Chapter 23 #2
We set off early, packs on our backs, each with a bow, and me with a long spear Cat made me which I used like a walking pole.
I feel like a wizard in that book, I said.
It felt awkward, swinging it ahead of me as I went along. I just wasn’t used to walking with a stick, especially not a long, sturdy one. Cat grinned as I tried it out, trudging in a circle round her.
It’s not for walking, Mouse, she said. Not really. It’s for using the poky bit to keep any angry pigs away.
A boar spear, I said. I knew about those.
A boar spear, she said. But don’t use it. Come back in one piece.
I packed the stitching kit, just in case, I said with what I hoped was a brave smile.
I know you did, she said. I checked your packing. Don’t have to use that either, please.
She reached up and gave me a hug and a kiss, which surprised me a bit, and then she slapped my arm in a friendly and brisk goodbye, before turning to Storm and telling her for the thousandth time that she should, just this once, let me do the leading and not argue, because I knew what I was doing, and then she hugged Storm and kissed the top of her head, and it was worth it, really, because I never saw Storm look so surprised and outraged and maybe secretly happy all at the same time ever again.
Come on, I said. Soonest we’re off, soonest we’re home.
The dew was still pearled on the scutch grass, and heavy enough to have soaked through our shoes before we had turned to give a last wave to Cat and Digger who were standing outside the Bunker watching us as we crested the ridge, pulling Devil on the end of a rope.
Freya had had another bad night and was still in bed, I suppose.
I’m sure Storm said goodbye to her earlier.
Again I felt a small lurch behind my breastbone as we crossed over onto the downslope and they fell out of our sight as we took our last looks backwards, but Storm was in a surprisingly good mood.
Unlike the goat, who wasn’t very happy to start with and kept trying to stop dead just when I thought he’d got bored with being pig-headed.
Which is a strange thing for a goat to be.
And I don’t know why pigs got a name for being stubborn, because the only one I had met was aggressive and dangerous and flew at us, and I’d have been much happier with it if it had dug its heels and stayed obstinately put.
I wouldn’t have these scars on my hand, for a start, and it wouldn’t ache in the cold weather and remind me of my past. Anyway, by mid-morning Devil had given up and trotted along beside us, more or less accepting of the whole new undignified experience of being taken on a trip.
I knew from looking at the map that we had to walk maybe three hours heading south, until we came to a railway line that we’d then follow left.
Railway lines were black on the map, but in reality, they were green, and as easy to see as the M-way.
You had to kick through the grass and moss if you actually wanted to see the old rails and stone underneath.
Like the sides and centre of the M-way they had been fertile ground for new trees over the years, better than the surrounding fields, maybe because the bed of stone chippings the rails were bedded on had resisted grass long enough for the tree seedlings that sprouted between them to take hold.
Then, once the saplings provided enough leaves to shade the old tracks, that too kept the grass and the brambles at bay while the trees just grew and grew, so the railway lines were now like long streamers of woodland or forest stretching across the terrain.
Cat said they were easy to see because they were like long ribbons of tall hedgerow cutting through the moorland and the rough heath.
You had to be careful tracking them through places where they had once passed through older woodland, but because they were usually much straighter than a road you could normally do it more or less accurately enough to pick them up again when you came out of the woods they were cutting through.
And then of course you’d find old stations with crumbling platforms on either side of the great river of trees, and it was at one of those that we stopped for our lunch.
It was a small station, but it had a bridge that was still intact that spanned the gap between the two platforms. We put down our packs and stuff and I then fixed the hobbles and the bell on the goat before letting him loose to find some grass, secure in the knowledge he couldn’t wander far.
I walked to the edge of the platform to have a pee where I was shielded by a tangle of elder and sweetbriar and had my head back and my eyes closed, breathing in the heady flowery, almost fetid scent coming off the elder mixed with the with the clean apple smell of the pink briar roses when I heard Storm’s voice coming from high above me.
Hey, she said. The goat’s making a lot of noise.
I looked up. She had climbed the old footbridge and was looking down at me from where it disappeared into the thin canopy of trees.
