But Arrietty, more practical for once, said, "But when they've finished, perhaps we ought to have the skin. It might come in useful," she pointed out, "for winter."
"Winter..." breathed Homily, "you say it to torment me," she added in a sudden spurt of temper. The stream when they reached it seemed less a stream than a small clear pond disturbed as they approached by several plops and spreading silvery circles as the frogs, alarmed, dived in. It meandered out of a tangled wood beyond the hedge and, crossing the corner of the field, had spread into a small marsh of cresses, mud and deepsunk cattle-tracks. On the farther side of the stream, the field was bounded, not by a junction of hedges but by several mildewed posts hung with rusty wire slung across the water. Beyond this frail barrier, the shadowed tree trunks of the wood seemed to crowd and glower as though they longed to rush forward across the strip of water into the field and the sunlight. Arrietty saw a powdery haze of wild forget-me-not, with here and there a solitary bulrush. The dry-edged cattle tracks were water-filled chasms criss-crossed with dykes, and there was a delicious smell of fragrant slime, lightly spiced with spearmint. A sinuous, feathered current of clear ripples broke the still, sky-reflecting surface of the miniature lake. It was very beautiful, Arrietty thought, and strangely exciting; she had never seen so much water before.
"Watercress!" announced Homily in a flat voice. "We'll take a bit o' that for tea...."
They picked their way along the raised ridges of the cow craters whose dark pits of stagnant water reflected the cloudless sky. Arrietty stooping over them saw her own clear image sharply focused against the dreaming blue but oddly tilted and somehow upside down.
"Careful you don't fall in, Arrietty," warned Homily. "You only got one change, remember. You know," she went on in an interested voice, pointing at a bulrush, "I could have used one of those back home, under the kitchen. Just the thing for cleaning out the flues. Wonder your father never thought of it. And don't drink yet," advised Homily (as though Arrietty intended to!). "Wait till we get where the water's running. Same with watercress, you don't want to pick it where the water's stagnant. You never know what you might get."
At last they found a place from where it would be possible to drink: a solid piece of bark, embedded firmly in the mud yet stretching out into the stream forming a kind of landing stage or rough jetty. It was gray and nobbly and looked like a basking crocodile. Arrietty stretched her length on the corklike surface and cupping her hands took long draughts of the cool water. Homily, after some hesitation and arrangements of skirts, did the same. "Pity," she remarked, "we don't have a jug nor a pail, nor some kind of bottle. We could do with some water in the boot."
Arrietty did not reply; she was gazing happily down past the drifting surface into the depths below.
"Can vegetarians eat fish?" she asked, after a while.
"I don't rightly know," said Homily. "We'll have to ask your father." Then the cook in Homily reasserted itself. "Are there any?" she asked, a trifle hungrily.
"Plenty," Arrietty murmured dreamily, gazing down into the shifting depths. The stream, she thought, seemed to be gently breathing. "About as long as my forearm. And some invisible things," she added, "like shrimps...."
"How do you mean—invisible?" asked Homily.
"Well," explained Arrietty in the same absent voice, "I mean you can see through them. And some black things," she went on, "like blobs of expanding velvet...."
"Leeches, I shouldn't wonder," remarked Homily with a slight shudder, and added dubiously, after a moment's thought, "Might be all right stewed."
"Do you think Papa could make a fishing net?" asked Arrietty.
"Your father can make anything," asserted Homily loyally. "No matter what—you've only got to name it."
Arrietty lay quiet for a while, dozing, she seemed, on this sun-soaked piece of bark, and when at last she spoke Homily gave a startled jump—she, too, lulled for once into quietness, had begun to float away. Never do, she thought, to drop off to sleep on a log like this. You might turn over. And she roused herself by an inward shake and rapidly blinked her eyes.
"What did you say, Arrietty?" she asked.
"I said..." Arrietty went on after a moment in a lilting lazy voice, "eouldn't we bring the boot down here? Right beside the water?"
Chapter Eight
"Every man's house is his castle."
