Read Online The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones - Free Book Online Page B

among the yellow, because of the earth.
    Gull would not eat again, and I thought of my dream. I found I was wringing my hands like Robin as I looked down at Gull lying in the frosty boat. I expect it was the cold. Now what is a watersmeet? I said to myself. It is where one river joins another. Hern may say what he likes, but if we do come to another river, I shall fall overboard, or pretend to die, or something, and make sure we stay there.
    Then it turned out that Robin had come to a decision, too. “You know,” she said, “I don’t think we should go any farther. I think we should stay on this island and get Gull warm and well again. I think this is the safest place we’re going to find.”
    Gull, for a wonder, said nothing. He seemed too weak to speak. But Duck said, “Oh, honestly, Robin! We’d starve here!”
    Hern said, “We’d be much better off finding a deserted house somewhere. Gull needs shelter, Robin.”
    â€œOr there must be some people who’ll believe we’re not Heathens,” I said, “and who’ll help us look after him. Let’s go on, please.”
    â€œI think you’re wrong,” Robin said. “It seems to me we may be killing Gull, taking him on a journey like this.”
    â€œHe wanted to go,” Hern said.
    â€œHe doesn’t know what’s right for him,” Robin said. “Do let’s stay.”
    We took no notice. Hern and Duck climbed over Gull in the boat and put the sail up. I poured water on the fire and put the firepot away.
    Robin sighed and shook her head and looked about eighty. “Oh, I don’t know what to do for the best!” she said. “Promise me you’ll stop as soon as you see a good place.”
    We all promised, easily and dishonestly. I meant only to stop at another river. I do not know what Hern and Duck meant to do, but I can tell when they are being dishonest.
    As we sailed on, the sun came up over the hill at the right of the River, leaving it all dark and blue with frost and turning the left bank to gold. The slopes became higher and steeper as we swirled along, one blue, one gold, until the sun melted the red earth into sight again. There were low red cliffs to the left suddenly, which stopped like the wall of a red house. Beyond that the River was twice as wide or more than that. We could see a row of trees to either side, standing in water, and sheets of water beyond that, flaring in the sun. I think the trees marked the real low banks of the wide River.
    I turned my head as we sailed past the end of the red cliff. And I saw more water there, winding back behind the cliffs, with red cliffs on the other side of it.
    â€œThe watersmeet!” I shouted. I jumped to the tiller and wrestled to get it out of Hern’s hand. Duck jumped with me.
    â€œDon’t be idiots!” Hern shouted.
    We went to and fro and the sail swung. The boat began going in circles. “What are you doing?” Robin shouted.
    â€œWe’re going to land. We want to land!” Duck yelled.
    With three of us shouting and fighting round the tiller and the boat going in circles, we should have been a perfect mark for bowmen, Heathen or our own. But we were lucky. Hern gave in, though he kept shouting. We came surging round into a great bed of rushes under the first red cliff.
    They were the tallest rushes I have ever seen. They must have been deep in the floods beneath, but they were high above our heads even so. They parted in front of the boat and closed behind, and the speed we had drove us on between them, still arguing, into a sort of green grove, until we grounded on a beach of dry shingle, hidden from both rivers.
    â€œI suppose this seems safe enough,” Robin was saying when a Heathen man came swiftly down a small red path above us and stopped among the rushes when he saw us.
    â€œWho was it called?” he said.
    He seemed—how shall I say?—wet with haste or