The Golden Flight (20 page)

Floating torpidly in the water near her was the abandoned Woodstock. Sun forbid that the Greys learn the secret of its power, she thought, and was about to direct her swan towards it, when the twisted stick, as if it was now too tired to float, tilted slowly into an upright position then sank in the deepest part of the pool. It seemed to the exhausted squirrel as if it was being drawn down by an invisible, underwater paw. Sunlight glinted on the tiny ripples created as it disappeared.

‘SWANS –  she said wearily.

‘SWANS –

FLY ME BACK TO THE BIG ISLAND –

ACTION NOW –

The swans turned and once more ran down the surface of the pool, taking off and circling to gain height. Marguerite, looking down past her swan’s neck, saw the mass of Greys on the ground below, heading for the Blue Pool. Even from high above, a sense of jubilation was apparent in their movement and her anger rose.

‘SWANS –

FLY LOW OVER THOSE GREY CREATURES –

ACTION NOW –

FLY STRAIGHT –

STEADY –

EMPTY YOUR BOWELS –

ACTION…ACTION…ACTION…

NOW!

FLY ME TO THE BIG ISLAND –

ACTION NOW –

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Lord Malachite looked up when he heard the W-wow, W-wow, W-wow of the swans’ wings overhead and watched the two white birds circle round in a wide arc, then fly in straight towards him. He was staring at the leading bird, trying to see if there was one of those hated natives clinging to its back, when a shower of stinking green dung splattered him from head to foot.

‘Lord Malachite – Lord Mala
shite
– more likely,’ a voice called from behind him, and he turned furiously but was unable to see which of the grinning squirrels had spoken.

‘Silence!’ he shouted, trying to wipe the slime from his face. ‘Back to your duties, all of you.’

He stayed behind as the other Greys passed him, wrinkling their noses pointedly. Then he sought out one of the small pools that had formed in the remains of the many worked-out clay-pits scattered over the Great Heath. He found a pool with a fallen post reaching out into the shallow water and went along it to the end, stopped and splashed himself, washing the swan-dung from his fur and tail. When he had finished, he peered at his reflection in the water. Was that him? That old, fat squirrel staring back at him.

He sat up and looked around. The pond surface was still, except for tiny disturbances where whirly-gig beetles swam in frantic circles. Round his head damsel-flies with blue or brown bodies flitted. A pigeon coo-d its familiar call from a pine and he suddenly felt homesick for the Tanglewood. But no. He braced himself – there were troops dependent on him at the New Massachusetts Base, his place was there with them. He hurried off in that direction.

When he arrived, the Greys were milling about aimlessly. He climbed on to a stump and called for order. No squirrel heeded him. He called again.

‘Shut it, Malashite,’ a Grey called. ‘We’re all leaving. Something about this place stinks!’

The speaker flicked his tail insolently and headed off westwards, followed immediately by the others.

Lord Malachite sat on the stump until they were all gone, then hopped off in the direction of the Tanglewood, curiously light-hearted.

Burdock, the Ourland News-squirrel, was planning a field day. Even before dusk fell, she had extracted all the details of the Eyeland rescue from her mother and was preparing to spread the news across Ourland at first light –

TEACHING SQUIRRELS SNATCHED FROM CERTAIN DEATH.

In a rescue unique in the history of squirreldom, Marguerite saves her

brother and others from the raging hordes of Greys and returns with them

high on a bird’s back…

Marguerite woke to the sound of her daughter’s voice and listened sadly to young Burdock telling a dramatised account of the events of the last few days, then she turned away to seek out Wood Anemone and comfort her for the loss of her life-mate, Spindle. She would probably be building a new drey in the same tree where she had had her home when she was a zervant on the island years before.

As Marguerite hopped along, Burdock’s words repeated themselves in her head – high on a bird’s back – high on a bird’s back! The words seemed familiar, but she was sure that she could not have heard them before. No one had ever been
high on a bird’s back
or even considered the possibility.

She must be wrong, yet the words would not go away.

She was concentrating so hard that she nearly ran into a party of humans who had just arrived on the island by boat, hoping to see the famous red squirrels. Marguerite fled up the nearest tree, a mature birch, to their ‘0o’s’ and ‘Ah’s’ and hid behind the trunk, catching her breath. Her claws bit deep into the silvery-white bark as she clung there. Birch-bark.

I honour birch-bark
, she said to herself.
High on a bird’s back
–
that
was the pattern of words.

Forgetting the humans, she tried Old Wally’s prophecy again.

High on a birds-back

The Island Screen. Flies stinging –

The piece of the sun
.

Or could it be –

High on a bird’s back

The island’s Queen. Flies stinging . . .

If Queen was right then it could be –

High on a bird’s back

The island’s Queen flies . . .

But then it would be –

. . .Stinging . . .

