Waking wasn’t a bit good. I was so cold and stiff I heard my joints crack as I tried to sit up. I ached everywhere. And the pain in my head was worse. My eye had swollen half shut and was so gummy it took a lot of scrunching and stretching to get it open at all. But there was thin warming light coming through the arched windows even though the fire was now grey ash. And Saga was gone.
Brand sat on a chair, packing up his bedroll.
So here’s what’s going to happen, he said, and I stopped breathing for a couple of heartbeats as he pulled the knife out of the chair. I must be on my way, and just in case you’re telling the truth about the others being behind you, I’d best be going soon. Dawn’s up and there’s light enough to see the rocks in the water.
He used the knife to quickly gut a couple more of the red books and put them on the embers. Then he kicked another chair to bits and put it on the fire.
You blow on that, you’ll get it going again, he said.
I could see he was in too much of a hurry to fan it back into life for me.
I’m not a monster, he said. But I cut my own way through this life, Griz, and that is a truth. I don’t want you or yours following me. You all stay up here, away from the world. You’ve got a safe enough thing going. Just sit tight. World might come by and take a few things from you every now and then, but mostly you’ll be fine. You know what a tax is?
I did, but I shook my head.
Well, it was a thing people used to pay, like a money sacrifice. They paid it to be left alone and helped to live easier, I was told, he said. So when I come by, or someone else does, what we take’s like a tax.
That made no sense to me at all. I was much more interested in the way he was weighing the knife in his hands.
I see you moving about before I go, I will take it badly, he said.
You can’t leave me tied up, I said.
It’s just rope, he said. And I’ll not even take your knife. There’s a graveyard you maybe came through on the way up? There’s one stone unlike the others. I’ll leave the knife there. You won’t find it till it’s full daylight, but you will find it. Stone catches your eye because it’s different. I’m not a monster.
Saga clinked into view behind him. She clinked because she had Jess joined to her with a length of rusty chain, neck to neck, just enough play in it to let the bigger dog bite the littler one if she wanted, just enough to allow Jess to run hobbled alongside Saga, two steps to the one. Jess wouldn’t be able to bite back because she was wearing something on her snout that kept her mouth covered.
It wasn’t tight enough to stop her whining excitedly when she saw me, and her tail began wagging so hard her whole back end waggled from side to side and buffeted Saga. Saga snarled and bit her, not once, but twice. The muzzle didn’t muffle Jess’s yelp of pain. She tried to bite back, because being a terrier that was what she had to do, not having an inch of back-away in her, but all she could do was punch her muzzled nose into the side of the dog towering over her, and all that did was get another snarl and a single precise bite in the same place as the other ones.
Shackle the new dog to the old dog, said Brand. Teaches them how to be. Won’t take long till she’s broken to our ways.
Seeing the pain and confusion in Jess’s eyes was worse than the image I’d created in my head, the one of her drowning alone. She stared right at me and the question in her look—why aren’t you helping me?—could only be answered one way and my body was answering before my brain knew what it was going to do. I lunged to my feet and tried to get to her and then Brand stepped forward between us and straight-armed me in the chest with the open palm of his hand which hurt bad and winded me worse. It knocked me back so that I stumbled wildly to keep my balance, suddenly aware that without my hands to help me I could easily dash my brains out on the hard church floor.
As if he realised this, Brand jumped forwards and caught hold of my sheepskin. For an instant, we were eye to eye and I thought about hitting him in the face with my forehead, but then Jess yelp-snarled and tried to lunge at him, defending me, and Saga bit her again and then turned and ran, dragging Jess out of the building.
Again, Jess’s instincts were better than mine, and again it was the worst thing I’d seen, Saga just yanking her alongside her like a broken limb.
Brand sat me on one of the chairs. Then he shouldered his pack and picked up a long case that I guess held the violin and his other self.
Breaking her doesn’t mean she’ll be damaged permanently, he said. Just means getting her head right, knowing who to be loyal to now. And don’t fret. I’ll be good to her while I keep her. She’s full of piss and vinegar, same as you. I like that in a dog.
The cloud came back over his face.
Doesn’t mean I want to see it in you. In fact I don’t want to see you at all. Ever again. Because if I do, young Griz, if I do, things will go badly and there may be some dying to be done. So you stay in here until the sun’s full up and I’m over the horizon.
He pointed with his chin.
You just find your way home and stay there. World’s not what you think it is, but that needn’t bother you out there on the edge of it. It is empty enough though, so don’t you go looking for me. Once I’m gone, I’m gone.
You stole my dog, I said.
