Plug-Ugly and as gaunt and grey. I found it very comforting. It reminded me of Skarr.
Shortly, however, we came into an upland that was nearly level, where the grass was a normal kind of green. There were sheep grazing it everywhere. They wandered on to the road and stared at us and bleated. Around a bend there was fencing with cows behind it, and around the next bend there was a large rock. For some reason there was a rope wrapped around this rock with what looked like a small ship’s anchor spliced to the end of it.
“Are they afraid the rock will fly away?” Ogo wondered.
“You never know, with all the magic in Gallis,” I said.
As I said it, we came around the rock and saw that the rope led to a small shed uphill from us.
“No, it’s the hut that might fly away,” Ogo said.
Rees and Finn were waiting just beyond the hut. Ivar and Riannan joined them just as we saw them. They all turned and watched us coming.
“Welcome to the Pandy,” Rees said when we drew level. He gestured uphill to the left.
There was a big old farmhouse there, surrounded by more sheep and nestled most comfortably among rocks and stone buildings. Someone in one of the doorways saw us coming and shouted and went dashing to the back of the house. By the time we arrived, the farmhouse door was open and Rees’s mother and father were coming out to greet us, with, behind them, quite a crowd of farm workers and serving women.
“She won The Singing!” someone shouted. “I knew she would!”
Riannan’s mother rushed to embrace her. Then we were all introduced and a massive cowman reached into the cart and picked Aunt Beck out of it. She was carried into the Pandy sitting demurely across his great arms, just as she had been carried to the boat in Skarr. Indoors, we were all made very welcome. I think I have never felt so much at home as I did in that house.
The main room downstairs was a vast kitchen, very light because it was whitewashed. The wide windows looked out to the south-west. There was a fire in the big hearth, despite the warmth of the day, and the cowman installed Aunt Beck in a cushioned chair beside it before going crashing out through one of the several outside doors. There were big black beams in the ceiling with things hanging from them – Green Greet flew up there at once, where he sat gravely inspecting a string of onions. Plug-Ugly made straight for the fireside. Four sheepdogs and a whole crowd of cats instantly made room for him, most respectfully. He threw himself down in the best place and, in my memory, the rest of the day was filled with his rumbling purr.
I saw all these things in snatches because I was being passed between my uncle and aunt, who kept saying, “Really Gareth’s daughter! You have quite a look of him!” and, “You have your father’s eyes, did you know?” and so forth. It made me feel quite tearful. Wenda, my aunt, was almost as lovely as Riannan, except she was older of course and her hair was darker. My uncle’s name was Bran. I kept looking to see if he resembled my father, but it was hard to tell because he was very tall and had a full beard besides. I think he had the same slight air of majesty that I remembered in my father, as if he were above most people without meaning to be in the least. Rees’s younger brother Brent had the same air.
It was very strange to find so many unknown relations. And shortly there were more. People came flocking in from the houses down the other side of the hill, all on purpose to meet us. Each one would say to me things like, “I’m your father’s second cousin twice removed, see,” or, “I’m your grandmother’s niece, you know.” There were so many of these that I am quite unable to recall them all. The only ones I remember were the Dominie and the priest, who stayed to supper, and they were relatives too. The Dominie was Wenda’s sister and very learned, even more erudite than the priest, who was Bran’s cousin. Really, it reminded me of Skarr, the way everyone was related, and I had to struggle with another attack of homesickness.
All these visitors caused a great bustle of hospitality. Wine was brought out and tea was made, and Wenda and the two maidservants became very busy handing around olives and salty biscuits to go with the drinks. Ivar’s face when he first tasted an olive was a picture. His cheeks sucked in, his mouth and eyes screwed up and he said desperately, “Where can I spit this out? Please!”
Riannan collapsed with laughter, but managed to say, “In the fire of course, silly!”
Ogo said, “Oh, I remember these!” and took handfuls. He really loved them. And so it seemed did Aunt Beck. Ogo sat on a stool beside her chair and carefully took the hard little pipstones out of olive after olive for her. The fire hissed with a bombardment of olive stones. I think Ogo ate two for every one he gave Aunt Beck.
Finn sat quietly in a corner, eating everything that was offered. Well, I always thought Finn could eat anything. Me, I preferred the salty biscuits, although I imagined I might just acquire the taste for olives in time. Green Greet came down from the beams to share the biscuits with me.
In the intervals of all this, Finn, Ogo and I were at the windows, fascinated. Bran’s farmland stretched away downhill into the sunlight in gentle shelves. The grey-green trees nearest were where the olives grew. But there were vineyards and orchards of more normal fruit beyond, and field after field of crops of all kinds – I recognised barley and hay, but many were plants I had never seen before. The most fascinating things, though, were teams of little fat horses pulling carts of produce to the barns. They were not exactly carts. They had no wheels. Each one seemed to float ponderously behind the team pulling it.
“How can that be?” Finn wondered.
I wondered too. But mostly I was thinking that Bran in his way had a kingdom out there, full of distant relatives, rather like my distant cousin King Kenig.
When all the visitors had gone except the priest and the Dominie, there was supper served around the huge table. While I was busy bullying Aunt Beck to eat, Ogo got very bold and chatty and kept asking questions. One of the first things he asked was what were the astonishing carts without wheels.
“Oh, those,” Rees said, “are a magical invention of my father’s. Neat, aren’t they?”
I looked at my uncle, thinking, So he’s a magician too!
Bran grinned. “Took me a while to think them up,” he said. “They’re easier on the horses. But I still haven’t found a way to stop them swivelling about.”
“They need careful driving,” Riannan said. “I can’t do it.”
“No, my girl,” Bran said. “I’m still shuddering at the way you crashed my first one into the big barn.”
Riannan went very pink and said nothing more. Ivar, who would have laughed loudly at anyone else, looked at her sympathetically. “I can see it’s an art,” he said. I found I still seethed a little at that.
Ogo went on asking things, but the question I chiefly remember was when we were eating piles of pancakes covered with jam and honey for dessert. Ogo said, “Do you ever get snow here?”
“Not often,” the Dominie said and, typically of a teacher, went on, “Gallis lies in a warm air current from the southern ocean, you see.”
“But when it does snow,” Ogo said, “what do the bards do?”
“Oh, they get really busy,” Rees said, laughing. “They swarm around singing it all thick and white and picturesque, with beautiful icicles on every waterfall.”
