of them had heard before.

Ynen clenched his fingers round the tiller. “This is my boat.”

“Then you must continue to steer her,” said the sailor.

“But you must be guided by us. The road has hazards,” said the second sailor. “And will the other little ones go up before the mast to give us room?”

Mitt was so fascinated by the singing talk that he did not gather straightaway that the men were asking him to move. He got up, holding his stomach, and saw that Hildy still had not understood. Mitt nudged her, and she jumped, feeling as if she had been dreaming. They scrambled stiffly onto the roof of the cabin. The sailors settled on either side of Ynen as naturally as if they sailed Wind’s Road every day, and gave him gentle instructions what to do. Mitt and Hildy knelt on the cabin roof and stared, while Wind’s Road turned and heeled softly into the now-thinning mist.

They were little brown men with dark eyes and oddly light hair, as fair as light new rope. They felt safe, somehow. They were as warm and brown as the earth itself. Even Ynen felt lulled and peaceful with them. Mitt and Hildy could not shake off a feeling that they were dreaming—a good dream that they had dreamed several times before.

“This is a fine sweet boat,” one sailor remarked. “Will you take in the foresails a fragment—Jenro will do it, little one. You steer left now.”

Jenro, the second sailor, put his brown hand to the ropes that led to the foresails. Ynen was a little shamed to see how much better Wind’s Road sailed. “Very sweet,” Jenro agreed. “What is the name she goes under?”

“Wind’s Road,” said Ynen.

The dark eyes of the two sailors met across him. “Is it so?” said Jenro. “Who comes sailing on the Wind’s Road? What are the names of them?”

Ynen looked up uncertainly at the dreamy faces of Hildy and Mitt. There seemed no harm in saying. “My name’s Ynen. My sister’s called Hildrida, and our friend’s name is Alhammitt.”

Mitt blinked. Both sailors were looking at him, smiling warmly. He smiled back. They both made a little gesture, almost as if they bowed. Rather surprised, Mitt ducked his head back at them.

“This is Jenro, and I am Riss,” said the first sailor. “Remember us in times to come.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Mitt said uncertainly.

Wind’s Road had come gently past the green hump in the mist. The mist cleared steadily as she sailed. When Mitt looked away from the sailors’ faces, he was astonished to find they were sailing among islands— more islands than he could count at a glance. Some were green and steep, with gray rocks standing above the green and trees clinging to the rocks. Some were green and low. Some were quite small. Others, in the distance, were clearly several miles long. Mitt could see houses on nearly all of them, usually near the shore, as if the sea were their road and the island their farm or garden. Sheep and cows grazed in pastures that mounted above the houses. Smoke rose from the chimneys. The sea space round them was so sheltered that it was warm and calm as a lake. Mitt could smell the salt of the sea mingling with the smell of earth, smoke, and cattle, in a close, queer mixture. He looked round, sniffing, warm and delighted, wondering why he felt so happy and so much at home, and everywhere he looked he saw the astonishing emerald green of more islands.

“Where is this?” Ynen said suspiciously.

Jenro smiled at him. “The Holy Islands, little one.”

Hildy’s head went up. The dreamy feeling left her and left her feeling strained and rather sick. She retreated to the mast and knelt there by herself, nervously clasping her hands and gripping them with her knees. She seemed to feel better like that. Ynen looked dubiously at Mitt. This was not the North. Mitt still had to get away, and Ynen wanted to apologize. He was surprised that Mitt did not seem either annoyed or frightened. Mitt supposed he ought to be. But he was entranced, smiling and sniffing. Seabirds and land birds flew over, uttering their different cries. Jenro, with a mixture of pride and politeness, began to tell Ynen the names of the islands as they passed them, while Riss softly put in a word here and there about the steering. Their voices made Mitt feel as if this was a song he had heard a long time ago, which he had never managed to learn the words to.

“That was Chindersay, and there Little Shool. Big Shool is after. Then Hollisay and Yeddersay and Farn—”

“—to the right here, then left immediately—”

“—and Prest and Prestsay. High Tross there beyond. The large one is Ommern.”

“—your mainsheet out here, but with care. The wind gusts after Tross. And a sweet way to the right as you go—”

So Wind’s Road threaded gently between tall emerald slopes and past low green humps, and Mitt listened and listened, trying to remember that song.

“Then you have Ommersay and Wittess, and we come out past lovely Holy Isle, the holiest of all. After, you will see Diddersay and Doen and the three Ganter Islands—”

Mitt thought it was not quite a song he had in mind. It was the astonishing turfy smell of the islands, or a mixture of the two. Anyway, had he not once, years ago, thought he knew this place and set out to find it? Navis came into it somehow. Mitt was so pleased to remember this much that he scrambled over to Hildy and beamed at her. “Hey, I take it all back about this place! You’re going to love it here!”

He was rather hurt at the pale, haughty way Hildy looked. “This,” she said, squeezing at her fingers, “isn’t the North.”

“Who cares?” Mitt said. “I think I’ll have a go at staying here myself. I wouldn’t mind—I really wouldn’t mind!”

“—left now—”

“—and there is Trossaver, with Lathsay beside—”

Wind’s Road slipped between long, high Trossaver and lump-shaped Lathsay and came into a wide space ringed with islands, where there was ship upon tall ship at anchor. One was just hoisting sail. Another was gliding in through a wide gap opposite, as if it were coming off patrol, but most were anchored, with bare masts. Among the anchored ships Mitt recognized the Wheatsheaf. She had no doubt sailed fast on wind above the islands that Wind’s Road was too small to catch, but she was evidently so far ahead of them that Mitt suspected Riss and Jenro had sailed them on a tour of the Holy Islands. That suited Mitt, but he wondered why.

They sailed toward a long horseshoe-shaped jetty, with a host of little ships tied to it. Behind it was a small town of gray and white houses, with what looked to be the Lord’s mansion rising above them at the back. The mainland was beyond again, as green and rocky as the islands, as if the town was also on an island.

“That is the Isle of Gard. The hardway to the land is behind,” Jenro explained.

“And a fine fleet in harbor,” Riss added proudly.

Hildy tried to unbend. “There are more ships here than in Holand,” she said. She thought she sounded as condescending as her aunts. She saw Ynen wince a little. So she became angry with everyone and did not say any more.

As Wind’s Road approached the jetty, Riss and Jenro sprang into sudden activity. Mitt had hardly had time to climb to his feet and offer to help before the sails were down, ropes out, and Wind’s Road was quietly nudging the jetty stonework, tied up and her long journey over. Mitt and Ynen stared at one another, tired, sad, and a little aimless. Riss, meanwhile, was out on the jetty, talking to a number of large blank-faced men who were standing there.

“Will you go with these?” he said, coming back to Mitt and pointing to the men. “They are not of the islands.”

They were clearly not of the islands. They were dark and heavy, like a lot of men in Holand. But since they were standing in a line along the jetty, Mitt did not see he had any choice in the matter. “I suppose so. All of us?”

“If you will,” said Riss. “We shall see you.” He and Jenro both shook hands with Mitt, smiled warmly, and trotted away along the jetty. Feeling rather deserted, Mitt, Ynen, and Hildy scrambled out on the jetty, too. The men closed round them to lead them away. It was alarming. But it was also very silly because for a minute or so none of the three of them could walk. When they stepped forward, the ground was either unaccountably missing, or it came up and hit them before they were ready for it.

“Too long at sea!” gasped Mitt. “You have to wait.”

The large men waited, silent and impatient, while Ynen fell into Mitt, and Hildy into both of them, and Ynen and Mitt shrieked with laughter, and even Hildy was forced to smile. None of the men smiled, even when they were able to set out through the town, rolling like old sailors and giggling as they went. They were not able to notice the town much, though Mitt did see that there were fields in it, confusingly, among the houses, with cows or wheat stubble in them, and that, every so often, there was a short square-topped pillar about as high as his waist, where people had carefully laid flowers, fruit, and ears of corn. But they saw few people because it was still early morning.

They came to the mansion and were taken inside through a small door. Hildy relaxed a little. The small door meant they were probably prisoners, which must mean that nobody knew who she was. She was glad of that because she could soon put that right. Mitt was not so sure. He had simply no idea what was happening. The only thing seemed to be to wait and see.

They staggered their way up a flat flight of stone stairs to a sunny stone landing. They waited, while one of the men went to knock on a door. Then— bang! There was an explosion somewhere. All the windows rattled. All three of them jumped violently, and Mitt, at least, burst out in cold, trickling sweat all over. He was nearly as scared as he had been in the storm. But the large man did not turn a hair and did not pause in knocking on the door. There was a voicelike noise from beyond it. The large man opened the door.

“They’re here. Shall I show them in?”

“If you like,” said someone inside.

The man jerked his head. Hildy, Ynen, and Mitt trooped through the door into a long, sunlit room smelling of food and gunsmoke—as queer a mixture, though less pleasant, as the mixed smell of the islands and the sea. The food smell came from the table near the door. Al was sitting beside it, with his back to the table and Hobin’s gun supported over the back of his chair. Another table was against the wall at the other end of the room. There was a row of bottles on it and cups balanced on the bottles. One bottle was smashed. Al fired again as soon as the door was shut. It was deafening. A cup jumped and shattered, and there was a great deal of laughter.

“Got the hang of this flaming gun now, Lithar,” said Al.

“About time,” said Bence, the captain of the Wheatsheaf. He was sitting on a chair by the window, eating an apple.

The third man said, “Oh, Al! I have missed seeing you do that!”

Lithar’s clothes were nearly as rich as Harchad’s, but he looked nothing like so well in them. He had a mop of fairish hair over the brown face of a Holy Islander and a long, long chin. He seemed quite well built, but he sat in a strange, hunched way which creased his clothes in all directions. When he looked toward them, Ynen, Hildy, and Mitt were uncertain how old he was, because his face was oddly lined, old and young at once. Like Mitt’s face, Hildy thought, and she looked at Mitt to compare the two. But Mitt was young and undernourished, whereas—

With a horrible jolt, Hildy realized Lithar was a near imbecile. It was as if her whole future, and her whole past, too, fell away and left just herself—a small girl with untidy hair—alone in a sunny smoke filled room. Hildy had not realized how much she had built on Lithar and the Holy Islands. She seemed to have founded on them everything which made her into Hildrida and not one of her cousins. It was not exactly her fault, but she had done the building. And it was all unreal. It had not even gone; it had just never been.

