‘Travel safe and return soon,’ Bily said, trying to be brave and cheerful.
‘I will, I promise,’ Zluty replied, resisting the desire to reassure his brother about the odd sky, for that would only make him worry all the more. But he was glad to see Redwing glide down to sit in the bush nearest the door, where his brother lifted his hand in farewell. The black-and-red bird gave a trill of farewell and Zluty bowed to her to thank her for her good wishes – he supposed that was what she was saying – and then he set off, his heart lifting at the sight of the distant forest, despite the strangeness of the sky.
3
Bily stood watching Zluty until he was no more than a yellow dab of brightness on the stony plain. Redwing made a little sympathetic noise in her throat.
‘I wish he did not have to go,’ Bily confessed softly to himself, and although he had not meant to look, his eyes flickered away to the West and the strange, horrible redness in the sky. It was not the pretty scarlet of Redwing’s tip feathers, but a dark heavy red that reminded him unpleasantly of blood. The thought of the sky bleeding made his stomach hurt but he told himself that it was only hunger he was feeling. He ought to go in and finish his breakfast. He had eaten a few mouthfuls to keep Zluty company but his mind had been on the pancakes and his brother’s looming journey.
Leaving the door ajar so that Redwing could come in if she liked, Bily went back into the cottage. He was immediately reassured by the sight of all the familiar things around him. If he tried hard, he could make himself believe that Zluty had only gone for the day and that he would be back when the sun set. Sometimes when Zluty was away and Bily felt lonely, he did that, but he never felt he could do it when Zluty went to the Northern Forest. It was too great and solemn a journey, and since Zluty must endure the danger and hardship of it, Bily felt he ought at least to endure his loneliness.
He ate his porridge, enjoying the taste of the honey that flavoured it. He would use the remainder of it to make a rich honey cake. He would then hide it away in the cellar and bring it out to serve for their mid-Winter supper. Thinking of the Winter to come turned Bily’s thoughts to the dyes, for that was when he did most of his weaving. He especially wanted a deep clear blue, and the thin colour he had got from his last experiment was no use to him. But perhaps he could turn it into a delicate shade of purple by adding a little of another colour dye. It would not go to waste for he needed purple as well as blue for the special wall hanging he would make. The difficulty in making dyes was that the colour that came from the thing he boiled was often quite different to the colour of the thing. For instance, his best yellow dye came from a vivid pink petal. And two dyes mixed together did not always produce the colour he expected. To achieve a certain colour meant days of experimenting.
Bily pushed the interesting and complicated question of dyes to the back of his mind and set about putting the cottage in order. He washed the dishes and dried them, and wiped down the table and stove, then he set the pancakes he had made for his own supper in the cool cupboard and scrubbed and oiled the table. Finally, he swept the floor and remade Zluty’s bed, which his brother never made quite smooth enough to satisfy Bily.
This done, he had a drink of hot honey cordial and made up his mind that instead of going outside to garden straightaway, as he usually did, he would occupy himself with some spinning. But when he went down into the cellar to fetch his bag of white fluffs, he noticed that several of the older pottery urns had begun to crack. He ought to do some potting while Zluty was away. Aside from some new urns, he could make a new mug to replace the one Zluty had dropped the week before. But digging up clay and making pottery were outside jobs and he did not want to go outside until the sky was its proper self. He got a basket full of white fluffs and his spindle and carried them upstairs, thinking that he would have plenty of time to make pots before Zluty came back. Then he settled himself contentedly by the fire and began to spin the fluffs into thread. Redwing, who liked the movement of the spindle, soon came in to keep him company, and for a time Bily was far too absorbed to think about his brother or the sky.
That afternoon, Zluty came upon a vast new patch of sweetgrass. The wind must have blown some of the seeds here from the field closer to the cottage, which he had passed that morning. It was odd that the seeds did not mind being carried here by the wind, but had refused to grow when he had carried them back to the cottage. Perhaps Bily was right and there were some seeds that needed to be wild.
The thought of his brother made Zluty feel uneasy, because he knew Bily would be fretting over him and over the red stain in the Western sky. He was sure that the strange mist would vanish by nightfall, but until then, Bily would fret.
Zluty wished he had suggested that Bily come with him to the Northern Forest, but even if his home-loving brother had agreed to such a dramatic change in routine, it would have made things very hard for them in the seasons to come. Zluty knew that his foraging was important for their survival, but so were all of the things Bily did at the cottage. It took both of them to collect and prepare all they needed. Zluty could still remember the terrible Winters they had endured after one of the wild crops they relied upon had failed during the year, and another time when he had fallen ill and had been unable to do his share.
That had not happened for a long time because they had a lot more than they needed stored in the cave cellar now, in case of an emergency, but the memory of the hungry Winters was very strong.
