The Wind Singer (11 page)

‘My, oh my,’ he murmured to himself, smiling. He didn’t know he was smiling. He’d been out most of the day, chewing tixa most of the time, and really he should be thinking about going home. The nut-socks strung round his neck were full, and his wife would have expected him back long ago.

But the shrill shrieks didn’t stop, so Willum decided to set off towards them, following the network of trails that all the mudpeople learned as soon as they could walk. These trails ran beneath the surface of the mud, sometimes just below, sometimes down to the knees. There was a way of walking the trails which all the mudpeople had, a slow steady stride, easing one foot in, easing the other out, in a swinging even pace. You couldn’t go fast, you just swung along, particularly after a day of tixa hunting.

All this time, the children went on sinking. The mud was up to their necks now, and still their desperately wriggling toes could feel no hard ground. Kestrel was frightened, and would have started to cry, if it wasn’t that Mumpo was crying enough for all of them.

‘Yaa-aa waa-aaa!’ shrieked Mumpo, exactly like a baby. ‘Yaa-aaa waa-aaa!’

None of them heard Willum approaching behind them until he spoke.

‘Oh my sweet earth!’ he exclaimed, coming to a stop on the nearest part of the trail.

‘Yaa-aaa waa – Glup!’

Mumpo suddenly went quiet: not because help was at hand, but because his mouth had filled with mud. All three children tried to twist their heads round, but they couldn’t.

‘Help us!’ said Bowman, choking on mud.

‘I should think so,’ said Willum.

Like every mudman out on the lake, he carried a rope, wound several times round his plump waist. He unwound it now, and threw it neatly over the surface of the lake so that it lay within reach of the three children.

‘Take ahold,’ he said. ‘Slow, mind.’

As the children worked their hands up out of the mud, and towards the rope, Willum noticed a bunch of tixa growing right by them. It was a big bunch, with broad mature leaves, the very best sort.

‘They leaves,’ he said. ‘Just you bring they along too, eh?’

The children’s efforts to reach the rope were making them sink faster, and now the mud was half suffocating them. Willum was so excited by the sight of the tixa leaves he forgot this.

‘They leaves,’ he said again, pointing. ‘Take ahold of they, eh?’

Bowman had the rope now, and pulled hard on it, very nearly jerking Willum off the trail. With his other hand, Bowman reached for his sister, and held her while she too took the rope. Kestrel in turn reached for Mumpo, who was the one nearest to the tixa plants.

‘Pull!’ cried Bowman, feeling them start to sink again. ‘Pull!’

‘I should think so,’ said Willum, not pulling. ‘Just you fetch me they leaves.’

It was pure chance that Mumpo’s hand, scrabbling for the rope, closed over the tixa plant. And as soon as Willum saw that he had it, he proceeded to pull. Leaning forward to get all his weight on the rope, he set off along the trail hauling like a pack mule. His short sturdy legs were immensely strong, like all the mudpeople’s, and soon the children felt themselves rising up out of the clinging mud.

With a spluttering gasp, Kestrel freed her face, and drew a huge gulping breath. Mumpo spat the mud out of his mouth and started howling again. And Bowman, panting, heart hammering, tried hard not to think what would have happened to them if the mudman hadn’t found them.

When they felt the solid land of the trail beneath them, they collapsed and lay there in a mud-coated heap, made weak by the shock of it all. Willum bent over Mumpo and took the tixa leaves from his hand.

‘That’ll do. Thanky kindly.’

He was very pleased. He broke off the tip of one leaf, brushed the mud off, and popped it in his mouth. The rest went in his little bag.

He turned then to studying the children he had pulled out of the lake. Who were they? Not mud people, certainly. They were far too thin, and no mud people wandered off the trails into the deeps, not without being roped. They must have come from up yonder.

‘I know who you’m are,’ he said to them. ‘You’m skinnies.’

They followed the small round mudman down winding trails that only he could see, across the dark surface of the Underlake. Too exhausted to ask questions, they tramped along behind him in single file, still holding the rope. Their legs ached from the effort of pulling them in and out of the mud, but on and on they went, until dusk started to gather in the great sky-holes above.

Willum sung softly as he went along, and occasionally chuckled to himself. What a stroke of luck it was finding the skinnies! he was thinking. Won’t Jum be surprised! And he laughed aloud just thinking about it.

Willum had wandered far in his day’s hunting, and by the time they were back again by his home it was almost night. The shadows were so deep that the children could no longer see where they were going, and kept to the trail by feeling the tug of the rope. But now at last, Willum had come to a stop, and with a sigh of satisfaction announced to them,

‘No place like home, eh?’

No place indeed: there were no signs of any house or shelter of any kind, but for a thin wisp of smoke rising from a small hole in the ground. The children stood and shivered, fearful and exhausted, and looked round.

‘Follow me, little skinnies. Mind the steps.’

