I walked away from the accusing finger of smoke with the thumpity-thump delivery Dad had always read the mariner poem with pounding away in my brain. If you listen to someone reading a poem often enough, it hammers itself into your mind and makes it not only easier to remember, but also harder to forget. I would really have liked to have forgotten the lines that kept going round and round, the ones that said something like:
And I had done an hellish thing,
And it would work ’em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay
That made the breeze to blow!
Well, I told myself. At least I don’t need breezes to get me moving. All I need is my legs.
And I did punish them, walking more pebbles in that first day than I had done in two before I had lost Jip. I walked hard to make my body ache enough to distract me from the heart-wrenching question of why I had set off on a probably futile search for one dog and then lost the other. In shame and self-loathing, I walked through the dusk and on into the darkness, lit by moonlight until the clouds came and then I rolled into an uncomfortable bundle beneath a little rounded bridge that had once taken a small road over a single railway track. It was dry and like a house without walls on two sides. I slept well and woke to the sound of birds in the trees all around me, and stepped out into the sunlight feeling that this was going to be a good day. The feeling lasted through most of the morning, and even raised a bit as my nose caught a whiff of woodsmoke blowing into my face as I climbed the first proper slope I had so far encountered on my walk from the coast. I knew from the direction of the wind that I was not smelling Jip’s funeral pyre behind me. And I knew I must be close to the spot I had marked what seemed an age ago on the rain-lashed viewing platform on the tower, the source of the distant firelight I had seen winking at me in the storm, the spark of hope and mystery that I’d been so excited about when I had been confident and angry, and had a good dog to travel towards it with. Before I lost Jip and shot the albatross.
Some part of me must have been thinking straight and acting cautious, because I crested the slope with my bow in my hand, arrow ready.
The fire had not been manmade. Ahead of me was a burn mark just like the ones on the heather-covered slopes at home. It had blown through the bracken and gorse in the same long distinctive tongue shape. I walked the length of it, from the widest point to the narrow tip where it had begun. There I found a small stand of trees protected from the wind in a crease in the land just below the ridgeline, and half of them—on what must have been the windward side—were still green. The others were charred and it was easy to see where the lightning had struck and ignited the fire. One tree still stood—taller than the rest but dead on its feet, split in two by the strike. The halves leaned away from each other exposing the burned-out heartwood. It was somehow terrible—both the sight and the thought of the power it must have taken to do that, electricity jagging out of the sky. Even at the time, it seemed like another bad omen. I did not know that one day I would know exactly what the tree had felt like, riven in half by a bolt from out of a clear blue sky.
The burn scar stemming from the lightning tree was still fresh. No growth had begun to fill in. The smell was new and strong. The fire had been nature, not man. The spark of distant hope had been an illusion and the adventure it had lured me into was a mistaken ordeal instead. It had also killed my dog.
I was still as alone as I had ever been. I sat on the ridge and looked down at the countryside spread out below. I decided the best way to deal with the disappointment was to look at the map and try and work out how far I had come, where I was, and how far I had to go to get to Brand’s hideout. I was thinking of it as that by then—a hideout. A place thieves and pirates took their plunder. It was fanciful, but at that point I was not seeing the world as it is, because I had still seen so very little of it. I know that now, now that I have had a long time to do little else but think. I was still seeing it through the lens of the books I had read about it before it died, and that coloured things. It was like the old pair of sunglasses that Bar used to wear when fishing, the ones that made the water look different. It’s not exactly like that because Bar’s sunglasses actually took away the reflection on the surface of the water and let you see what was happening below. My lens of books didn’t seem to be helping me see any hidden things below the surface.
The map was both helpful and confusing. I had a rough idea of where I was, even though I had messed up my distance counting while I was feverish, on the days when I had futilely plodded away counting steps but forgetting to mark them with my clever-but-actually-not-so-clever-if-you-forget-to-do-it pebble trick.
Before I laid out the map, I climbed as high as I could, out on to the edge of an area of high moors, and looked down. My compass gave me north, so I was able to lay the map down at my feet and orientate it in the right direction. I weighted the edges against the wind and spent a long time carefully trying to match up the features that were so confidently marked on the map with the much blurrier details time and vegetation had overgrown. It took me most of the rest of the daylight to put it all together in a way that at least half made sense, but even as I went to sleep I was not sure I’d got it right. My plan was to walk to the curving line of trees about five klicks away and see if it was, as I guessed, one of the important roads the map showed and numbered beginning with the letter M. If it was the one I thought, then walking along it would take me to a very big city in the middle of the country, and then if I confirmed that I could make my way east by following the path of old roads and a railway line until I hit the coast more or less where I wanted to. It would be better than steering by notches in the hills. Especially because on the downside of this high ground there would be no more slopes rising ahead of me.
