The boar was dead. The gun had blown an ugly chunk out of its face. It was just like the chunk blown out of its backside, only fresher. I didn’t know then but I found out soon enough that this wasn’t a coincidence. She had tried to kill the boar the day before, but only wounded it. If Ferg was right about the curses that piled up as long as you left an animal hurt before finishing it off cleanly, then she was drowning in them. And there was nothing clean about the way the boar had been finished off. It had tried to disembowel me, but now I looked at its poor hacked-about body I felt sad. It had been in pain. A human had caused that pain. I don’t blame it a bit for attacking the next human it saw.
But I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at it, or even thinking about it. There was too much else to take in. Her horse. The other two horses behind her, riderless, roped together, with great bundles hanging on either side. They were all pale grey, dappled with whiteish blotches and long white manes. They were much bigger than the little ponies we had on the islands. They stood very calmly, not even that interested in me.
Oo son lays owe-truh? she said, pointing around the landscape with a questioning gesture. She grimaced again and I realised that she was actually in pain.
I don’t understand, I said.
The rain was easing and she pushed the hood back off her head. My first thought was that her hair matched the horse’s—grey, strong and wild-looking as the wind blew it round her face. My second thought was that she had a face that was really two faces, the first old and weather-beaten but one that had also kept alive within it the second, younger face it had once been.
She grimaced again and pointed at the dead boar.
Sallo! she said, spitting at it. Pew tan de sangliay.
And she spat on it again and then turned her horse so that I could see the other side and the thing that made her grimace every time she moved.
The side of the horse was pink with blood. My first thought was that it was injured, but as I followed the irregular fan of blood back to its source I saw the wound was in the woman’s side, a gash in her buttock that she had tried to bind with a sash.
I had not expected to meet anyone on the mainland, or at least not until I got to Brand’s home. I had been brought up in the sure and certain knowledge that the mainland was empty. It made sense to me. I had, as I said, been made to do the maths to calculate how vanishingly few people remained in the world. And there was an unspecified sense that something had happened there that made it mysteriously hostile to man. I had in fact seen nothing that supported that on my journey so far, and had been wondering if it was really true or just a story our grandparents had told to make sure we kept safely out of the way, on the fringes of the world as the Baby Bust died away. I had been a dutiful enough child, but maybe all children have an urge to go where they’re forbidden, or to touch the things they have been warned away from. I think that was how my secret wanting to travel and see the forbidden world began. Even though I was now grown, I had still felt a sense of excitement as well as righteous anger as I’d set out on this journey. And though I hadn’t expected to meet anyone, I had of course thought about what it might be like if the unlikely happened. But of all the things I had imagined, I had not anticipated that we would not be able to speak to each other.
You would have thought of this possibility, coming from a world still crammed with people talking in a whole mishmash of different languages. In fact, when I now look at the photo of you, I realise I don’t even know if you and I would have been able to talk if we had met. I had just assumed you spoke the same language as me. But maybe you were from somewhere else, like she was. This mainland was no more hers than it was mine. As I eventually found out, she came from across the sea channel dividing it from the bigger mainland to the south. She was French. But before I knew that, I knew three much more important things about her: she was badly hurt, she needed help and she was extremely bossy. I think the long word that describes her best was imperious. She carried herself—and her gun—as if she were in charge of the world. And she hated to be seen with any kind of weakness.
Communication was hard at first. She seemed both frustrated and slightly offended that I didn’t speak her language, which was an odd thing since later she had me dig a small book out of one of the packs: an English/French dictionary. She wouldn’t have brought it along with her had she not anticipated the problem. Once the book was found, we moved from communicating by sign language alone to doing so by sign language and pointing at words in the dictionary. But that was long after she had showed me how to put up her shelter and had managed to painfully get off her horse.
The shelter was a rectangle of oiled cotton, with metal-ringed holes in it from which hung long strings. She showed me where to tie it off between two trees, and then she threw me some aluminium pegs so I could pin down the back to make a sloping roof. Then she waved me away, again with the gun, and got off her horse. She dismounted on the other side of the animal, and I think she did that so I wouldn’t see her wince and cry out as she did so. Imperious meant that she was proud before she was anything else.
I went to help her, and again she waved me back.
She took two steps towards one of the horses, obviously intending to get something from the packs, and then she stumbled and yelped and fell hard, and then lay there.
She’d fallen on the gun and was panting with the pain from her wound. I leapt across and yanked the gun out from under her. It wasn’t the gentlest thing I could have done, but I wanted it out of the way quickly in case she grabbed at it.
She gasped and then growled and glared at me as if she wanted to scorch me with her eyes as a punishment.
