The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

few days she was up and doing what she could around the farm. It was hard to say whether she was more silent than before, because unlike her mother and daughters she had never been much of a talker, but silent she certainly was, and sometimes Tilja would find her halfway through some task, standing stock-still, with a blank, lost look on her face. At the interruption she would sigh and shake herself and go on with what she’d been doing.
    But it was all clearly an effort for her, and Tilja and Anja had to do as much as they could to make up. One day they were up in the forest inspecting and resetting traps, and collecting firewood, when Tilja needed the hand ax and found it was gone, though she was certain that last time she’d used it she’d slotted it back into its notch on the logging sled just as carefully as Ma would have done.
    This was a disaster. Metal was scarce in the Valley. For small coins they used counters made from the hard, dark wood of a tree that grew only in one narrow glen in the foothills. Mostly they traded by barter and cooked in clay pots. In the old days iron had been brought in from the Empire, but when the Valley was closed off they could only use and reforge and use again the things they already had, hoarding every scrap. Iron still became increasingly scarce, and now was used almost solely for working tools. Even a small hand ax would be hard to replace.
    Tilja tethered Calico to a tree and they started to work back along the way they’d come, scuffling the fallen leaves aside with their feet, but there were long stretches where the sled had left no traces on the leaf litter, and soon Tilja couldn’t be sure they were still on their track. She was already miserable and furious with herself when Anja caught her arm. Tilja shook her off.
    “No, please,” said Anja. “Stop. I want to listen.”
    With an angry sigh Tilja stood and stared around. No, this was wrong. They hadn’t come past this cedar. It must be over there. . . .
    “This way,” said Anja, and scampered off between the trees. It was the direction Tilja had decided on anyway, so she followed more slowly, scanning the ground for runner marks. Anja had stopped and was standing by another cedar with her head tilted to one side, listening. Before Tilja came up with her she was off again.
    And there were the sled marks! Tilja followed them slowly, searching beside the left-hand runner, where the ax notch was. There would need to have been a stump or a root or something to jolt the ax loose. . . . She almost bumped into Anja hurrying to meet her with the ax in her hand. Her whole body flooded with relief.
    “It had hooked itself onto a holly branch,” said Anja. “The cedars told me.”
    “That was nice of them,” said Tilja, humoring her. Then her heart seemed to stand still. She remembered her visit to the lake last summer. And something Anja had said that day when Ma hadn’t come back from singing to the cedars . . .
    “Anja,” she asked. “Do you know where the lake is?”
    “Oh yes. It’s over there. But it’s too far to go before dinner. Do you want to?”
    Anja, who could barely be trusted to find her way down to Meena’s cottage, let alone know how long it would take to get there . . .
    “How do you know?”
    “I just know. It’s in my head. It’s always been. What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing. Only you can hear what the cedars say. I can’t. And you know the way to the lake. Not me. And one day it’ll be you singing to the cedars, like Ma does. Not me. And Woodbourne will be your farm. Not mine.”
    Anja was staring at her. Of course she’d known she could do those things, but she hadn’t known what it meant, hadn’t understood. She was too young.
    “But you’re eldest,” she said.
    “Aunt Grayne’s older than Ma,” said Tilja. “I’d never thought about it. Well, at least at first snowfall I’ll be able to lie snug in my bed and think of you having to get up and trudge out into the forest and