It was the same with Mitt. He took one look at Lithar, and one look at Hildy, and he knew that what was happening to Hildy now had happened to him in Holand. But he had not admitted it.

Everything he had thought of as being Mitt—the fearless boy with the free soul, the right-thinking freedom fighter—had fallen to pieces there, as thoroughly as Canden in his dream, or Old Ammet in the harbor, and he had been left with what was real. And it had frightened him to death. Mitt thought his face must be as yellow pale as Hildy’s. I hope neither of them are fools enough to say who they are, he thought. We better all make off North, quick.

“Who are you?” Lithar asked, with a surprised wag of his long chin.

Mitt and Ynen opened their mouths to begin on two separate false stories, but Al got in first. “Little present I brought you,” he said, without turning round. “Don’t you like it?”

Lithar giggled. “Well—not terribly, Al. Unless they do tricks. Are you acrobats or something?” he asked them. “Untidy children, aren’t they?” he said to Bence.

Al hitched his chair round and leaned close to Lithar, in a way that could only be described as possessive. “They’re untidy because they’ve been at sea. Forgot to take their hairbrushes with them. But you know who they are? Who she is? She’s your little betrothed. Harl’s niece, from Holand. The brat with the long nose is her brother.”

Hildy said, “How did you—?”

Al grinned at her. “You sit on top of the cabin, little lady, boasting for half a day how you was betrothed to Lithar, and then you ask me how I know! Be reasonable!”

“I thought you were asleep,” said Hildy.

“Not me,” said Al. “Too seasick. Well, Lithar? Aren’t you going to thank me?”

Lithar, to help himself absorb what Al said, had put a forkful of food in his mouth. It looked like some of the tastiest sea fry Mitt had ever seen. He and Ynen looked at it longingly. They were ravenous. Lithar chewed, wagging his brown boot toe of a chin. “I suppose she’ll grow,” he said discontentedly, with his mouth full. “But I don’t want her brother.”

“Yes, you do,” said Al. He went back to eating sea fry, too, but paused to wave his loaded fork to Bence. Mitt thought it was cruel. “Here, Bence,” Al said. “Tell us that news from Holand you gave me on the boat.” Bence raised his eyebrows and looked at Hildy and Ynen as if he did not want to say anything in front of them. Al angrily waved another forkful at him. “Get on with it!”

Bence was the ruddy, hairy kind of man who looks strong-minded but is really rather weak. He was obviously well under Al’s thumb. “I just wondered—” he said. “Well, the news from Holand is that the old Earl was shot some days back, and his sons had a set-to over the earldom. Harl, the eldest son, killed Harchad, the second son, and family. And Navis, the third son, and family took fright and ran away. That’s all I heard, Al.”

Hildy and Ynen stared desolately at one another, while Al laughed loudly and pointed his fork at Lithar. “Understand?” Lithar nodded intelligently and plainly did not understand. “Harl,” Al explained, “has come out on top. But Navis isn’t dead, or not yet. You’ve got Navis’s family here. You want the girl, anyway. She’s worth alliance, and bargains and a lot of money. But you want the boy, too. He’s a nuisance to Harl. Harl’s got boys of his own, and he’ll pay high to be rid of this one. And if the unexpected happens, and Navis comes out on top, then you’ve done him a favor instead, see? Don’t worry about the girl. She’ll grow.”

“Sure to. They all do,” Bence said heartily.

Lithar’s lined face was riven with bewilderment, but he gave Hildy a formal smile, still with his mouth full, and Ynen a doubtful nod. Then he pointed his fork at Mitt. “But who are you? Al keeps not talking about you.”

“I’m just a nobody,” Mitt said quickly.

Al tipped his chair back and looked at him. “Don’t be too sure of that. Murderer, aren’t you?”

Lithar was delighted. “Oh? Like you, Al?”

“No—though he flaming near got in my way,” said Al. “I bear you a grudge for that,” he told Mitt. “Harl’s going to want him, too, Lithar. He had a go at killing Hadd. It didn’t come to much, but he’ll make someone to blame—satisfy a crying need nicely, you might say. You offer to send him back for a price.”

Lithar cocked his long face intently. “How much should I ask?”

Mitt wanted to say something, but he was in such terror that his mind was blank. How had Al known? He must have given himself away just as Hildy had, thinking Al was asleep, and his red and yellow breeches were on him to prove it.

Ynen looked at Mitt’s face and knew exactly how he felt. Ynen felt bad. They had promised Mitt to take him North. Something Al had said came into Ynen’s mind and combined with the way those sailors had behaved. “I don’t think you should,” he said to Lithar. “His name’s Alhammitt.”

“Half Holand’s called that,” Al said swiftly and loudly.

But Lithar looked at him reproachfully. “Now, Al. That isn’t a name we take chances with in the Holy Islands. You should know that. I can’t send him to Holand. I’m a god-fearing man.”

“You’re a superstitious ass,” said Al. “You send him.”

“I can’t,” said Lithar, and he smiled pleadingly, as if he wanted Al to forgive him.

Al’s square face lost all its expression. He laid down his fork and picked up Hobin’s gun again. It was empty. Al must have used all the remaining shots demonstrating it to Lithar. He grunted. Then he looked up in annoyance, because the door of the room opened. A little brown woman with white hair came in. She was a slim, upright person in a green-embroidered island dress.

“Clothing and food is prepared for the little ones,” she said to Lithar.

Lithar giggled. “Little ones! A bit more respect, please, Lalla. You wouldn’t believe how important they are! Shall I send them with her?” he asked Al. Al shrugged.

18

To Mitt’s heartfelt relief, Lalla took them out of that dangerous room. A crowd of small brown island women were waiting for them outside, with beautiful dark faces and hair either snowy white or light-fair. No one could have been kinder or more concerned than these women. They hurried all three of them upstairs again to rooms where baths were waiting.

Hildy and Ynen, in spite of the situation, were very glad to have a bath. Mitt was hugely embarrassed. He was not used to baths. He was not used to being undressed in front of strangers. Two of the kindly women helped him, soaping and scrubbing and then drying him. Mitt was afraid he seemed unpleasantly dirty. And they kept shaking their heads distressfully over him and talking about him in soft voices almost as beautiful as their faces.

“He is too thin, this one. Look at those legs on him, Lalla. But see the shoulders, and the span on them. There is the makings of a thick man, and the flesh of a sparrow to cover him.” Mitt writhed.

At length, feeling rather as if he had been put through the mangle in Hobin’s backyard, Mitt tottered out into a long, cheerful room with barred windows, where Hildy and Ynen were waiting to begin breakfast. Mitt hardly knew them. Hildy had been given a faded blue island woman’s dress with white embroidery down the front, which made her look grown-up and haughty. Ynen’s black hair was wet and shiny and smooth. He had been given a secondhand suit so faded that it was the color of blue-green distance. Mitt became very conscious of the good suit of new bottle green they had given him to wear. He had never worn anything half so good. It gave him a feeling there had been a mistake somewhere, because it was certainly better than Ynen’s.

They were left alone to eat breakfast. There were piles of smoking sea fry, new bread, crusty outside and moist within, salty butter, and bunches of green grapes, smaller and sweeter than those of Holand. As Ynen said, it made a wonderful change from pies. But Hildy simply sat looking haughtier and haughtier and not eating.

Mitt found her very annoying. “Do eat,” he said irritably. “Keep your strength up.”

“I can’t,” Hildy said, tight and toneless. “Uncle Harchad’s dead. And half the cousins.”

“So what? Good riddance, if you ask me,” said Mitt.

“Uncle Harl’s a murderer,” said Hildy. “He’s no better than Al.”

“Well, you knew that before,” Mitt pointed out, “and you didn’t let it put you off your food then.”

“Yes, do eat, Hildy,” said Ynen.

“Don’t you see?” said Hildy. “Uncle Harl has probably killed Father, too.” Two tears ran slowly down her narrow cheeks. “Because we got away, people think he was with us.”

Ynen looked at Mitt, appalled. Mitt sighed, rather. He felt he had enough troubles of his own, without sharing theirs. “I always thought it was wrong somewhere,” he said, trying to think it out, “what you told me about when you were coming away. Looks as if your uncle Harchad may have been out to kill you.”

“You mean,” Ynen asked, “that when those soldiers fired at us in the West Pool, it wasn’t because they thought we were you, it was because Uncle Harchad had given them orders to stop us?”

Mitt nodded. “Could be. Harchad or Harl. If you ask me, you were luckier than you knew there.”

“Lucky!” exclaimed Hildy. “You call us lucky when Father’s probably dead and Al’s going to sell us to Uncle Harl!” Tears came down her cheeks in pulses. “Lithar’s an imbecile!” she said. “And I boasted so! There’s no such thing as luck. Life’s horrible. I hate everything about it. I think I always have done.”

“You like sailing in Wind’s Road,” Ynen said, rather hurt.

“With two murderers,” said Hildy, “into captivity.”

She bent her head over the pale oak table and sobbed miserably.

Mitt was offended. “Stop that!” he said. “If I hadn’t had to get away, you’d be lying dead in Holand at this moment, and you know it! Ynen’s worse off than you, and he’s not crying. All this means is that we’ve got to get out of here and go North. So will you stop crying and eat something!”

Tears whisked over the table as Hildy raised her head and glared at Mitt. “I don’t think I’ve ever disliked anyone so much as I dislike you!” she said. “Not even Al!” She snatched up a bunch of grapes and began to eat without noticing the taste.

“How can we get away?” Ynen asked anxiously.

Mitt got up and tried the door. It was locked. Rather dashed, he looked over at the bars on the windows. Somehow he had not expected the island women to lock them in.

“Iron bars,” said Ynen.

“Of course, stupid!” said Hildy. “This is a nursery. The bars are to stop babies falling out.” Eating the grapes made her suddenly realize how very hungry she was. She began wolfing lukewarm sea fry. “Ye gods!” she said as she wolfed. “I haven’t been shut in a nursery for—for some time.”