That all you can say? he sighed. Doesn’t get better the more you say it.
And with a half-wave and the ghost of his earlier smile he turned and walked out of the room, leaving me alone with the chairs, the mouldering pile of books and a fire I could not be bothered to work on. Instead I got up and walked around the church looking for something to get the rope cut.
There was a glint of metal behind the altar table, but it was just a cross on a stand and the metal had no edge sharp enough to help. I tried rubbing the rope against the corner of the altar but the stone was too dull and the rope too tough to get it done.
And then I got angry again and found I was standing in the door looking towards where the boat had been moored and looking at nothing but water. I decided there and then that if I couldn’t see him then he couldn’t see me and so I went out of the church and looked for the graveyard. It wasn’t as overgrown as I thought it might be, and the reason was obvious, though it gave me a shock when I first saw the sheep move out of the corner of my eye and thought it was Saga. There were wild sheep on the island and three ewes and a ram watched me suspiciously as I walked carefully into the garden of gravestones. It was a smaller graveyard than I expected, but then it was a small island and what buildings remained intact apart from the church wouldn’t have supported a big population.
The stones were all rectangular and weathered and I didn’t bother to read names as I usually did when walking past grave-markers on the Uists. I just made my way to the one different grave which was a round boulder, not shaped by anyone.
There was writing carved into it, writing that told me I was standing on the grave of someone who had been called Smith. My knife was in the grass in the shadow of the boulder, and I used Mr. Smith’s stone to carefully sit on, and slid down so my hands could find the knife behind me. Then I used it again to lever myself upright. I said a silent thank you because even though ghosts aren’t real and when you’re dead you stay that way, it seemed the polite thing to do.
I returned to the church and very carefully backed up to its thick wooden door, pressing the tip of the knife into the grain as hard as I could. Then I carefully put my wrists on either side of the blade and began to saw.
The knife fell out twice and I had to awkwardly pick it up and stick it back in before I got my hands free. And when they were my own again I gave a yelp and ran to the top of the slope that crested the island to check on the Sweethope.
It was gone.
He hadn’t taken it in tow, because I could see his red sails in the distance, but he must have cut the anchors loose. Maybe in retaliation for my locking up his anchor chain. I saw the Sweethope closer in, but still too far to swim for. And it was moving away on the drift of the tide.
My heart began to hammer again, but I was not too worried as I ran back down the slope to the other side of the island where the kayak was. I could move fast when I paddled, faster than the tide, and though it would be a long pull I knew I could reach the boat.
And I had to. Not just because it was my boat. But because Jip was locked below. If the boat got away from me, he would slowly starve and die of thirst. Alone. And believing he had been forgotten.
That thought made me run faster, which was a mistake because I fell and twisted my ankle and then had to hobble the last hundred yards.
Brand had found my kayak. And he’d been annoyed by it. The paddle lay snapped on the shoreline, as if he’d thrown it in the water which had then floated the parts back to shore. He’d also stamped through the kayak, putting a foot-sized hole in the top covering about where my knees were.
I cursed and turned the kayak over to look at the hull. And then I breathed a deep sigh of relief. You could see where his foot had smashed the bottom of the boat against the rocks, but it had not made a hole.
My heart was thumping badly and my hands were trying to move too fast and I fumbled and dropped the bow as I slid it out of the kayak. I left it on the ground and retrieved the broken paddle. Again I was moving too fast and nearly sliced my thumb open as I cut the mooring rope that was coiled in the bottom of the boat and used it to start lashing my bow as a splint between the two broken parts. My fingers seemed to have forgotten how to tie the right knots as the anchor knot kept slipping loose and making the whole lashing come loose. I closed my eyes and made myself count twenty very slow elephants. Then I cinched the beginning of the lashing so tight it hurt my hands as I kept the tension on, and wrapped the bow into the paddle. I took extra care with the finishing knot, and then tested the repaired paddle. It felt clunky in my hands but solid.
I didn’t waste time looking back at that church; I just gritted my teeth, told myself I was fine and not hungry or thirsty or hurting in all the wrong places, and dug in.
I paddled around the point and scanned the sea ahead of me. No sign of the red sails, which was not such a bad thing, but also no sign of the Sweethope. Which was. I began to feel that rising panic again and looked around to get my bearings, trying to work out where I’d stood on the hillock that divided the island, and then remember the rough direction the boat had been drifting.
As I did so, I realised that one reason I maybe couldn’t see the Sweethope was that I had been looking from a higher angle on land, whereas now I was sitting at sea level. And then again the sails were down which made it harder still to spot.
