The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson Page A

taking turn and turn about with Alnor. At one point when she was resting, the main current narrowed to round a bend, running close in beside the right-hand bank. Alnor took them through so near it that she could have reached out and touched the red mud. Silon, the other cousin, was lolling beside her. She heard his sigh of admiration.
    “Beautiful,” he muttered. “Clean as a whistle. Just look at him sitting there, muttering away. You wouldn’t think, to look at him now, that that’s the best kick-fighter there’s ever been in the Valley. And a wild lad he was too, those days, with the devil of a temper on him, my da told me.”
    “He looked really furious at the Gathering,” said Tilja, “when he thought people weren’t taking him seriously.”
    Toward evening they came ashore to spend the night at a farm. The effect of the hemp had worn off and Calico made a typical fuss about landing, and didn’t seem remotely grateful to be loosed into a paddock with real green grass to browse, and friendly horses the other side of the fence. Next morning, at first light, Tilja fed her a double dose of hemp, the farmer sent for extra help from his neighbor farm, and with a great deal of hauling and shoving they manhandled her back onto the raft and into her stall.
    “You’d better get used to it,” Tilja told her. “I’m not letting you ashore again until we’re through the forest.”
    The cousins came with them as far as the last landing place, in the shallows of the outer bank on the curve that took the river south into the trees. While they were wading ashore with their own kit Alnor turned to the other three.
    “From now on I will need your help,” he said. “We know that rafts were floated down to the Empire before the Valley was closed, so the journey can be done. But we also know, from memories passed down in my family, that once it enters the forest the river flows in a canyon. And with the snowmelt from the mountains it runs more strongly than it did in those days. In such a place the water will not be quiet. You must tether the horse firm, so that it cannot be thrown about. Then you must take the cords which you’ll find coiled by the sweep rails and tie them round your waists, in case you lose your footing.
    “Then, Tilja, you must watch me. If the sickness does not affect me—as it may not, out on the water—I will for the most part be able to take us through without help, apart from that of the waters themselves. But at times that may not be enough, and you will need to use your sweeps. If I raise my left arm, you must work to turn the raft that way, and the same if I raise my right arm. If the sickness overcomes me it will also overcome Tahl, and you must do what you can.”
    Calico was drowsy with hemp, but even in her stupor did her best to squeeze Tilja against the sides of the stall. By the time Tilja had her secure they were in among the trees, and she hurried back to her post at the stern sweep. The river had narrowed suddenly, and now ran between steeper banks, its whole current moving all together without eddies or still places, but sending continuous faint tremors through the timbers of the raft. The trailing sweep fidgeted in Tilja’s grip as if it were alive. She kept her eyes on Alnor, waiting for the moment when he lost control and she and Meena must take over. Beyond him she could see the river running dark with the reflection from the hills, and roughening here and there into foam. Nothing happened. All the way down that reach the raft stayed steady in midstream, held there by the waters doing Alnor’s bidding.
    Until they reached the woods she had barely heard his muttered song, but he was singing more loudly now, so that his voice carried to her above the whispering hiss of the raft, a steady, rippling drone, repetitive, endless, shapeless, but full of intricate little changes, like the surface of a flowing stream. She thought about what Silon had told her, that Alnor had been a