"Can you manage all that?" asked Pod anxiously of Homily as she started off ahead down the hill.
"I'd sooner carry it than grind it," remarked Homily tartly, without looking back.
"There wouldn't be no badgers' sets along this side," panted Pod (he was carrying the heaviest load), coming abreast of Arrietty. "Not with all the plowing, sowing, dogs, men, horses, tractors and what-not—as there must have been—"
"Where could one be, then?" asked Arrietty, setting down her corn for a moment to rest her hands. "We've been all round."
"There's only one place to look, now," said Pod. "Them trees in the middle," and standing still in the deep shadow, he gazed across the stretch of pastureland. The field looked in this light much as it had on that first day (could that only be the day before yesterday?). But from this angle, they could not see the trail of dusky shadow thrown by the island of trees.
"Open ground," said Pod, staring. "Your mother would never make it."
"I'd go," said Arrietty. "I'd like to go...."
Pod was silent. "I got to think," he said, after a moment. "Come on, lass. Take up your corn, else we won't get back before dark."
They didn't. Or, rather, it was deep dusk along the ditch of their home stretch and almost dark when they came abreast of their cave. But even in the half-light there seemed something suddenly homelike and welcoming about the laced-up boot.
Homily sank down at the foot of the bank, between her bunches of corn. "Just a breather—" she explained weakly, "before that next pull up."
"Take your time," said Pod. "I'll go ahead and unlace the boot." Panting a little, half-dragging his ears of corn, he started up the bank. Arrietty followed.
"Pod," called Homily from the darkness below, without turning, "you know what?"
"What?" asked Pod.
"It's been a long day," said Homily. "Suppose, tonight, we made a nice cup of tea."
"Please yourself," said Pod, unlacing the neck of the boot and feeling cautiously inside. He raised his voice, shouting down at her: "What you have now, you can't have later. Bring the half scissor, Arrietty, will you? It's on a nail in the storeroom." After a moment, he added impatiently, "Hurry up. No need to take all day, it's just there to your hand."
"It isn't," came Arrietty's voice, after a moment.
"What do you mean—it isn't?"
"It isn't here. Everything else is, though."
"Isn't there!" exclaimed Pod unbelievingly. "Wait a minute, let me look." Their voices sounded muffled to Homily, listening below; she wondered what the fuss was about.
"Something or someone's been mucking about in here," she heard Pod say, after what seemed a distressed pause; and picking up her ears of wheat Homily scrambled up the bank.
"Get a match, will you," Pod was saying in a worried voice, "and light the candle," and Homily foraged in the boot to find the wax-matches.
As the wick guttered, wavered, then rose to a steady flame, the little hollow, halfway up the bank, became illumined like a scene on a stage: strange shadows were cast on the sandy walls of the annex. Pod and Homily and little Arrietty seemed, as they passed back and forth, curiously unreal, like characters in a play. There were the borrowing-bags, stacked neatly together as Pod had left them, their mouths tied up with twine; there hung the tools from their beam-like root, and, leaning beside them—as Pod had left it this morning—the purple thistle-head with which he had swept the floor. He stood there now, white-faced in the candlelight, his hand on a bare nail. "It was here," he said, tapping the nail, "that's where I left it."
"Oh, goodness," exclaimed Homily, setting down her wheat ears. "Let's just look again." She pulled aside the borrowing-bags and felt behind them. "And you, Arrietty," she ordered, "could you get round to the back of the boot?"
But it was not there nor, they discovered suddenly, was the larger hat pin. "Anything but them two things," Pod kept saying in a worried voice as Homily, for the third or fourth time, went through the contents of the boot. "The smaller hat pin's here all right," she kept repeating. "We still got one. You see no animal could unlace a boot...
"But what kind of animal," asked Pod wearily, "would take a half nail scissor?"
"A magpie might," suggested Arrietty, "if it looked kind of shiny."
