Tulku by Peter Dickinson Page B

fuzz of twisted trees crowned these outcrops, and nearly always there was a shrine or tomb, mostly in ruins but once or twice looking almost new.
    To Theodore’s eye the path vanished – you could roam where you wished over the measureless grassland – but Mrs Jones seemed to see where it lay. The grass itself was deceptive, shimmering green in the distance but underfoot only tufts and sparse blades protruding through shaly soil. The air was almost painfully sharp and clear after the muggy heat of the valley. At first their path took them back to the line of the river, which now ran a thousand feet below them, cutting its way through a gorge which made the ravine at the Settlement seem no more than a trivial crack. Even from this height, though, they could hear the mutter of rock-torn water. Then the river curled away south and for three hours they rode through the weird plateau, with no landmarks except the rock formations, which often looked completely different from different angles. It became steadily colder, and Theodore was grateful for another of P’iu-Chun’s ‘gifts’, a hip-length jacket of coarse-woven wool, with a breast-pocket he could fill with bread to munch as he rode.
    Towards dusk they came to a pillar crowned by a shrine and a single, leaning birch-tree. A flight of steps had been cut in the sheer side. Mrs Jones reined and looked at it.
    ‘This’ll do,’ she said. ‘You two give the horses a feed, and I’ll nip up with the glasses and see if I can spot if we’re being followed. If we ain’t, then we’ll camp here – if we are, then we’ll have to plug on.’
    She dismounted, took a pair of binoculars from her saddle-bag and started to climb the steps. Lung seemed even more absent-minded than usual, so Theodore saw to the horses single-handed. When he had finished he found Lung staring up at the rock-pillar and followed his gaze. Mrs Jones was there, standing on a slant of rock stair forty feet up, her back braced against the cliff and the binoculars to her eyes.
    ‘She has a great head for heights,’ said Theodore.
    ‘She is the osprey on the crag,’ said Lung. ‘She is the song men sing when they march under banners. Her heart beats with the blood of dragons.’
    ‘Yes, she doesn’t seemed scared of anything.’
    ‘But she is the duck on the nest. She is flute music heard under willows in the evening. Her eyes shine with lamplight from old gardens.’
    ‘Is that your own poem?’
    ‘A beginning. You have fed the horses?’
    ‘Yes. Do you . . .’
    ‘Look, she has seen us.’
    Mrs Jones’s voice floated down through the evening stillness. ‘Cooee! I can’t see nothing, and that’s right to the forest. We’ll camp here. And I’ve found a nice cave a little up the cliff.’
    * * *
    The cave was dry and surprisingly clean. Lung said it had probably been used by a hermit. They made no fire, but cooked hot stew from a can using Mrs Jones’s patent stove, whose white tablets of solid fuel reeked vilely in the clean air. They ate their food in the dark, by feel and smell, and watched a storm build itself against the mountain wall far to the north. Lightning whipped and blinked, too distant for them to hear the thunder, but overhead the sky was full of stars.
    ‘Going to be a moon,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘We better keep watch, I suppose. Don’t feel like sleeping, myself, so you go and kip down, Lung, and I’ll wake you when it’s your turn . . . No, you stay along of me, young Theo, and I’ll tell you my life history. I need a bit of company, stop me thinking. You’re not too fagged?’
    ‘No, not at all,’ said Theodore with automatic politeness, though his eyes were sticky with needed sleep and his whole body chilled through.
    ‘That’s the ticket. Here, wrap yourself in a couple of blankets. Off you go. Lung, and don’t lie awake half the night making up poetry – I can see you’re in the mood. You’ll have the other half for that, when you’re doing