It’s almost impossible to stand up in a kayak, but I did. Very, very carefully. And then I saw the mast, and then the hull, and then as I sat down I realised I could still see them both. It was as if the panic had blinded me. Like I thought I’d lost them, so I did lose them.
The wind was getting stronger and blowing with the tide, which I didn’t like. I fixed my eye on the Sweethope and began the chase into the choppier waters between the bigger island and the mainland beyond. I kept an eye on the hills in the far distance and made a point of keeping track of the direction the Sweethope was drifting by using them as markers. I decided if the gap between us lengthened because of wind or my arms tiring I should still be able to find the boat by keeping on its bearing.
When I made the plan, I felt it was one of the ones you make for luck but you’re never going to need. Maybe an hour later I seemed no closer and my arms were shaking and my shoulder sockets seemed to have grit in them.
Then a sudden squall blew in from over my shoulder and I took my eye off the boat to look at the hole in the kayak top, wondering if the rain would fill the hull. I decided maybe I should take off my sheepskin and stuff it down there to prevent water getting in, and then when I looked up I couldn’t see either the Sweethope or the mountains beyond.
I decided once more not to panic.
But I did want to.
Instead I closed my eyes and concentrated on feeling the kayak and the current.
If you paddle in open water, there’s always a tension between you, the sea and the boat. You want to go to A, the sea’s pulling you towards B and your body feels the tension between those two destinations with every stroke as it fights B and angles the kayak towards A. I’d been paddling hard for more than an hour, maybe two even, and without noticing it my body had got into a habit and a feeling. I concentrated on getting that tension back—recreating the pull of the water and the balancing pressure as I pushed the kayak where I wanted it to go.
I was literally paddling blind.
It was like a game I used to play on the big wide beaches on Uist: close your eyes and see how far you could walk before you opened them. On the hard-packed sand, it was a matter of counting steps and feeling the slope of the beach so you didn’t veer into the shallows. It was always easy to start with and then you began to wonder if there was some treacherous loop of seaweed or piece of drift-garbage that was going to trip you at your next step. Eventually, a kind of horizontal vertigo would grip me and I’d open my eyes to find the beach clear ahead and all the snares only in my mind.
I counted to a hundred, then another and then halfway to the next hundred I felt the rain stop and I opened my eyes and there was the Sweethope, almost dead ahead. I grinned and felt good. Then I realised it was much closer than I’d expected and felt even better. And then I heard a distant barking, and felt worse as my thinking brain caught up with my excitement.
The Sweethope was turning slowly, and the reason it was closer than I had expected was that it was caught on a skerry. Shallow banks of sharp-toothed rocks are common around the islands, lurking just below the water, ready to rip the bottom out of any boat too blind to see them. As the Sweethope continued to yaw around, it revealed a lick of white in the water behind it where one of the treacherous outcrops was just breaking the surface.
Fear surged through my shaking arms and gave a boost of energy I didn’t know was still in me. The barking got high-pitched and urgent as I approached, and that helped too.
When I was about a hundred yards out—and just beginning to think everything was going to be all right—there was a cracking noise and the boat slewed drunkenly in the opposite direction to the one it had been going. The current had twisted it off one rock and snagged it on the next one. I had visions of the scene inside the cabin if the hull were holed and that noise meant water was now gushing in, and I started shouting and whistling so that Jip would know help was on the way.
Brand had been in a hurry to get going, and so had only cut the anchor ropes in order to set my boat adrift. They were whipping the side of the hull in the freshening breeze, and I snapped my hand out and caught the flailing end of one and used it to pull myself alongside. I shouted to Jip and banged the boat and as his barks mounted in excitement I threw my paddle into the cockpit and awkwardly scrambled aboard, almost losing the kayak as I did so, and then as I sprawled to keep hold, I nearly fell back into the water myself.
It’s okay, Jip! I shouted. It’s okay.
But it wasn’t. Even as I manhandled the kayak over the taffrail, I could feel the keel grinding on the rocks below. I wondered whether I should lash the kayak down as I always did, or if I should leave it ready for a quick exit if the boat was holed and started to sink. Habit won and I tied it off with a quick-release knot, jumped down into the cockpit and tore open the cabin hatch. Jip hit me like a furry cannonball, jumping up, tail thumping away as his paws scrabbled at me, yelping and barking happily. Like all terriers, he wasn’t usually a soppy dog but he had clearly been scared by his confinement and the absence of a familiar person as the boat had swept away on its own.
Sorry, boy, sorry, I said and hugged him to me.
