He is brought to a gasping halt at the sight of them: Kettle Peak and the knolls, solemn and majestic, just as they’ve always been. He turns in a slow circle, breathing in the expanse, filling his lungs with it and hearing, just for a moment, a phantom Taffy panting at his leg. Eleven years ago, he calculates: striding through the chill with Taffy—taking stock of the world he strode through too. It returns to him. Family. What to protect. How to protect it.
Smoke threads from one of the Hierde House chimneys. Emily will be with Mrs Simpson, little Lou leaning from her mother’s embrace, arms waving, as if she could catch the smells that cram the kitchen—yeast, cinnamon, raisins—in her tiny fingers. And when Lou becomes too heavy, Emmie will see if Bea can tend to her squirming niece and sink with a sigh into the nearest chair.
He feels the smile on his face, and it reminds him that he could, if he wanted, think as a child might—as he once did—on the failings of guardians, on the loss that scarred his childhood, on that interminable span of time when he and Emily were cleaved from each other, battling something they could not even name. But he is a guardian himself now. A husband, a father—maybe soon a politician under Gladstone, if Father’s retirement opens the way for him to stand, represent the constituency; one day, a baronet. And so he will do what he has done for years now: stay calm, be patient; quietly support any legislation that continues to improve the lot of the poor, the uneducated, the homeless; take comfort in these little steps; cherish thoughts of the future—the influence he will have, the plans he will set in motion. He is only twenty-seven, after all.
He stamps his boots against ground made rock-like with cold, wiggles his toes in their woollen socks, whacks his jacketed arms across his chest, rubs his gloved hands hard against each other, turns again to the ascent, slipping on heather, skirting spills of rock, feeling the air race raw into his lungs. A cow lows in the distance as he climbs, and rooks cry harshly overhead, making their way north. Heading for the elm thicket, no doubt, the rookery there.
There was one in that dream that came at the darkest time, the dream that is now only wisps in his mind: entering the thicket, the cradle of elms, and a glossy rook egg. Black, beating wings. His own form reflected, whole and good, in the eye of a rook. Then Mother’s voice, and the egg’s dark tracings settling into a language he could finally, finally understand.
Here it is, the outcrop of gritstone. The craggy tumble, the gaps and crannies. And now the skull, a bare summit. The vista of villages and ranges. The feeling of being on top of this whole vast, multitudinous world. And again the sense of Taffy alongside him, their breaths hanging white in the chill air, the press of the terrier’s hard nut of a head against his leg. Then that urgent bark. It comes back to him, this memory, with clear, bright edges: the downhill run, the fierce moorcock, remembering Harris and Rattlin and the fight. His own defence of something he could not put a name to, then. Mother. And fending for those not able to fend for themselves. Fighting for others. Fighting for love.
His feet lead him off again—to the east this time, along a path he rarely follows. And then that cry again, like a rusted lid forced open: another rook, a straggler making its solitary way to the rookery.
How wonderful to be able to fly. To see the world like a story unfurling below you. To see him, Arthur, brown cap of hair and feet beneath. To see him, Arthur, striding into his future. To see him, Arthur, becoming smaller and smaller until, finally, he disappears.