To distract himself from his concern about Bily, and from his weariness, for he had not stopped at midday to rest and eat as he usually did, Zluty took out his little green pipe and began to play a soft tune as he walked. The song wove the steady tread of his feet into the rushy whispering of the sweetgrass and for a time he tramped along contentedly, lost in the sweet scent of the grass and the sweetness of making a song. But even with the song to distract him, once dusk came, he could not make himself go on any further. He was so tired that he did not trouble to light a fire when he stopped. He merely moved the biggest stones from a little patch of ground where he would lay out his bedroll, ate some dried fruit and nuts, and stretched out to sleep.
The next morning, when Zluty awoke, he was dismayed to find the sun was already high above the horizon. He had slept in, wasting the time he had made up the day before by skipping his midday meal.
He rolled his bed hastily, tied it to his pack and set off at once. He wanted to try to reach the Northern Forest a half-day earlier than usual so that he would have time to gather the blue berries for Bily’s dye without lengthening his trip. If he could travel fast enough, he might even have time to venture a little deeper into the forest than usual.
In the past, it had been impossible to think of it. The farthest he had ever gone was to the great circular mounded bank of earth where he collected mushrooms. It had been simply too dark to go any deeper into the forest. As it was, he had had to sniff his way to the mushrooms and collect them by feel. Looking back from the earthbank, he could just see the faint greenish light that was the edge of the forest.
Once, Zluty had tried bringing a candle into the forest so that he could go beyond the mushrooms. He had planned to leave a trail of pebbles that would guide him back out, but he had barely taken ten steps into the trees before the flame flickered out.
A lantern proved no better. There was something thick and heavy in the air under the trees that stifled flame. Zluty had always longed to go deeper into the forest, but without a trustworthy source of light he had dared not risk it.
He had pushed all thoughts of exploration to the back of his mind until one morning near Summer when he had gone to collect the white fluff balls that Bily spun into thread. He had almost filled his collection bags when he noticed one of the small hard boulders that sometimes fell burning from the sky at night. It had hit a rocky hump of earth and cracked open. Spilling out of its hollow middle was a glittering flow of stones as clear and gleaming as the ice that formed on the well during Winter.
Zluty
had collected the stones with delight. He decided to give Bily the prettiest one, and the largest would serve as a better cutter for the tough sweetgrass than his stone knife, if he could find a way to mount it in a handle.
But that night, back at the cottage, when he had brought the stones to show Bily, they had both gasped as a pale cloud of light flowed out of the cloth pouch. The stones gave off their own light, and the darker it became, the brighter they shone. Zluty had thought at once of using the shining stones to lay a trail deeper into the Northern Forest, though of course he had said nothing of this to Bily.
Zluty had been eager to try the stones on this trip, but looking at the sky when he woke, he was startled to find that the red mist had not gone away in the night. He was not really anxious about the mist, but he had seen how Bily had pretended he was not afraid when they had parted and did not want to give his brother cause for more worry. He was determined not to lengthen his trip. The only way he could explore or spend time searching for the blue berries was if he could make up enough time to do it. No matter what, he must be home within ten days.
Glancing back over his shoulder at the red mist, Zluty realised it had grown and wondered if a wind was pushing it Northward. Somehow it did not surprise him that the mist had come from the West. That was a way he never went, for the plain was at its most barren in that direction.
4
Bily woke the next morning to the sweet scent of the honey cake he had baked the previous day. He was especially pleased because he had managed to stretch out the honey to make a batch of small honey nut cakes, which he meant to serve as part of the welcome home feast he was planning for Zluty. His brother loved honey cake better than anything – the crunchiness of the nuts mixed up with the sweetness of the honey. Bily sat up and stretched deliciously, but when he opened his eyes his spirits fell. The window above his bed looked to the West, and the awful red mist that had come up the morning Zluty left the cottage now covered so much of the sky that the plain below was bathed in its dreadful bloody colour.
Bily got out of bed and padded across to look out the window on the other side of the cottage. From this direction, the early morning sun was shining down on the garden out of a pure blue sky. There was not a hint of red in the light, and Bily gazed out for a long time before he went to wash his face and hands and brush his fur.
This was the third day of Zluty’s journey. Tomorrow evening, he would arrive at the Forest. He would sleep the night, and the following day – the fifth day – he would tap the trees and collect mushrooms. The sixth day he would collect the tree sap and get the honey from the forest bees and that night he would cook some pancakes and refill all of his water bulbs. Early on the seventh day he would be ready to set off for the cottage.
How Bily wished it were already the tenth day and that Zluty was arriving home. Then he chided himself, for if it were the tenth day the new mug he had made for Zluty yesterday would not be ready. He had also made an urn for honey, and a particularly nice bowl. Tomorrow the clay would be dry enough for him to fire them in his little kiln. Then he had only to glaze the pots and fire them a last time.
Thinking about glazes, he carried the heavy honey cakes down to the cellar and then he carried up a basket of ground cones to feed to the fire. He was just spreading some toast with the digger butter when Redwing swooped through the window and came to land on the arm of his chair. He fed her some crumbs and tried to feel content, but he could not help but picture Zluty, waking in his bedroll on the bare plain with the unnatural red sky arching above him. He did not know how Zluty could bear it, even knowing how brave he was.