Oxford & Harvard boat race 1869
[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, August 27th]
AND THAT is just what they did do. Pod, consulted, had looked over the site, weighed the pros and cons and rather ponderously as though it was his own idea decided they should move camp. They would choose a site further along the hedge as near as was safe to the brook. "Homily can do her washing. You got to have water," he announced, but rather defensively as though he had only just thought of it. "And I might make a fish net, at that."
The boot, though fully loaded, ran quite easily along the shallow ditch with all three of them in harness. The site Pod had chosen was a platform or alcove halfway up the steepish bank below the hedge.
"You want to keep fairly high," he explained (as, to make it lighter for hauling, they unpacked the boot in the ditch), "with rain like we had the other night and the brook so near. You got to remember," he went on, selecting a sharp tool, "that flood we had back home when the kitchen boiler burst."
"What do you mean," sniffed Homily, "'got to remember'? Scalding hot, that one was, too." She straightened her back and gazed up the slope at the site.
It was well chosen: a kind of castle, Arrietty had called it, in which they would live in the dungeons, but in their case the dungeon was more like an alcove, open to the sun and air. A large oak tree, at one time part of the hedge, had been sawn off at the base. Solid and circular, it stood up above the bank where the hedge thinned, like the keep of a fortress, its roots flung out below as flying buttresses. Some of these were not quite dead and had shot forth here and there a series of suckers like miniature oak trees. One of these saplings overhung their cave, shading its lip with sun-flecked flickering shadow.
The underside of a large root formed the roof of their alcove and other smaller roots supported the walls and floor. These, Pod pointed out, would come in handy as beams and shelves.
He was busy now (while the boot still lay in the ditch) extracting some nails from the heel.
"It seems a shame," remarked Homily as she and Arrietty sorted out belongings for easier transportation. "You'll lose the whole heel."
"What good's the heel to us?" asked Pod, perspiring with effort. "We ain't going to wear the boot. And I need the nails," he added firmly.
The flat top of the tree trunk, they decided, would come in useful as a look-out, a bleaching ground for washing, and a place for drying herbs and fruit. Or for grinding corn. Pod was urged to chip out foot-holds in the trunk for easier climbing. (This he did later and for years after these foot-holds were considered by naturalists to be the work of the great spotted woodpecker.)
"We got to dig a cache for these nuts," remarked Pod, straightening his aching back, "but better we get all ship-shape here first and snug for the night, as you might say. Then after the digging we can come home straight to bed."
Seven nails, Pod decided, was enough for the moment (it was tough work extracting them). The idea had come to him when he had been mending the hole in the toe. Heretofore, he had only worked on the softest of glove leathers and his little cobbler's needle was too frail to pierce the tough hide of the boot. Using the electric bell-clapper as a hammer, he had pierced (with the help of a nail) a series of matching holes in the boot itself and the tongue which was meant to patch it: then all he had to do was to thread in some twine.
By the same token, he had made a few eyelet holes round the ankle of the boot so they could, if necessary, lash it up at night—as campers would close a tent flap.
It did not take them long to drag the empty boot up the slope, but wedging it firmly in the ri
ght position under the
main root of the alcove was a tricky business and took a good deal of maneuvering. At last it was done—and they left panting but relieved.
The boot lay on its side, sole against the rear wall and ankle facing outwards so that if disturbed at night they could spot the intruder approaching, and so when they woke in the morning they would get the early sun.
Pod drove a series of nails along one shelf-like root on the right wall of the alcove (the left wall was almost completely taken up by the boot) on which he hung his tools: the half nail scissor, the fret-saw, the bell-clapper, and the piece of razor blade.
Above this shelf was a sandy recess which Homily could use as a larder. It went in quite deep.
When Pod had placed the larger hat pin in a place of strategic importance near the mouth of the alcove (the smaller one they were to keep in the boot in case, Pod said, "of these alarms at night") they felt they had met the major demands of the moment and, though tired, they felt a pleasant sense of achievement and of effort well-spent.