With these words, he walked straight down into the ground. Kestrel, following behind, found that her feet went through the mud into a sudden hole, where there seemed to be a descending staircase.

‘Mouth shut,’ said Willum. ‘Eyes shut.’

One moment Kestrel felt the mud round her neck, the next moment her mouth and nose and eyes were clogged and smothered, and the next moment she had stepped down into a smoky firelit underground room. Bowman followed, and then Mumpo, both spitting and pushing mud from their eyes. Above them, at the top of the staircase, the mud had resealed itself like a lid.

‘Well, Willum,’ said a cross voice. ‘A pretty time you’ve been.’

‘Ah, but looky, Jum!’

Willum stood aside, to display the children. A round mud-coated woman sat on a stool by the fire, stirring a pot and scowling.

‘What’s this, then?’ she said.

‘Skinnies, my love.’

‘Skinnies, is it?’

She lumbered up from her seat and came over to them. She patted them with her muddy hand and stroked their trembling cheeks.

‘Poor little mites.’

Then she turned to Willum and said sharply,

‘Teeth!’

Obediently, Willum bared his teeth. They were stained a yellowy-brown.

‘Tixy. I knew it.’

‘Only the smallest leaf, my dearest.’

‘And harvest tomorrow. For shame, Willum! You should lie down and die.’

‘Mudnuts, Jum,’ he said placatingly. Untying the long nut-socks, he fingered out a surprisingly large number of brown lumps.

Jum stumped off back to the fire, refusing to acknowledge the fruit of his labours.

‘But, my love! My sweet bun! My sugar 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 skinnies?’

‘What’s squotch?’ said Bowman.

‘What’s squotch?’ Jum was baffled. Pollum started to giggle. ‘Why, it’s – squotch.’

Willum now entered the discussion.

‘Why, so it is squotch,’ he said. ‘And why not? Everything goes into the sweet earth, and makes for the flavour. One great big stew-pot, that’s what it is.’

He dipped the ladle into the stew-pot and drew out a spoonful of thick stew.

‘One day I shall lay my body down, and the sweet earth will take it, and make it good again, and give it back. Don’t you mind about squotch, little skinnies. We’m all squotch, if you only see it aright. We’m all part of the sweet earth.’

He consumed the stew straight from the ladle. Jum watched him, nodding with approval.

‘Sometimes you do surprise me, Willum,’ she said.

Mumpo finished his stew first. As soon as he was done, he lay down on the rug-covered floor, curled himself up into a tight ball, and went to sleep.

‘That’s the way, little skinny,’ said Jum, pulling a rug over the top of him.

Bowman and Kestrel wanted to go to sleep too, but first they wanted to remove the mud that was caked hard all over them.

‘Please, ma’am,’ said Bowman. ‘Where can I wash?’

‘A bath is it you’re wanting?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Pollum! Get the bath ready!’

Pollum went to the fire and unhooked the steaming kettle. She heaved it over to one side of the burrow, where there was a saucer-shaped depression in the earth floor. There she poured the hot water from the kettle in a swirling stream straight on to the ground. It slicked the sides of the hollow, and gathered in a shallow steaming puddle at the bottom.

‘Who’s go first?’ said Jum.

Bowman and Kestrel stared.

‘Show’ee, Pollum,’ called out the aunt. ‘No baths up yonder. Poor little things.’

It wasn’t often Pollum was allowed first roll in the bath, when the water was new, so she jumped in without waiting to be told twice. Down on to her back, splayed out like a crab, and then over and over, wriggling and turning, covering herself with a fresh coat of warm slime. She giggled as she writhed about, obviously loving it.

‘That’s enough, Pollum. Leave some for the skinnies.’

Bowman and Kestrel said it was very kind of them, but they were too tired to have a bath after all. So Jum made them up nests on the floor among the piles of rugs, and they curled up as Mumpo had done. Bowman, worn out by the terrors of the day, was soon deeply asleep, but Kestrel’s eyes stayed open a little longer, and she lay there watching the mudpeople and listening to what they were saying. Willum had taken something out of his bag and was giving it to the old man, and they were chuckling together softly in the corner. Jum was cooking by the fire, making what seemed to be an enormous amount of stew. Pollumwas asking questions.

‘Why are they so thin, mum?’

‘Not enough to eat. No mudnuts up yonder, see.’

‘No mudnuts!’

‘They don’t have the mud for it.’

‘No mud!’

‘Don’t’ee forget, Pollum. You’m a lucky girl.’

Kestrel tried to listen, but the voices seemed to be getting softer and fuzzier all the time, and the flame-shadows flickering on the domed ceiling softened into a warm blur. She snuggled deeper into her cosy nest, and thought how much her legs ached, and how good it was to be in bed, and her eyes felt so heavy she closed them properly, and a moment later she was fast asleep.