LITMIR.BIZ

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bewilderment in his voice. “Why do they not know me?”

      Fenodyree crouched to examine the arrow more closely.

      “Well, whoever fired yon, conner be much of a size,” said Gowther. “If it’s eighteen inches long that’s all it is, and what sort of a body could use the bow to fit it?”

      “The elves of light,” said Fenodyree, “the lios-alfar. This is an elven shaft. Yet still I do not think they are with us. It is more like to be the work of stromkarls.”

      “Stromkarls?” cried Durathror. “Have you ever known the river-folk to take up arms? It is the lios-alfar!”

      “Eh up! What’s yon?” said Gowther, and pointed into the trees.

      Something white moved among the branches, though not even Gowther could say where it first appeared. It fell gently towards them, swinging backwards and forwards with a graceful, swooping, dipping motion, and landed at Durathror’s feet. A white eagle feather.

      The dwarf grabbed it, and flourished it under his cousin’s nose.

      “See! A token! And from an elven cloak! What say you now?”

      Fenodyree looked hard at the feather, and then at Durathror.

      “It is the lios-alfar,” he said.

      Fenodyree urged them on with all speed after the delay. No other sign from the elves, if they were elves, was forthcoming, and Durathror was prevailed upon to curb his excitement, and to turn his thoughts to their immediate problems.

      “But it is hard,” he said to Colin later in the day, when they were sharing the same cloak in an effort to stay alive, “it is hard to lose the companionships of elves. And if one has been dearer to you than your own kin, a more than brother right from earliest memory, the loss is nigh unbearable. When Atlendor took his people northwards I thought to renounce my heritage, and go with him, but he would not have me come. ‘You have a duty to discharge,’ he said, ‘one of great weight.’ The eyes of the lios-alfar see not only the present. By Goldenstone we said our farewells, and he gave to me Valham, and I parted with Tarnhelm, the greatest treasure of the huldrafolk.” Durathror smiled ruefully. “I exchanged the power of going unseen for the power of flight, and Gondemar, my father, cast me out in his anger. So have I wandered all these years, barred from my people and from the elves. Had not Cadellin pitied me, and opened to me the gates of Fundindelve, mine would have been a desolate lot.”

      But all this came much later in the day, and for the present the children and Gowther were left to make what sense they could of the dead birds and Durathror’s ravings.

      Not that there was time for thought. They were forcing their way down an almost extinct track of frozen, rutted leaf-mould, between rhododendrons of such size that the branches met over their heads as well as across their path, when Fenodyree held up his hand. They stopped; listened.

      “Footsteps! Into the bushes!”

      They forced their way through the glossy hide of leaves into the tangled, bare branches that comprised the main bulk of the growth.

      “Stay wherever you are, and do not move!” whispered Durathror fiercely. “He is close.”

      It was difficult to see through the bushes in the dappled light. They heard someone approach, but caught only a glimpse of dark clothing. Whoever it was, he was breathing heavily. Then, as he came level with where they were hiding, he stopped. Colin, Susan and Gowther prayed that the beating of their hearts was not as loud as it sounded. Durathror and Fenodyree exchanged glances.

      “Phew! Be hanged to old Place!” muttered a deep voice, and the owner of it sat himself down on the trunk of a fallen beech that lay across the path: and in that position his face could be seen. It was Mr Hodgkins, a local businessman.

      Every morning during the week, between the hours of eight and nine, he was to be found, with dozens like him, on the platform of Alderley Edge station, carrying his briefcase and tightly folded newspaper, and tightly rolled umbrella. But now, in place of the stiff white collar and formal, city clothes, James Henry Hodgkins’s frame was clad in thick ski-trousers, and a hooded anorak, above which protruded the neck of a sweater. A beret hid his thinning hair, round his lean neck were snow goggles, leather gauntlets hung by tapes from his wrist, nailed boots encumbered his feet, and down his lined, sallow, businessman’s face ran rivulets. He put his back against the roots of the tree, took out his handkerchief, and began to mop.

      Five pairs of eyes watched him in agony. Neither the children, Gowther, nor the dwarfs had had time to make themselves comfortable among the branches, even if that were possible, but were standing frozen in the most awkward attitudes, cramped, precariously balanced. Any movement would have set the leaves dancing at the end of their snakelike branches. It was as though they were dangling in a snarl of burglar alarms. However, James Henry was not one to waste time unduly, and as soon as he was restored to a more even temperature he pulled himself up and went on his way, cursing the unwieldy rucksack that chafed his shoulders and was always becoming entangled with the bushes.

      “Well!” said Gowther. “Owd Hodgkins! Ten years he’s been a customer of mine. It just shows, you con never tell.”

      “I didn’t breathe once the whole time!” said Susan.

      “I couldn’t!” said Colin. “There was a branch twisting my collar, and it nearly strangled me! It’s not much better now. Is it safe to move yet, Fenodyree?”

      “Ay, if we can,” said the dwarf.

      He was wrestling to free his leg, which was hooked round the knee by a thick branch. But the branch swung higher at every jerk, and Fenodyree was being tipped gradually backwards off his feet. He looked so ridiculous, his knee level with his ear, that the others would have been tempted to laugh at his plight, had not they found themselves in difficulties as soon as they tried to move.

      These were old bushes, and behind the green outer cover lay the growth and litter of a hundred years; tough, crooked boughs, inches across, stemming to long, pliant, wire-like shoots; skeins of dead branches which snapped at a touch, forming lancets of wood to goad and score the flesh; and everywhere the fine, black, bark dust with the bitter taste, that burnt throat and nostrils and was like fine sand in the eyes.

      “It’s as … bad … as walking … on an old … spring mattress!” puffed Susan.

      “It’s worse!” said Colin.

      They had to step on to the thicker branches to clear the snare at ground level, and once off the ground they were helpless. The bushes dictated the direction in which they could move, and movement was not easy. Branches would give beneath their feet, and spring back awkwardly, catching limbs, and making even Gowther, for all his weight, lurch drunkenly, and grab in desperation the nearest support, which was invariably a change for the worse. And always they seemed to be forced to climb, with the result that they were soon two or three feet from the ground. Sense of direction left them: they just took the line of least resistance. But they noticed, with growing concern, that the earth, or what they could see of it, was becoming less like earth and more like water. Ice-covered puddles were frequent; very frequent; broader; deeper; they joined each other; and then there was water tinkling the pendants of ice at the bush roots, and no earth at all. Ahead, the curtain was not so dense, and Fenodyree, with renewed enthusiasm, plunged, bounced, rolled, and squirmed, and his head broke free of the chaos. Before, on either side, beneath, lay Radnor. The rhododendrons spread for many yards out over the mere, their roots gripping deep in the mud; and at the point where they stretched farthest into the water, five faces bobbed among the leaves like exotic flowering buds.

      “Happen I’m nesh,” said Gowther, “but I dunner foncy a dip today. I’m fair sick of this here cake-walk, though; so what do we do, maister?”

      “Nay, do not ask me, my friend. I am past thought,” said Durathror.

      “We must go back,” said Fenodyree. “Cousin, we may have space to draw our swords here. If we can do that, we shall cut an easier road to the path.”

      Dyrnwyn

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