The piece of the sun.

Not a lot of sense in that, although the first part felt right. Forget it – there aren’t any Queens on the island now anyway, though Wally couldn’t have known that when he composed his prophecy. So ran Marguerite’s thoughts as the humans walked on and she resumed her search for Wood Anemone.

She found her with her twins, building a good sized drey in a pine tree, helped by Chip. She greeted them and Wood Anemone paused in her work to talk. Marguerite said how sorry she was that Spindle had been killed by the Greys, but Wood Anemone seemed to have accepted the fact easily.

‘Him would have been pleazed to go like that. Him liked to help otherz, it wuz hiz whole life really. Him’z left uz two good daughterz.’

She indicated the twins who were with Chip collecting moss for lining the drey. They too did not seem unhappy.

Wood Anemone continued, ‘Uz only regret iz that hiz body iz hanging from a tree, inzstead of being cozy under the ground nourishing won, like iz proper. But there uz is…’

Chip watched until he saw the conversation cease, then hopped over.

‘Quite an adventure we had…’ then stopped, his head on one side.

‘Yes,’ Marguerite replied, ‘if only we hadn’t lost Spindle and Hickory, it would all have been wonderful. The flying was most exciting.’

Marguerite turned to Wood Anemone, ‘Did you ever hear Old Wally’s prophecy that starts –
I honour birch-bark
?’ she asked.

‘Oh yez.’

‘Hie honour birch-bark,

The I’landz Queen fliez, bringing

The pieze of the zun.’

‘Did you say
bringing
, or
stinging
?’ Marguerite asked.

‘Zum zay ztinging but uz iz zure it uzed to be bringing.’

‘It didn’t start
High on a bird’s back
did it?’ Marguerite asked.

It might have done, wonze. Theze thingz changez over time, Marguerite-Friend.’

High on a bird’s back

The Island’s Queen flies, bringing

The piece of the sun
.

‘That would make some kind of sense if we knew who
the Queen
was, and what is meant by a piece of the sun,’ Marguerite said.

Chip was sure that
he
knew. He had heard a little about queens from Just Poplar and how beautiful they had been. The Queen in that prophecy must be his beloved Marguerite, and the piece of the sun was that golden disk that he had so stupidly dropped in the water at Rowan’s Pool. But he said nothing. He must find a way to get the gold and fulfil the prophecy. Then he would ask his Queen to be his life-mate.

‘If I could get over the water I’d go back and bury Spindle,’ he said unexpectedly.

‘Zo would uz,’ said Rosebay who had just joined them. ‘Uz would too,’ said Willowherb.

As they were saying this, The grey squirrel, Sumac, on the Eyeland, was engaged in just this melancholy task.

The previous day, following the trail from the Blue Pool towards Rowan’s Pool, he had heard the sounds of a group of excited Greys coming towards him and had hidden to hear what they had to say. ‘…totem stick was nasty…lots of curled whiskers…some very sick still…serve the Reds right…good native is a dead one…hanging there…covered in it he was, head to tail…silly old fool…’

Sumac heard enough to know that he was too late to be of any help. When the posse had passed, he had come out of hiding and had run after them.

‘Sorry to have missed the action. Only just arrived. What happened?’ he asked breathlessly.

When he had heard the full story, including Malachite’s humiliation, he slipped away and followed the well-beaten trail to the Eyeland Pool. It was all just as he had been told, the body of his friend Spindle was hanging from one of the island trees alongside that of Hickory, while Sitka’s corpse dangled grotesquely from a tree above his own head.

Sumac climbed and dislodged Sitka’s body, which fell to the ground amid a buzzing of disturbed flies. He dragged it across the tree-trunk bridge on to the island and buried it at the foot of one of the trees, then did the same with the other two – one beneath each tree.

Judging by the accounts of the rabble he had just met, these were three fellow Sun-squirrels, two of them Silvers, who had died defending their beliefs even though it meant being branded as traitors by their fellows.

Moved by a feeling he had never before experienced, he gnawed away a small area of the pine-bark just above the ground and cut a fish symbol into the trunk of each tree.

The setting sun lit up the bright patches of exposed wood and a tiny tear of resin oozed from the bitten bark above Spindle’s grave. Sumac turned, crossed the bridge and headed back over the Great Heath towards the bulk of Screech Hill. Tumbleweed would be wondering why he had been away so long.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Bluebell approached her aunt shyly. She had learned to respect Marguerite on the journey the previous year which had culminated in the battle of the Agglestone. Since Marguerite had flown in on the swan’s back to rescue them from the Eyeland, her aunt had been elevated to an almost Sun-like status in her eyes.

Marguerite looked at her niece, Rowan’s daughter, waiting for her to speak, and remembering the first Bluebell who had given her life to warn the Reds of an impending attack by the Greys of the Silver Tide.