slide to a stop, turn and investigate. The rest of the pack engulfed it while it was still swallowing, then came on. Margaret dug into the saddlebag and flung piece after piece of her picnic behind her, until the street was filled with squabbling hounds. Only the slowest ones came too' late to share the feast, and they followed halfheartedly on her trail. Soon she was a hundred yards ahead of the nearest one. Next time she looked round they’d all given up.
Scrub took some slowing, though. The road -curved through a section of the city where all the houses had caught fire; it ran under a railway bridge and straightened again before he could be induced to canter, and then to trot. They were still going a fair lick when they came out into open fields and the road tilted towards the hills.
Two miles further on, among inhabited cottages once more, she dismounted and led him. His coat was rough and bristling, his cheeks and neck rimed with drying foam. Every now and then he tensed and gave a great heaving shudder. When the hill really began to slope steeply, beyond the turning for Upton, she led him onto a wide piece of grassy verge to graze and rest; there were two crusts of bread and a strip of bacon fat left for her lunch, and now it was nearly teatime, but she ate them thankfully, thinking that there are worse things than hunger. Then she looked over his hooves, though it was too soon to see how bruised he’d been by the punishing gallop along the tarmac.
They went home very slowly, Margaret walking most of the way. It was dark before they started down
through the long wood that screened the village from the north, and she was already far later than even Aunt Anne’s merciful errand would give her an excuse for; so just before she turned the lane where the farm lay she picked up a small stone and rammed it into the groove between Scrub’s near front shoe and the tenderer flesh. She led him into the farmyard convincingly lame.
But all the playacting she’d prepared, all the believable lies, all the excuses — they were unnecessary. Uncle Peter was cock-a-hoop at the best milk yield of the year; Aunt Anne wanted to know all about Cousin Mary’s new house; Jonathan talked busily about the fox cubs in Low Wood; Lucy was her usual secret self. Any stranger coming in would have thought them a nice, dull, contented family enjoying a plain supper after an ordinary day.
III
MARGARET was full of sleep — as full as a ripe Victoria plum is of juice — but something was shaking her. Her dream turned it into a bear, and she was too heavy to run away, and she was opening her mouth to cry out for help when she was all at once awake. Not very awake; longing for the warm and private world of sleep again; but awake enough to know that it was Jonathan who was shaking her and the world was too dangerous to cry for help in. She tried to say “Go away” but the noise she made was a guggling grunt, a noise such as a bear might make while shaking a person.
“Oh, wake up, Marge,” whispered Jonathan impatiently.
“I’m asleep. Go away.”
“Never mind that. He wants to talk to us.”
“Who does? The witch?”
“His name’s Otto.”
“Oh, all right.”
She rolled on her back and with a strong spasm of will power forced herself to sit up while the frosty night sent fingers of gooseflesh down her shoulder blades. Jonathan, thinking ahead as usual, had gathered her clothes onto the table below the window, where she could just see by starlight which way round she was picking them up; but she didn't feel warm even when she was dressed, and stood shivering.
“Shall I go down and get you a coat?" he whispered.
“No,” said Margaret, remembering all the betraying creaks in the passage and on the stairs. “I’ll be all right. I suppose we're going out through your window. What time is it?”
“Nearly midnight. I took some thistles to bed to keep me awake. Put your cushions under your blankets to make it look as if you’re still in bed — Mother might look in — she often goes creeping round the house in the middle of the night. That'll do.”
Outside, the frost was deep and hard, the true chill of winter. The stars were thick and steady between the apple branches, the grass crisp under her feet; dead leaves which had been soggy that morning crackled when she trod on them; the air was peppery in her nostrils. It would be hunting weather tomorrow.
As they stepped into the heavy blackness of Tim's shed Jonathan caught her by the arm and stopped her.
“He's ill,” he whispered, “and Lucy says she thinks he’s getting worse. I've put a splint on his arm and I tried to strap up his ribs, but I don't know if it’s any use. He can’t move his legs at all. Perhaps he’ll die, and all we’ll have to do is bury him. But if he’s too ill to think and then he doesn't die we've got to know what we’re all going to do. We’d have settled it this morning without you, but Lucy said he was too tired after his washing; he took one of the last of his pills, which are for when something hurts too much, and they make him sleep for twelve hours. So he should be awake now.”
She couldn’t see at all, but let him guide her through the torn asbestos, between the bruising tractors and into the engine hut. Here there was a gentle gleam from the shrouded lantern, as faint as the light from the embers of a fire after the lamps are put out.
Lucy was asleep on a pile of straw in the corner, but twitched herself wide awake the moment they came in. Tim was already awake, bubbling quietly, watching them, sitting so close to the lantern that his shadow covered all the far wall. The witch — Otto — was awake too, his eyes quick amid the bruised face. His wounds looked even worse now that the blood and dirt had been washed away, because you could see how much he was really hurt.
“Welcome to Cell One of the British Resistance Movement,” he said in his croaking voice. “I’m Otto.”
“I’m Margaret.”
“Pleased to meet you. I got a fever coming on, and we should get things kind of sorted before. I could have tried earlier, but I figured you were some kind of trap. But Jo tells me I owe you my life, young lady. Such as it is.”
“It was Jonathan really,” said Margaret. “I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“Well, thanks all the same. You reckon they’ll stone me all over again if they find me?”
“Yes,” said Jonathan.
“And what’ll they do to you?” said Otto.
Margaret and Jonathan glanced at each other, and then across at Lucy. She shook her head slightly, meaning that they mustn’t tell him, but his eyes were sharp and his mind quick with the coming fever. He understood their glances, plain as speaking.
“Kill you too?” he whispered. “Kids? What kind of folk are they, for God’s sake?”
“Not everywhere,” said Margaret quickly. “I mean I don’t think it’s the same all over England. I was wondering about that this morning. This village has gone specially sour, don’t you think, Jo?”
“I don’t know. I hope so, for the other villages’ sake.”
“They’re so bored,” said Margaret. “They haven’t anything to do except get drunk and be cruel.”
“It’s more than that,” said Jonathan slowly. “They’ve done so many awful things that they’ve got to believe they were right. The more they hurt and kill, the more they’re proving to themselves they’ve been doing God’s will all along. What do you think, Lucy?”
“That’s just about it,” said the soft voice from the corner.
“And what started it all?” said Otto.
“The Changes,” said Margaret and Jonathan together.
“Huh?”
“We aren’t allowed to talk about them,” said Margaret. “But everyone woke up feeling different. Everyone started hating machines. A lot of people went away, and the rest of us have gone back and back in time, until . . .”
“But why?” said Otto.
“I don’t think anybody knows,” said Jonathan.
The girls shook their heads. Tim bubbled. The witch was silent for half a minute.