So he doesn’t get lost, I said. Get down from there.
I’m fine, she said.
Everyone’s fine until they aren’t, I said, conscious I was sounding like Cat. Seriously, those old bridges aren’t safe.
She didn’t move. Something in my tone had definitely hit her stubborn button. I made myself speak more calmly.
Seriously, I said. Please.
She just pointed at the goat, who was chomping through the grass at the far end of the platform, where it sloped down and met a great surge of elder whose white sprays of flowers – as I remember it now – made it look like the long stretch of crumbling tarmac was a boat plunging into a foaming wave.
At the time I couldn’t have thought that, I know, because I had never seen the sea, let alone white-capped waves, or a long sailing boat ploughing its way through them, meeting each one by burying its prow in the foam, making your heart miss a beat until the boat bucks up and the prow breaks free again.
I do remember the black goat against the white flowers though.
And I remember thinking it was as if the goat was now calm and biddable, but its pig-headedness had not gone.
A bit of it had just leaped on to Storm instead.
That’s not safe, she said. Making a noise like that. It’ll draw attention.
Storm, I said. Please come down and we’ll talk about it. There’s no one else out there. No one is going to hear the bell. There’s no one to hear. There isn’t a Russian behind every—
You don’t know that, she said. You don’t know a thing about them.
Suddenly the easy companionship of the morning’s walk had taken a turn back towards the old spikiness and something deeper than just obstinacy. I felt a fool for letting myself spoil things, but I felt more concerned about the bridge.
Storm, I said. If you don’t come down slowly and carefully, I’m taking the goat and we’re heading home right now.
You’re not in charge of me, she said.
Yes, I said. Yes, I am. We agreed that. I’m in charge of both of us doing what we set out to do. I’m in charge of us finding some new goats, but especially I’m in charge of bringing Freya’s sister back to her in one piece.
She stared at me with a challenge in her eye, as if I had broken another invisible rule by using her sister as a threat.
Storm, I said. Really. Those old bridges stay up so long sometimes exactly because nobody steps on them, then something does and that’s what tips the balance and they just collapse.
It’s made of concrete, she said. Like your old tower, and you sit on that all the time.
I thought of the Tower moving a little under my feet and the crunching noise Cat and I had heard.
Not any more, I said. We don’t think it’s stable. You know that.
She grinned again and tossed her head, hair fanning out brightly against the dark green of the trees around her.
Then she took a pace into the trees, away from the steps.
There was a wilful bounce to her stride as she disappeared into what was a shadowy aerial pathway through the trees but, at that moment, looked to me like the mouth of a great beast that was going to swallow her up entirely.
I opened my mouth to shout but she stopped, her eye caught by something in the branches beside her.
I closed my mouth, since I hadn’t actually known what I was going to shout and suspected that even if I’d said what I thought was just the right thing, it would inevitably have made things worse.
She reached into the cloud of leaves and disentangled something which she pulled out and turned to show me. It was a bird’s nest with a single blueish egg in it, which I immediately knew from the brown speckling over the blueness was a magpie’s.
Hey, Mouse, look at this, she said. It’s so bl—
And then the bridge lurched and she staggered and I shouted something, even though I don’t remember what it was other than loud and sharp and probably panicked.
And then though the bridge abruptly stopped tilting alarmingly sideways and didn’t fall all the way down, the delicate nest slipped from her hands as she instinctively steadied herself against the list, and the egg tumbled out and over the edge of the rail.
I watched it fall and then hit a branch and crack open, leaving a sad smear of yellow and something red on the pale bark.
One for sorrow, I thought, remembering the rhyme. Bad omen, if you believed in such things, which I was too young and hopeful to do. I wasn’t too young and hopeful not to be simultaneously angry with and fearful for the egg thief on the bridge above me. I tried not to let that appear in my voice.
Storm, I said calmly. Move very slowly towards the steps. Don’t shake the bridge. If it starts tilting again, run, but now just move slowly.
All the stubborn playfulness had been knocked out of her face by the sudden jerk the bridge had made under her feet. Her eyes were wide and there was a white tautness in the skin below them.
She didn’t move.