‌Fittest

‌Janice Galloway

The weather had been wicked for ages but summer was little short of criminal. Warm, heavy rain every morning shifted to high winds, howling winds and tree-shaking bluster by noon. Long humid evenings, the sun emerging fitfully like a jaundiced eye between bruisy clouds, brought an end to more days than most cared to remember. There was even a freak shower of giant hail, ice-balls hard enough to shatter as they landed, spilling seeds, or maybe insect eggs, over the pavements of Braemar. Not to be outdone, Stornoway reported fleets of stray jellyfish stranding boats offshore, and Perth, a shower of live eels. The Central Belt was milder by comparison, but no one would have called it pleasant. Save for the occasional olive-tinted tuft, grass showed only in shades of straw and brown. When an intercepted film shot by Grampian Police surfaced on YouTube suggesting the sky near Inverness was turning bronze, those of us who paid attention to our instincts began, like salmon, drifting north.

Despite warnings of petrol shortages, I took the caravan. Old engines don’t let you down, and this way I could ferry the bike on the roof, just in case. The cat wouldn’t come – she’s not a traveller at the best of times – so I left the flap unlocked and plenty of food, set the tap to a dribble and left her to it, telling myself she’d be fine. Beasts, unless you deliberately crippled their chances, usually were. Nonetheless, guilt and worry nipped at me as I drove over the hills. No deer. No Highland cows. Nothing looked right.

Despite the dreichness of the drive, I was there before I realized, the loch showing suddenly over the gorse like labradorite under heavy cloud. A wispy ectoplasm floated above the water’s surface, preparing to evaporate the moment the sun broke through, only the sun wasn’t for breaking. The water itself was as still as ever, but swollen. Horribly swollen: near-convex, like a cow in calf.

Leery now, I parked behind a clump of spruce trees and scrambled up the nearest crag, scanning the surrounds for – what? Clues, maybe? A landmark that said I was somewhere else entirely? Most likely, something as weak-willed as the need for company. And there they were. Spread like sheep on the downside of the verge, their tents and their transport, their animals and children, washing lines like flags in the wind. A whole camp, it seemed, had arrived before me, massed, however loosely, for what was most likely the same reason I had begun this journey myself. The tweed set, having sought out less sodden clumps of moss, perched on shooting sticks near the edges of the lake, keen to observe what they took to be their terrain more closely. Others had gathered driftwood and stood chatting or simply staring near smoky fires. Behind them, fishermen cast lines. I glanced over my shoulder to the caravan, hoped its camouflage enough, and tipped my boots over the downward slope to join them.

Next day, I left the caravan shortly after dawn and approached the encampment by a devious route, fearful of giving away my home. Either I had miscalculated, or the number of settlers had doubled overnight. Two saddled ponies fed from open sacks at the waterside, and a handful of chickens, with no coop in sight, scratched at nothing under a barren tree. A man in a cloth cap had set up a deck chair and held a flask as he smiled absently over the water. There were tents, teepees, a makeshift lean-to and open-backed vans, and further off, a painted contraption not unlike a dog sled, its tangle of harnesses empty. A couple of boys in biker boots played Elvis songs to the queue at the snack van offering all-day breakfast rolls with black-pudding or sausage. I ate from my own provisions out of preference, watching monster-hunters, here in the hope of a brief appearance of Nessie from the vantage point of higher ground. A girl in tiger face paint had set up a stall with helium-filled balloons and inflatable hammers, and an ice-cream van rounded the brae with a jangly round of ‘Greensleeves’, the strains of which attracted a trio of divers, who broke the surface of the loch like seals. People took photographs. Why not? There was charm here, an air of festival. Even I could feel it.

At night, my natural caution restored, I saved the torch and washed my socks in the dark, taking my books to bed unread merely to keep them dry. I needed them for reference, after all, these maps, tables of edible flora and, if it came to it, fauna. Some were old, already out of print. I could not risk loss. Irredeemable loss.

Next day, an almighty whirring of helicopter blades brought a fly-over of military sorts and freelance hacks with long-lens cameras. I assumed they were scanning the loch, but perhaps they scanned the crowd: the hippies and hoboes, the students and amateur geologists, the tourists, the rubberneckers, and the solemnly intent that made up our group. We were families, radio hams and lone rangers. Silent, in the main, this last group exuded an aura of mild trepidation, a wish for separateness. They – or more correctly, we, for I counted myself part of their number – carried our own supplies: books, compasses, axes, wire and rope, picks and fish-hooks. We carried hunting knives, boning knives, toughened steel-parers. I knew from experience we carried lots of knives.

That same afternoon, the rain came back so hard it hurt. Some people moved out, or tried to, but their wheels rutted, spraying loam. As the sky darkened, faces that had begun to be familiar slid monkishly under the hoods of their jackets, and those without hoods wore supermarket bags, skin streaking into runnels as they ran. The priests – so similar they might have been twins – shut their innovative travelling confessional and shifted to drier land just before the deck chair, the refuge of the elderly man I had not seen for a day, now I thought of it, disappeared under a slick of loch-side mud. In disarray, the encampment shifted to higher ground, clanking and clustering like Greek hoplites beset by the Persians. When the sky lifted, they said, tomorrow; when the ground became less treacherous. But for now, we waited. Numbers meant safety, after all. We bided our time.

