"I lead them where is best pickings," he said. "We steal, okay? But no other way we can live. Two, three of my people they settle. Now I have few left. We steal, but not here. Here we barter, like Wise Woman say. Time now for all my people to find place to live. Summer travel, winter dig-in. Down there—" he pointed south "we steal. Up here, we barter."

  "And what do you trade in?" I asked.

  He laughed, flung his arms wide. "Anything! Nothing! What people want. Your Wise Woman, she give us clothes, blankets, flour in—barter—for salt, herbs, seeds, curios. Two times a year I come. Sow-time and Gather-time. I bring her what I steal, what is different, she give me good barter." He pointed at me. "You wear one of my steals round neck." He was looking at my necklace. "Got from way west. You like?"

  "Very much," I said. "Very pretty. . . ."

  "Like you name!" He laughed delightedly; we had introduced ourselves earlier. "Find more next year. Pretty for the Pretty, yes?"

  Tam shot me a glance which meant: don't encourage him. I smiled to myself.

  Tam rose to his feet and made a courteous little speech of thanks. "And now we really must go—"

  Loken pointed to the sky where the first stars were pricking through, and then leant forward to touch my bandaged ankle. "Sleep now, travel later."

  We tried to explain again about our rendezvous the following afternoon; he listened, his head on one side, then he turned away as if he were considering. We waited. At last he turned round and called his tribe towards him, obviously ordering them to do something. They nodded and scattered into the trees. Loken turned to us.

  "Pretty ankle hurt 'cos I make too big surprise. So will get you to friends in time. Promise." He produced a small bottle from the debris of our meal. "We drink to being friends. I think you no tell about Loken and his people. Right?"

  We nodded. Telling about any of the things that had happened to us spelt trouble. He poured a small amount of the liquid into our mugs and topped it up with water.

  "Is cordial: very good. Wise Woman say: 'Your health' " He drank from his own mug—I reckoned an earlier steal. The cordial tasted like bubbly water, with a hint of the bitterness of dandelion leaves and a sort of musty aftertaste. It wasn't until I had emptied the mug and started to feel the numbness and tingling in my toes and fingers, and the veil of darkness began to creep in from all sides that I realized with horror that we must have been poisoned!

  I tried to get up, but the numbness was creeping all over—

  "Tam!" I croaked, but glancing over I saw him topple over on his side, a silly grin on his face. Well, if this was poison, then it didn't hurt. The last thing I remember was a voice in my ear whispering: "Sleep, my pretty one, sleep. . . ."

  Someone was trying to shake me awake, but it was such a long way to travel and I was so sleepy. . . . Just let me stay here wherever it was a little bit longer, surely it wasn't time to get up for school—

  "Pretty. Pretty, wake up! It's time to go—"

  "Go 'way . . ."

  "Wake up!"

  I opened my eyes reluctantly and saw Tam's anxious face bent over mine, "Thank God! I thought for a moment . . . You feeling okay?"

  "I feel terrible! Give me a drink, my mouth tastes awful!" I drank gratefully, and Tam handed me what looked like two large biscuits.

  "Breakfast: sorry there's no more, but they don't taste too bad."

  I struggled out of my sleeping-bag. We were once more in the open, under the shade of a large beech tree. "Where are we? How did we get here?"

  "Good question! I'm not sure, but I think Loken gave us some sort of sleeping-draught and they carried us here in litters. I seem to remember being jolted up and down, but then I passed out again. My back is killing me. . . ." He rubbed it, wincing. "I'll say one thing for them: they must have traveled! It's just after midday, but we're less than a mile from the rendezvous. How's your ankle?"

  I tested it gingerly. "Not bad; a bit twingy, but much better. Whatever Loken put on it, it certainly worked!" I shook my head. "Who would have thought we would meet two sets of people so unlike! Who would have thought we would have met anyone at all, come to that. . . ."

  "Which reminds me," said Tam with a grin, "I think I've worked out a way to explain the loss of the fry-pan and your—er, underwear. You sprained your ankle on the river-bank, your rucksack tipped up and we lost—what we bartered. What do you say?"

