I glanced over at the other pannier. Rosalind had one arm round Petra, and was looking down at her attentively. Petra herself had her eyes shut, as though all her attention were on listening. Presently she relaxed a little.
‘What is it?’ Rosalind asked her.
Petra opened her eyes. Her reply was puzzled, and not very clearly shaped.
‘Somebody asking questions. She’s a long way, a very long, long way away, I think. She says she’s had my afraid-thoughts before. She wants to know who I am, and where I am. Shall I tell her?’
There was a moment’s caution. Then Michael inquiring with a touch of excitement whether we approved. We did.
‘All right, Petra. Go ahead and tell her,’ he agreed.
‘I shall have to be very loud. She’s such a long way away,’ Petra warned us.
It was as well she did. If she had let it rip while our minds were wide open she’d have blistered them. I closed mine and tried to concentrate my attention on the way ahead of us. It helped, but it was by no means a thorough defence. The shapes were simple, as one would expect of Petra’s age, but they still reached me with a violence and brilliance which dazzled and deafened me.
There was the equivalent of ‘Phew’ from Michael when it let up; closely followed by the repeated equivalent of ‘Shut up!’ from Petra. A pause, and then another briefly-blinding interlude. When that subsided:
‘Where is she?’ inquired Michael.
‘Over there,’ Petra told him.
‘For goodness sake—’
‘She’s pointing south-west,’ I explained.
‘Did you ask her the name of the place, darling?’ Rosalind inquired.
‘Yes, but it didn’t mean anything, except that there were two parts of it and a lot of water,’ Petra told her, in words and obscurely. ‘She doesn’t understand where I am either.’
Rosalind suggested:
‘Tell her to spell it out in letter-shapes.’
‘But I can’t read letters,’ Petra objected tearfully.
‘Oh, dear, that’s awkward,’ Rosalind admitted. ‘But at least we can send. I’ll give you the letter-shapes one by one, and you can think them on to her. How about that?’
Petra agreed, doubtfully, to try.
‘Good,’ said Rosalind. ‘Look out, everybody! Here we go again.’
She pictured an ‘L’. Petra relayed it with devastating force. Rosalind followed up with an ‘A’ and so on, until the word was complete. Petra told us:
‘She understands, but she doesn’t know where Labrador is.
She says she’ll try to find out. She wants to send us her letter-shapes, but I said it’s no good.’
‘But it
Presently we got the first one. It was ‘Z.’ We were disappointed.
‘What on earth’s that?’ everyone inquired at once.
‘She’s got it back to front. It must be “S,”’ Michael decided.
‘It’s not “S,” it’s “Z,”’ Petra insisted tearfully.
‘Never mind them. Just go on,’ Rosalind told her.
The rest of the word built up.
‘Well, the others are proper letters,’ Michael admitted.’ Sea-land — it must be—’
‘But, darling, “Z” doesn’t mean anything. Now, Sealand obviously means a land in the sea.’
‘If that helps,’ I said doubtfully. ‘According to my Uncle Axel there’s a lot more sea than anyone would think possible.’
At that point everything was blotted out by Petra conversing indignantly with the unknown. She finished to announce triumphantly: ‘It
‘All right,’ Michael told her, pacifically, ‘but ask her if there is a lot of sea.’
Petra came back shortly with:
‘Yes. There are two parts of it, with lots of sea all round. From where she is you can see the sun shining on it for miles and miles and it’s all blue—’
‘In the middle of the night?’ said Michael. ‘She’s crazy.’
‘But it isn’t night where she is. She showed me.’ Petra said. ‘It’s a place with lots and lots of houses, different from Waknuk houses, and much, much bigger. And there are funny carts without horses running along the roads. And things in the air, with whizzing things on top of them—’
I was jolted to recognize the picture from the childhood dreams that I had almost forgotten. I broke in, repeating it more clearly than Petra had shown it — a fish-shaped thing, all white and shiny.
‘Yes — like that,’ Petra agreed.
‘There’s something very queer about this, altogether, ‘Michael put in. ‘David, how on earth did you know —?’
I cut him short.
‘Let Petra get all she can now,’ I suggested. ‘We can sort it out later.’
So again we did our best to put up a barrier between ourselves and the apparently one-sided exchange that Petra was conducting in an excited fortissimo.
We made slow progress through the forest. We were anxious not to leave traces on the rides and tracks, so that the going was poor. As well as keeping our bows ready for use we had to be alert enough not to have them swept out of our hands, and to crouch low beneath overhanging branches. The risk of meeting men was not great, but there was the chance of encountering some hunting beast. Luckily, when we did hear one it was invariably in a hurry to get away. Possible the bulk of the great-horses was discouraging: if so, it was, at least, one advantage we could set against the distinctive spoor behind us.
The summer nights are not long in those parts. We kept on plodding until there were signs of dawn and then found another glade to rest in. There would have been too much risk in unsaddling; the heavy pack-saddles and panniers would have had to be hoisted off by a pulley on a branch, and that would deprive us of any chance of a quick getaway. We simply had to hobble the horses, as on the previous day.
While we ate our food I talked to Petra about the things her friend had shown her. The more she told me, the more excited I became. Almost everything fitted in with the dreams I had had as a small boy. It was like a sudden inspiration to know that the place must really exist; that I had not simply been dreaming of the ways of the Old People, but that it really was in being now, somewhere in the world. However, Petra was tired, so that I did not question her as much as I would have liked to just then, but let her and Rosalind get to sleep.
Just after sunrise Michael came through in some agitation.
‘They’ve picked up your trail, David. That man Rosalind shot: his dog found him, and they came across the great-horse tracks. Our lot is turning back to the south-west to join in the hunt. You’d better push on. Where are you now?’
All I could tell him was that we had calculated we must be within a few miles of Wild Country by this time.
‘Then get moving,’ he told me. ‘The longer you delay the more time they’ll have to get a party ahead to cut you off.’
It sounded good advice. I woke Rosalind, and explained. Ten minutes later we were on our way again, with Petra still more than half asleep. With speed now more important than concealment we kept on the first southward track that we found and urged the horses to a ponderous trot.
The way wound somewhat with the lie of the land, but its general direction was right. We followed it for fully ten miles without trouble of any kind, but then, as we rounded a corner, we came face to face with a horseman trotting towards us barely fifty yards ahead.
