Tulku by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

along a steep-sided valley; below them rushed a tumbling tributary, green with melted snows. As they climbed, the climate changed, the rain ceasing earlier each day until by now it had ended before they were moving. But the forests that clothed the valley’s flanks were ancient and reeking with decay, and though the air grew steadily cooler, the valley still breathed out a heavy, sodden odour which seemed as oppressive as the heat in the lower hills. Only sometimes, brought into view by a curve of the track or the crest of a ridge, was there a glimpse of anything beyond this prisoning cleft – far off, blue against blue, the snow peaks of the Himalayas. No day’s journey, however long, seemed to bring them nearer.
    They hired porters at the villages, each sourer and poorer than the last, a huddle of ramshackle huts spilt down the hillside like a rubbish-tip. The poorer each village seemed, the more sullen were its inhabitants, though they must have needed the money they were paid. Lung conducted all the negotations with great lordliness while Mrs Jones encouraged him with fierce mutters from behind the closed curtains of her litter.
    On this third morning the track narrowed and began to climb erratically away from the river. Mostly the party was forced into single file, with Lung at the head, followed by half a dozen porters carrying their burdens slung fore and aft on coolie-poles and jogging up the track with an apparently tireless shuffle. Next came Theodore, leading Bessie, who carried the front end of the litter; its rear end was carried by Albert, because the litter-poles prevented him from straying and Mrs Jones was close enough to coax or bully him into tolerable behaviour. Then came two more porters with coolie-poles, and finally Rollo, led by an elderly, tiny man who carried no load but had a huge old pistol stuck in his belt to show he was guarding the party against bandits and so was worth his extra copper coin a day. He spoke a little Mandarin and Miao, beside his native Lolo. He wore a long wisp of grey beard, so Mrs Jones called him Uncle Sam.
    ‘Come and look here,’ called Mrs Jones after they had been travelling for a couple of hours. ‘Path’s wide enough for two, and old Bessie’ll jog along without you. I been looking at these here hangings.’
    Theodore hitched Bessie’s reins to a basket and dropped back. Mrs Jones had drawn the litter curtains and was looking around for something to amuse her. The litter was a gaudy affair, like a miniature pavilion with gold tassels dangling at the corners; its curtains were scarlet, embroidered with green trees through which swooped blue and yellow birds. At the foot of each tree sat a man and a woman, fully clothed and not touching each other, but with something about their poses and expressions which produced in Theodore a flicker of unease.
    Mrs Jones was dressed in much the same style as the women in the pictures, with her hair piled up into a bun, stuck through with great wooden pins, and her face painted white and scarlet like a doll’s. Her small hands fluttered inside the huge sleeves as she spoke.
    ‘Isn’t it perfectly marvellous needlework?’ she fluted in her upper-crust accent. ‘I can’t help wondering what they’re up to. What do you imagine the story is, Theo?’
    ‘There’s got to be a story?’
    ‘Oh, yes, please. I wouldn’t trust this gentleman here one inch. Why’s he giving her that lily –
lilium tigrinum
, I’d say? He’s just the type to deceive an innocent girl. Would you say she looked innocent?’
    ‘The rain has spoilt them.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she cooed. ‘These vegetable dyes don’t run and wool stands a lot of wetting . . . Now is this the same lady? Ooh, fancy, she’s got a knife! Is it for herself or for him? It’s a different gentleman, I think . . .’
    Theodore knew quite well what she was doing, deliberately steering the conversation as close as she could to the frontiers of indecency, to