"Mayhap on the way home," Gwen answered. "Yet now, I think, we must needs be on our way, Gregory."
"Cannot the rocking horse come?" Gregory asked, crestfallen.
"Nay, though it doth warm mine heart to know thou dost wish it," the rocking horse answered. "Yet I must needs rock here on my dial, or I'll not grow. Wouldst thou deny me that?"
"No," Gregory said, as though it were pulled out of him. "Yet I shall miss thee, good horse."
"And I thee," the horse answered, and for a moment, its music swelled up, slower and sadder than it had been.
"It must let thee go thy way." Cordelia laid a hand upon Gregory's shoulder. "And thou must let it grow."
"Indeed I must." Gregory turned away, following his siblings and Fess with lowered gaze. Cordelia's eyes misted. But Gregory turned back and called to the horse, "Shall I see thee when thou art grown?"
"I doubt it not," the horse cried, rocking away on its arc.
"Belike I shall be transformed into a great spring-steed—yet I will know thee."
"And I thee," Gregory returned. "Till then!" He waved once, then turned away, catching his sister's hand as he straightened up, squared his shoulders, and lifted his chin. "Come Delia! For I must let it rock!"
She squeezed his hand and followed a half-pace behind, hoping he would not see the tenderness in her smile.
Gwen blinked several times, caught Rod's hand, and followed.
Chapter Five
"This deal of sound could become a great nuisance." Gregory winced at the raucous noise around him. As they walked ahead through the trees, it dwindled behind them; but before it had faded, the music of the next rock wafted toward them on a truant breeze.
"It is not terribly loud yet, Gregory," Fess suggested. "It is not truly the volume that irritates you."
"Cordelia," Rod said, "stop nodding."
"Mayhap." Gregory looked distinctly unhappy. "Yet the coarseness of it doth jar upon mine ear."
"Even so, son," Gwen agreed.
"It is the timbre, the quality of the sound, that bothers you, is it not?" Fess asked Gregory.
"Cordelia," Rod said, "stop bobbing!"
"The quality?" Gregory frowned, listening to the music for a minute. "Aye, 'tis summat of the sort. 'Tis harsh; an 'twere less so, that fall of notes might be a ripple, whereas now, 'tis a grating."
"Perhaps it is the rhythm of the bass, the low notes, that bothers you."
"Magnus!" Rod snapped. "Can't you walk without tapping your toes?"
"Mayhap." Gregory cocked his head to the side, listening. "Aye, for each third beat hath stress when it should not… Fess!" Gregory's eyes widened. "It doth no longer grate upon mine ear!"
"I had hoped that would occur."
"Yet how hast thou…Oh! When I do begin to analyze it, the music doth cease to irritate, and doth fascinate! Or if not it, at the least its composition!"
"Precisely, Gregory. There are few irritants that cannot become a source of pleasure, if you make them objects of study."
"Fess! It hath become greatly louder!" Magnus called.
"It has." The robot-horse's head lifted. "What causes that?"
The path widened suddenly, and they stepped past the last trees into a broad meadow with a stream running through it; but on the other side of the stream was a churning mass.
"Well, then, what have we here?" Geoffrey growled.
"Naught but a pack of children." Magnus looked up, frowning, then stared. "A pack of children?"
"'Tis the bairns of three villages, at the least!" Gwen exclaimed.
"Each beast comes in its own manner of grouping," Gregory said. "Sheep come in flocks, as do birds—and lions come in prides. Yet 'tis wolves do come in packs, brother."
"Then what do children come in?" Geoffrey demanded.
"Schools," Gregory answered.
Geoffrey turned away with a shudder. "Scour thy mouth, brother! An thou dost wish to be fish, thou mayest go thine own way!"
"I do not seek to gain on such a scale," Gregory protested.
"Whatever their aggregate, we must discover their purpose." Magnus jumped into the air and wafted over the stream toward the mob of children. "Come, my sibs! Let us probe!"
Rod started to call him back, alarmed, but found Gwen's hand on his arm. "There is no danger, and we must discover wherefore these children are gathered here."
Rod subsided, nodding. "You're right. Let the younger generation take care of its own."
Cordelia, Geoffrey, and Gregory swooped up to follow Magnus with yelps of delight.
"However," Rod said, "I'd like to hedge my bets. Fess, you don't suppose that you…"
"Certainly, Rod." The great black horse backed up from the riverbank a little, then bounded into a full charge, accelerating to a hundred miles per hour in fifty feet, and sprang into the air, arcing high over the water to come thudding down ten feet past the opposite bank. Not that he needed to fear wetting, of course—his horse-body had been built with watertight seams. But jumping was faster, and the river was muddy, and it would have been so tedious to have had to clean all that sediment out of his artificial horsehair.
Still, the children could have waited.
"I see a boat." Gwen pointed downstream.
Rod looked up and nodded. "Careful, dear. It gets soggy, over there." He offered his arm; they began picking their way through the cattails.
By the time Fess caught up, the Gallowglass children had landed and were prowling around the edges of the mob, staring, fascinated, for the crowd of children was in constant motion, pulsing like some huge amoeba. On closer inspection, the pack proved to be composed of smaller groups, each doing something different—skipping, dancing, tossing a ball—but each child was making every single movement to the beat of the music that twined all about them, throbbing and swooping.
"What hath set them to moving all together so?" Cordelia wondered, nodding her head in time to the beat.
"In truth, I could not say," Geoffrey answered, his hand beating time.
"Why, then, let us ask them." Magnus reached out to tap a six-year-old on the shoulder. The child looked up, nodding to the beat, but his eyes didn't quite seem to focus.
After a moment, he turned away and, on the downbeat, tossed a ball to another six-year-old ten feet away.
"Hold! I would speak with thee!" Magnus cried, tapping him again; but the child only looked up once more with unseeing eyes.
"What dost thou?"
Magnus looked up to see a ten-year-old step up behind the smaller child. "I do but seek to speak with him."
The ten-year-old shrugged, head and shoulders bobbing, and spoke with the beat. "He is young, and hath not yet caught the trick of speech."
"Trick of speech?" Geoffrey was puzzled. "Why, how is this? A child hath learned that much by the time he is two!"
"But not the knack of speech in time," the nodding boy answered. "He cannot therefore speak, till he hath caught the rhyme."
"There may be rhyme to thee, but no reason! Nay, then, do thou tell us—how dost thou come to all move together so?"
"Together?" The boy frowned, looking about him. "We do not move together. I move as I wish, and they as they wish!"
"Yet thou dost all make thy movements of a piece, at the same instant!"
"Why, how else can one move?" the boy asked, surprised.
"I do not understand."
"Then thou art dimwitted," a twelve-year-old said, stepping up. "Cease to pester my brother, and let him return to his jackstraws."
The children watched, astonished, as the ten-year-old knelt down in three separate, rhythmical stages, picked up the jackstraws on one beat, settled them on another, and dropped them on a third.
"Can he not move between beats?"