Chapter 6 #2
I know they’re horses even though I’ve also never seen them before because the picture books are full of them, and they figure in one of the teaching games Cat used to play with me when I was little.
It was called How Big? And you played it by choosing an animal and asking your opponent how big it was, which always had to be answered with something it was bigger than, and something it was smaller than, all answers checked in The Bumper Book of Animals In Full Colour.
In this case if the question was how big is a horse?
A correct answer could be bigger than a deer, smaller than an elephant.
There are three of them, and they have been tied to one of the cross-braces.
They’re cropping the thin grass around what is unmistakably a campfire where a single bedroll leans on two pairs of huge wide-framed saddle baskets that I later discover are called panniers, and a pair of riding saddles, one small.
The horses look at us with a kind of haughty disinterest, and then carry on eating.
People are clearly no novelty to them. The thing making the strangled howling noise bursts out of a clump of harts-tongue ferns and sort of moans eagerly at us, straining at a metal chain padlocked to a collar around its neck.
It has shaggy, coarse-looking grey fur, its eyes are bright and excited and its mouth is full of very white teeth.
What is it? I say.
It’s a dog, Cat says.
I thought so, I say. Bigger than a fox, smaller than a wolf.
Cat moves quickly round the camp searching and looking at the ground around the fire.
I watch the dog. It keeps running away to the far end of its chain and strangle-howling down the line of fallen pylons and the old cables they used to support that all lead towards the quarry.
Then it runs back and moans at me, wagging its tail with such enthusiasm that it creates a fan of spray through the rain that’s still falling through the roof of ivy far overhead us.
Cat looks up from where she’s been looking at the saddles.
One of everything, she says.
Except the saddles, I say. Why’d he have three horses if there’s just him?
She looks at me for a long beat, like I should really know the answer to this, but I don’t. Then she shakes her head with a small angry twitch
For us, she says. Or for whoever he found before he got to us. But he didn’t, I guess.
How do you know, I say. How can you know that?
You know what he hit me with? she says, pointing to her split lip. The metal thing, the rings in his fist?
Yes, I say.
It was a handcuff. They go on your wrists. To lock them together, she says. To prison you.
Prison? I say.
To capture you, she says. Us. You did good, Mouse. You’re a saver.
No, I say. No. I’m a killer.
Now I’ve said it out loud that big hard bubble in my throat is really threatening to come up and make me choke and start crying. I swallow hard and try not to look at Cat. I look at the dog instead. It cocks its head and looks back at me.
You’re not a killer, Mouse, she says. You’re the gentle giant.
The Gentle Giant is one of the other books she read to me when I was little.
It was one of the ones she used to teach me to read for myself.
I know she’s trying to make me feel better, but making me remember sitting in the sun looking at the pictures of the big man and the girl in the straw hat he finds in the lake while she pointed at the words and sounded them out for me just makes me feel worse.
Because back then I didn’t feel alone in the world.
I wasn’t scared of things. And I hadn’t done anything bad yet.
I was too young. I didn’t know enough to know there was such darkness stalking the perimeter of my small world.
Yeah, I said. Yeah, I am Cat. I never saw another person except you in my life until today, and in less than a moment after I did – I killed him.
You’re not a killer, Mouse, she says, more insistently. Not a bit of you. You’re a saver. You saved us. If you hadn’t done what you did, I don’t think he’d have been able to catch both of us. I think he’d have had to kill one of us to get the other.
I know she’s feeling bad too and I know she’s trying to make me feel better.
Thing is, I just feel numb and not quite here.
Like what I’ve done has knocked me out of myself, only a bit but just enough so that I can’t quite get back in again.
Like I don’t fit inside me comfortably any more.
Maybe that’s what happens when you do a really bad thing.
When you kill a person. I don’t know how to make it better.
I don’t know how to get rid of this bubble in my chest. I know what we do when we’re hunting, because Cat’s mum taught her, and she taught me in turn to kill quick and clean and always thank the rabbit or the bird or the fish for the life it’s giving us.