I woke and looked for Jip and then remembered he would not be greeting me on any more mornings, and so I drank some water, checked the map and got going, my stomach telling me it needed filling and my legs wondering why they couldn’t have a few hours more rest.
I hit the M road where it cut into the shoulder of the slope I was descending. The deeply cut sidings were a vivid slash of purple and green, and as I pushed through the head-high plants, the seed-pods snapped noisily, firing seeds in every direction. It made me jump at first, but then I decided it was quite a cheery thing and even whacked some of the plant heads as I passed, just to see the sharp little explosions.
Grass and moss had invaded the roadbed, but I could see it had originally been many cars wide and had once had a low barrier of metal and thick steel cables running down the middle of it. It made a sort of green road that ribboned away between purple banks for several klicks ahead and I wove my path along the old road, checking my compass every pebble to make sure it was the one I imagined it was, and wasn’t a different road snaking me back the way I had come.
I saw two strange and differently wonderful things on that road, before the next bit of albatross luck happened. The first was a true marvel.
As the roadway passed through another deeply cut groove in the surrounding high ground, there was an impossible bridge. It was beautiful, as if made from two thin ribbons of stone which I expect were concrete. One carried a road that ran straight across the chasm, continuing the line of the slope that had been removed. The other ribbon supported it in a breathtaking arch that sprang from the right hand side of the cutting, barely seeming to touch the top piece before curving back down on to the left-hand side. It was obviously rock-solid, having stood there in all weathers for more than a century, probably a century and a half, but it was so light and joyous it seemed more like movement than something built. It was like a leap made from stone. A leap and a balancing act. Would it have looked so wonderful to you? Or would you have driven a car beneath it and not noticed? With so many marvels around you, did you stop seeing some of them?
The other wonderful thing was what was on top of the bridge looking down at me. It was a black bull. Or maybe a big cow. It looked male though, and it had stubby horns and a huge hump of muscle around its shoulders. It wasn’t nearly as interested in me as I was in it, because as I walked under the bridge and looked back, it did not bother to come to the other side to watch me on my way. I had never seen a bull or a cow before. I didn’t feel particularly frightened by it, though I definitely doubted I would be able to kill one with an arrow if it decided to attack me. A pony was the biggest animal I had seen thus far in my life, and the biggest one I had hunted was the deer. The bull was rangy and bunch-muscled at the same time. It looked like all it would have to do was flex those muscles and arrows would bounce off it. And if the arrows didn’t bounce off, there was too much body between the outside and the vital organs within for even the most powerful bowshot to penetrate. I looked back at the empty bridge behind me and was glad that cows and bulls were plant-eaters. Something that size with a taste for smaller mammals would have been terrifying.
On the other hand, something that size would feed a person for a year if you could kill it and smoke or salt the meat. And there were other ways of killing and catching than shooting with a bow. Traps, for example. I was thinking all this as I walked, maybe because the universe sometimes has a warped sense of humour—or perhaps just a really sharp sense of timing.
Before the end of that day, I was the one in the trap.
It started with being hungry. The diet of berries was fine enough, though it wasn’t entirely agreeing with my stomach. I reckoned I was about half a day’s hard walking from the big city where I would have to take a turn from the M road and follow a railway line towards the coast—if I could find it. I had made good time so far and decided to see if I could find some rabbits to shoot. With that in mind, I waited until the road bottomed out into flatter land surrounded by heath that had once been fields. Then I turned off the road and walked parallel with it, bow ready. I saw a hare that ran too soon and too fast for me to fire at it, and then a couple of white tails turned up and ducked into thickets before I could aim properly. There was enough game around for me not to worry about firing at every opportunity. It just wasn’t worth the risk of losing a precious arrow loosing off at anything but a certain hit.
I walked off the heathland onto a small built-up area beside the M road, this one connected to a similar collection of single-storey buildings on the other side by a bridge that was too thin for cars and which had buckled in the middle and fallen onto the roadway. I suppose it was a bridge for walking on. It was covered, like a big pipe you’d have to go through. Probably to keep the rain off. A huge rectangular canopy had fallen in and landed drunkenly on top of some rusted boxes that I recognised as petrol dispensers from the couple I’d seen back on the Uists. It was tilted up on one corner, propped on a tank. This was my first tank, and I knew it by the long gun-barrel and the tracks rusted to the wheels on either side. I don’t know why an army tank would be on a petrol station. I climbed up on it and tried to open the big metal hatches, but they were corroded shut. I hopped down again and then froze as I saw a child’s face in the end of the gun-barrel looking at me. And then I realised it was a toy doll’s head that someone had put inside it. Again, I don’t know why.
