a silly goose,” said her elder brother, Dawsy.
Dakin had stopped drinking her soup and was looking out of the window towards the farthest-away mountain, which in the clear air looked as if it were just beyond the end of the village. “I must go to the farthest-away mountain and see what’s in the forest,” she said. “And I want to find out what makes the snow change colour.”
“There’s nothing in the forest that you won’t find in our own pine wood,” argued Margle, her second brother, who thought he knew everything. “And I can tell you why the snow changes colour, without you going to see: it’s the sun shining on it.”
“Shining blue? Shining green?” said Dakin scornfully.
“The gargoyle part’s silly, though,” said her littlest sister Triska, who was only six. “I’ve seen pictures of them in Paster’s book of church pictures, and they’re horrid and ugly.”
“I think they look sad,” said Dakin, “I want to find one and ask why gargoyles look sad.”
“They’re only statues of heads. They can’t talk!” scoffed Sheggie with her mouth full. “Anyway,” she added with some satisfaction, “You’ll have to give in about the prince. There’s only Prince Rally, and he can’t marry anyone until the Ring of Kings is found.”
“Which might be any time,” said Dakin.
“Which will be never,” said Margle. “It’s been missing for seventeen years, since it was stolen by a troll at Prince Rally’s christening. And no one in the Royal Family can get married without it.”
“Besides,” said Sheggie, “what makes you think he’d marry you? He’d want to marry a princess.” But a dreamy look came into her eyes, so that Dawsy, who was a tease, said, “Look at Sheggie, wishing he’d come and ask her!” And they all laughed.
Dakin’s brothers and sisters forgot what she’d said, and her father and mother hoped Dakin had forgotten too. Four years went by, and young men began to ask for her hand in marriage. But when her father would tell her that this one or that one had asked for her, Dakin would only shake her head.
“It’s no good, Father,” she would say. “I’ve made up my mind to visit the farthest-away mountain, and see a gargoyle, and find a prince to be my husband.”
Her father at first tried to reason with her, and later got angry and shouted, and as time went by he grew pathetic and pleaded, which was hardest of all for Dakin, who loved him, to resist. But her mind was made up and somehow she couldn’t change it.
So now she was nearly fifteen and there was hardly a young man in the village who had not asked for her at least once and gone away disappointed. Sheggie and Dawsy and Margle were all married, so that left only Triska at home to keep her company. But she seemed quite happy, and usually sang as she did her work round the house; only sometimes, on her way past a window or across the grass outside the back door, she would stop with a dishcloth or a plate of chicken-meal in her hands and look to the left, along the valley to where the royal estates lay, with the spires, high walls and shining golden gates of the palace.
Then she would turn and look the other way, towards the mountain. She would stand quite still, as if listening; then she would sigh very deeply before moving on again.
One morning, very early, Dakin woke up sharply to find herself sitting up in bed.
“Somebody called me!” she thought. “I heard a voice in my sleep!”
She jumped up and ran to the open window in her long nightgown. Outside the sun was just appearing beyond the farthest-away mountain, breathing orange fire onto the strange, patchwork snow and streaking the pale sky with morning cloud-colours. It was still cold, and Dakin shivered as she called softly into the empty world:
“Did somebody want me?”
No one answered, and Dakin thought she must have dreamt it. But just as she was turning to jump back into bed again, she saw something which nearly made her fall out of the window.
The mountain nodded.
At least, that’s what it looked like. As the sun almost burst over the top, the black head of the mountain seemed to dip, as if to say, “Yes, somebody wants you.”
Dakin stared and stared, forgetting the cold, until the sun was completely clear of the peak and stood out by itself, round and red and dazzling. Nothing else happened, but all the same, Dakin knew. It was time to start.
Moving quickly and quietly, she put on her warmest dress with three red petticoats under it, her stout climbing boots which laced with coloured lacings up past her ankles, and the white apron she always wore. She hadn’t time to plait her hair so she pushed it out of the way under her long white stocking-cap. Then she tiptoed downstairs.
It was difficult to be quiet because of the boots, which she should have left till later. Her mother called from the bedroom:
“Dakin, is that you?”
“Yes, Mother,” said Dakin, wondering how she would explain her going-out clothes if her mother saw her.
“Put on the water for the porridge, little one,” called her mother sleepily.
Dakin almost changed her mind about going in that moment. She wanted to run into her parents’ room and curl up under the big feather quilt, hugging her mother’s feet as she used to when she was little. It would be so safe and happy to put the water on the big black stove for the porridge, and later to eat it with coffee and wheaty bread with Mother and Father and Triska, and feed the hens and do the washing and go on all day as if the farthest-away mountain had never called her.
For a moment she paused on the stairs. Then she thought, “No. I must do what I’ve said I’ll do.”
So she went downstairs, and pumped the water very quickly and put it on to heat. Then she hastily filled her knapsack with the things she thought she’d need – a chunk of bread and another of cheese, a slab of her mother’s toffee, a mug and a knife, a candle and some matches. Then she looked round. On the window-ledge was a book of poems her father had brought back for her from the city, and she put that in.
Then, as an afterthought, she lifted off the mantlepiece the little brass figure of a troll that her father had found years and years ago on the very edge of the pine wood. She held the little man in her hand and looked at his impish, bearded face under the pointed hat.
“I shouldn’t take you really,” she whispered. “You’re brass, and you’re heavy.”
But nonetheless she slipped him into her knapsack and felt him slide between the loaf and the book and lie at the bottom. And she didn’t feel so lonely, suddenly.
Now she could definitely hear sounds of movement from above, and she knew that soon they’d be down. So she pulled her warm brown cloak down from the hook behind the door and wrapped it round her; then she put all her weight on the heavy latch, and the next moment she was out in the bright morning, running, running towards the farthest-away mountain with her white stocking-cap flying out behind her and her knapsack bumping.
First she had to go through the village, or rather across a corner of it. People she knew were just opening up their shutters and putting their bolsters and sheets on the upstairs window-ledges to air.
“Good morning, Dakin!” they cried as she passed. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“I’m going to the farthest-away mountain,” she called back over her shoulder. But they all thought she was joking, and laughed, and let her go.