Ynen and Mitt left her eating and went to look at the windows. They looked out on the mainland, rolling into green distance, and the shingly causeway which led to it from the back of Lithar’s mansion. Little boats were drawn up to the causeway, nudging the shingle on either side. Immediately below them was a courtyard, with a gateway opening on the causeway. It was full of people, and people were walking backward and forward along the causeway, too.

“We could get down,” Ynen said. “Next window along. There’s a drain that goes right down to the yard wall. We’d better wait till there are fewer people and then try.”

Mitt cautiously forced open the window over the drain and tried if he could get his head through between the bars. He found he just could. And, he knew from experience, where his head would go, the rest of him could follow, sideways on. Since he was bigger than Ynen, that meant that Ynen could certainly get through, and probably Hildy, too. So they settled down to wait until there were fewer people about.

The time came about an hour later. Mitt put his head through, turned his shoulders sideways, and shoved. He could hardly do it. He thought he must have grown. His stomach stuck. By the time he finally forced himself through onto the high sill outside, his stomach felt as if it had been pulled down near his knees. He turned round, hanging on to the bars, to help Ynen and Hildy through.

But Ynen could not get through. He was too well nourished. His shoulders were just too thick. He pushed and squirmed and squeezed, and Mitt pulled him perilously from outside, but it was simply no good. Ynen had to give up, bruised and miserable. Hildy was even worse. She was bigger than Mitt all over and could barely even get her head through. They stood unhappily against the window, while Mitt crouched outside with his knees aching from the strain, feeling both unsafe and obvious, wondering what they were going to do now.

“Do I come in or what?” Mitt said angrily.

“Could you come back up and unlock the door for—” Ynen began to say.

“Oh, ye gods!” said Hildy. “There’s Father! Look!” Her face was suddenly bright red, and she looked as if she was going to cry again.

Mitt swiveled himself round on the sill to look. The man trudging along the shingle of the cause way was wearing farmer’s clothes and big boots, but he was certainly Navis. Mitt knew him by the way he walked and, even at that distance, by the face that was so like Harchad’s and Hildy’s. “It is, too!” Mitt said. “You lot have the luck of Old Ammet!”

“It’s not lucky at all,” said Ynen.

“Mitt, go down and warn him, quick!” said Hildy. “Tell him we’re prisoners and it’s not safe for him here. Quickly, before Al sees him!”

“But he’ll know me,” Mitt objected.

Hildy shook the bars in her anxiety. “He can’t possibly—not in those clothes. If you won’t go, I’ll have to shout, and someone will hear!”

“All right, all right!” said Mitt. “I’ll tell him. Til tell him to keep back on the mainland, and then I’ll have a go at letting you out. Tireless Mitt does all the work again.”

“Oh shut up!” said Ynen.

“And hurry up!” said Hildy.

Mitt made a face at both of them and slid down the drainpipe. Mitt to the rescue! he thought. He reached the yard wall without anyone noticing him at all. Nobody seemed particularly interested when he shot down from the wall and raced to the gate.

Navis was just about to come through it. Close to, Mitt saw that he looked tired and not very well shaved. The big boots were caked with mud. But Navis took no notice of Mitt as Mitt darted out of the gate to meet him. That encouraged Mitt. Navis did not remember him. He could only have seen Mitt for half a minute on the day of the Festival, after all.

“Hey!” Mitt said to him. “Don’t come in here. It’s not safe.”

Mitt had reckoned without two things. Navis had been a fugitive, living on his wits, for days now. And he had Ynen’s memory for faces. Or perhaps not only for faces, for he recognized Mitt mainly by his build and the way he ran. And since Navis had no reason to think Mitt would do him a good turn, he simply looked at Mitt as people do when they are surprised to find themselves addressed by a total stranger and walked past him into the court-yard.

Mitt was so annoyed by this haughtiness that he would have let Navis alone had it not been for Ynen and Hildy watching from above. He ran after Navis and took hold of his sleeve. Navis shook Mitt’s hand off and walked on. Mitt was forced to trot beside him, trying to explain.

“See here, it’s not safe for you here. Lithar’s wrong in the head, and the fellow who shot Hadd got hold of him and made him take Hildy and Ynen prisoner. They’re up there, in that room with bars. Take a look.”

Since there were so few people about, Mitt risked pointing. But Navis would not demean himself to look. He trudged on, trying to decide why this murdering brat should spin him a yarn like this and taking no notice of Mitt at all.

“Father’s not listening!” Hildy said, with her head pushed against the bars. “Isn’t that just like him!”

“He may only be pretending not to listen because it’s safest,” Ynen suggested hopefully.

Mitt hoped Navis was pretending, too. “Hildy and Ynen sent me,” he explained, feeling sure this would convince Navis. But Navis tramped through the main doorway of the mansion into a large stone room without appearing to have heard. The room was full of people. Mitt hung back in the doorway, wondering whether he dared follow Navis in. They were mostly island people. The singsong of their talk rang round the room. Mitt decided that it was safe enough and ran after Navis to make one more attempt.

“Do come out of here,” he said, dodging about near Navis’s shoulder. “They’ll sell you to Harl to kill. Honest.”

Navis looked at someone beyond Mitt’s head and called out loudly, “Will one of you take this offensive child away, please!”

Mitt sensed a movement in the crowd and got ready to run. “Can’t you listen to me, you pigheaded idiot!” he said.

“Will you shut your unpleasing mouth?” said Navis. “Guard! Remove this, will you!”

Mitt turned and ran. But the guard was nearer than he thought. Two big men seized him as he turned. Mitt lost his temper then. He kicked and struggled and called Navis a number of names he had learned on the waterfront.

“Oh him again,” Al said from behind Mitt. “Not to worry, sir. I’ll take care of him, sir.”

Upstairs in the barred nursery, Hildy and Ynen waited and waited. For a long time they were sure that whatever had happened between Mitt and their father, Mitt would come and unlock the nursery door any moment. They had great faith in Mitt’s resourcefulness. But when the island women came and brought them lunch for two, even Ynen gave up hope.

“I don’t think Mitt was even trying to make Father understand,” Hildy said angrily. “And now he’s just forgotten us. His kind are all the same!”

“I don’t think he would forget,” Ynen said.

“Yes, he would. He had a perfect chance to escape on his own, and he took it,” said Hildy.

“I thought he felt he owed us—” Ynen began uncomfortably.

“He didn’t feel anything of the kind,” said Hildy. “His whole idea was that we owed him everything, because of his rotten life in Holand!”

This was so exactly the kind of thing Mitt had said himself that Ynen could not argue any longer.

Long hours later they were trying to play I spy. Hildy was far too dejected to concentrate. “I give up,” she said. “There’s nothing beginning with T in this room.”

‘Table, “ Ynen said drearily.

The door opened just then, and Lithar shambled in. Hildy did not realize. “How was I to know it was something as stupid as that!” she snapped, thoroughly bad-tempered.

Lithar stared at her, shocked. “I don’t think I want to marry you,” he said.

“That goes for me, too!” Hildy retorted. “I hate the sight of you!”

Lithar turned plaintively to Al, who had followed him in. Behind Al came two of the large men, with Navis between them. “Al,” said Lithar, “I don’t have to marry her, do I? She’s not womanly.” Al laughed and patted him on the back.

“There, Hildrida. You have just received your first compliment,” said Navis. “Possibly your last, too.”

“Where’s Mitt?” Ynen said to Al. Al laughed and shrugged. “You do know, don’t you?” said Ynen. “Have you killed him?”

Al chuckled. “Say hallo to your pa like a good boy.”

“Not until I’ve told you what a foul brute you are,” said Ynen.

“He’s not very nice either,” Lithar complained. “Let’s go away.”

“After you,” said Al, and everyone went out of the room again, leaving Navis standing by the locked door.

Hildy and Ynen stared at Navis. He looked tired, dirty, and depressed. Hildy felt sorry for him. She was almost certain she was glad to see him. She went toward Navis to tell him so. But she did not quite dare and stopped. Then she somehow ran at him without thinking and threw her arms around him. For just a second Navis looked surprised. Then Hildy found herself being hugged, picked up, and swung round, and her father looking more pleased and more upset than she had ever seen him. When Ynen came shyly up, Navis spared an arm for him, too, so that they all hung together in a bundle.

“Who warned you to get away?” said Navis. “How did you manage in that fearsome storm?”

“Nobody. It was an accident. Mitt and Libby Beer and Old Ammet helped,” they said, and they tried to tell him about their adventures in Winds Road. After a little Navis let go of them and sat down to listen, pressing two fingers to the corners of his eyes as if he had a headache. They could not help noticing that he frowned and seemed to press harder every time they mentioned Al or Mitt.

“Why did you come here?” Ynen asked him at last. “Was—is Al in your pay? I saw you talking to him in Holand.”

Navis looked up at Ynen in surprise. “Of course not. You must have seen him the time he came to offer—for a large sum of money, naturally—to tell me of a plot against the Earl. You can’t imagine how often people did that,” Navis said. He sounded very depressed. “I found Al very uncongenial. But I mentioned the matter to Harchad, and, ironically, I remember Harchad telling me in return that he had put an agent in the Holy Islands to keep Lithar in line, in case the North attacked. If I had known it was this same Al, I would have stayed well away. I came because there are boats here—prepared to pay high for being taken North—and trying not to hope there might be news of you two. But it seems that Al has decided that Harl would pay more for us than I would pay for a boat—which I’m sure is true— so we are being sold back to Holand.”

There was a wretched silence.

“Wouldn’t Uncle Harl let us go,” Hildy asked, “if we all signed something to say we didn’t want to be earls?”

Navis shook his head, with his two fingers lodged hard above his nose. “He doesn’t trust me. He never has. Besides, I kicked him in the stomach when he came to arrest me. He was so annoyed that he came out in the Flate after me himself, in spite of the storm. He nearly trod on me while I was lying in a ditch. By which I knew he wouldn’t easily forgive me.”

Ynen laughed, though he was sure it was no joke. “But didn’t Mitt try to warn you?”

He saw his father’s forehead crease. “If Mitt is the boy who tried to blow up the Sea Festival—yes, he did. I thought he was lying and asked the guards to take him away. Al took charge of him after that. Is this one more mistake I’ve made?”

“Yes,” said Ynen.

