boy,’ he said. ‘Are we nearly there?’
‘No, my Mist. First we must reach the mountains.’
The cat did not speak aloud, nor did Bowman answer him aloud. But they understood each other well. The cat asked this question every day, and every day received the same answer. There were never any mountains to be seen, so Mist had come to believe that Bowman chose to conceal their true destination. Mist knew that Bowman had great powers, greater even than his former master, Dogface the hermit, who had been able to fly. If the boy had such powers, he could not possibly be leading all these people with so much effort for so long, without knowing where he was going. Therefore their destination was a secret. So reasoned the cat, clever but not wise.
‘And on the other side of the mountains, your homeland.’
‘Yes. We believe so.’
‘It must be something very wonderful, this homeland.’
‘We shall see.’
‘Do the cats there know how to fly?’
‘I don’t know, Mist. I don’t know that there are any cats there. But if there are, I doubt if they can fly.’
‘I shall teach them.’
Bowman smiled and stroked the cat’s head. This annoyed Mist. It had always been his heart’s dream to fly, and just once he had made a jump that was so immense that it must have been flying. He had told the boy, and the boy had said he believed him, but the look in his eyes had shown that this was no more than a polite pretence.
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘If you say you flew, Mist, then I believe you.’
‘Well, I did fly.’
The truth was, he couldn’t be entirely sure. The time he had flown, it had only been a short distance. A short flight is very like a long jump.
‘Take care, Pinto!’
This was Hanno, calling out in warning. Pinto had seen a plump husk on a very high branch, and she reckoned she was light enough to reach it without danger. Looking across to the neighbouring tree, she saw that Mo Mimilith was also climbing, and he saw her. At once, instinctively competitive, they began to race each other.
Mo Mimilith was three years older than Pinto, and much heavier. At first his greater strength enabled him to outclimb her. But then he felt the branches bending beneath him, and realised he was at his limit. Pinto kept on climbing, her skinny little body easily supported by the upper branches; and so was the only one to reach to the very top of the tree.
She looked down and saw the wagon, with the horses among the cows, snuffling out what coarse grazing they could find. She saw the huddle round the fire, where the sourgum was being boiled, and she smelled its strange sharp-sweet smell. She saw her mother, seated on the ground with her father beside her, holding her hands and stroking them, as he so often did. Then she looked across and saw Mo Mimilith on his way down his tree.
I’ve won! she thought, exulting. I’m the highest one of all!
Only now, turning and looking up and ahead, did she think to take advantage of her high vantage point. There were the rolling hills, receding into the distance. But beyond them, far off, she could clearly discern through hazy low cloud a range of jagged white-capped peaks.
‘Mountains!’ she cried. ‘I can see mountains!’
No one else would be able to climb so high. She must be the eyes for all. She looked and looked, and memorised.
Some way off, the rolling land levelled out and became rocky and craggy: it seemed to be a huge desert of cracked and shivered land, a rubble of boulders and fissures. On the far side of this broken plain, where the cloud lay low over the land, there was a belt of dark forest running from side to side of the visible world. Within this forest gleamed a river; and beyond the river towered the mountains. They rose through the cloud, to rear their bare-toothed peaks all along the white horizon.
Bowman called up to her.
‘Can you really see the mountains?’
‘Yes! Far, far away!’
People were gathering below, staring up at her.
‘Be careful!’ That was her father, who could see how the treetop swayed under her weight.
She came scrambling down, a little too fast, showing off, and grazed one arm. She pretended not to notice. The marchers gathered round her, eager to hear what she had seen.
‘There’s a river,’ she told them. ‘And a forest. But before that, empty land, for miles and miles, all full of cracks.’
‘Cracks? What kind of cracks?’
‘Like cracks in dried mud. Only much bigger.’
‘Did you see any people? Any houses? There must be people living somewhere.’
‘No. I didn’t see anyone.’
‘How far to the mountains?’ asked the teacher, Silman Pillish.
‘Miles and miles. Days and days.’
‘Days and days!’
‘And how far beyond the mountains?’
This question was addressed to Ira Hath. She was the prophetess, the one who knew the way to the homeland; though, as she told them again and again, she would only know it when at last it lay before her. She had seen it in a dream. They would find it on the other side of mountains, at the end of a path rising between steep slopes of land. It would be snowing. Ahead, the sun would be setting. Red sky, falling snow: and framed in the V of the hills, a land where two rivers ran to a distant sea.
‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ she said. ‘First we must get there.’
‘It’s just beyond the mountains,’ the people told each other. ‘The homeland!’
Even though the mountains Pinto had seen were so far away, this news gave everyone heart. They felt the end of their journey had been sighted. Their task now was to survive the getting there.
While Hanno Hath questioned Pinto more closely about what she had seen, Kestrel went up to Bowman.
‘It’s only mountains,’ she said, very low. ‘We don’t know the homeland’s on the other side. There might be a desert on the other side, or a swamp, and then more mountains, before we get to the sea.’
‘There might.’
‘So there’s nothing to get so excited about.’
‘No,’ said Bowman. ‘But people need hope.’
‘I don’t. I don’t want hope. I want what’s real. I won’t believe we’re getting to the homeland until I see it.’
‘You don’t really want to get to the homeland at all,
