The Wind Singer by William Nicholson Page A

plum!’
    ‘Don’t you sugar me! You and your tixy!’
    The children, forgotten for the moment, stared at the room in which they now found themselves. It was a big round burrow, with a dome-shaped roof, at the top of which the smoke of the fire escaped through a hole. The fire was built in the middle of the room, on a platform of stone that raised it up to table height; and round it was a kind of wide-barred cage of iron rods. This arrangement allowed pots and kettles to be suspended over the fire on all sides, at various levels. A large kettle hung high up, steaming softly; a stew-pot lower down, popping and spitting.
    Beside the fire there was a wooden bench, on which sat the members of Willum’s immediate family, all as round and mud-covered as each other, so that apart from the differences in size there wasn’t much to distinguish them. They were in fact a child, an aunt, and a grandfather. All were staring curiously at the newcomers except for the grandfather, who kept looking at Willum and winking.
    The floor of the burrow was covered with a litter of soft rugs, mud-stained and rumpled, thrown one on top of the other like a huge unmade bed.
    ‘Pollum!’ said Jum, stirring the stew. ‘More bowls!’
    The mudchild jumped up and ran to a wall cupboard.
    ‘Good day, then, Willum?’ said the old man, winking.
    ‘Good enough,’ said Willum, winking back.
    ‘You’ll not be wanting your supper, then,’ said Jum, banging the stew-pot. ‘You’ll be in the land of tixy.’
    Willum went right up close behind her and put both his arms around her and hugged her tight.
    ‘Who loves his Jum?’ he said. ‘Who’s come home to his sweet Jum?’
    ‘Who stayed out all day?’ grumbled Jum.
    ‘Jum, Jum, my heart does hum!’
    ‘All right, all right!’ She put down her ladle and let him kiss her neck. ‘So what are we going to do with these skinnies of yours?’
    The silent aunt now spoke up.
    ‘Fill’um poor skinny little bellies,’ she declared.
    ‘That’s the way,’ said Willum. And he went and sat down by the old man, and fell to whispering with him.
    Pollum put bowls on a table, and Jum filled the bowls with thick hot stew from the stew-pot.
    ‘Sit’ee down, skinnies,’ she said, her voice more kindly now.
    So Bowman and Kestrel and Mumpo sat down at the table and looked at the stew. They were very hungry, but the stew looked so exactly like lumpy mud that they hesitated to eat it.
    ‘Nut stew,’ said Jum encouragingly. She popped a spoonful into her own mouth, as if to show them the way.
    ‘Please, ma’am,’ said Bowman. ‘What sort of nut?’
    ‘Why,’ said Jum, ‘mudnut, of course.’
    Mumpo started to eat. He seemed not to mind it, so Kestrel tried it. It was surprisingly good, like smoky potato. Soon all three were spooning it up. Jum watched with pleasure. Pollum twined herself round her mother’s stout legs and whispered to her.
    ‘What are they, mum?’
    ‘They’m skinnies. They live up yonder. Poor little things.’
    ‘Why are they here?’
    ‘They’m escaped. They’m run away.’
    As they ate, the children’s spirits revived, and they began to be curious about where exactly they were.
    ‘Are we in the Underlake?’ asked Kestrel.
    ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Jum. ‘We’m under, that’s for sure. We’m all under.’
    ‘Is the mud – ? I mean, does it come from – ?’ There didn’t seem to be a polite way to ask the question, so she changed tack. ‘The mud doesn’t seem to smell so much down here.’
    ‘Smell?’ said Jum. ‘I should hope it does smell. The smell of the sweet sweet earth.’
    ‘Is that all?’
    ‘All? Why, little skinny, that’s all and everything.’
    There came a sudden chuckle from the aunt by the fire.
    ‘Squotch!’ she exclaimed. ‘They’m thinking our mud is squotch!’
    ‘No-o,’ said Jum. ‘They’m not daft.’
    ‘Ask’ee,’ said the aunt. ‘You do ask’ee.’
    ‘You’m not thinking our mud is squotch, little