“You didn’t know,” said Hildy. “I never trust Mitt either. His ideas are all in a muddle. But if Al’s killed him, I’m going to call on Old Ammet and Libby Beer for vengeance.”

“I sincerely hope they answer you quickly,” said Navis.

But when, about an hour before sunset, Al came into the nursery with a number of the largest guards, he was as sturdy and carefree as ever and rather more pleased with himself than usual.

“Up you get, sir,” he said, “and you, guvnor. Bence is back from a little job I sent him on. The old Wheatsheaf is all ready, the tide’s right, and we’re going sailing again. It’s not what I’d have chosen, being a landsman and inclined to queasiness, but we reckoned you’d not be able to give us the slip so easy at sea.”

Navis stood up slowly. “You mean you’re taking us back to Holand.”

“Quick on the uptake, your pa,” Al remarked to Hildy. “That’s right, sir. We’re taking you and the boy, and leaving the girl here.”

“Why are you leaving my daughter?” said Navis.

Al looked at Hildy. Hildy wanted to hit him, to scream, to make a fuss in every way she could think of, but she felt she could not when her father was behaving so calmly. “Be reasonable, sir,” said Al. “She’s betrothed to Lithar. We’ve got to have a bargaining point. The money Harl offers has got to go up, and up again, and she’ll be the reason. And if he won’t offer enough, you may find we come sailing back here with you in a day or so. Look on the bright side, sir.”

“Oh, is there a bright side?” said Navis.

“For some of us,” Al answered genially. “I’ll trouble you to step along now.”

They said good-bye stiffly. None of them wanted to say anything important with Al there. Navis and Ynen were marched out by the guards. Hildy stood by herself in the middle of the room, with her hands clenched into useless fists, watching the door close behind them. She was determined not to cry till it shut

The door opened again. Al put his head round it. “By the by, little lady,” he said, “something tells me that Lithar may suffer a little accident on the voyage. He would come with us, you know. Then there’ll be a new Lord of the Holy Islands for you to marry.”

Hildy looked at that grinning face stuck round the edge of the door and was so angry that she shook all over. “If you mean it’ll be you,” she said, “I bet you have at least two wives already.”

Every scrap of expression went out of Al’s face. “Someone tell you their life story, did they?”

“No,” said Hildy. “I just know. You’re just that kind of man.”

“Then you better keep that idea to yourself,” said Al. The door snapped shut, and the key grated.

Hildy went on standing where she was, too miserable and frightened even to cry now. She knew she had been very, very foolish to say that to Al. But after all that had happened, it hardly seemed to matter. She thought she might as well sit down anyway.

She was just turning toward a chair, when she noticed that the door was swinging open again. Beyond, in the dark corridor, Hildy could see one of the little island women. She thought it looked like Lalla.

“Will you come out now?” asked the gentle island voice. “It is time to be leaving, if you wish to go.”

“Oh, I do wish to go!” Hildy said, and hastened out to her.

Lalla turned and walked down the passage, and Hildy walked beside her. It was so strange to be free suddenly that Hildy did not quite believe it. It felt like a dream. Dreamily she went with Lalla down some stairs and along another passage.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they came to more stairs and went down again.

“Out to the hardway. Riss is waiting there for you.”

Despite her troubles, Hildy was dreamily glad. Of the two little sailors, Riss was the one she had liked best. “Where will Riss take me?”

“To the North, if you wish to go there.” They came to the end of the stairs and out into the big stone room where Mitt had made his last attempt to convince Navis. It was empty now, rather cold, and seemed dim because there was such a blaze of evening light from the arched doorway to the courtyard. Their footsteps echoed softly from the stone. Among the echoes Hildy heard Lalla ask, “Will you be wishing to come back to the Islands again?”

Hildy thought about it, as they crossed the ringing stone floor. She would not have been surprised to find she never wanted to come here again. But she found she did. The Holy Islands had somehow taken her heart while she was sailing through them in Wind’s Road into danger. “I’d love to,” she said. “But not if Al’s here.”

“We can rid you of your enemies,” Lalla said, “if you are prepared to trust Alhammitt.”

“Mitt?” said Hildy. “Is Mitt all right?” Then she became embarrassed that Lalla knew how little she trusted Mitt and wanted to explain herself. “It isn’t what he did. It’s what he thinks and the way he’s been brought up. I mean, I know I’d probably be just the same if I’d been brought up on the water-front, but I haven’t. And I can’t help the way I was brought up, either. I think mostly he annoys me. I suppose I annoy him. That’s it, really.”

As Hildy said this, she came to the doorway and a blaze of orange sunlight. There was a bull in the courtyard beyond. It was a huge animal, almost red in the low sun. There was power in every line of it, in each stocky leg and from its tufted tail and slim rear to its great shoulders and blunt triangular head. It seemed to be loose in the courtyard, with no one to control it. Hildy stopped short and stared at it. And the bull raised two wicked horns growing out of a mat of chestnut curls, and looked at Hildy. Hildy did not care for the look in its large red eye. She turned uncertainly to Lalla.

The blazing low sun had dazzled her, but Lalla seemed taller than she had thought. In the dimness, her hair seemed not white but red, or brown. But it was the same singing island voice which said, “It was only two things I asked you. Would you come again to the Islands, and would you trust Alhammitt?”

Hildy felt the ground shake under the weight of the bull as it trod nearer. It was unfair of Libby Beer to try and frighten her. “What happens if I say no to those questions?” Hildy asked defiantly.

The lady standing in the dimness might have been a little surprised. “Nothing will happen. You will go in peace and live quietly.”

Then Hildy found that it was important to her to answer both questions truthfully. She stood thinking, while the bull twitched its tail and paced heavily in the sunlight. “Yes, I want to come here again,” she said. That was the easy part. “And—and I suppose I do trust Mitt really. I did in the storm. It’s just when I’m angry I notice the difference between us, but I don’t think that’s quite the same. Is it?”

She looked up to Libby Beer for an answer, but there was no one there. The stone room was empty. Shaken, Hildy looked out into the courtyard. That was empty, too.

“Didn’t I answer right, then?” Hildy said. Her lonely voice rang round the room. Since there was no good to be done there, Hildy went out into the warm dazzle of the courtyard and walked over to the open gate. The damp scent of the Islands met her there. The sea hurried to the shingle of the causeway in a myriad small ripples, setting the waiting rowing boat nuzzling at the stones.

As Hildy’s feet crunched on the pebbles, Riss stood up in the rowing boat and smiled warmly. “Will you thrust on the boat and climb in, little one? We will be stirring to your ship.”

Beyond Riss, Wind’s Road was moored in the deeper water between the mainland and the cause way. Hildy could see her swinging gently in the tide. She smiled at Riss delightedly.

“I think,” she said, as she kicked off her shoes on the shingle and tied a knot in one side of her Island dress to keep it out of the way, “I think I’ve just been talking to Libby Beer.”

“That is not the name we use here,” Riss said. “She is called She Who Raised the Islands.”

19

Al slung Mitt into a room which was probably a storeroom and left him there while he went to attend to Navis. It was a very small stone room with a skylight too small even for Mitt to squeeze out through. Mitt sat with his hands behind his head, glaring up at it and hating Navis with all his heart. All his troubles went back to Navis. He felt as if instead of kicking a bomb this time, Navis had actually kicked him in the teeth. And Mitt had only been trying to help!

“That’s the last time I ever do anything for that lot!” Mitt said to himself, and fell into a prolonged and fierce daydream about what he would like to do to Navis. He imagined himself as a powerful outlawed revolutionary with several hundred seasoned followers at his back. He imagined himself conquering a town full of terrified lords and ordering them all to surrender. Out they came, with Navis among them, cringing Harchads, quaking Hadds, dozens of Hildys, and several frightened Ynens, all hanging their heads and shuffling, as the men from the North had shuffled through Holand.

Mitt had them all killed, but Navis he saved till last for a truly frightful death.

It was most interesting. For years now Mitt had been too busy with other things to do any day dreaming. He found he had been missing something. He did the story over again, with a larger town, and made himself more powerful and even more merciless. He began to see that he really had it in him to become such a revolutionary. He felt considerable respect for himself. He did the story a third time and conquered all South Dalemark, pursuing Navis ruthlessly until at last he caught him.

He was halfway through killing Navis very slowly, with great attention to detail, when Al came back again. Mitt jumped up and backed into the far corner of the small space. Al’s face had its most blank and unpleasant look. Because of what he had been thinking of doing to Navis, Mitt knew rather well how much Al could hurt him if he wanted to.

But Al simply leaned against the door and surveyed Mitt. “You’re a real nuisance to me,” he said, “and I’m going to have to get rid of you quick. How many people know where you are?”

Mitt stared at Al uncertainly. He did not know what Al thought he had done.

“Out with it,” said Al. “Or do I have to knock your head in? Navis knows you were the one with the bomb. Does Hobin know about that? Hobin must’ve given you that gun. I don’t see you pinching one of Hobin’s specials. He’s too careful of them. Does Milda know where you are, too?”

Mitt shook his head and went on staring at Al. Out of the distant past came memories of Al’s voice shouting that the cow had calved, and Al’s square back marching away toward Holand to find work, but he could not bring himself to believe it.

“If you was anyone else,” Al went on badtemperedly, “I could send you back to Holand with the other two and good riddance! But I’m not having you tell Hobin about me. He’d have it round every gunsmith in the country, and without Harchad to back me I’d never get near a gun again. He’s made it hard enough for me as it is. And all because I happened to drink a bit too much one day and let out to him how I bust up the Free Holanders. He said he was going to Holand to look after you and Milda, but I know he did it just to spite me.” Here Al noticed the way Mitt was staring at him, and laughed at him. “Say hallo to your pa, then, why don’t you?”

“Aren’t you proud of me at all?” Mitt asked him. Al stared at him. “Chip off the old block, and so on?” said Mitt.

At this Al spit on the floor as Mitt remembered him often spitting in the dike. “Proud of you! I’ve got three kids in Neathdale, and the lot of them put together never got in my way like you do. First thing you ever did was get lost and put me under an obligation to Navis. Then you let the bull get at the rent collector. Then you hang round my neck in Holand. Then, when I thought I’d seen the last of you years before, you bob up dressed like a side of bacon and dump a bomb in front of Hadd just when I’d got my sights lined up on him! I don’t know what good you thought that would do. Mind you,” said Al, “I didn’t know who you were then, but if I had known, I’d have said it was Milda’s fault. It looked just like one of her daft ideas.”