That night, reckless, I burned the torch for hours, checking routes, gambling they’d be unsubmerged. I whittled sticks, ignoring the whining of a dog outside that seemed lost or abject. I must have slept eventually, because something woke me. Through the low burr of morning rain, a beating noise. A slow, thick pulse. Awake immediately, I hauled on my boots and went outside.

In our sodden clothes, from the lip of our ridge, we – for there were many of us alert now – looked down at a loch that even from here was visibly bloating further. The rains, of course, but something more was at work. Perhaps a runnel had formed at an unthinkable depth between the loch, the River Ness and the Caledonian Canal. Could it be that the darkest basins beneath Loch Ness had finally opened and the long-denied sea was rushing into the freshwater vacuum? Maybe this, in turn, had led to the death agonies of freshwater fish and deep-sea invertebrates which showed on the surface as this tormented, implacable bubbling? Someone cranked up the volume of a radio, fast-forwarding through every channel in quick succession for news. We heard zip-fast fragments of jazz, a female voice intoning that all roads in and out of Westminster were blocked, a flash of Connie Francis singing ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ and Radio Nan Gàidheal warning tourists in English and Gaelic not to go out without a macintosh. An umbrella, the presenter joked, would only help you blow away all the quicker. Leave the bugger in the hall stand! Radio 1 blared a grating jingle followed by a breathless astrologer who insisted the monster would make an appearance at Loch Ness that very afternoon. Interference carried off the invited response of the Archbishop of Canterbury before Radio 2 screamed out the opening bars of the Doctor Who theme. With a cry of frustration, the owner cut the sound and there was only silence. Thick, almost dark silence. In the unaccustomed calm, the earth was steaming gently, allowing excess water to evaporate as the sun rose. The rain had stopped. The rain. Had. Stopped.

The priests were the first to rally, setting up votives under tarpaulin and handing out free cigarettes. There was laughter, a general softening of shoulders and shaking of hands. Tyres were checked with a view to moving on when the mist cleared, fresh tea gratefully sipped in proper cups. An elderly woman began to practise Tai Chi. It was then I noticed what made the human sounds, small as they were, so stark. There was no birdsong. No cries of crows or sparrows, not even a stray gull. I had a fag while they lasted, in sympathy with the others, and snapped my maps into the pockets of my cargoes. Two books, a knife, and a slim-handled pick. In case.

The dry spell continued just long enough to begin to seem normal. Then the earth, done with resting, girded its loins. We heard a sucking noise, like boots emerging from a swamp as, almost simultaneously, the loch surged. Fin-shaped waves were spreading out from its heart, coiling like the limbs of a giant squid or a Catherine wheel to flood what was left of the bank. Some yelled and began walking backwards to escape the steady seep. Grown bold now, the guitar players lifted their instruments like clubs and looked out over the water, ready to act. But there was nothing to act against: just more sound, like groaning, the press of insistent, ground-covering waves. Children clasped whatever hand was prepared to take theirs and a helicopter reared into view like a black Pegasus, the pilot waving one arm from the cockpit. Back, he mouthed, circling once, move back, though only a handful could have seen before the harsh, warm gust that meant he had turned away for the last time. As the water groaned again and the copter disappeared, I wheeled and walked, limping with something very like sluggishness, a sensation of being trapped underwater. Perhaps I was afraid. A great belch of mud and gas behind me was all it took to spur my legs, of their own volition, to a canter, to choose without my having to rationalize that to run was my best chance. Where were the pheasants? I thought. They were here only yesterday, but now not one remained. On either side, tethered dogs strained on their leashes, part of the debris, the abandoned litter we would doubtless leave behind. It was then, as I lurched uphill and away from whatever it was that headed towards us, I saw it. Off to my right, glowing in the dark, dry grass.

A tiny, living fire. I slowed. Orange with coal-black flecks and magnesium-flare markings, those tiger-tints of amber, auburn, gold. Closer to, though I tried to still myself, the creature fluttered, showing its full colours. A copper lycaenidae, but which? Its antennae, glowing like incense sticks; that frill, like bead-work on his wings; those distinctive legs. It was a Duke of Burgundy for sure. Male, perfect, impossibly far from home. Despite the situation, I could not help but smile. An allegedly extinct butterfly was here, miles from what had once been his normal habitat, breathing after all. And searching for a mate. And where he had chosen to search, where his instinct had driven him to best survive, was north. As I watched, he folded himself in half and lifted weightlessly into the air, spiralling higher with every beat of his wings. Against all prudent judgement, I waited, wishing him luck, till he disappeared.

Others crushed against me, insistent, haring in what I knew for sure now was the wrong direction. Trusting everything to an insect, I let his fitter senses guide me and took the left fork. I accelerated North. North.