6. 6.
6.
T he stars had gone. In their wake, a pulsating throb entrapped his skull. The redolence of wilderness and musk closing in brought Folke comfort, and he rested his face against warmth as the frigidity of the floor crept into him. Soft fur tickled his left cheek while calloused fingers tapped the other.
“Shepherd.”
Folke grunted, moving to sit up and wincing when Finlay’s muffled shouts sharpened into bellowing.
“You want me to wipe your ass for you? Slap a diaper on, since you can’t be bothered to clean up after yourself?”
“You left the puddles too,” Thomas mumbled.
A series of unintelligible swears. “Whyte, You deal with this imbecile. I’m going to end him at this rate.”
“I’m fine,” Folke muttered as boots thundered down the stairs.
He tried to stand, but the arm around his shoulders tightened.
“Give yersel a moment.”
Another grunt, this time with the effort of standing. He curled his grip into Darach’s coat to steady himself, soft leather pliant and rising with him. Steadfast hands slid off his upper back and elbow when Folke stepped away. He was too disoriented to know which way to go, extended his arms to find a wall, only to reconnect with someone else.
His palms slid over a stiff wool coat that seemed to have very little in it, but pockets and buttons aplenty. Big, round. Metal with circular indentations. Unable to help himself, Folke shifted his touch upward, until his fingertips connected with a prominent Adam’s apple. It bobbed under his fingers. Further up, a pronounced jawline. Cleanly shaven. Maybe Finlay got to Thomas, too.
“Stop trying to kill me,” Folke groused, his face tight with pain.
“I didn’t mean to.” Hands came around the inside of his elbows, then pulled away. Then returned. “This. . .way.”
Folke jerked out of the uncertain hold, careful not to step back.
“Stubborn git.” Muttered, but he’d heard it .
It took some fumbling, but Folke found the exit and traced the railing. He raised his left hand to the back of his head and winced, staggering slightly. His fingers came away damp.
Just the water.
“Ye’re bleeding, Folke.”
A trivial bit of blood.
“Have you seen my crook?”
“I dinnae think ye should be going anywhere after that.”
“My crook.”
A defeated tut. “In the kitchen.”
The crook stood against the wall by the back door next to his chore jacket that he shrugged on. Folke gingerly slipped into the rubber boots. The added wetness wasn’t comfortable, one would have a hole in it now, but nothing he couldn’t handle. Darach’s heavy footfalls were right behind him as Folke staggered outside, catching himself on the railing. Old paint audibly flaked away, the railing itself wobbling under his unsteady weight.
Darach called out to him again, more urgently. Blunt ends dug into his hands and knees.
Gravel.
He’d fallen.
Up again.
The occasional gale pulling through the hills remained faithful to the antecedent storm, but the rain had mellowed, no more than a thick mist brisk against his shaven face. Folke rounded the cottage, the gravel changing to stepping stones, uneven with tufts of grass. Damp leaves and branches of an old lilac tree caught his neck as he rushed past. His head gave a sharp throb, fierce enough for Folke to stop and grimace.
Darach brushed up against his side. A faint shift of leather and the branches eased out of Folke’s face. For a wild moment, he was thankful for the man’s presence. He wouldn’t be able to do this without help.
The beginnings of the rope were still there, but he soon reached its unnatural end. Somewhat helplessly, he turned to Darach, still silent to his left.
“Do you see—” Folke’s face contorted, his own voice sending a jolt through his head.
“Na. Folke,” Darach continued before he could proceed, “What makes these sheep so special? Are they worth dying for?”
“I’m not dying.”
His head was just sore.
It will pass. Everything always does.
“Ye dinnae ken that.” A stately body positioned itself before him, muting the wind. “I’ve seen what accidents like that can do, and it’s no always apparent at first.”
“Will you please just show me where the rope continues?”
Reluctance emanated. Folke thought Darach might have changed his mind, that he would need to do this on his own after all. Until a hand touched his, requesting permission. His heart lurched. Strangely but not unpleasantly, worry and pain giving way to nervousness as Darach’s fingers curled around his. The flyaway beatings of his heart didn’t settle when the hold secured.
“Mind yer step, the ground might be different from what ye’re used to.”
“What do you mean?”
The question barely left him and the scraggy texture of the hills disappeared underfoot. Darach’s hold on his hand tightened as Folke lowered to his haunches, setting the crook down to feel across the ground.
Neither stone nor grass or dirt.
It reminded him of his glazed mug. Sinuated smoothness with slight imperfections, like bubbles popped before it set.
“What is this?” Folke asked in a whisper.
“Lightning must’ve hit the ground. It forms glass. Or something akin to it, anyway.”
Folke tried to explore further, running his fingers along dwindling veins shaped like bolts, but Darach gently pulled him up by the hand.
“Come. We have searching to do.”
The ground’s smooth texture didn’t change for several paces, gradually shifting into finer veins until Folke once more heard the whip of ryegrass under the thick soles of his rubber boots. Darach still held his hand, their palms pressing and sliding together with each step down the incline. The heat of movement and nervousness slickened Folke’s skin.
“Can I ask ye a question?”