Mitt was not much given to blushing, but he felt his face going warm and red at this. “It was my idea. So!” he said. He felt he had to defend Milda to Al. “She’s all right, Milda is. It’s just she’s not too clear about what’s real. You know, always throwing her money about—” Mitt stopped. That was exactly the truth about Milda, and he had always known she was like that. Milda never looked to the future, whether she was buying too many oysters or sending Mitt to be taken by Harchad. The fact was, neither of them had dreamed what it would be like. It was very painful to Mitt, the way Al was laughing about it.

“You don’t have to tell me she’s got no flaming sense!” Al said. “She’d have ruined me if I’d let her. And you’re just the same. Fancy making friends of Hadd’s grandchildren!”

“They’re not my friends!” Mitt said angrily.

“You could have fooled me,” said Al. “Swap jokes on the cabin roof with your enemies, do you? Told them half your life story, didn’t you? And that Hildrida’s no fool. If you say one word more to her, she’s going to add it up with what I said and spoil all the plans I got for her. You finished yourself when you opened your big mouth, you did. You don’t make friends with people like that. You batten on them.”

There were hurrying footsteps outside the storeroom door. Someone shouted, “Al! Al, are you there? Lithar wants you.”

“Coming!” Al shouted back. “I’ll have to leave you to Bence to deal with,” he said to Mitt. “Can’t that gibbering fool manage for five minutes without me?” He banged out of the storeroom, muttering.

The bolts shot home. Mitt slid down into a heap in the corner. After a moment he wrapped his arms round his head, as if that could keep some of his misery off him. But nothing could. The horrible similarity between himself and Al was clearly no accident. Like father, like son. And as Mitt hated Al so vehemently, he hated himself, if possible, even more. He had set out to be a brute like Al, and it had not been his fault if he had failed. Worse still, everything he had thought he was doing it for turned out to be a complete sham. Al had betrayed the Free Holanders, not the other way round. Mitt felt as if his whole mind was falling to pieces, like Canden in his dream. There seemed nothing left of him at all.

“One thing you might have done, Al,” he said from his corner. “You might have put me out of my misery quick, instead of running away to flaming Lithar!”

It was some hours before anyone came to put an end to Mitt’s misery. By that time he was rolling groaning in the middle of the room. He barely had time to scramble up and barely time to glimpse the little brown sailor, Jenro, and another he did not know, and Bence standing in the doorway, before a large sack was pushed over his head and he was bundled head-down over Jenro’s shoulder.

“Hey!” Mitt said, struggling miserably.

“Be silent, little one, and no harm will come,” Jenro said softly.

“Hurry up,” said Bence from the distance.

Mitt trusted Jenro and stopped struggling. The world began to bounce about as Jenro hurried somewhere with him. Mitt was uncomfortable with his head hanging down, but not badly so. After a short while he was swung up, swung down, and lowered surprisingly gently onto boards that dipped a little. Mitt heard water slapping quietly under the boards and guessed he was in a boat. He felt the boat sway, bumping as the two sailors hitched on the oars. Mitt tried to see through the sack where they were. It was a hairy, porous sack, which tickled his nose rather. He could see very little light coming through, which made him suspect that the boat was undercover somewhere and whatever was being done with him was a secret. He would have yelled, but for what Jenro had said.

The movements of the two sailors stopped. Jenro’s soft voice said, “Then, Captain, you are settled that we must be stirring out to sea to throw this little one in?”

“Yes,” Mitt heard Bence say from above some where. “And I’m coming with you to see it done.”

“Captain, there is no need to do that,” said the other sailor.

“Oh, isn’t there?” The boat surged heavily as Bence landed in it. “I know you lot. When you say no need, I start to get suspicious. Cast off there.”

The sailors said nothing. Mitt felt the boat move. The oars began a slow, sleepy dip-creak-splash, dip-creak-splash. Shortly, bright sunlight fell across the holes in the sack. Mitt thought they must be out in the harbor. They went on steadily in the sun, dip-creak-splash, dip-creak-splash. It was so soporific that Mitt nearly fell asleep, in spite of his misery.

Then he heard the gentle voices begin again. “Captain, throwing this little one in the sea is a thing we cannot do.”

“But you wait to tell me till we’re past Trossaver,” Bence said from the distance. “You’ll do it.”

“Captain, there are two of us and one of you.”

“All right. You can watch me do it, then,” said Bence.

“But that is a thing we cannot do.”

“You’ll have to put up with it,” said Bence. “Al wants it done. You always do what Al wants, don’t you?”

“We would not do this for Al either.”

Bence seemed really astonished. “Not for Al!”

“No,” said Jenro. “For this one came on the wind’s road, with a great one to guide him behind and before.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Bence demanded. “You saw Al come on the same flaming boat.”

“That matters not at all. The great ones contain multitudes.”

“Don’t you throw your religion at me!” said Bence.

The voices stopped. The oars dipped slowly and peacefully. Mitt grinned to himself inside the hairy sacking and rubbed his itching nose. He suspected that Bence was more likely to be thrown into the sea than he was. He thought Bence knew it, too. Mitt dozed off, soothed by the sound of oars and glad to forget himself. Every so often he woke up to find the argument going on again.

“What am I supposed to do when two of my best men don’t do what I say?” he heard Bence demanding.

“We will do what you say,” answered a gentle voice.

“Then I want this brat dumped in the sea.”

“But that is a thing we cannot do.”

Another time Mitt heard Bence say, “What do you think you’re rowing all this way for, then? Are we just going to turn round and come back again, or what?”

“If you wish for us to turn round, Captain.”

“I do not! I want this brat dumped in the sea.”

“But that is a thing we cannot do, Captain.”

The next time Mitt woke, Bence’s nerve had broken. “I see,” he was saying. “And if I lay a finger on him, it’ll be me in the sea instead.”

“You would not force us to that, Captain.”

“Then what can I force you to?”

“If it is a thing that meets your mind, Captain, we can be stirring to an island and putting the little one on it. There are those where no mortal men live.”

“Bother meeting my mind,” said Bence. “It won’t meet Al’s.”

“If you are not telling Al, we shall not be saying either.”

“Hmm,” said Bence. After a pause he said, “Well, it’s not so different from dumping him in the sea, I suppose, provided it’s uninhabited. Which island is it to be?”

“Lovely Holy Island is nearby. There is none on her but She Who Raised the Islands and the Earth Shaker.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No mortal soul lives there.”

“I thought there was supposed to be a mad old priest living there.”

“He does not live there. No mortal soul lives there.”

“Oh, very well!” said Bence.

There was a noticeable increase in the creak and jerk of the oars. Mitt could feel the boat shoving through the water. After barely a minute the swing of the oars stopped. Shingle grated underneath and grated again. Mitt could hear waves rattling the pebbles of a beach.

“Hurry up!” said Bence.

Mitt was lifted and carried by two people. Their feet crunched on sand, and then his own feet were placed tenderly on what felt like turf. Jenro pulled the sack off him and smiled at him.

Mitt had a feeling Jenro was going to say something, perhaps tell him something important, but while Mitt was blinking and rubbing hairs from the sack out of his eyes, Bence was climbing angrily along the rowing boat at the sand’s edge.

“Get back here,” said Bence. “Or else.”

The two sailors smiled at Mitt, and Jenro certainly winked, though Mitt could not see why, before they trotted back to the boat. Mitt stood, blinking still, while they pushed the boat off, twirled it with a deft shove of an oar, and rowed smartly away, getting smaller and smaller against the green of the nearest island. He thought they were going at least twice as fast as they had come.

Mitt felt desolate. The nearest island was far too far for him to swim. Holy Island towered above him in a tumble of rocks and green grass. Little trees and heather hung far above his head. It was wild, uncultivated, and deserted. To judge from the fresh, peaty smell, there was water somewhere, but there was no food except berries. Mitt could not see why Jenro had winked. He was going to starve to death.

He tried to remember what Holy Island had looked like from the other side, as they sailed past in Wind’s Road. He thought it had seemed lower and greener, and—though he might be mistaken—he thought he remembered that the islands were nearer on that side. It was worth going to look, anyway.

Mitt set off round the island. There was no clear path. He was forced to wander up and down, between rocks and over slippery turf, sometimes almost down to the water’s edge, sometimes quite far up the high hill, and, as he went, his miseries caught up with him again. He hated himself and Al and Navis—everything—so much that he wished someone really had drowned him. He no longer wondered why Hildy had exclaimed she hated life. It was not worth living.

The sun was low. Mitt was hot and under a cloud of midges. And he found his way round the island barred by a huge block of granite. Grumbling dismally under his breath, he scrambled his way to the top of it. A green meadow spread beneath him on the seaward side, bright in the golden evening. Beyond it the sea rolled and swashed in little waves. Mitt looked out over their golden ribbing and saw that the nearest two islands were only two hundred yards or so away. He could swim that easily. No wonder Jenro winked. Then he looked down at the meadow.

There was a bull in it. It was a huge animal, almost red in the low sun. Its great shadow stretched halfway across the meadow. As Mitt looked at it, the bull raised its triangular head, armed with wicked horns growing out of a mat of chestnut curls, and looked at Mitt. Its tufted tail swung. Keeping its red eyes on Mitt, it advanced toward the rock. Mitt could feel the granite tremble under the weight of it as it walked.

Now what am I supposed to do? Mitt wondered, crouching on top of the rock.

A woman came round the rock and looked up at Mitt. “You’d better not go that way,” she said to Mitt, nodding toward the bull. She was wearing a green island dress with red embroidery, but Mitt thought she could not be an island woman. She was tall, and she had long red hair which blew round her in the sea breeze. Her face was very beautiful and rather serious. “Go up that way,” she said, pointing to the island above the rock.

Mitt looked where she pointed and saw a path of trodden earth climbing steeply this way and that among the rocks. He looked back at the bull, which met his eye unpleasantly. “I suppose I’d better,” he said, and he stood up. Then it occurred to him that the woman was standing in the meadow, only a few yards from the bull. “Are you safe there?” he said.

