On the way over he unraveled a spare length of rope, knotted a few strands into a pattern of squares and set it to grow into a bag-net, which he trailed over the stern and scooped up a couple of plump sunfish. But at Angel Isle his luck seemed to run out. All round it the cliffs ran sheer down to the water with the ocean swell foaming against them. There was no possible anchorage or landing place.
He sailed as close as he dared to the cliffs and asked the wind-charm to hold the skiff steady in one place against the current flowing past the island. Then he took four of the coils of rope he had brought and flung their ends up against the cliff, telling them to lodge themselves in crannies, wriggle on up and find somewhere to secure themselves. That done he dropped their lower ends into the water, two on each side of the boat, telling them to float themselves below the hull, knot themselves to the rope opposite, and then tighten their weave along their whole length so that as they shrank they lifted the skiff clear of the water while he used an oar to stop it scraping against the cliff face.
He was nine years old, and none of this was anything he’d thought of, let alone tried, before. It was just there, on Angel Isle, waiting for someone who knew about ropes to use it.
“Swarmed up and found this place,” he said. “Changed me. Didn’t realize it; then kids don’t. Cooking my fish, all I thought about. Told the ropes to fetch me driftwood, caught in the rocks. Piled it up. Lit it by snapping my fingers—hedge magic, of course, but I’d never seen it. Good fish, mind.
“Dropped off when I’d finished—dog tired—working all night, remember. Strange dreams, shapes, distances, all wrong. Nothing fitting with anything. Know why now. Maja will tell you. Eh, Maja?”
She opened her eyes to see him sponging the last morsels out of his bowl—her bowl—with a hunk of bread. Jex had changed back into his proper shape and crept out of the saddlebag and was now squatting on a sunlit boulder, staring at him with unblinking eyes.
“Woke up feeling nothing I can’t do,” he said as he chewed. “Only got to find out about it. Twenty years I spent, just finding out. Best time of my life.”
He had changed, she thought, since she had first seen him yesterday, in Benayu’s egg. There was something slightly different about him, but she couldn’t think what. He swallowed the last spoonful and gave a long, satisfied belch. As if at that signal the rhubarb-and-ginger crumble appeared on the turf. Maja smiled at the familiar smell. Even the dread and misery of life at Woodbourne hadn’t been able to spoil the excellence of her aunt’s cooking.
“I could eat a little of that,” she whispered.
“A little,” said Ribek.
It was as good as her aunt’s had been, but no better. Strange to think of her aunt never making it again. When they were back in the Valley, she decided, she’d go to Frog Bottom and ask Mrs. Finsdaughter to show her how. Then she could make it for Ribek as often as he liked.
“Want you to understand,” said the Ropemaker. “That’s why I’ve been telling you all this. Next thing, Tilja and the others show up in my life. Won’t bother you with all that—you know the story.”
“I’m not from the Valley,” said Benayu. “I only know what they’ve told me.”
“Ring Faheel passed on to me? Know about that?”
“You can use it to change time, so you can undo something that’s happened and do something else. You’d need to get outside time to do that, so it’s got to have something to do with other universes, where time’s different.”
“Mphm. Fourteen, and you’ve figured that out. Took me getting on a couple of centuries. Didn’t start thinking about it straight off, of course. Too busy getting things sorted in the Empire. Good people helping me, mind you. Tilja, Lananeth, Zara…You met Zara at Larg, Maja says. Waiting for me to come back. Good, brave woman. Let her down. Any of the others, they’ll be gone. Or turned into Watchers. Worse, that. Ah, the things you do for the best. You think.”
He took a small black box from the fold of his cloak and sat staring at the ground, juggling it up and down in his hand. The mood and posture made him look somehow older. She could almost feel how long he had borne his burden. Yes, that was it. He did look older. Yesterday, in Benayu’s egg, he’d seemed about Ribek’s age. Now she’d have guessed at a good ten years more.
He sighed and straightened.
“Never used the ring unless I had to,” he said. “Scared the hell out of me first time I tried. Still does. Maybe if I’d practiced a bit more, wouldn’t’ve got into the mess I did. Ah, well.
“Getting worse, if anything. Time’s like that. Every day goes by, another lot of complications weave themselves in. Things old Faheel did, I doubt he could do now. Ring only makes it worse. Every time you use it, you mess with time itself. Does a bit of that, even when you’re not using it. Like a rock in a river—sets up an eddy, just by being there. Round and round, round and round, can’t stop. And after all that, who d’you hand it on to? Really want it, you’re not fit to have it. Wrong people get hold of it—Watchers, way they’re set up now—these Pirates of yours—either of them…doesn’t bear thinking about.
“Decided, better get rid of it. Once and for all. Hide it, someone’d have found it. Melt it down, smash it to bits, no chance. Only hope was unmake it, same way it’d been made.
“How? Saw I’d got to get outside time somehow. Tried using the ring—takes you someplace else—sort of nowhere—can’t explain it—all there is is this rope thing, everything ever happened, happening now, going to happen, this and that causing this and that, all woven together, stretching on and on each way, for ever. Been there before. So that’s time, I used to think. Started nosing around, up and down time, see how it all worked, how it was made, how to unmake it.
“Took me a while to see I’d got it wrong. Rope isn’t time. Time’s always out there—things happening, kid swinging on a branch, star falling, chick hatching, arrow on its way, blink of an eyelid. Rope I was looking at—that’s only a model of real time, time out there. Ring’s inside time, and you’re in there with it, and the rope you’re looking at, all inside the ring, still inside time. You can mess with it inside real time, and somehow it reaches out, outside real time, and messes around with stuff that’s happened, changes what’s going to happen.
“No use trying to unmake the ring from inside real time. Wasn’t made that way. Made from outside it. Got to be unmade same way.
“How do I do that, eh? Thought about it all day. Got nowhere. Woke up next morning thinking, wrong question. Not how, where. Where’s outside time? Thought about that all day. Still got nowhere. Had a dream that night. Strange. Nothing happened in it. Just kept seeing shapes, distances. All wrong. Nothing fitting with anything. Remember? Same dream here, on Angel Isle.
“Never been back till then. Didn’t want to spoil it for myself. But came here and nosed around. Found the whatchamacallit…”
“Touching point,” said Jex in their heads.
“Right. Made of the wrong stuff somehow. Didn’t get it about different universes, different dimensions, all that. Trial and error. Blasted myself clean out of the tunnel a couple of times. Must’ve been mad to try it.”
He laughed, shaking his head at his own folly.
“Did it in the end,” he went on. “Made a sort of pocket in the barrier. Put a lining into it—wove it out of same stuff barrier was made of, way I do with a net. Made it small, easier to move around once I was through. Came out egg-shaped, like Benayu’s. Seemed to be the only way. Don’t know why.”