If I’d been a really good person, I would have looked to see if I could help before doing anything else, but I’m not a really good person. I’m just me. Not bad. Just good enough. So the first thing I did was take out my knife and cut Jip free. The second thing I did was check to see why he was limping. It wasn’t deep, but he had a cut running three quarters of the way around his foreleg, as if something had caught it in a noose. He licked my hand in thanks and looked at the woman and then back at me.
I know, I said.
I opened the gun and saw there was only one shell in it, and that was the one she had fired to kill the hog, so she’d been bluffing when she ordered me around with it. Hadn’t really felt like she was threatening my life anyway, but it was good to confirm that was so. I left the gun on the ground and went to her packhorses.
She started shouting at me, but her voice was weakening and I ignored her. I found her bedroll and placed it under the shelter she’d had me put up. Then I pointed at it and used sign language to try and tell her I was going to help her get to it. She batted my hands away when I first tried to get hold of her. I stepped back and made calming gestures with my hand, the same gestures I used to make when approaching the half-wild ponies on the islands when we needed to get a halter on them. I said the same things to her that I said to them, using the same calming voice.
It’s okay, I said. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.
Maybe it was the tone but she allowed me to drag her across to the shelter. I laid her on her bedroll and tried to look at the wound. Again she batted me away, pointing at the horses. She wasn’t talking much now and maybe that was because she was gritting her teeth to deal with the pain. I got that the horses should be unburdened and that they should then be hobbled and left to graze. The packs took some unbuckling, but the hobbling ropes were on top and the horses let me slip them on their legs with very little fuss, being used to it. They wandered off and began munching the grass noisily.
More grunting and pointing had me going through the right pack and finding her medical kit and the dictionary. The stuff in her medical box was different to mine, but there were clean strips of bandage and a lot of herbs and ointments I didn’t recognise. She snatched them from me and started to try and deal with her wound. And that was the problem, because she couldn’t twist around to get at it. She’d been able to tie a loop of material around herself and cinch it tight, but the gash was behind her.
I indicated that I would have a look. She shook her head in irritation. I picked up the book. Although I used it hundreds of times after that, I remember the first word I looked up. The English was “infection”. So was the French. I grunted in surprise. When I showed it to her, she stared at it and the side of her mouth twitched microscopically.
Infection, I said. If you don’t clean it you will get infected. And you can’t reach it.
Anfecksee-on, she agreed.
I took the book and found the next word. I pointed at myself, then at her, then the word. She squinted at it.
Ay-day, she said.
Yes, I said. I will ay-day you.
She looked at me with those eyes that were both old and young.
Okay, she said.
Okay, I said.
She beckoned and I gave her the book.
She pointed to the word for clean. Then at the word for close. I must have looked confused because she tutted and found another word.
Sew.
She pointed behind her. And grimaced.
Sew.
She rummaged through her medicine box, tutting as she did so. She was looking for something that wasn’t there.
I walked away and found my pack. I brought back my honey and showed it to her.
Okay, she said. She said other things in French but I was too busy building a fire. After a bit, she watched me and said nothing. Her face was getting as grey as her hair now, and the night was coming in. I wanted to get this done while there was still light enough to do it by. The wound was long and deep. I was going to have to clean it and then see if I could close it. There would be lots to do before dark.
She stopped barking commands at me after a bit, I think because she saw what I was doing and approved. I got the fire going and used two of her cooking pots to boil the water we both had been carrying. When it had boiled for ten minutes, I put her bandages in and boiled them for another ten. While that was happening, I made a rack out of birch twigs and used it to stretch the bandages on to dry in the heat of the fire as I let the boiling water cool. I speeded that up by pouring the water from one pot to the other, letting the air get at it.
It was still just warmer then blood temperature when I started. I pointed at her trousers. I indicated they would have to come off.
Pew-tan, she said, and took out a knife. Before I could stop her, she had reached round and cut through the waistband just over her hip, wincing with the effort. Then she started trying to peel the two sides apart to expose the wound. The blood had dried and the material was stiff and glued to her skin. She winced and looked paler.
No, I said. I’ll do it.
I felt sick when I saw the damage close up. The boar’s tusk had cut long and deep, deep enough for me to see the different colour of fat and muscle. It was worse than any cut I’d seen before, and the thought that I might have to sew it up gave me a feeling like vertigo.
First things first, I said. First things first.
I helped her roll from her side to her stomach. Because I imagined this would hurt about the same as having a bone set—which was something I’d seen Dad do for Bar—I went and found a branch a little thicker than my thumb and cut a short length from it. I gave it to her, making a dumbshow to let her know she should put it in her mouth to bite down on for the pain.
Pew-tan, she said again, rolling her eyes. But she shrugged and put it between her teeth and turned away.