The woman smiled. It reminded Mitt of the way Milda smiled, when the crease went out of her face and the dimple took its place. “Thank you. I can manage him,” she said.

As Mitt set off up the steep path, he saw the woman go toward the bull with her hand held out. The bull stretched its massive neck to nuzzle her fingers. Well, rather her than me! Mitt thought.

The path went backward and forward across the hill, diving between twisted trees and making hairpin bends over rocks. Mitt climbed with the rich smell of the earth and the sharp smell of turf in his nose. In his ears the plangent plash and roll of the waves became larger, but more distant. Mitt wondered where he was going and what good it would do when he got there. Then the path went round a rock with a tree growing out of it and entered a very small hanging dell, open one side to the sea, and greener than any of the islands. Mitt stood there to get his breath. There was a great view over the islands in the golden light, islands on one side floating green-gold in blue-gray sea, and islands on the other side blue-black against the sun, floating in silver-gold, like clouds in the sunset.

Mitt, hot and breathless and miserable as he was, felt very bitter at the sight. Times out of mind, as a small boy, he had dreamed of such a place. Now he had found it, and what good had it done?

He turned away and went on into the dell. It was moist and cool. To Mitt’s pleasure, there was a trickle of water running down a rock. The sack had made him very thirsty. He put his hands and then his face into it and came out dripping. He noticed that beside him there was one of those stone pillars he had seen on the Isle of Gard. It was about as tall as a sundial, but wider. On it were two small figures, one made of green grapes and rowan berries, and the other of plaited stalks of wheat.

“Hey!” said Mitt. “Here’s Libby Beer and Old Ammet!”

He was stretching out a hand to give Old Ammet a touch of greeting when he felt the dell tremble under the feet of a heavy creature. He whirled round, expecting to see the bull again.

A gray-white horse had stopped further down the dell and a tall man with flying light hair was dismounting from it. Mitt hastily brushed his wet face with his arm and backed against the short stone pillar. The man was Old Ammet. He came toward Mitt, smiling a little, with his long light hair blowing and swirling about his head and shoulders as if the wind were blowing half a gale in the dell. But there was no wind at all. He had a straight, grave way of looking, which reminded Mitt a little of Hobin, though his face was nothing like Hobin’s. It was like no face Mitt had ever seen. One moment Mitt thought Old Ammet was a grand old man, and the next he seemed a handsome young one. And as Mitt saw these strange changes in Old Ammet, he was more frightened than he had ever been of any nightmare. With every step Old Ammet advanced, Mitt felt another wave of fear, until he was as terrified as he had been that time in Holand when he pretended to play marbles—right up to the moment when Old Ammet spoke to him. Then it all seemed perfectly natural.

“I was needing to speak with you, Alhammitt,” Old Ammet said. His voice reminded Mitt of Siriol’s, though it was also quite, quite different. “I have to ask you a question.”

“You could have talked to me anytime,” Mitt said, feeling a little resentful. “Why does it have to be now, when I’m all to pieces?”

Old Ammet’s young face laughed, and his old face answered. “Because there was no doubt till now what you would do.”

“What I want to do is get out of this place and go North,” Mitt said. “What’s so doubtful about that?”

“Nothing,” agreed Old Ammet, out of his grave old face. “The men of the Islands will help you go North.” Then his face blazed young and glad and eager, and he said, “It is also quite certain that you will come back.”

“How did you know that?” Mitt asked. He knew it was true. He would have to come back to the Holy Islands. “When do I come?”

“That is for you to say,” said Old Ammet, young and old at once. “And when you do, it is laid down that we shall deliver these Islands into your keeping. My question to you is: Will you take them as a friend or as an enemy?”

“As an enemy to you, you mean?” Mitt asked, highly perplexed by this question.

Again Old Ammet’s young face laughed. “We are not the stuff of enemies or friends, Alhammitt. Shall I ask this way: Will you come as a conqueror or in peace?”

“How should I know?” Mitt said. “What do you mean coming and asking me questions like that? What do you mean coming and pushing me around? It’s my belief you’ve been pushing me around all the time, you and Libby Beer, and I don’t like people pushing me around!”

“Nobody has pushed you around,” said Old Ammet. He looked as old as the Islands. “You chose your own course, and we helped you, as we were bound to do. We shall help you again. All I needed to know was what manner of help we must give you in times to come.” And as if Mitt had already told him the answer to that, Old Ammet turned away and went to his horse. The corn color of his clothes and hair caught the sun and seemed to melt into it.

“Hey, wait!” said Mitt. He felt very resentful and very disappointed in Old Ammet. He had expected more from him somehow. “Well, what am I supposed to say? You might give me a bit of help over that, at least!” he said, hurrying after the melting, hazy figure. Old Ammet turned round, melting back to a young man, and Mitt found he had to stop. “Can’t you give the Holy Islands to someone else? I don’t deserve to get them,” he said.

Old Ammet shook his blowing hair and smiled regretfully. “I’m not anyone’s judge.”

“But you could be,” said Mitt.

“What good would that do?” said Old Ammet. “What is your answer?”

Mitt was glad to find that he had not, after all, yet answered Old Ammet’s question. He thought about it. The first thing he wanted to do was to ask Old Ammet to come back in an hour or so, to give him time to think. But Old Ammet stood there, old and patient beside the tall gray horse, and the horse cropped the cool green turf with drops of bright water falling gently from its mane, as if, for both of them, there was all the time in the world.

“I’m bad at thinking without talking,” said Mitt. “I’m like Al that way. We both love to talk.”

“Then why not talk?” suggested Old Ammet.

But Mitt did not talk because it suddenly came to him that he had it in him to be far worse than Al. Mitt, if he wanted, really could become the person out of his recent daydream and go round the country putting people like Navis to death. Al did what he did for himself alone. Mitt would be doing it against people. Mitt looked up at Old Ammet and caught his face as it changed to young. He looked as splendid as Mitt’s daydream. Yet beyond Old Ammet was the opening of the dell, and there lay the Holy Islands spread out between the evening sea and the sky. And Mitt knew he did not want to come back to them hunting people from island to island and putting them to death. It just did not fit. But if he came back as an enemy, he would. He had Old Ammet’s word for it that he would come back. And it would be like destroying his own early day dreams.

He looked up at Old Ammet’s face and caught it between young and old. “It’ll have to be friends,” he said.

Old Ammet, turned to old now, simply nodded gravely. It was no more than Mitt expected, but he was disappointed all the same. He had hoped Old Ammet would praise him, or at least reward him, for his decision. He was a very puzzling being, and, Mitt suspected, a very powerful one, too.

“What’s your name?” he said. “It isn’t really Old Ammet, is it?”

“Once,” said Old Ammet, “it used to be the same as yours. But people have forgotten.”

Mitt thought he had known that. Old Ammet and Alhammitt did not sound so very different. “And Libby Beer,” he asked. “That’s a silly sort of name.”

Young Ammet smiled at Mitt, dazzling him by the heave and billow of his bright hair and the brightness on his clothes. “You can learn how to call both of us now you’ve decided. Go on up to our house and take what help you can from there. Remember to ask for our names.” He pointed to the end of the dell. Mitt saw the path went on there, up into the rocks. While he was looking, Mitt had a feeling Old Ammet walked dazzling out of the dell, leading the horse, into the sky. But he was not sure. He was only sure he was gone.

“Well, I’ve met him at last,” Mitt said, and he was wonderfully pleased now as he went on up the path.

It was not far, a short, steep climb through the rocks. Then Mitt came to the very top of Holy Island, into a strong breeze, and found a little gray building which looked as old as the island. Standing in front of it was an old, old island man with long white hair and a wrinkled brown face.

“Hey!” said Mitt, remembering that Jenro had said there was no mortal soul on the island.

“You’ve had a hard climb,” the old man said in a gentle island voice. “Come and seat yourself on the bench here and be breathing.”

“Thanks,” said Mitt “But I got to ask for their names first. That’s what I come for.”

“Sit down first. That will be needing a quiet mind,” said the old man, pointing to a stone bench outside the house. Mitt went over and, a little impatiently, sat down. The old man sat creakingly beside him. “Will you eat?” he said.

“Well, I—Yes—Thanks!” said Mitt. The old man was suddenly passing him a large bunch of grapes and a flat loaf plaited like an ear of wheat, and Mitt had no idea where he got them from. “How about you?” he said politely.

“I am well, thank you,” said the old man.

Mitt supposed that meant he was not hungry. He was very hungry himself. The loaf was better even than the bread they had that morning, and the grapes were sour-sweet, cold and juicy. He ate every scrap. “How about those names?” he said, munching.

“The names of the Earth Shaker and She Who Raised the Islands are strong things,” said the old man, “even the least of them. Spoken aloud by the voice, they are too strong, unless the speaker has right in the heart of him. And I must tell you that the names of the Earth Shaker are cruel even then, as they are strongest. He who learns these names must never say them aloud, even sleeping, unless he wishes something perilous to follow. Will you still learn those names?”

Mitt was not sure. He did not like the idea that he might say something perilous in his sleep. He was about to tell the old man to forget he asked when he realized that Old Ammet had indeed rewarded him for his decision, and this was to be the reward. Frightening though it was, Mitt saw he would have to take it, or he would be going back on his decision. And when he thought of himself conquering and killing among the people of the Holy Islands, he knew his decision was right. “Yes, please,” he said.

“And who was it sent you?” asked the old man.

Mitt answered without hesitation. “The Earth Shaker.”

“Then I will be showing you,” said the priest, “if you have taken enough of their gifts.” He stood up as creakingly as he had sat down. Mitt brushed the crumbs off his suit and got up, too. “Can you read?” asked the old priest.

“Just about,” Mitt conceded.

The old man walked to the door of the house, but he did not go in. He signed to Mitt to go inside. “Look under them in the sun,” he said. “And do not speak what you read until you have true need.”

Mitt had to duck his head to get into the house. When he was inside, he was surprised to find it was not dark, as he had expected, but light and warm and quiet. The late sun was streaming in through windows placed curiously low down, nearly at the floor. The red-gold light fell on the end wall, on two hollows in the stonework. In one hollow stood Libby Beer, and in the other Old Ammet. They were not as grapes and corn, but as queer old statues of themselves as Mitt had just seen them. Mitt knew that whoever had made those statues had seen them, too. Libby Beer was carved smiling as she had smiled at Mitt, and Old Ammet was miraculously both old and young at once. Mitt wished he knew how to carve like that.

