The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

like a hurt or wound, but more like part of one of the patterns with which the apple pickers painted their faces for the cider feast each fall.
    “Do you think . . . ?”
    “Not if I can help it,” snapped Meena. “You can hope if you want to. I don’t know that hoping ever did much harm.”
    Tilja looked at her and realized that after yesterday her feelings about her grandmother had changed. Though Meena sounded as cross as ever—crosser—really she was worried sick about her daughter but she wasn’t going to admit it to anyone, so she covered up by snarling. Now she was glaring at Tilja, her pale blue eyes glinting with seeming rage. Tilja smiled back.
    “Glad somebody’s got something to laugh about,” said Meena. “What’s so funny, then?”
    “You, Meena,” said Tilja. “You were wonderful yesterday. That must all have hurt horribly, but you never said anything.”
    “No point, was there? I don’t mind bearing provided nobody asks me to grin. And while we’re throwing posies around I may as well tell you you didn’t do so badly yourself.”
    “Is your hip sore today?”
    “Been better. Tickled it up a bit with all that banging around. But I’ll do.”
    “Meena, that thing that bellowed at us when we were coming away from the lake—do you think . . . ?”
    “No I don’t. I’ve told you already. And that’s enough of that.”
    This time Meena’s snarl was genuine. Her glare was stony. With a gulp Tilja changed the subject.
    “Where’s Da? And Anja?”
    “Feeding the beasts. They’ll be starving by the time they’ve done, so you get a move on and get yourself washed and all, and then you can finish seeing to their dinner. After that you can run down to my place and get the cat fed, or I’ll never hear the last of it from him. I’ll be staying on here awhile, till I’ve some idea how your mother’s doing.”
    Ma didn’t stir for the next five days. The only change in her that they could see was that the mark on her forehead faded from its dark blue-purple to a deep red and then a fiery orange and a softer yellow, until on the sixth morning it was almost gone.
    Meanwhile Tilja had her hands and mind full with helping on the farm, doing all the endless things that Ma usually dealt with, while Anja did her best to take over some of Tilja’s tasks, and did them very well, provided someone kept telling her she was doing them marvelously. Tilja was glad to be kept too busy to brood. She didn’t want to think about the adventure in the forest, or to puzzle about the “little wretches” that Meena had seen by the lake, or the invisible great creature that had bellowed its challenge at them as they were leaving. The whole episode had been terrifying, but now it was over, that momentary fear was replaced by another, far deeper and more enduring. What had happened in the forest had been something new, something that had never happened before. To Tilja it seemed a sign that her world was changing, a sign, perhaps, that everything she loved—Ma, Da and Anja, Brando and the animals, Woodbourne, the whole Valley—was somehow going to be taken from her.
    Tilja was by Ma’s bed, feeding the stove, when Ma woke. Tilja heard the rustle of bedclothes and looked up. Ma’s eyes were open and she had raised an arm and with her fingertips was caressing the place on her forehead where the mark had been.
    “It touched me with its horn,” she murmured.
    Her eyes closed, her arm fell away, and she was asleep again. When she finally woke that evening she couldn’t remember even that. She could recall riding Tiddykin out through the forest in the dawn light, reaching the lake, heaving the barley sacks out of the panniers and spilling the seed in heaps beneath the cedar branches at the top of the meadow, where the snow wouldn’t at once bury it. Then she was walking back down to the shore of the lake to start her singing. After that, nothing.
    It was a long while before she had her strength back, but in a