"Oh, my back," exclaimed Homily, her hands in the small of it. "Let's just sit down, Pod, for a moment and rest quietly and look at the view." And it was worth looking at in the afternoon sunlight. They could see right away across the field. A pheasant flew out of the far group of trees and whirred away to the left.
"We can't sit down now," said Pod. "We got to dig that cache."
Wearily, they collected the half nail scissor and a borrowing-bag for anything they might see on the way, and the three of them climbed down the bank.
"Never mind," Pod comforted Homily as they made their way along the ditch. "We can go straight to bed after. And you haven't got no cooking," he reminded her.
Homily was not comforted. As well as tired she realized suddenly she was feeling very hungry (but not,—she reflected glumly—somehow, for nuts).
When they reached the place and Pod had removed the first sods in order to reach the soil (great shrubs these were to him, like uprooting a clump of pampas), Homily revived a little—determined to play her part (courageous help-mate, it was today). She had never dug before but the prospect faintly excited her. Strange things are possible in this odd world and she might (one never knew) discover a new talent.
They had to take it in turns with the half nail scissor. ("Never mind," Pod told them. "I'll set to work tomorrow and rig us up a couple of spades.")
Homily screamed when she saw her first worm: it was as long as she was—even longer, she realized, as the last bit wriggled free. "Pick it up," said Pod, "it won't hurt you. You got to learn." And, before Arrietty (who was not too keen on worms herself) could volunteer to help, she saw her mother, with set face and tensed muscles, lay hold of the writhing creature and drop it some inches beyond the hole where it writhed gratefully away among the grasses. "It was heavy," Homily remarked—her only comment—and she went back to her digging; but (Arrietty thought) she looked a trifle pale. After her third worm, Homily became slightly truculent—she handled it with the professional casualness of an experienced snake charmer—almost bored, she seemed. Arrietty was much impressed. It was a different story, however, when her mother dug up a centipede—then Homily not only screamed but ran, clutching her skirts, halfway up the bank, where she stood on a flat stone, almost gibbering. She only consented to rejoin them when Pod, tickling the angry squirming insect with the tip of the nail scissor, sent it scuttling at last into what Arrietty always thought of as "the bush."
They carried a few nuts home for supper: these, and several wild strawberries, a leaf or two of watercress, washed down with cold water, made an adequate though somehow dismal repast. There seemed to be something lacking; a bit of digestive biscuit would have been nice, or a good cup of hot tea. But the last piece of biscuit, Homily decided, must be kept for breakfast and the tea (Pod had ordained) only for celebrations and emergencies.
But they slept well all the same; and felt safe, tucked away under their protecting root, with the boot laced up in front. It was a little airless, perhaps, but they were far less cramped for space because so many of their belongings could be stacked outside now in the sandy, root-filled annex.
Chapter Nine
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
Valparaiso surrenders to the Congressionalists, 1891
[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, August 28th]
"NOW, TODAY," said Pod, at breakfast next morning, "we'd better go gleaning. There's a harvested cornfield yonder. Nuts and fruit is all right," he went on, "but for winter we're going to need bread."
"Winter?" moaned Homily. "Aren't we supposed to be looking for the badger's set? And," she went on, "who's going to grind the corn?"
"You and Arrietty, couldn't you?" said Pod. "Between two stones."
"You'll be asking us to make fire with two sticks next," grumbled Homily, "and how do you think I can make bread without an oven? And what about yeast? Now, if you ask me," she went on, "we don't want to go gleaning and trying to make bread and all that nonsense: what we want to do is to put a couple of nuts in our pockets, pick what fruit we see on the way, and have a real good look for the badger's set."
"As you say," agreed Pod, after a moment, and heaved a sigh.
They tidied away breakfast, put the more precious of their belongings inside the boot and carefully laced it up, and struck out uphill, beyond that water, along the hedge which lay at right angles to the bank in which they had passed the night.
It was a weary traipse. Their only adventure was at mid-day, when they rested after a frugal luncheon of rain-sodden, over-ripe blackberries. Homily, lying back against the bank, her drowsy eyes fixed on the space between a stone and a log, saw the ground begin to move: it streamed past the gap, in a limited but constant flow.