Look under them in the sun, the old man had said. Mitt took his eyes reluctantly off the statues and looked at the wall under the hollows. There was a mass of cracks there, as if something had hit the wall and all but smashed it. But as Mitt looked, he found that the sun was lighting some of the cracks and not others and that the lighted parts were forming letters. The letters fell together to form words, two words under each figure, and the words were names.

Mitt had always thought he could not read without saying what he read aloud. But he dared not do that now. It was one of the hardest things he had done, spelling out those words in his head. Three of them were such strange names, too, that he was not sure how to say them. Only one—the one immediately under the hollow where Old Ammet stood—was not so strange. It was almost Ynen, or like Ynen with an extra Yn to it. From this, Mitt gathered, though he could not say how, that the top name in each pair was the lesser name and went with the usual figures of Old Ammet and Libby Beer, made of corn and berries, and that the names below were the strong ones and went with Old Ammet and Libby Beer as they really were. After that he found them a little easier to remember. Even so, he walked to the door with his eyes up and his mouth moving, remembering hard.

“Will you let them stay easy? They will stay in you,” the old priest said kindly, seeing his trouble.

Mitt blinked at him. “They will? They seem to get away every time I stop thinking about them.”

“You will be saying them when you should not if you will not leave them lie,” said the old man. “Now what you must be doing is going down that way.” He pointed to the rocks on the landward side of the low gray house.

“But how can I get off the island that way?” Mitt said.

“The Earth Shaker will show you,” said the priest.

Mitt shrugged and looked over at the green hump of the nearest island, a good half mile away. Still, where the old man pointed, there looked to be an easy way down. Mitt turned back to thank him, and he was gone. Mitt knew he had not had time to hobble off anywhere. He was simply not there anymore. Mitt could feel that the space by the house was empty somehow.

“And he felt like a real one, too,” Mitt said. “I wonder who he was.”

20

Wind’s Road heeled gently westward in a peaceful evening breeze, threading her way among the Islands. When the sun went red and gold behind High Tross and the misty green hump of Holy Island beyond that, Hildy began to feel chilly. Riss told her there were coats below. Hildy went into the cabin. There she found that not only had the cupboard been repaired and the water keg refilled, but the forward bunk held a pile of coats and seaboots to fit both men and boys. Puzzled by this, Hildy put on one of the coats and came out, intending to ask Riss about it.

A sweet, haunting sound came to her. It seemed to be coming from Ommern. Hildy listened, enchanted, to a tune at once melancholy and filled with joy—at once a tune and at the same time only the broken pieces of a tune. Instead of coming from Ommern, as she had thought, it came from the green hump of Wittess. But when she turned that way, the sound came from Prestsay to one side. “Piping?” she said to Riss.

He nodded. “The greeting of the great ones.”

Hildy leaned over the side of Wind’s Road listening until she thought her heart would break, but whether with joy or sorrow she could not tell.

They heard the piping aboard the tall ship Wheatsheaf, too, as she tilted among the islands, carrying Navis and Ynen to Holand. They were in Bence’s stateroom, with Al, Lithar, and two guards. Bence was stamping about above in a considerable rage. It seemed that the Wheatsheaf’s sails unaccountably kept losing the wind, and they were making very poor progress.

“Can’t any of you trim a sail right!” Bence roared.

“It is the wind toward evening, and the islands taking the force from it,” explained a gentle voice.

“Teach your flaming grandmother!” roared Bence. “You there! Stop sleeping along that yard and trim your sail!”

The piping came to Ynen’s ears very sweet and fitful, sometimes like a melting song, sometimes as a wild skirling. He could not hear it properly for the roaring of Bence. “I wish he’d be quiet,” he said to Navis.

From time to time Bence fell into an exasperated silence. Each time the piping came from a different quarter. Al wriggled his shoulders at it as if it made him itch.

“I wish they’d stop that flaming piping! What do they do it for?”

“Nobody does it,” Lithar said in surprise. “It happens sometimes. Always near sunset, around suppertime. Shall we have supper?”

“If it makes you happy,” Al growled.

Bence’s steward brought in cold meat and fruit and wine. Al did not eat much, though he drank the wine. The rest had supper and listened to the shouts of Bence and the piping in between. The steward cleared the meat away, and they were still among the islands and the piping still sounded.

Mitt heard the piping, too, as he swung down the side of Holy Island, galloping the occasional steep stretch. The sound seemed to come from the heart of the island beneath his feet. It was the wildest, most joyful music he had ever heard. Mitt felt so glad and confident that he would have sung, except that he was afraid of spoiling the music.

But when he came down with a steep rush to the shingly shore and saw the well-known elegant shape of Wind’s Road leaning past High Tross in the haze of evening, he nearly despaired again.

“They’ve got away! They’ve gone and left me!” he said. “Wind’s Road! Hey, there! Wind’s Road!” He jumped and waved and shouted, knowing they were too far away to see or hear him.

A sudden wave rose between Holy Island and green Ommern and traveled swiftly to the shore where Mitt was. It was so queer, all on its own, that Mitt stopped shouting and watched it. It rushed on, one lonely peak of water, and thundered down on the shingle beside Mitt in a mass of white water and the rubbly squeaking of pebbles. Mitt scrambled hastily out of range. Then he realized that the white foam of the wave was still standing high above his head. He found he was staring at one of the lovely white horses of the storm.

“Thanks, Ammet,” Mitt said, laughing a bit nervously. He had ridden a horse only when he was a very small boy, and that was a cart horse. He edged toward the horse. It put its nose down and blew salty breath at him. Nervously Mitt grasped it by its rough wet mane, which it did not seem to like, and struggled onto its slippery back. The horse shook its head and rippled the skin under Mitt, but it did not throw him off.

“Can you catch that boat for us?” Mitt said to it.

The horse surged forward, joggled him, bounced him, and then seemed to be pure movement under him. Mitt found they were galloping across the sea itself, tossing spray, tossing the horse’s mane, tossing Mitt. He fell forward and put his arms round the horse’s neck. There were hard muscles in it, and it felt warm and cold together, like a hot day high on a mountain. Spray dashed into Mitt’s face and the dark sea raced beneath. He could only bear to watch it out of one eye. He tried peering forward for Wind’s Road, but she had sailed behind Wittess.

Wittess was straight ahead. Almost there. Underneath him. The horse galloped straight across the island without checking. The only difference was that its hooves thudded deep and drumlike, and turf flew into Mitt’s face instead of spray. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several people, who all shaded their eyes to see Mitt against the sun. They did not seem particularly astonished.

“Must have odd things happen all the time,” Mitt said breathlessly to the horse as it thudded down to the sea again. Among the sound of its hooves, he could hear the piping again, strong and wild. The sound changed to whipping water, and the horse seemed to splash wet sunset out of the sea. In the dazzle Mitt saw the deck of Wind’s Road just in time, almost underneath him, as the horse dissolved to a wave of gray, foamy water.

Hildy turned round almost too late. She saw Riss smiling, a welter of disappearing water, and Mitt’s feet landing on the cabin roof. “You’re not alive!” she said.

It was not very welcoming. “I’m not a ghost yet,” Mitt said gruffly. “Where’s Ynen then?”

“With Father and Al on the Wheatsheaf,” Hildy said miserably. “He’s taking them back to Holand. They went hours ago.”

“Oh, well,” said Mitt. He was going to say it was a pity, and then forget about it, when he saw Riss was smiling at him knowingly.

“The Wheatsheaf will be between Yeddersay and the outer island,” Riss said. “Jenro is seeing to that. They will wait until the sun goes down and the piping stops, when they will know you are not coming.”

“Oh,” said Mitt. This was too bad! It was not enough to decide to come back as a friend. It seemed to mean he was expected to act as a friend, and to Navis, of all people, here and now. Ynen, Mitt did not mind. But he did not want to see Al again either. He shot a surly look at the bows of Wind’s Road, where Old Ammet still lay, stiff and blond and bristly. It was all his fault.

But while he was looking, Mitt suddenly remembered, for no reason he clearly knew, the time when he had first seen Old Ammet in his other, better shape, standing by the bowsprit as Wind’s Road hung on the slope of that monster wave, trying to turn over and drown them all. For a moment he felt like Wind’s Road himself. But at that point he had already saved Ynen’s life by grabbing his ankle just in time. Mitt sighed. It seemed as if it was his way to make friends without knowing he had— just as he had with Siriol, or Hobin, for that matter. Perhaps even Hildy and Navis were friends, too, deep down where it did not show.

“We better make haste to Yeddersay then,” he said.

Riss looked dubiously up at the sail. He meant they were doing as much as the wind would let them.

“I’ll see to it,” said Mitt. He clambered sideways along to Old Ammet and gently, politely, touched the image on its shoulder. “Could you give us just a bit more wind, please?”

Hildy glowered after him. The pure annoyance on Mitt’s face when he first realised what his decision meant made her feel anything but trustful of him. She saw the water ahead ruffle and darken. Wind’s Road creaked. The sails tightened, and she heeled over with a much brisker rippling round her bows.

“Never fear,” Riss said, thinking Hildy was staring at Mitt because she was afraid of him. “He has been on Holy Island.”

“I wish he’d stayed there,” Hildy muttered.

Wind’s Road threaded among the Islands quickly now, accompanied by her own ruffle of wind. The sun was just touching the rim of the sea when she rounded Yeddersay, and there was Chindersay, and the piping came from Hollisay, loud and joyful behind them. And there, sure enough, was the Wheatsheaf, towering against the crimson sky, hardly moving at all, with her sails drooping and swinging about. They could have heard Bence bellowing easily on Hollisay.

“What are we going to do?” Hildy asked.

Mitt was not at all sure. “There are four things I can do, I suppose,” he said. Then he had a bad moment, thinking he had forgotten those names. But, when he examined the inside of his head, they were there all right, safely stuck.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing, and nothing, I’ll bet!” Hildy said scornfully. Wind’s Road glided nearer the Wheatsheaf, and she saw that there happened to be two ropes dangling over her side, just where they would be within easy reach. Somebody trusted Mitt. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been having a horrible time, you see.”