Before there was a tank there, this must have been a place that travellers came to eat and refuel when going along the M road. The low building smelled damp and earthy. I didn’t trust the saggy roof, but through the broken window walls I could see the rusting skeletons of chairs and tables.
A faded plastic sign told me to try a Whopper.
I don’t know what a Whopper was. Maybe you tried one once. I hope it was good.
I walked on, hungry, skirting the M road, still tracking it in the hope of rabbits. A few pebbles later I saw something in a stand of white-barked birches and stopped walking. It was a deer, smaller than the ones on the island, with a lighter coat and much shorter antlers. I carefully shrugged out of my pack and took two arrows. One I put through my belt at the back; the other I nocked as I began to carefully move into bowshot.
The wind was in my face so I knew I couldn’t be scented and the deer seemed totally absorbed in cropping the grass between the birches. I moved slowly, keeping an eye on the ground in front of me to be sure I didn’t tread on anything that would make a noise and spook my next week or so of meals. The deer moved away, and I thought I had lost it, but it had only decided to graze on a different patch of grass. I entered the birch wood carefully, trying to calm my breathing. Beyond the thin strip of birches was a taller mass of vegetation, a steep rampart of brambles and creepers rising above the silvery leaves like a dark thunderhead.
The pale deer was easy to see against it. It was entirely unaware of how close I was getting. I slowly raised the bow and said the silent apology and thanks that Ferg had taught me when he and Bar first took me hunting, the one that calms your breathing and brings good luck. And then I shot it.
I don’t miss much. And the deer was close and perfectly broadside on. I saw the arrow feathers thump home exactly where I had aimed, just behind the shoulder. The deer gave a couple of instinctive steps forward, and then fell. I dropped my bow and the spare arrow and ran in, unsheathing my knife in case it was lung-shot and needed a quick mercy. Ferg said every second you left an animal in pain when you could end it for them was a curse on you. But the deer was heart-shot and dead, and looking as suddenly sad as all prey does when the life is gone. I said another silent thanks and promised the meat would not be wasted, which was not something Ferg or Bar had taught me, but something I had added myself when I shot my first deer.
I should have dragged it out the way I had come, but I would have had to step over fallen logs to do so, and there was an animal track winding through the trees that looked clearer. Because I wasn’t paying too much attention to anything other than the light and whether I would have enough time to gut and butcher it before dark, I didn’t see the boar until it was too late. Jip would have seen it. He would have warned me. But Jip was gone.
I heard the huff and growl before I saw the small eyes and the large tusks turning towards me from the brushwood just ahead. I went still and the eyes and the tusks raised themselves off the ground as the boar stood up. And up. It was much bigger than I had imagined a boar could be. Not as big as a bull, but just as solid and hard-muscled. It just looked like trouble. I don’t know what you would have done if you had met a giant boar on a remote woodland track, but I do know that whatever the right thing was, I didn’t do it. I kept looking at it, and backed away slowly.
It’s okay, I said, putting all the soothe I had in me into my voice. It’s okay.
The boar huffed and grunted some more, pawing the ground. Its eyes looked really angry. I didn’t know boars got so big.
I didn’t know how fast they could run either. There was a spit of dirt as it launched itself at me. I twisted away and ran and everything that happened next happened in a jumble I still can’t quite get straight in my head. I ran and there was no room really, nowhere to run to. I felt the boar’s breath on the back of my leg and tried to dodge sideways. I hit the trunk of a tree that I hadn’t seen and then I was on my back, and the boar was sort of turning round in its own length and charging at me and then I was on my feet and instead of the boar’s breath I heard its teeth snap together and felt the tug on my leg as it bit at my trousers, and I stumbled because though the bite had missed my flesh it had tripped me. And then as I corkscrewed to my feet, brambles ripping at me and trying to keep me pinned in place, the boar leapt at me and hooked its tusk into my thigh. That tusk must have been keen as a shaving blade because I felt the air on my leg as the material was cut from knee to inner thigh as I was jumping in a forlorn and desperate attempt to save myself—and even though I was going up and away from the boar’s head, the tusk punched into me like I was being hit with a sledgehammer. It wasn’t a sharp feeling like a cut. It was a horrible dull punch and I knew the damage was bad even as my fingers found the branch above me and I swung out of the animal’s way. It turned and twisted, ready to slash me again, but somehow I lifted myself high enough so my feet were clear of it. And then, with a last grunt of pain, I swung one of my legs across and got a precarious toehold on another branch and held myself there, shakily parallel with the ground,
Where the tusk had got me was close to the big artery on my inner thigh. In that moment, as I held myself in an awkward horizontal position, stretched between two thin branches, I knew that blood loss would very soon make me lose my grip. And I knew that the position in which I was desperately clinging to safety was also ridiculous and undignified. Maybe that’s always the way death comes. I made myself look across at my thigh.
