Hexwood. Diana Wynne Jones

I do, somehow. Hume leapt down beside her, shaking with excitement. They watched the robot brace its silver arms on the railway sleeper and push. The timber swung sideways and the whole rubbish heap changed shape. The robot sat up among the elder trees. Very slowly, creaking and jangling rather, it got its silver legs under itself and stood up, swaying.

      “Thank you for releasing me,” it said. “I am only slightly damaged.”

      “They threw you away!” Hume said indignantly. He rushed up to the robot and took hold of its silvery hand.

      “They had no further use for me,” Yam intoned. “That was when they went away, in the year forty-two. I had completed the tasks they set me by then.” He took a few uncertain steps forward, creaking and whirring. “I am suffering from neglect and inaction.”

      “Come with us,” Hume said. “Mordion can mend you.”

      He set off, leading the glistening robot tenderly towards the door they had come in by. Ann followed, reluctant with disbelief. What year forty-two? she wondered. It can’t be this century, and I refuse to believe were a hundred years in the future. And Hume knows the robot! How?

      Well, I know the date is 1993, she told herself, and she knew, of course, that there were no real robots then. It was hard to rid herself of the feeling that there must be someone human inside Yam’s unsteady silver shape. The paratypical field again, she thought. It was the only thing that would account for those elder trees growing above Yam and the way Hexwood Farm itself was so mysteriously in ruins.

      With a sort of idea that she might catch the farmhouse turning back to its usual state, Ann looked over her shoulder at it. It happened to be the very moment when the decaying front door opened and a real man in armour came out, stretching and yawning like someone coming off duty. There was no doubt this one was human. Ann could see his bare hairy legs under the iron shinguards strapped to them. He wore a mail coat and a round iron helmet with a nosepiece down over his very human face. It made him look most unpleasant.

      He turned and saw them.

      “Run, Hume!” said Ann.

      The armed man drew his sword and came leaping through the weeds towards them. “Outlaws!” he shouted. “Filthy peasants!”

      Hume took one look and raced for the half-open door, dragging the lurching, swaying Yam behind him. Ann sprinted to catch up. As they reached the door in the wall, more men in armour came running out of the farmhouse. At least two of them had what seemed to be crossbows, and these two stood and aimed the things at Ann and Hume like wide heavy guns. Yam’s big silver hands came out, faster than Ann’s eyes could follow, closed on Hume’s arm and Ann’s, and more or less threw them one after the other round the door and into the snowball thicket. As Ann landed struggling among the bare twigs, she heard the two sharp clangs of the crossbow bolts hitting Yam. Then there was the sound of the door being dragged and slammed shut. Ann scrambled towards the open ground as hard as she could go.

      “Are you all right, Hume?” she called as soon as she was there.

      Hume came crawling out of the bushes at her feet, looking very frightened. Behind him there were shouts and wooden banging as the armed men tried to get the door open again. Yam was surging through the thicket towards them, swaying and whirring. Twigs slapped his metal skin like a hailstorm on a tin roof.

      “You’re broken!” Hume cried out.

      Ann could hear the door in the wall beginning to scrape open. She seized Hume’s wrist in one hand and Yam’s cold, faintly whirring hand in the other, and dragged both of them away. “Just run,” she told Hume.

      

      Mordion got off his rock hastily when Ann appeared, breathlessly dragging Hume and the lurching, damaged robot. He found it hard to make sense of what they were telling him. “You went to the castle? Are they still chasing you? I’ve no weapon!”

      “Not exactly,” Ann panted. “It was Hexwood Farm in the future. Except the soldiers were like the Bayeux tapestry or something.”

      “I told them,” rattled Yam. His voicebox seemed to be badly damaged. “Beyond trees. Soldiers. Me for. Afraid of Sir Artegal. Famous outlaw.”

      “Mend him, mend him, Mordion!” Hume pleaded.

      “So they’re not following?” Mordion said anxiously.

      “I don’t think so,” said Ann, while Yam rattled, “Inside. Me for. Famous knight. Cowards.”

      Hume pulled Mordion’s sleeve and shouted his demand. “He’s broken! Please mend him. Please!”

      Mordion could see Hume was frightened and distressed. He explained kindly. “I don’t think I can, Hume. Mending a robot requires a whole set of special tools.”

      “Ask for them then – like the nails,” said Hume.

      “Yes, why not?” Ann said, unexpectedly joining Hume. “Ask the parawhatsit field like you did for the aeroplane food, Mordion. Yam stopped two crossbow bolts and saved Hume’s life.”

      “He was brave,” Hume agreed.

      “No,” Yam whirred. He sounded like a cheap alarm clock. “Robot nature. Glad. Mended. Uncomfort. Like this.”

      Mordion pulled at his beard, dubiously. If he used the field the way Ann and Hume were suggesting, he sensed he would be admitting a number of things about himself which he would rather not admit. It would be like turning down a forbidden road that led somewhere terrible, to face something he never could face. “No,” he said. “Asking for things is cheating.”

      “Then cheat,” said Ann. “If those soldiers go back for reinforcements and come after us, you’re going to need Yam’s help. Or start being an enchanter again, if you won’t cheat.”

      “I’m not an enchanter!” Mordion said.

      “Oh blast you and your beastly field!” Ann said. “You’re just giving in to it and letting it make you feeble!” She found she was crying with anger and frustration, and swung round so that Mordion should not see. “Come on, Hume. We’ll see if my dad can mend Yam. Yam, do you think you can get across that river down there?”

      “You know Hume shouldn’t go out of the wood,” Mordion said. “Please, Ann—”

      “I’m – disappointed in you!” Ann choked. Bitterly disappointed, she thought. Mordion seemed to be denying everything she knew he was.

      There was a helpless silence. The river rushed below. Yam stood swaying and clanking. There were tears running down Hume’s face as well as Ann’s. Mordion looked at them, hurt by their misery and even more hurt by Ann’s contempt. It was worse because he knew, without being able to explain to himself why, that he had earned Ann’s scorn. He did not think he could decide what to do. He did not think he had decided anything, until a large roll of metalcloth clanked to the ground at his feet.

      “Did you ask for this?” Mordion said to Hume.

      Hume shook his head, sending tears splashing. Ann gave a sort of chuckle. “I knew you’d do it!” she said.

      Mordion sighed, and knelt down to unwrap the cloth. He spread it across the earth under the pine tree to find every kind of robotics tool in there, tucked into pockets in rows: tiny bright pincers and power drivers, miniature powered spanners, magnifying goggles, spare cells, wire bores, a circuit tester, a level, adhesives, lengths of silver tegument, cutters …

      Yam’s rosy eyes turned eagerly to the unrolled spread. To Mordion’s fascination, a sort of creasing bent the blank modelling of Yam’s mouth. The thing smiles! he thought. What a weird antique model! “Old Yamaha,” Yam