The wound didn’t smell, and the blackness within it was dried blood and not anything worse. I used the lukewarm water to soften the bloody trouser material enough to free it and swabbed the revealed buttock as clean as I could on either side of the horribly gaping slash.
I put my hand on her shoulder. She didn’t turn round.
I’m sorry, I said. This will hurt.
She nodded and said nothing while I sluiced the wound with the clean water. Her whole body tensed, and I realised how strong and wiry she was under the clothes that hid it. I tried to get it done as quickly as I could. The only sound I heard was the wood of the branch crunching between her teeth.
Cleaning it just made it look worse really: fresher but also easier to see where the flesh had started dying. If it had been a gash on an arm or a leg, I might have thought of just trying to hold the wound closed with a really tight bandage, but being where it was there was no doubt it would have to be sewn up.
I realised that I had been staring at it for so long, trying to work out what to do next, that I had not seen her turn her head and stare back at me.
Anfecksee-on? she said.
Not yet, I said. And then I held up the jar of honey.
Ah, she said. Ah bon.
She nodded her head and turned away.
I cleaned the needle by boiling it. It was the needle I always carried for mending things that might rip, like bags or sails or clothes.
I almost scalded my hands washing them, and I used my shaving soap to clean them. She watched me do all of this with her head craned round as she lay on her stomach. I showed her the needle with an apologetic grimace.
Mared, she said.
Pew-tan? I said.
It was the first time I saw her smile properly. The stern face cracked and let out a little unexpected sunshine.
Wee, she said. Pew-tan.
And she picked up the stick, bit down on it and turned away.
I think it would have been easier if she had fainted, but she didn’t. Pouring the honey into the wound made her buck and flinch, but that was the first, not the worst of it. I’ve done some horrible things in my life, but sliding that curved needle in and out of living flesh and then making knot after knot in it, pulling the wound closed and leaving a thin and badly puckered gash is one of the things I still have nightmares about. I am not a good sewer at the best of times. At the end of things, it looked more like a length of barbed wire than anything else. But I got it done as fast and as neatly as I could, and when there was no more wound to cinch tight, I poured a line of honey over it and carefully laid a strip of clean bandage on top to hold it in place. Then I made a pad to put over it and was going to ask her to lift her hips so I could wind the long bandage around it to hold it in place when I realised she was asleep. Asleep or passed out. She was breathing though, so I left her undisturbed and just watched in case she woke and tried to roll over on the wound.
Jip came and sat with me, and for a long time that was all I needed in the world. He licked my hand and I scratched him, and then I buried my nose in the familiar roughness of his neck fur and he let me hold him and tell him how much I had missed him and how bad I had felt when I was sure he was dead and it had all been my fault. And then we just stayed leaning against each other and watched the sky and the sleeping woman. The horses cropped away. It got darker. When she woke, she did try to roll but I stopped her. Then she drank some water and went back to sleep.
Before it got full dark, I hung the pig upside down and cut its neck so that if the blood had not already settled it might run out during the night. Then I collected the horses and tied them to a tree each. And then I went to sleep too. I didn’t know if what I had done would work or if she would take an infection and die. As I lay in the darkness and listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the night starting up, I wondered if it had been the right thing to do. I decided I didn’t know if she was as dangerous a person as Brand. Then I thought some more and decided she was probably as dangerous, but that she had saved me and found Jip and that, all in all, I probably had done the right thing. And then I slept.
I woke in the early morning, dew beading the trees and the grass. She was poking me with a stick. She needed to piss. Helping her up was a complicated effort. Holding her up while she squatted awkwardly keeping the wounded leg straight so as not to put pressure on the stitches was even more so. When I got her back on her bedroll, she looked white.
Door may, she said, nodding at my bedroll. Then she went straight back to sleep.
By the next time she woke, I had slices of hog sizzling over the fire and the three horses were untied and grazing again. I had also been through her packs. I could make no sense of the things she had clearly collected on her travels, some of which were useful—like tools—and others of which seemed just to have caught her fancy because they looked interesting, like a small bronze head, or a homemade doll, sewn together with buttons that nestled in an old box full of shiny necklaces.
She was looking at me, her face unreadable. Then she gave me a nod, as if I’d done something right.
Mare-see, she said. Mare-see.
I brought her some of the boar. She rolled onto the unwounded side and ate propped up on one arm. She finished the slice and belched, deep as Dad did. She smiled, as if pleased with herself. She picked up the dictionary and flicked through it, found a word and showed it to me with a raised, questioning eyebrow.
Name?
Griz, I said. My name is Griz.
I pointed at her.
Mwah? she said, eyebrow still raised. She shrugged her shoulder as if names weren’t important to her, as if she was above having just any old name like everybody else had one. Then she made a face as if just picking one of her many names.
John, she said.
John? I said.
Wee, she said, nodding. John Dark.