"Maybe," said Pod. "But what about the hat pin? I don't see a magpie carrying the two. No," he went on thoughtfully, "it doesn't look to me like no magpie, nor like any other race of bird. Nor no animal neither, if it comes to that. Nor I wouldn't say it was any kind of human being: a human being, like as not, finding a hole like this smashes the whole place up. Kind of kick with their feet, human beings do out walking, 'fore they touch a thing with their hands. Looks to me," said Pod, "like something in the style of a borrower."
"Oh," cried Arrietty joyfully, "then we've found them!"
"Found what?" asked Pod.
"The cousins ... the Hendrearies..."
Pod was silent a moment. "Maybe," he said uneasily again.
"Maybe!" mimicked Homily, irritated. "Who else could it be? They live in this field, don't they? Arrietty, put some water on to boil, there's a good girl. We don't want to waste the candle."
"Now see here—" began Pod.
"But we can't fix the tin lid," interrupted Arrietty, "without something to hold it."
"Oh, goodness me," complained Homily, "use your head and think of something! Suppose we'd never had a nail scissor! Tie a piece of twine round an aspirin lid and hang it over the flame from a nail or bit of root or something. What were you saying, Pod?"
"I said we got to go careful on the tea, that's all. We was only going to make tea to celebrate like, or in what you might call a case of grave emergency."
"Well, we are, aren't we?"
"Are what?" asked Pod.
"Celebrating. Looks like we've found what we come for."
Pod glanced uneasily toward Arrietty who, in the farther corner of the annex, was busily knotting twine round a ridged edge of a screw-on lid. "You don't want to go so fast, Homily," he warned her, lowering his voice, "nor you don't want to jump to no conclusions. Say it was one of the Hendrearies. All right, then, why didn't they leave a word or sign or stay awhile and wait for us? Hendreary knows our gear all right—that Proverb book of Arrietty's, say, many's the time he's seen it back home under the kitchen."
"I don't see what you're getting at," said Homily in a puzzled voice, watching Arrietty anxiously as gingerly she suspended the water-filled aspirin lid from a root above the candle. "Careful," she called out. "You don't want to burn the twine."
"What I'm getting at is this," explained Pod. "Say you look at the nail scissor as a blade, a sword—as you might say—and the hat pin as a spear, say, or a dagger. Well, whoever took them things has armed himself, see what I mean? And left us weaponless."
"We got the other hat pin," said Homily in a troubled voice.
"Maybe," said Pod. "But he doesn't know that, see what I mean?"
"Yes," whispered Homily, very scared.
"Make tea, if you like," Pod went on, "but I wouldn't call it a celebration. Not yet, at any rate."
Homily glanced unhappily toward the candle: above the aspirin lid, she noticed longingly, already there rose a welcome haze of steam. "Well," she began and hesitated. Then suddenly she seemed to brighten. "It comes to the same thing."
"How do you mean?" asked Pod.
"About the tea," explained Homily, perking up. "Going by what you said, stealing our weapons and such—this looks to be something you might call serious. Depends how it strikes you. I mean," she went on hurriedly, "there's some I know as might even name it a state of grave emergency."
"There's some as might," agreed Pod wanly. Then, suddenly, he sprang aside, beating the air with his hands. Arrietty screamed and Homily, for a second, thought they had both gone mad. Then she saw.
A great moth had lumbered into the alcove, attracted by the candle; it was fawn-colored and, to Homily, hideous, drunk and blinded with light. "Save the
tea—" she cried, panic-stricken, and seizing the purple thistle-head, beat wildly about the air. Shadows danced every way and, in their shouting and scolding, they hardly noticed a sudden, silent thickening of night swerve in on the dusk; but they felt the wind of its passing, watched the candle gutter, and saw the moth was gone.
"What was that?" asked Arrietty at last, after an awed silence.
"It was an owl," said Pod. He looked thoughtful.
"It ate the moth?"
"As it would eat you," said Pod, "if you went mucking about after dusk. We're living and learning," he said. "No more candles after dark. Up with the sun and down with the sun: that's us, from now on."
"The water's boiling, Pod," said Homily.