‘I wish he would never have to go to the Northern Forest again,’ Bily said fiercely.
An odd silence fell and Bily suddenly felt frightened, for the words he had uttered were no less than a wish for change. He tugged his mind away from the red mist and from thoughts of Zluty, and set himself to scour the cottage from top to bottom. He washed and polished all of the pots, trimmed the candles and renewed the paper on the lanterns. When the fire had gone out, he raked out the embers and swept the hearthstones before laying another fire ready to be lit. He tidied all of the cupboards and shelves in the cottage and pulled the rugs together in a pile by the door, to be beaten outside. He swept and mopped the floor and then steeled himself to go outside.
‘You went out yesterday,’ he pointed out sternly to himself.
But that had only been briefly to fetch water and clay which he had brought inside to mould, even though he usually did his potting outside. And the red mist was smaller yesterday, said a frightened voice in his mind.
‘Just because I am frightened doesn’t mean I have to let that stop me from doing what I need to do,’ he told Redwing, and with that, he took a deep breath to steady himself, and opened the door. Steadfastly keeping his back to the West, he brought the rugs out onto the step. One by one he draped them over a bush and beat them thoroughly before carrying them back inside.
When he had finished the rugs, Bily went to draw a bucket of water from the well. He had noticed the delicate bellflowers growing nearby were drooping unhappily and he was ashamed that he had let his fear of the sky stop him from bringing them water the previous day. To make up for it, he gave every plant and bush and tree in the garden a good long drink and then he got himself a mug of water from the well.
As he drank, he forced himself to look at the sky.
Could that terrible redness really be a mist? he wondered. Yet if it was not a mist, then what could it be, spreading slowly and monstrously eastward?
Redwing flew down and alighted on the rim of the well, tilting her head to fix him with one bright eye. She gave a soft trill and he sighed and gathered her into his arms, stroking her crest feathers. ‘I know the sky can’t hurt me, Redwing, but it makes me feel strange to see it looking so wrong. It would be the same as if Zluty came back from the Northern Forest turned green or with a third ear on top of his head.’
Redwing gave a little chirrup as he set her down again and Bily shrugged. ‘I know it would still be Zluty, but it would mean something about him had changed.’
Redwing fluffed her wings.
‘I just don’t like things changing, that’s all,’ Bily muttered.
He went to the cellar to fetch his dye-making box and carried it out to the bench under the largest bush in the garden. He was determined to see if he could make the too-pale blue dye into a more interesting colour. He had some paper and he made notes and marks as he tried this and that combination, so that he would remember how to make the dye if he chanced upon a good colour. This reminded him that he ought to make some more sheets of paper for this was the last piece and Zluty liked to map anything new that he had found on his journey to the forest.
A slight breeze had begun to blow, flipping the edge of the paper and making the leaves rustle, but Bily was concentrating too hard even to notice it.
Far across the plain to the North, Zluty felt the same breeze and gave a shiver of delight, for walking was hot work when the sun was shining down so brightly and he was pushing himself harder than usual to make up for sleeping in the day before. He had not been thinking of the red sky, but when he turned his face to the wind, which was coming from the West, he saw how it was spreading in the sky behind him and his mood darkened. It was clear to him now that it was not growing but moving Northward even as he was.
That meant it was also getting closer to the cottage.
Zluty was troubled but it was too late to turn back. He had walked into the night and was a good deal closer to the green shadow on the horizon that was the Northern Forest than he would usually have been on the third day. Besides, red mist or not, they needed the tree sap and honey and mushrooms to last through the harsh cold dry Winter on the plain. The best thing was to do what he had come to do and get home as fast as possible. He had already decided when he woke and saw that the mist had not gone, that there would be no exploration or berry hunt this time. His sole aim now was to get home as
soon as possible.
He put down his pack and unhooked one of the water bulbs to drink. Moving more quickly meant he was drinking more than he usually did and this was his last bulb. He was careful as he stoppered it, for Bily had made the bulbs thin so they would weigh less and they were now very fragile. One year Zluty had tripped and, in a single disastrous moment, had broken four bulbs, losing all the precious water they held. It had been exactly halfway through the second day of his journey home and he had been fevered from thirst by the time he staggered into the cottage.
And yet, despite the dangers of the journey and his dislike of worrying Bily, despite even the red mist, Zluty loved this march across the plain. Bily said it must be terribly dull to walk for days on end across the flat emptiness, but it was not dull at all. You soon saw that the plain was not truly empty either. Aside from diggers, there were many different sorts of insects and small plants, and even when there were no plants, there were pools of colour in the slight dips and rises of the land which changed constantly as the day rearranged shadows and light.
Zluty had never been able to explain to Bily why crossing the barren plain filled him with such joy, because he was not sure himself. But it had something to do with being alone in all that strong hot brightness, carrying all that he needed on his own back.