Folke bit down his vexation. “I wasn’t always blind.”
A brief silence. “Weren’t ye?”
“No. I was fourteen when I lost my sight.”
“Must’ve been difficult.”
Folke grunted.
An updraught pushed at his legs as they ascended. He had walked these hills countless of times, the hissing grass as familiar to him as the skyward howls of sullen winds. Bright green on a summer’s day forever lingered in his mind. His heart ached with gratitude for having been able to see it. And it ached with loss, for he’d never again get to witness lightrays imbue wood-rush as the sun dipped low, turning distant hills hazy blue.
“That wasnae my question, by the way.”
“Huh?”
“I wanted to ask about all yer books.”
“Oh.” His mother’s books. She’d read to him every single book she got her hands on, from romance to fantasy to the bible. Folke did not much care for the last. “What about them?”
“Ye’ve quite a few.”
“You’re wondering how I read them.” Folke waited, expecting Darach to respond. He didn’t, only helped him around a cairn no taller than his knee, a stone clattering to the ground after he knocked his crook into it. “The answer is that I don’t. ”
Darach said nothing, and for a long while, they simply walked. Hand in hand, each step in tandem with the other. Until it occurred to Folke to ask, “Is the guide rope still down?”
He’d need to hire someone to put it back up.
Was old man Cyril still alive?
Slower than the dead, a long time friend of his father’s, but he didn’t charge much. Fortunate, since Folke didn’t have much to his name.
If he never found his sheep, however, then. . .There was no need.
No point to anything, any longer. Nothing to stop him from fading into the hills like any rock claimed by overgrowth.
Folke slowed to a stop. Tilted his head into the wind, fine droplets bedrizzling his face.
This was what he had wanted all along.
Wasn’t it?
He’d given up breeding the herd, spending too little time fighting for his mother’s legacy and too much time wishing to be left alone.
Darach cleared his throat, startling Folke.
“I’m sorry,” the man said.
Folke’s brows knit together in confusion as his clasped hand was brought across his body, over to the right, and thick, frayed rope itched his knuckles. The warming hold drifted away, leaving Folke to stand there, trying to piece together why Darach had not done that sooner.
“How. . .much rope have we passed?” he asked.
The man made a strange noise, as if words had caught in his throat. Then, “Only a small break, where the earth’s turned to glass.”
“Oh.” Folke traced the damp rope, worn down over the years but still holding strong. Mostly.
That was a relief, then. He might get away with marking the missing piece using stones instead.
He carried on, switching the crook to his left hand to follow the guiding ropes and posts over the hills. They reached the top of the third, and Folke’s body threatened to crumple. His head pulsated, breaths coming in strained, precipitous bursts as if he hadn’t done this a thousand times already. Folke leant heavily on his crook, face contorting with the effort of being upright.
They had reached the end of the rope by the pasture where his sheep last grazed, the grass shorter here. Further along the declivity, a faint gurgle of a brook. Once his favourite place to rest. Long since deteriorated to a nightmare. A place he’d spent three days and two nights trapped, with no one to help him.
Darach had said something, Folke realised, but couldn’t recall what. He opened his mouth around greedy lungfuls of air, each breath like a hammer to his head.
“Did ye hear me, Shepherd? There they are!”
Folke walked forward. Stopped. “ Where ?”
“By the water. Come on!” Boots slid down grass and rock, sending fragments scattering into the brook with loud splashes .
Folke choked on another sharp inhale, panic ensnaring his neck. Tight. Unrelenting. His hand fluttered up to his chest, fingers seeking buttons hidden beneath the knit jumper, clusters of raindrops clinging to its wool.
“I can’t,” he rasped.
His cheek met with earth, the stone rough and freezing against his skin. Ryegrass brushed his lips with every turbulent inhale. The uneven shaft of his crook dug into his hips where he’d collapsed atop it. Not enough to keep him from descending into the deepest depths of a world he didn’t want to know again.
He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to squeeze away the memory of a lifeless weight against him.
For days.
And nights.
Haunted by the plashes of the brook, the tinkle of bells. Needle’s barking relentless. The hills a bulwark against his cries for help.
Until someone finally found him. After his voice had gone hoarse, the reservoir of his tears desiccated, and his shivers reduced to a stillness matching the body in his arms.
Melancholic bleats pulled Folke back to the surface. He reached out, his aching fingers connecting with compacted wool. Oily and dirty and comforting. One nudged his face with hers, the other his elbow.
“Ye’re a mess, Shepherd.” Darach’s deep rumble, right by his ear.
“Is it–just the two?” Folke’s own voice seemed distant, like his soul had left his body to listen from afar. The touch to his sides, guiding him back to his feet, seemed equally faraway.
“Only two.”
Better than none.
“Bizarre looking sheep.”
A breathless chuckle interwoven with misery escaped Folke. He tilted into Darach, the man’s arm around his rib cage helping him keep hold of himself as he staggered down the slope. Bells chased after them. A long-winded bleat told him Socks was there.
“They’re an illicit breed.”
Darach said nothing for a long time. Finally, “Ye’ll have to tell me more about that, sometime.”
That subtle note of amusement had returned.