"Put the tea in," said Pod, "and douse the light: we can drink all right in the dark," and turning away he propped the broom handle back against the wall and, while Homily was making the tea, he tidied up the annex, stacking the ears of wheat alongside the boot, straightening the borrowing-bags, and generally seeing all was ship-shape for the night. When he had finished he crossed to the hanging shelf and ran a loving hand along his neatly hanging row of tools. Just before they doused the light, he stood for a long time, deep in thought—his hand on an empty nail.
Chapter Ten
"Necessity hath no Law."
Brigham Young died 1877
[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, August 29th]
THEY SLEPT well and woke next morning bright and early. The sun poured slantwise into the alcove and, when Pod had unlaced it, into the neck of the boot. For breakfast Arrietty gathered six wild strawberries and Homily broke up some wheat grains with Pod's small bell-clapper which, sprinkled with water, they ate as cereal. "And, if you're still hungry, Arrietty," remarked Homily, "you can get yourself a nut." (Arrietty was and did.)
The program for the day was arranged as follows: Pod, in view of last night's happening, was to make a solitary expedition across the field to the island of trees in the center, in one last bid to find the badger's set. Homily, because of her fear of open spaces, would have to stay behind and Arrietty, Pod said, must keep her company. "There's plenty of jobs about the house," he told them. "To start with you can weather-proof one of the borrowing-bags, rub it all over hard with a bit of candle, and it'll do for carting water. Then you can take the fret-saw and saw off a few hazel nuts for drinking out of and while you're about it you can gather a few extra nuts and store them in the annex, seeing as we don't have a spade. There's a nice bit o' horse hair I saw in the hedge going toward the stile, caught on a bramble bush: you can fetch a bit o' that along, if you feel like it, and I'll see about making a fish net. And a bit more corn-crushing wouldn't come amiss...."
"Oh, come on, Pod—" protested Homily. "Oblige you, we'd like to, but we're not slaves."
"Well," said Pod, gazing thoughtfully across the ocean of tussocky grass, "it'll take me pretty near all day—getting there, searching around, and getting back: I don't want you fretting..."
"I knew it would end like this," said Homily later, in a depressed voice, as she and Arrietty were waxing the borrowing-bag. "What did I tell you always, back home, when you wanted to emigrate? Didn't I tell you just how it would be—drafts, moths, worms, snakes and what not? And you saw how it was when it rained? What's it going to be like in winter? You tell me that. No one can say I'm not trying," she went on, "and no one won't hear a word of grumble pass my lips, but you mark my words, Arrietty, we won't none of us see another spring." And a round tear fell on the waxed cloth and rolled away like a marble.
"What with the rat-catcher," Arrietty pointed out, "we wouldn't have if we stayed back home."
"And I wouldn't be surprised," Homily persisted, "if that boy wasn't right. Remember what he said about the end of the race? Our time is come, I shouldn't wonder. If you ask me, we're dying out."
But she cheered up a bit when they took the bag down to the water to fill it up and a sliver of soap to wash with: the drowsy heat and the gentle stir of ripples past their landing stage of bark seemed always to calm her; and she even encouraged Arrietty to have a bath and let her splash about a little in the shallows. For a being so light the water was incredibly buoyant and it would not be very long, Arrietty felt, before she would learn to swim. Where she had used the soap the water went cloudy and softly translucent, the shifting color of moonstones.
After her bath Arrietty felt refreshed and left Homily in the annex to "get the tea" and went on up the hedge to collect the horse hair. Not that there was anything to "get," Homily thought irritably, setting out a few hips and haws, and some watercress, and cracking a couple of nuts with the bell-clapper.
The horse hair, caught on a bramble, was halfway up the hedge, but Arrietty, refreshed by her dip, was glad of a chance to climb. On the way down, seeking a foothold, she let out a tiny scream: her toes had touched, not the cool bark, but something soft and warm. She hung there, grasping the horse hair and staring through the leaves. All was still—nothing but tangled branches, flecked with sunlight. After a second or two, in which she hardly dared to breathe, a flicker of movement caught her eye as though the tip of a branch had swayed. Staring she saw, like a bunch of budding twigs, the shape of a brownish hand. It could not be a hand, of course, she told herself, but that's what it looked like, with tiny, calloused fingers no larger than her own. Picking up courage, she touched it with her foot and the hand grasped her toes. Screaming and struggling, she lost her balance and came tumbling through the few remaining branches on to the dead leaves below. With her had fallen a small laughing creature no taller than herself. "That frighted you," it said.