I allowed myself to bury my face in his fur while he licked away at my neck for a long moment. I think we both needed the physical contact with something familiar, something that loved us.
Then the boat lurched and I pushed him away and ducked into the cabin. I really needed to see if we were taking on water. A quick check seemed to show the hull was intact. The floor was dry all the way to the bow compartment. That was good news. But the grinding noise was worse below deck, where it had an added resonance that came through the soles of my boots. This close to, there was an ominous creaking undertone below it, like something was bending under the boat. I thought it was the keel and that it might be jammed in a crack in the rocks. It seemed to me there was every chance it might snap off or rip straight out of the bottom of the boat. Jip was standing in the hatchway looking at me, panting.
I grabbed the old saucepan we used as bailer and dog bowl and filled it from the canteen. He scrabbled down the steps and lapped the clean water greedily. I told him I’d feed him later and stepped up into the cockpit, ducking below the boom and looking over the side opposite the tide, trying to see exactly what we were stuck on.
It wasn’t rocks. I think if it had been rocks then maybe the waves would have smashed the Sweethope more than they did. What the boat was stuck on was a moveable object, itself drifting with the tide. At first I thought it was a boat, half sunk and drifting below the surface, but its sides and angles were all flat and right-angled. Then I realised it was a big metal shipping box, the size of a small house. There was one of them on Eriskay, mostly rusted out, on a wheeled trailer by the causeway. The majority of the paint on this one had gone and it had a thick beard of barnacles and seaweed dangling off its wrapping, which was a tangle of nylon fishing net. I crossed to the other side of the cockpit and saw the net was snarled round a second metal box floating end-on, nose down in the water. The first box must have had air trapped in it, making it more buoyant. It seemed like the keel of the boat was wedged in the gap between them. Because the boat was above water, the wind was trying to make it move faster than the current that was moving the boxes below, and that was what was twisting the keel.
I was going to have to cut the netting. And there was a lot of it. And the wind was getting up. So I was actually going to have to get it done before the keel snapped off. If the keel went, the bottom could rip out of the boat, or the boat could just capsize.
With the boathook and my knife, I set to work. I hooked the tangle of netting and pulled it to the surface and just started sawing at it. I didn’t have a plan of attack to begin with, but as I worked the twist of the current and the movement of the boat kept it taut and I was able to cut down the same row, strand after strand. The plastic your people made was strong stuff. We find so much of it now—I wonder if it will outlast us entirely. The netting bit back as I cut it. Sharp strands parted suddenly and scratched at the back of my hands as I worked the knife, and the palm of my right hand got blisters which then burst and stung in the salt water.
I don’t remember much from that afternoon, because it was gruelling, repetitive work and my side hurt from lying on the deck and leaning out over the water, and my back hurt from being bent over the gunwale all the time. I do remember stopping for water and making a lanyard for the knife because my grip was so painful I was worried about dropping it into the sea, and I do remember doing exactly that several times as the light began to dim all around, each time yanking it back up out of the depths and carrying on sawing away at the hard plastic strands. I also remember how the net suddenly untwisted at one point, slashing the side of my arm with a garland of sharp-edged shellfish that had colonised it. I’ve still got those two scars. And then—maybe because the part of the net that had been closest to the sunlight had rotted more than the strands I had started on—the thing suddenly came apart, and the heavier, nose-down cargo box dropped into the depths. Because it was already underwater, there was no noise and it was a strangely final but undramatic moment as it disappeared. The other one was more lively—freed of the counterweight, the air trapped in it bounced it higher in the water and though I moved fast, it still took skin off the back of my forearm as the rough tidemark of barnacles rasped across it. I swore and pulled back onto the boat.
The floating container rolled slowly on the surface like a lazy whale showing its belly to the sky, and then began to drift away as if it had never meant us any harm at all.
Cut loose, the Sweethope immediately felt different under my back. It bucked more in the chop—suddenly frisky—as if it really wanted to get moving again. And though I wanted to lie there and sleep for a while, I knew the boat was right and I had to get sails up and find somewhere to moor for the night.
Again, I have little memory of the rest of the afternoon, except I know I got the sails up and caught the wind and that Jip reminded me to feed him. And I know that the boat steered a bit differently to the way it always had, but I put that to the back of my mind. And most of all I remember that though I had the strongest heart-tug to turn her north and head home, I headed south-east, for the mainland. At the time I thought it was because it was close now, and so provided the best chance of a safe anchorage. Now I think I always knew I wasn’t going to give up on getting Jess back. And then again, I had never once set foot on the mainland itself. Curiosity, you see. It doesn’t just kill cats.