  "I say I can't wait till we catch up with the others: just hope they've got some food left—I'm starving!"

  But when we made our slow way to the rendezvous an hour later, there was nobody there. . . .

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tam pivoted on his heels, staring in every direction. "Right place, right day, right time," he said. "And neither hide nor hair of them."

  "Lally never was very punctual," I said, shucking off my pack with a sigh of relief, to nurse my injured ankle which was beginning to throb.

  "Sven usually is."

  "Not when he's with her."

  "She sure knows how to pick 'em." He grinned, his pack following mine. "I don't know about you, but I'm not only starving I'm bone dry as well. The river's only about a quarter mile away; think you can make it? You could bathe that ankle of yours—"

  "And you could have a bath! Have you any idea how grubby you look? 'Sides, you don't exactly smell of roses. . . ." There were leaves in his wildly tangled hair, his shorts were torn and filthy and one toe poked out from his laced boots.

  "Seen yourself? You look as if you'd been dragged through not one but two hedges backwards!"

  "Right," I said. "It's the river. Give me a hand. . . ." I rose to my feet reluctantly, and fished in my rucksack for what was left of my clean clothes, a towel and comb, noticing as I did the briar scratches on my arms and legs. I could smell my own sweat, and could only imagine what my hair looked like. "What happens if they turn up while we're gone?"

  "Leave 'em a marker—the 'Back Soon' one."

  "Better leave a 'This Way' as well, just in case."

  Because of the shortage of paper and writing materials all messages in the village were either in pokerwork or carved; "Not at Home," "Call Again," "Don't Disturb," "Back in Five Minutes" and "Help!" were favorites, left hanging on the front door. Of course in the open we had to make do with sticks and stones: a combination of a circle plus an arrow for direction was enough in this case. Other recognized markers were formed of squares, triangles, angles, crosses or straight lines, used in combination if necessary, and understood by us all.

  I suppose we were at the riverside for about an hour, washing, drying off, changing, drinking our fill and filling the flasks, but when we arrived back at the rendezvous the others had still not arrived. I began to worry. We sat down to wait, but privately I had decided that if they didn't arrive in the next hour or so we would make our way back to camp. We had no food, although I rummaged about in both rucksacks, just in case. We could leave another marker, if necessary, and go back for them in the morning. Tam found a handful of rather furry nuts in one of his pockets and we made them last out as long as we could, but it only made us hungrier.

  For a while we talked of our experience with Loken and his tribe.

  "Let's face it," said Tam. "He and his people needed those things, the food and all, more than we did. Remember how thin they all were?"

  "No excuse for thieving."

  "Barter."

  "Yes; I reckon the Herb-Woman is the one they've been dealing with. Perhaps we should have a word . . ."

  "No complaints though: Loken and his people might be useful. He knows the way of the woods, and when and if I decide to strike out on my own—"

  "Oh, you're not on that again!"

  "The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it's the right thing to do. Don't you see—"

  But he was interrupted. There was a shout from the slope above us and looking up, we could see one of the twins waving his arms like a cockerel with the staggers.

  "It's Bill! Or Ben . . ."

  "Something's wrong!" said Tam. "Wait there, I'll go and fetch him down."

  It was Ben, but it was difficult to make out what he was saying, except that there was something wrong with Lally.

  "Won't wake up! Won't wake up!" he kept saying, and: "Beeping Sleauty!" over and over again. He kept pointing to the north and in the end we shouldered our packs again and followed his lead, my ankle holding up pretty well after its soak in the icy riverwater earlier.

  About a half-mile further on we found the others. Bill was dancing round like a disjointed puppet, and Sven was kneeling at the side of a recumbent Lally. White as death, she was tossing her head from side to side, her eyelids fluttering, while every now and again she gave a soft moan.

  I dropped down and took her head in my lap, noticing that she had a greenish slime trickling from the corner of her mouth.

  "What have you done to her? Lally, Lally, wake up!" She was icy cold. I cuddled her up close and glared at Sven.