"Oh, my goodness, Pod," she breathed, after watching a moment to make sure it was not an optical illusion, "do you see what I see? There, by that log..." Pod, following the direction of her eyes, did not speak straight away and when he did, it was hardly above a whisper.
"Yes," he said, seeming to hesitate. "It's a snake."
"Oh, my goodness..." breathed Homily again in a trembling voice, and Arrietty's heart began to beat wildly.
"Don't move," whispered Pod, his eyes on the steady ripple: there seemed to be no end—the snake went on and on and on (unless it was, as Arrietty thought afterwards, that Time itself, in a moment of danger, has often been said to slow down) but just when they felt they could bear the sight not a moment longer, they saw the flick of its tail.
They all breathed again. "What was it, Pod?" asked Homily weakly, "an adder?"
"A grass snake, I think," said Pod.
"Oh," exclaimed Arrietty, with a relieved little laugh, "they're harmless."
Pod looked at her gravely; his currant-bunnish face seemed more doughy than usual. "To humans," he said slowly. "And what's more," he added, "you can't talk to snakes."
"Pity," remarked Homily, "that we did not bring one of the hat pins."
"What good would that have done?" asked Pod.
By about tea time (rose hips, this time: they were sick of sodden blackberries) they found, to their surprise, that they were more than halfway along the third side of the field. There had been more walking than searching: none of the ground they had covered so far could have housed the Hendrearies let alone a badger colony. The bank, as they made their way uphill beside the hedge, had become lower in proportion until, here where they sat drearily munching rose hips, there was no bank at all.
"It's almost as far now," said Pod, "to go back the same way as we came as to keep on round. What do you say, Homily?"
"We better keep on round, then," said Homily hoarsely, a hairy seed of a rose hip being stuck in her throat. She began to cough. "I thought you said you cleaned them?" she complained to Arrietty, when she could get back her breath.
"I must have missed one," said Arrietty. "Sorry," and she passed her mother a new half hip, freshly scoured; she ha
d rather enjoyed opening the pale scarlet globes and scooping out the golden nest of close-packed seeds, and she liked the flavor of the hips themselves—they tasted, she thought, of apple skins honeyed over with a dash of rose petal.
"Well, then," said Pod, standing up, "we better start moving."
The sun was setting when they reached the fourth and last side of the field; but the hedge threw out a ragged carpet of shadow. Through a gap in the dark branches they could see a blaze of golden light on a sea of harvested stubble.
"As we're here," suggested Pod, standing still and staring through the gap, "and it's pretty well downhill most the way back now, what's the harm in an ear or two of corn?"
"None," said Homily wearily, "if it would walk out and follow us."
"Corn ain't heavy," said Pod. "Wouldn't take us no time to pick up a few ears...."
Homily sighed. It was she who had suggested this trip, after all. In for a penny, she decided wanly, in for a pound.
"Have it your own way," she said resignedly.
So they clambered through the hedge and into the cornfield.
And into a strange world (as it seemed to Arrietty) not like the Earth at all: the golden stubble, lit by the evening sun, stood up in rows like a blasted colorless forest; each separate bole threw its own long shadow and all die shadows, combed by the sun in direction, lay parallel—a bizarre criss-cross of light and dark which flicked and fleckered with every footstep. Between the boles, on the dry straw-strewn earth, grew scarlet pimpernel in plenty, with here and there a ripened ear of wheat.
"Take a bit of stalk, too," Pod advised them. "Makes it easier to carry."
The light was so strange in this broken, beetle-haunted forest that, every now and again, Arrietty seemed to lose sight of her parents but, turning panic-stricken, would find them again quite close, zebra-striped with black and gold.
At last they could carry no more and Pod had mercy; they foregathered on their own side of the hedge, each with two hunches of wheat ears, carried head downwards by a short length of stalks. Arrietty was reminded of Crampfurl, back home in the big house, going past the grating with onions for the kitchen; they had been strung on strings and looked like these corn grains and in about the same proportion.