“You’re not the only one!” said Mitt, looking up at those ropes dangling over the steep side. Al was up there. Mitt was afraid the sight of him was going to drive those four strange names clean out of his head. It seemed to him that it would be as well to take precautions. As Riss was bringing Wind’s Road up alongside the Wheatsheaf, Mitt hurriedly leaned right over the side and came up again with his hand dripping wet. “See here,” he said to Hildy, “if I get in a fix, or you do, and if I don’t seem to know what to say, shout this out.” And he scrawled with his wet finger on the cabin roof, big crooked letters: YNYHEN

Hildy looked at them. “But that’s—”

“Don’t say it!” Mitt said furiously. “Just keep it in your head, will you!”

Hildy saw that if she did not trust Mitt in this, she would have lied to Libby Beer, after all. “All right. I’ll remember.”

“Thanks,” said Mitt, and he swept his wet hand over the name, as Wind’s Road gently scraped against the side of the Wheatsheaf. The ropes hung head-high. Hildy and Mitt each seized one. There was no need to climb. The ropes went up with them, hauled by a dozen men above.

“What’s going on there?” bawled Bence.

One of the ship’s boats went down past Hildy as she went up. Another splashed into the water beyond Mitt, as he reached the rail. As they both set their feet on the decking, helped by any number of smiling island sailors, a third boat was going down. Mitt saw Bence stare, and then make for the ladder down to the deck where he and Hildy were.

“This is your way,” Bence’s steward said politely. Mitt and Hildy trotted beside him past masts and coils of rope, and past scores of sailors all busy getting down to the lowered boats, and arrived at the stateroom door just before Bence reached the bottom of his ladder. The steward opened the door for them, and they went in. Bence suddenly saw what his crew were doing and ran about shouting to them, instead.

Inside the stateroom the lamplight was not yet as bright as the sky. No one quite saw who they were until they were fully inside. Then Ynen was unable to stop himself calling out, “Mitt! Hildy, he’s not dead!” Al jumped to his feet. Lithar recognised them both and said amiably, “I wondered where you two had got to.”

“Bence!” bellowed Al.

“Mitt, I owe you an apology,” Navis said.

Mitt nodded at him as cordially as he could. He hoped that by keeping a friendly expression on his face, he might make himself like Navis. But the one Mitt was watching was Al. Hobin’s gun was in Al’s hand, and Mitt kept one eye on it, with a name waiting on his tongue.

“Bence!” yelled Al.

Bence arrived in the doorway, angry and sweating. “The flaming crew have got the boats out now!” he said. “They’re all rowing away.”

“Bence,” said Al, “how did they get here? Him particularly.”

“I don’t know!” Bence said, blustering a little. “They were on that boat again—Wind’s Road.”

“Then you can go by this road,” said Al. He brought Hobin’s gun up, over his forearm, and fired at Mitt.

Mitt shouted out Libby Beer’s lesser name as he saw Al’s finger move.

With unbelievable speed, an apple from the table was in the air between Mitt and the gun. The bullet hit it. The apple burst all over the room, showering everyone with pulp, pips, and skin. The deflected bullet clanged into one of the lamps and broke its glass cover. Navis and his two guards put their arms up against a cascade of broken glass. After a stunned moment, everyone shook themselves and dusted off apple and glass.

Al looked from the gun to the broken lamp. “What did that?”

“I did,” said Mitt. “And I can do it as often as you’ve got bullets. We came here to fetch Ynen and his father away North, and you might as well let them come. You ready?” he said to Ynen and Navis.

Ynen and Navis were already standing up. They might have left then, in that shaken moment, had not Lithar cried out. “Oh lovely! How pretty! You do do tricks then! Look at this, Al. Isn’t it pretty?”

Everybody looked. It was irresistible. Lithar had a little apple tree growing on his knee. Its roots spread visibly over Lithar’s trouser leg, sucking up the moisture from the apple pulp on it. Its leaves turned from spring green to summer dark as they looked. There was another growing on the table, and several more coming up on the floor. Lithar was delighted.

“Do another trick,” he said. “These are beautiful.”

Mitt almost agreed with him. Hildy agreed entirely. She leaned over the tree on the table and watched it grow in astonishment.

“Very pretty,” said Al, giving Lithar’s knee a cursory look as he passed. He took Hildy by her arm so suddenly and hard that she yelled. “Now get out,” he said to Mitt. “You and your tricks. I give you a count of five before I break her arm, and a count of ten before I strangle her. One—two—”

Mitt could see Al meant it. He could see Hildy was too frightened to say the name he had told her. He could see Bence standing aside from the door to let him go. He could see Ynen staring at him helplessly.

“Four,” said Al.

“A larger apple tree?” Navis suggested. “Heavy apples?” Mitt looked at him and saw that he was as tense and helpless as Ynen.

If he’s that fond of Hildy, why does he try to hide it? Mitt thought irritably. He said Libby Beer’s great name, before Al could come to five. It was a name that rang and reverberated, and became more awesome after it was said. It swelled inside the stateroom.

The result was nothing like Mitt expected. The Wheatsheaf shook from stem to stern as if she had hit a rock. They all staggered. There was a creaking and a hard rending. Bence, as soon as he heard it, turned and dived out of the door. The two guards hastily followed him, dragging Ynen and Navis with them. Lithar said, “What’s happening?” and ambled out past Mitt with his tree flapping on his leg. But Mitt had to stay where he was because Al, though he was hanging on to the table with one hand, still had hold of Hildy’s arm.

There was a huge creaking, followed by the sound of planks snapping and splintering. The end of the ship with the stateroom in it tipped, so that Mitt had to hang on to the door.

“This ship’s breaking up!” he shouted at Al, through the din. “Let go of her!”

Al seemed to forget that he intended to strangle Hildy. He dragged her to the door and stared out. He, Mitt, and Hildy all ducked back as a mast as big as a tree, shrouds, sails, and all, crashed down on their end of the ship. The ceiling above them began to cave in under it. Mitt took hold of Hildy’s other arm and Hildy pulled. Al was so bemused that he let go of her. Mitt and Hildy struggled over broken decking to an amazing sight.

There was an island growing through the middle of the ship. It was a wet shiny hump covered with shells and weeds and smelling like the waterfront on a hot day, and it was growing steadily. Navis, Lithar, Bence, and the guards were all on top of it, being carried upward as the island grew. Ynen was slithering anxiously down to them. Mitt stared round, weak with awe. The poor Wheatsheaf was in two shattered halves, on either side of the new island, and the surge and disturbance of its growth was rocking the ring of boats where the crew sat watching. Farther off, Wind’s Road’s mast beat to and fro.

“What’s happening?” said Ynen. “Hildy, what did he do?”

Grass was already springing on the wet hump. It grew faint and far apart at first, but it thickened as quickly as the apple trees had grown. The muddy mound grew greener as well as larger. Some grass seemed to be rooting on the timbers of the Wheatsheaf as well.

Navis shouted and pointed. Mitt and Hildy both turned round to find Al close behind them, in the act of grabbing for them. Hildy threw herself to one side and Mitt to the other, where Mitt sat down with a wet smick which reminded him nastily of the dikes by the West Pool. As he landed, he saw Al grab Ynen instead and drag him by the leg down the muddy slope. The gun was still in Al’s hand. Ynen put up a useless arm against it.

“Hildy! Help!”

“Mitt!” shouted Hildy. She pointed. She meant simply to shout that Ynen was in danger, but it came out with a stammer of terror. “Yn— ynen!”

The rough water round the new island spouted up into a point. A wing shape of water whipped across Al and Ynen, knocking them sprawling. Hobin’s gun was flung against Mitt. Mitt had barely time to pick it up, before the new island was a hurricane of wind and water. Huge yellow waves crashed over what was left of the Wheatsheaf and broke halfway up the newly green hump. One wave, sluicing down, left Ynen clinging to the grassy mud between Mitt and Hildy. Though none of them could hear, or even think, Mitt hung on to Ynen, and Hildy leaned over him screaming, “It’s all right!” until her throat was sore.

Then it was over. The sea was rippling and calm. The island had gone on greening in spite of the waves, and it was now as green a hump as the Ganter Islands. There was little of the Wheatsheaf left—just a few spars floating nearby. Nor was there any sign of Al. But where he had been there was a curiously shaped patch of green corn, growing and ripening, and crackling like fire with the speed of its growing.

The crew of the Wheatsheaf called remarks to one another and began rowing in to look at the new island. Navis stood shakily up at the top of the mound and shouted through the twilight to know if Hildy and Ynen were there.

Mitt shook the water out of his eyes. Ye gods! he thought. What happens if you say his big name?

A desperate thrashing in the water just below him caught his eye. He slid carefully down to look. Lithar’s young-old face looked up at him imploringly. Mitt knelt on the salty turf, holding out a hand, and Lithar struggled toward it.

“You should learn to swim,” Mitt said, catching hold and heaving him to land.

“Never could,” said Lithar. “No more tricks, please.”

The nearest boat arrived then, and Jenro leaned out of it. “I will stir you over to Wind’s Road, you and the two other little ones and their father.”

“Thanks,” said Mitt. “And then you take Lithar home and look after him for me.” He looked at Lithar, but Lithar was not attending. He was looking woefully at his knee. His apple tree had gone. “He’s a bit in the head,” Mitt explained.

“We know that he is,” Jenro said, without expression.

“Do what I tell you,” said Mitt. “You look after him. You. And don’t let anyone else get at him.” Jenro still looked expressionless. Mitt was exasperated. “You’ve got to have someone until I come back,” he said. “And he needs looking after.”

“Until you come back,” said Jenro. He smiled. “Very well. Will you all five climb in and I will stir to the Wind’s Road?”

Riss leaned down to help Navis, Ynen, Hildy, and Mitt aboard Wind’s Road. As soon as they were up, he slid down into his own rowing boat and untied it.

“I think I’d better take first watch,” said Navis, rather wearily, looking at the three tired children.

“You do that,” Mitt said. He felt exhausted. He had barely strength to wave to Jenro and Riss.

They waved back. “Go now on the wind’s road and return sevenfold,” said Jenro. The island men sat in their boats and watched Wind’s Road lean away North in the brown tag end of sunset, carrying Libby Beer behind and Old Ammet in her bows.