  His face was red, his hair tousled. "We—we've had to carry her. I don't know what's the matter, wish to hell I did! She's never been this way before. Always been all right after . . ." He trailed off.

  "Well, she's not all right now!" I snapped, rubbing her cold hands. "We'd better get her back to camp, pronto!"

  "I'll go," said Tam. "There are a couple of stretchers in the barn for emergencies, but I'll get Joe to bring the cart, so you both can ride. Be as quick as I can!" And he was away.

  It would be a good hour and a half before he could be back, so I made Lally as comfortable as I could, wrapping her up in our sleeping bags, Sven's jacket under her head. The twins were still weeping and wailing so I sent them off to gather wood to make a fire; not that it was cold, but I wanted them out of the way while I had a word with Sven.

  "Right," I said. "You asked us to cover for you on this trip, didn't you? That's why we went off together and were supposed to meet up here to go back to camp as though we had been with you the whole ten days? True?"

  He nodded, reluctantly. "Something like that. . . . But she wasn't meant to get ill like this. We—we just wanted a little time on our own, to—to do our own thing, without other people poking and prying."

  "Time on your own?" I said incredulously. "With the twins hanging round your necks? Oh, come on! Pull the other one!"

  He went redder still, if that were possible. "We needed them. To—to carry stuff, fetch wood, clear up . . . You know."

  "No, I don't know. Where exactly did you go that needed all that toting of stuff? And what in the world made Lally so sick?"

  "Look, I'll explain it all later, I promise. When she's better. When—when Tam comes back, all you have to say is that she ate something that disagreed with her. . . ."

  "Such as? Is that what really happened? And if so, just what could make her so sick? She looks as if she's been poisoned—"

  "Don't say that!" From being red faced, he now went almost as white as Lalage. "They wouldn't do that!"

  "Who wouldn't?"

  A voice behind us said "Pillar-cats."

  "Green cows," said another. Bill and Ben were back.

  "Beeping Sleauty don't like their milk," said one of them. "Taste ba-a-ad!"

  I rounded on them. "Just tell me, right now, exactly where you've been. And no lies, mind, or it'll be smacks all round!"

  "Din' go there!" bellowed Bill (or Ben).

  "Where didn't you go?"

  "Oh, stop it!" shouted Sven, suddenly. "Don't pick on them. Lally told them not to tell. Okay, okay, so we went to the Wilderness. It was her idea, she's always been crazy about the place. We knew if we told you, you wouldn't cover for us."

  Remembering the last time I had been there, I couldn't understand the fascination it still held for Lally. For me it had lost its earlier charm and had changed from my childhood memories. Then it had been a place of faery, difficult of true recall perhaps, but still full of memories of light and shade, flowers and fruit, a sun that shone all day long and dreams of elves and fairies taking part in theatricals. The last time I had visited it had been at night, and the ambiance had been totally different—for me at least, although Lally had apparently seen it still with the eyes of a bewitched child. To me the gloom, the unpleasant smell and the churned-up mud, together with the impression that things had shrunk, gave the whole place a sinister aspect.

  I remembered, too, the warnings the Herb-Woman had relayed through her daughter: that there were dark and powerful forces hidden in the Wilderness, ones it would be wise not to wake. For me the only evidence of anything unusual had come from those unexplained deep sleeps, the illusion of others around us and the strange vibrations I had when touching the ring of ancient stones. Was it because the others had been—literally—stung, and Tam and I never had?

  Full of foreboding I rolled up first one and then the other of Lally's sleeves, but there were only a couple of yellowing bruises around wrists and upper arms, as though someone had gripped her too tight. As a matter of course I looked at her legs also, finding the same discoloration about her ankles and above her knees, and they now assumed the aspect of some kind of binding or restriction—but who would do such a thing? Surely not Sven or the twins either, unless it was some strange form of bondage I could only guess at.