Arrietty stared, breathing quickly. He had a brown face, black eyes, tousled dark hair and was dressed in what she guessed to be shabby moleskin, worn smooth side out: he seemed so soiled and earth-darkened that he matched not only the dead leaves into which they had fallen but the blackened branches as well. "Who are you?" she asked.
"Spiller," he said cheerfully, lying back on his elbows.
"You're filthy," remarked Arrietty disgustedly after a moment. She was still very angry.
"Maybe," he said.
"Where do you live?"
His dark eyes became sly and amused. "Here and there," he said, watching her closely.
"How old are you?"
"I don't know," he said.
"Are you a boy or grown-up?"
"I don't know," he said.
"Don't you ever wash?"
"No," he said.
"Well," said Arrietty, after an awkward silence, twisting the coarse strands of grayish horse hair about her wrist, "I'd better be going..."
"To that hole in the bank?" he asked—the hint of a jeer in his voice.
Arrietty looked startled. "Do you know it?" When he smiled, she noticed, his lips turned steeply upwards at the corners making his mouth a "V": it was the most teasing kind of smile she had ever seen.
"Haven't you ever seen a moth before?" he asked.
"You were watching last night?" exclaimed Arrietty.
"Were it private?" he asked.
"In a way: it's our home."
But he looked bored suddenly, turning his bright gaze away as though searching the more distant grasses. Arrietty opened her mouth to speak but he silenced her with a peremptory gesture, his eyes on the field below. Very curious, she watched him rise cautiously to his feet and then, in a single movement, spring to a branch above his head, reach for something out of sight and drop again to the ground. The object, she saw, was a taut, dark bow strung with gut and almost as tall as he was; in the other hand, he held an arrow.
Staring into the long grass, he laid the arrow to the bow, the gut twanged and the arrow was gone. There was a faint squeak.
"You've killed it," cried Arrietty, distressed.
"I meant to," he replied and sprang down the bank into the field. He made his way to the tussock of grass and returned after a moment with a dead field mouse swinging from his hand. "You got to
eat," he explained.
Arrietty felt deeply shocked. She did not know quite why—at home, under the kitchen, they had always eaten meat; but borrowed meat from the kitchen upstairs: she had seen it raw but she had never seen it killed.
"We're vegetarians," she said primly. He took no notice: this was just a word to Spiller, one of the noises which people made with their mouths. "Do you want some meat?" he asked casually. "You can have a leg."
"I wouldn't touch it," cried Arrietty indignantly. She rose to her feet, brushing down her skirt. "Poor thing," she said, referring to the field mouse, "and I think you're horrid," she said, referring to him.
"Who isn't?" remarked Spiller, and reached above his head for his quiver.
"Let me look," begged Arrietty, turning back, suddenly curious.
He passed it to her: it was made, she saw, of a glove finger—the thickish leather of a country glove; the arrows were dry pine-needles, tipped with black-thorn.
"How do you stick the thorns to the shaft?" she asked.
"Wild plum gum," replied Spiller.
"Are they poisoned?" asked Arrietty.
"No," said Spiller. "Fair's fair. Hit or miss. They got to eat—I got to eat. And I kill 'em quicker than an owl does. Nor I don't eat so many." It was quite a long speech for Spiller. He slung his quiver over his shoulder and turned away. "I'm going," he said.
Arrietty scrambled quickly down the bank. "So am I," she told him.
They walked along in the dry ditch together. Spiller, she noticed, as he walked glanced sharply about him: the bright black eyes were never still. Sometimes, at a slight rustle in grass or hedge, he would become motionless: there would be no tensing of muscles—he would just cease to move. On such occasions, Arrietty realized, he exactly matched his background. Once he dived into a clump of dead bracken and came out again with a struggling insect.