The next morning I woke to bright sunlight and the sound of frenzied yelping. The door of the hut was open. The Siltman was there, his rags flapping. He was shading his face with his hand as he gazed up the river. Siltboy was with him, and the dogs were gone.
‘They are hunting, Siltgirl,’ the Siltman called, without looking in my direction. ‘They have caught the scent of something.’
‘I’m not Siltgirl. My name is Peat.’
‘Soon you will forget your old name,’ he said. ‘The dogs are turning. I can hear them.’
I looked along the riverbank. The dogs were racing through the water, driving something in front of them – something small and red.
‘Sleek!’ I cried.
He was heading in our direction, with the dogs on his tail, snapping and whining. He swerved and disappeared into a thicket of tussock grass on the riverbank. The dogs immediately had it surrounded.
‘Stop them!’ I screamed. ‘Call off your dogs.’
‘Why?’ the Siltman asked. ‘They love to hunt.’
I turned to Siltboy. ‘You shouldn’t have called him!’
Siltboy cringed.
The sleek shot out of the tussocks. He flashed past me into the hut and I leapt in front of the dogs.
‘Siltman, stop them! Please!’
The Siltman raised his hand. ‘Hold.’ He didn’t speak loudly, but the dogs stopped in their tracks. They looked towards him, quivering. If he lowered his hand or flicked his fingers they would be onto the sleek in a moment. They would tear him to pieces.
‘What will you give me?’ The Siltman stared in my direction with his peculiar eyes.
‘A story,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a story.’
I hoped the sleek might squeeze through a crack in the back wall of the hut or dig himself out. I had to give him time to escape.
‘Stories must be opened and closed,’ I said. I put my hand in my pocket and, to my surprise, something was there. It was the bottle of perfume Lily had given me in the marshes. I held it before me.
‘Once, long ago, there was a Siltman,’ I began. ‘He understood the language of birds and animals, and he travelled with a pack of hounds that were as big as horses. The dogs answered his every command.’
The Siltman slowly lowered his hand and the dogs went to him and sat at his feet. He was listening. The story had better be good. What had Siltboy told me? To be trickful and cunning.
‘Every summer the Siltman travelled north and the dogs travelled with him. Every winter he returned to the mouth of the Silver River, by the sea. Then one day a girl arrived. Her name was Peat.’
My heart was thumping in my chest. I had no idea how the story would go. I took a deep breath and continued.
‘Peat was a storyteller. She could tell a tale and make it come true. She had learned from a powerful teacher who was hundreds of years old – a teacher almost as old as the Siltman.’
I tried to remember the rules Eadie had taught me. See the story in your mind; then the audience will see it, too.
‘Peat came from the world beyond.’
I glanced at Siltboy. He was twisting the stranger’s thread between his fingers and staring at the Siltman with the same rapt attention as the dogs. The thread gave me an idea.
‘She was carrying a disease,’ I declared. ‘A deadly disease.’
I was thinking what to say next when I heard a screech and the sleek jumped from the door of the hut onto my shoulder, knocking the bottle out of my hand. It landed on a rock and smashed, releasing a fine mist. The dogs were on their feet in a second, but the Siltman raised his hand.
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Go on, Siltgirl.’
The sleek hesitated for a moment before jumping from my shoulder onto the rocks behind me. I saw the white tip of his tail disappear into the dunes.
When I turned back to the Siltman, I noticed a change had come over the dogs. They were no longer looking after the sleek or waiting for a command from the Siltman. They were gazing vaguely at the ground. The dog next to the Siltman put its head on his foot, and the one on the other side slumped against his legs. The air was filled with an acrid scent. It smelled a bit like ants.
The Swoon! I saw my opportunity and seized it.
‘It was a sleeping sickness! The disease spread from Peat to the Siltman’s dogs.’
‘No,’ the Siltman breathed. ‘That’s not true.’
‘One by one they sickened and died, and without the dogs, the Siltman was lost.’
I didn’t know what had made me say that. Maybe it was the uncertain look on the Siltman’s face. He moved his head from side to side and whispered a command to the dog that stood beside him. It gave a little sigh and fell down, almost knocking the Siltman over. He reached around him, feeling for his other dogs, and in that moment I realised he was blind.
‘He wasn’t lost,’ the Siltman muttered. ‘He had the boy to lead him.’
Siltboy was still twisting the stranger’s thread between his fingers. He looked terrified.
‘Siltboy wouldn’t help him,’ I cried, hoping it was true.
‘Boy,’ the Siltman ordered. ‘Come!’
Siltboy took a step towards the Siltman. He looked at me and stopped. I could see that he wanted to obey his master.
‘Boy!’ said the Siltman. ‘Where are you?’
‘Brave yourself, Siltboy,’ I whispered. ‘Courage is the warrior’s way.’
Siltboy stayed where he was.
‘Stop,’ cried the Siltman. ‘Stop the story!’
‘I can’t finish the story until it reaches the end,’ I said. ‘It’s one of the rules.
‘The Siltman had made a bargain, and the bargain was complete. The Siltgirl was his. She would stay in his country forever. The only way he could get rid of her,’ I said, ‘was to reverse the bargain.’
The Siltman nodded like a person in a trance.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Reverse the bargain. You’re trouble, Siltgirl. You’re wilful and bad. Go back to where you come from.’
‘Where are you keeping Eadie’s spirit?’ I asked. ‘If the bargain is to be reversed I must take it back to her.’
‘I put it in a plant . . . a flower.’ The Siltman staggered and lowered himself to the ground.
The perfume was starting to work on him the way it had worked on the animals. Lily must have perfected it – or perhaps it was the creature in him that was responding. I stepped back and hoped the wind wouldn’t blow the scent in my direction. The Siltman leaned against one of the sleeping dogs with his face turned to the sky.
‘Which flower?’ I yelled. ‘Where?’
But he didn’t answer. His breath wheezed in and out and his rags flapped around him. The Siltman was asleep.
I backed away.
‘Call Shadow,’ I said to Siltboy. ‘We have to find the flower and go quickly. I don’t know how long the Swoon will hold.’