Drowned Ammet
The second book in the epic fantasy-adventure series from ‘the Godmother of Fantasy’, Diana Wynne Jones. Now back in print!For centuries, Dalemark has been a land divided by the warring earldoms of the North and South. Now, with the help of the Undying, the mysterious gods of Dalemark, four extraordinary young people must join forces to reunify their beloved land.After his father mysteriously goes missing Mitt joins a group of freedom fighters plotting to overthrow the tyrannical ruler of Holand. But when his assassination attempt against the earl backfires, Mitt stows away on board a ship heading out to sea. As the boat is battered by storms Mitt finds himself alone among his enemies – except for the figure of Drowned Ammet…
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First published in Great Britain by Macmillan London Ltd in 1977
This edition published by HarperCollins Childrenâs Books in 2016
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Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1977
Map illustration © Sally Taylor 2016
Cover artwork © Manuel Šumberac
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
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: 9780008170653
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008170660
Version: 2016-10-21
For my mother
Contents
PEOPLE MAY WONDER how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end.
Mitt was born the day of the Holand Sea Festival, and he was called Alhammitt after his father. Perhaps the first sound Mitt heard as he burst bawling into the world was his parents laughing about both these things.
âWell, he took his time,â said Mittâs father, âand chose his day all right. What does this make him? A man of straw, born to be drowned?â
Milda, Mittâs mother, laughed heartily at this, because the Sea Festival was something of a joke. On that day, every autumn, Hadd, the Earl of Holand, was required by tradition to dress up in outlandish clothes and walk in a procession down to the harbour carrying a life-size dummy made of plaited wheat. The dummy was known as Poor Old Ammet. One of Haddâs sons walked after him carrying Poor Old Ammetâs wife, who was made entirely of fruit, and her name was Libby Beer. The procession that went with them was both noisy and peculiar. When they reached the harbour, they said traditional words and then threw both dummies into the sea. Nobody knew why this was done. To most people in Holand the ceremony was just an excuse to have a holiday, eat sweets and get drunk. On the other hand, everyone would have thought it horribly unlucky not to have held the Sea Festival.
So Milda, even though she was laughing until her dimple was creased out of existence, bent over the new baby and said, âWell, I think itâs a lucky birthday to have had. Heâll grow up a real free soul, just like you â you wait! Thatâs why Iâm calling him after you.â
âThen heâll be common as dirt,â said Mittâs father. âJust like me. You go into town and shout âAlhammittâ in the street, and half Holand will come to you.â And they both laughed at the thought of the common name they were giving their baby.
Mittâs early memories were full of his parentsâ laughter. They were very happy. They had the good luck to rent a smallholding on the Earlâs land in what was known as the New Flate, only ten miles from the port of Holand. It had been reclaimed from sea marsh by Earl Haddâs grandfather and grew lush emerald grass, big vegetables and corn in narrow yellow stripes between the dykes. Dyke End holding was so fertile and the market of Holand so near that Mittâs parents had plenty to live on. Though Earl Hadd was said to be the hardest man in Dalemark, and other farmers in the Flate were always being turned out of doors for not paying their rent, Mittâs parents always had just enough money to go round. They laughed. Mitt grew up running carelessly along the paths between the crops and the dykes. It never occurred to anyone that he could drown. When he was two, he taught himself to swim by falling into a dyke when his parents were busy. Since no one was there to help him, he had to help himself. He struggled to the bank and got out, and his clothes dried in the stiff breeze as he ran on.
The sound of that breeze was as much part of his early memories as his parentsâ laughter. Apart from the hill where Holand stood, the Flate was flat as a floor. The wind blew straight across from the sea. Sometimes it came storming in, laying the grass over, chopping the sky reflected in the dykes into grey Vs, and hurling the trees sideways so that their leaves showed white. But most days it simply blew, steadily and constantly, so that the dykes never stopped rippling and the leaves of the poplars and alders went
