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First published in Great Britain by Macmillan London Ltd in 1979
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
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Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1979
Map illustration © Sally Taylor 2017
Cover artwork © Manuel Šumberac
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Diana Wynne Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008170684
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008170691
Version: 2016-12-21
For my sister Ursula
Contents
I WANT TO TELL of our journey down the River. We are five. The eldest is my sister Robin. Next is my brother Gull, and then my brother Hern. I come fourth, and I am called Tanaqui, which is a name from the scented rushes that line the River. This makes me the odd one out in names, because my youngest brother is Mallard – only we always call him Duck. We are the children of Closti the Clam, and we lived all our lives in the village of Shelling, where a stream comes down to join the River, giving plentiful fishing and rich pasture.
This makes Shelling sound a good place, but it is not. It is small and lonely, and the people here are dark and unpleasant, not excepting my aunt Zara. They worship the River as a god. We know that is wrong. The only gods are the Undying.
Last year, just before the autumn floods, strangers came to Shelling from over the hills, carrying bundles and saying that our land had been invaded by strange and savage Heathens, who were driving all our people out. Hern, Duck and I went and stared at them. We had not known that we had any land except the country round Shelling. But Gull says the land is very large, and the River only the centre part of it; there have been times when Gull has said quite reasonable things.