There was no sheet of blood. Just a ruined trouser leg.
It made no sense. I had felt the blow. And then I craned round to see what the boar was making such a noise about, thrashing this way and that below me.
He had my little book of trees and my tin of beeswax impaled on the tusk. I’d been carrying the book in my front pocket so I could identify what kind of trees I was walking past. I took advantage of the fact he was so occupied with clearing his tusk and scrambled closer to the trunk of the tree, where I managed to get the right way up and climb higher.
There was blood, but it was not mine. And it was the thing that had made him angry enough to attack. He was hurt. Something had taken a great scoop out of the flesh on his back leg, close to the tail. It was nasty wound. I could see the dried blood on his leg from haunch to trotter, and as he shifted I could see the torn up and exposed muscles flex and move. I didn’t have much time to feel sorry for him because he finally got the book and the tin off his tusk and started circling the trunk of the tree, looking up at me and butting it. It wasn’t a very big tree, and I don’t think his butting and rooting at it had as much effect on it as my weight as I scrambled around getting on the other side of the trunk from him. To my horror the whole tree began to tilt alarmingly. Very aware that I had used up any good luck that was due to me with the trees book, I knew it wouldn’t be very long at all before this tree fell over and dumped me right back at tusk level. As the tree began to topple towards the cliff of brambles, I scrambled as high as I could and then leapt desperately towards it.
Hurling yourself into a bramble patch is not to be recommended, not unless the alternative is dropping into range of a murderously angry wild boar in so much pain that nothing will do but inflicting even more of the same on you. I know the thorns tore at me because I still have some of the scars, but at the time I felt nothing, fear numbing me as I grabbed desperately at the high bank of greenery and briars. It must have been ten metres high. Even as I had jumped, I had a vision of myself tumbling into the centre of it, the briars ripping at me but too insubstantial to hold my weight. Instead I hit something so solid it nearly jarred both wind and consciousness out of me. I held on and scrambled into the bramble cliff, half stunned and unsure what I was seeing.
The Neatfreaks were the Baby Busters who tried to tidy things up and leave the world in an organised fashion. I think it must have been them who had stacked so many old cars on top of each other. I had hit a rusted axle end and used it to crawl further in to safety. I lay across an old drive shaft and got my breath and my senses back. Inside the wall of brambles there was a three-dimensional maze of corroded car bodies. There were some creepers and briars twining around within the structure, but most of the growth was on the outside where the sun was. It was a strange space, broken up by the ribs and spines of the long dead cars, and the covering of vegetation gave it an underwater feeling. It would have been peaceful if there hadn’t been an angry wounded boar snuffling around just beyond the wall of thorns.
When I moved, the car skeleton shifted slightly. Something broke away from something else and fell noisily through the remains of the five or six cars below, hitting a bit of each one on the way down. The car pile was not a wholly safe place to hide. As I clung there and looked around, I was able to see how far gone most of them were. The solid panels had mostly corroded off. Where they survived, they were laced with holes, well on the way to crumbling into nothing. The frames of the cars were thicker metal and they and the wheels and axles were what was keeping the pile intact. The floors of almost every one I could see were either gone or clearly not suitable for treading on. The seats had long rotted away, right down to the springs, which were themselves rusted. There was nowhere you could trust yourself inside the whole pile. I had the strong sense, as I shifted again and heard the grinding noise that accompanied the movement, that the whole structure was just waiting for an excuse to fall in on itself. And even if that didn’t happen, there was an equally uncomfortable possibility that I might fall through the tangle of sharp rusty metal and impale myself on something, or that an axle or an engine block might drop out of a hulk above me and finish me like that.
I clung on and tried to figure out what to do, other than stay still. I had seen what the boar’s snout was capable of, pushing at the thin tree trunk. If it started jostling away at the foot of the car pile, I definitely thought it could destroy the balance and bring it all painfully and fatally down. I peered down at it and decided that it was mean enough to do that out of sheer spite and anger. I could see my bow and an arrow lying in the undergrowth beyond it, but there was no way I could get down and past it to get to them, and I was pretty sure it was too tough to kill with a single arrow unless I was unbelievably lucky.