  Time passed with agonizing slowness, while Lally still lay there in a stupor, the twins moaned quietly in the background and Sven kept asking if she was any better, but at last I heard a shout from the direction of the river path and Tam came running with Joe close behind, carrying a stretcher. After that it didn't take long to load Lally and me onto the wagon with all the gear, and transport us back to camp. Betty took a close look at Lally and ordered Joe to return her to the village immediately, together with Sven and explanations.

  She looked at my ankle and told me "cold compresses and keep off it for a couple of days," then disappeared to dish up supper, which did more for our well-being and morale than anything in the last week, or so it seemed. Baked potatoes with butter and chopped chives, slices of gammon with parsley sauce and green beans, followed by fruit bread and chamomile tea or goat's milk, and we were fit to burst.

  Afterwards we sat around the campfire and exchanged news and gossip; everyone had a story to tell, some lurid, some commonplace, but they were all so busy with their own adventures to notice that Tam and I were, for us, remarkably silent. Obviously most couples had paired off happily; I looked across the fire at Tam—yes, across, not next to me as if he considered us as a fixture—and wondered just exactly how he thought of me. Okay, so it hadn't been exactly a classic holiday, where all that mattered was that a boy and girl go off to find out what it's all about—after all, which of the others had discovered two different types of human tribes? Who else had walked their feet off and gone into forbidden territory? Who else had friends who had spent their week secretly in the Wilderness, from where at least one of them had returned seriously ill? And all of this a deadly secret . . .

  So, Tam and I weren't Romeo and Juliet, Rochester and Jane or Cupid and Psyche, but I had thought there was a special kind of fondness between us. In my own way I loved him, and I had believed he felt the same way. I felt strangely angry, deprived of something I couldn't name; at the same time I had one of those strange yearnings that my Nan called my "growing pains."

  That night, with the lamp swinging crazily from the tent-pole and the flaps tightly closed against mosquitoes and suicidal moths, we talked quietly of what had happened on our journey, conscious that the twins were next to us—we had taken the tent next to them in order to keep an eye on them, seeing that neither Sven nor Lally were here.

  I decided to change the subject. "Tam . . ."

  "Yes?" He yawned, a jaw-cracker.

  "I was thinking . . ."

  "About?"

  I hesitated. "Us." There, I'd said it.

  He yawned again. "And?" He was lying on his side, facing away from me.

  "I guess this is difficult for me to say . . ."

  "Then don't say it. Things have a way of sorting themselves out, Pretty."

  "I don't think this will. Not unless we talk about it." At least he knew what I was on about. "When we get back we have to answer that questionnaire—you know the one that asks how we got on, whether we intend to—oh, heck! You know what I'm trying to say! Why do you have to make it so difficult. . . ."

  "I haven't changed my mind: have you?"

  "Of course not! But . . . we don't seem to be exactly committed, do we?"

  "Perhaps it's a bit early for all that. Look, you and I grew up together didn't we? Your Nan treated me like I was one of the family, and you were a special sort of pal." He turned over to face me. "Then we both started to grow up. You know from school what happens to our bodies, our hormones. I started to look at other girls, you at other boys—don't deny it—but as it turned out we were both more comfortable with each other."

  "Then why—"

  "Will you shut up and listen? Comfortable, yes, but neither of us was head-over-heels in love, were we? I suppose most girls—"

  "I'm not 'most girls'!"

  "No you're not!" At last there was a grin on his face. "You're a one-off. I've never disputed that. Well, one-off girl, I thought you would be willing to accept my point of view without me having to explain."

  "And that point of view is . . .?"

  "I need my freedom, at least for a while, especially as I now plan to do a bit of traveling. How would you feel if I married you, then suddenly took off for parts unknown and left you with a brace of kids?"

  "Don't be silly!" I was smiling now. "Besides, you asked me to go with you, remember?"

  "And I also told you why you wouldn't. I need space, Pretty. I want to find out what this world is made of; I don't want to be stuck forever in the prison-camp of Deliverance! Can't you see that?"

  The trouble was, I could. After all we had seen and experienced and done in the last few days, if I had been a boy nothing would have pleased me more than to join him. But I wasn't, and I couldn't. So, being what I was, I fell back on stupid anger and resentment.

 

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