It seemed like my only option was to stay very still, lying on top of the axle until the boar got tired and went away. The boar didn’t seem to have any plans to do anything else, however, and stayed where it was, huffing and snuffling with what I first thought was anger but that—the longer I listened to it—I realised was pain. I tried to think of good things, like the miracle of the tiny book of trees that had saved my life. I told myself it could be worse.
And then it started raining, and it was. The metal got slippery and, badder than that, the car above was one of the few that still had some bits of bodywork intact, a roof that was angled just right to catch the rain and then funnel it in a small waterfall, right on top of me. It was miserable, cold and dangerous. And the more I tried to stay still, the stiffer I got, and the longer I waited, the more I started to notice the stings and aches of all the scratches criss-crossing me, the ones I’d got from throwing myself to this precarious almost-safety inside the cliff of briars. Once again, I thought what a fool I had been to rush off alone after Brand. And that thought led to the worst thing which of course was not dying alone, because I supposed when that happened I wouldn’t know much about it, but the losing of Jip. That was my responsibility. If I hadn’t come inland, away from the sea that I knew into this country I was so ignorant about, Jip would still be alive and by my side.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of something else, something that would stop me feeling like I was going to slide off this axle and cut myself to shreds on every exposed bit of corroded metal below me. But I couldn’t. Jip wouldn’t get out of my mind. It was like a haunting. Every time I tried to distract myself, he was there, like a ghost. Happy memories of simpler times? Jip was there. Setting off on this foolish journey in the Sweethope? Jip was there. Sitting by a warm fire in the safety of an island winter? Jip was there. He was so there that I imagined I could hear him barking.
The boar stopped snuffling and went very still.
The only sound was the rain. And Jip’s barking.
I opened my eyes. I wasn’t imagining it. Jip was barking and he was getting closer. It was unbelievable and it was unmistakable. Jip was alive, he was coming and the excitement in his bark told me he had scented me. My heart leapt. Then the boar huffed and turned and trotted towards the noise and my heart plummeted. Jip had the heart of a lion, and didn’t know to back off a fight, but he had the body of a terrier and the boar that was trotting towards him was much bigger and heavier and was equipped with tusks that would rip his belly open in a single twitch.
No! I shouted. Jip, no! Run! No, Jip! Go away!
His barking raised in excitement at the sound of my voice.
My guts turned to water.
No, Jip! I yelled. Bad dog! Bad dog! Get away with you! Bad dog!
I heard a squeal of anger and swear I felt a tremor in the earth below as the boar must have seen him and kicked into a charge
I heard Jip’s answering snarl.
NO, JIP! I shouted, launching myself off my axle perch, half scrabbling, half tumbling down through the car carcasses to the ground, some forlorn hope moving my body before I knew what I was doing.
NO, JIP!
There was a thunderclap.
And the world bucked.
And the boar’s squealing stopped dead.
I froze. No sound but the rain and the car chassis rocking against each other overhead, disturbed by my sudden descent. I stared at the wall of brambles between me and the fate of my dog.
And then there he was, barking happily at me on the other side.
Once more I forgot about the thorns and burst through and then he and I were together and he was jumping up and curving round me, barking and licking excitedly, tail thrashing and I was trying to hug and stroke and scratch him all at the same time and we were such a tangled mess of happiness I forgot about the boar and then my hand got snagged in the rope round his neck and before I could quite realise what it was and wonder at its strange out-of-placeness I heard a twig crack and looked over his head and my eye followed the long loop of rope and at the end of it I saw her.
I saw the hooded figure and I saw the pale horse she sat on, and I saw the long double-barrelled gun she was holding, pointed up at the sky like a knight’s lance.
She saw me, nodded and then her eyes kept moving, scanning the undergrowth around me, carefully, inquiringly. Finally her eyes came back to me and she spoke.
Eskeelya doe-travek voo? she said.
I could tell it was a question.
Eskeelya doe-travek voo? she repeated, eyes again looking behind me.
I had no idea what it meant.
I don’t understand what you’re saying, I said.
I did understand what the gun meant when it lowered and pointed at me, and then beckoned me out of the trees as she backed the horse away back into the open. She pulled the rope for Jip to come. He resisted. I stroked him.
I wondered if she could hear my heart thumping over the noise of the rain.
She gestured again with the gun, and then grimaced as if my not responding was causing her actual pain.
Veet, she said. Veet.
Okay, I said. Okay. I’m coming.