But a person? Kicking his way back into the nettle patch, a person who is grinding and gurgling on his back?
That’s a bad kill. How can I thank him and even if I could, how will that possibly make that better?
I don’t know what to do or what it all means but I have the strangest feeling that I’ve called in something very bad to match what I did, and it’s on its way now, and it’ll be on its way for ever, and the future is going to happen under the incoming shadow as it gets bigger and closer and darker until something worse than I can even imagine will happen to us.
There’s always been bad luck somewhere out there, and we’ve been able to dodge it for so long we almost forgot about it. Until now. Until I did what I did. Until I summoned it.
That’s what it feels like, as if everything in front of me that was once going to be good in the rest of my life will now be spoiled, like good food left out too long, food that has turned black with mould and poison.
The dog is looking at us and moaning. Later on, I will discover it never – almost never – barks, because it can’t.
Maybe its throat was damaged by someone yanking on it too hard sometime in the past. But right now it’s making what noise it can to get our attention.
It keeps doing this thing of running away to the very end of its chain where it strains to go further and strangle-howls at something we can’t see – something down the slope, into the undergrowth towards the quarry – and then running back to moan at us some more.
If there were any others with that man, this noise is going to bring them back pretty quickly, Cat says, her eyes scanning the wet foliage all around us.
The dog bounces back towards us again. Cat steps back to keep out of reach as the chain tautens and stops it coming any further.
I’m surprised to see she’s more nervy about the dog than I am.
The dog doesn’t look nervy. It just looks from one of us to the other and whines like it’s trying to talk or tell us something that we’re too stupid to understand.
It’s not scared of us, I say.
Somehow, if I focus on the dog, on its strange behaviour and the look in its eyes, I don’t feel that trapped bubble in my chest so much.
I’m scared of it, says Cat. Well. Not scared. But it’s got some pretty big teeth in there.
It’s true. It shows them to us again in a deep full-throated howl, and then bolts off to the far end of its chain to howl some more before sprinting back and dropping its chest low to the ground, tail-end up in the air as it resumes its moaning.
I realise what’s so odd about it. It’s this: I’ve seen plenty of animals, but I’ve never seen one that looks back at me like it does. I’ve never seen an animal so like a person. I can see that this dog is doing everything that it can to ask me a question, except for actually talking.
It’s trying to tell us something, I say.
Yes, it wants to be let go, Cat says.
No, I say. It’s more than that.
I go to the metal strut the chain is attached to.
Careful, says Cat. No, Mouse…
I pull at the metal, hoping that it’s rusted away at one end or the other so I can bend or break it to slip the chain off, but the dead man chose a strong piece of metal to loop the chain around and nothing gives.
Something scratches at my leg. At the same time Cat says, Mouse!
I looked down. The dog paws my leg again and whines. I look at Cat, who now has her bow drawn and pointed at him.
He’s not going to bite, I say.
You don’t know that, says Cat.
I’m not used to hearing that kind of uncertainty in her voice, but then today is full of new things. First man. First dog, first…
Have you got the Belzers? I say.
I know she has. They are part of her go-pack.
If that man tied it up, it’s because it’s a dangerous dog, Cat says.
I think he tied it up so he could keep quiet while he lay waiting for us, I say.
Cat’s eyes hold mine, and then she shakes her head and reaches into her pack.
She keeps out of reach of the dog and throws the spanners to me.
They bounce off the hazel saplings clumping at my feet.
As I bend to pick them up, something bright coloured catches my eye, and I find myself pulling my hand back in shock.
If it goes for you I’m going to—what? Cat says.
There are others, I say, turning and showing her what was hidden there.
There’s a blanket bed that we hadn’t seen because of the overhanging bush that covered it.
On top of the blanket is a pale-yellow dinosaur, made of soft threadbare material, all different coloured spikes running like a rainbow along its back and down its tail.
It’s obviously been patched and sewn back together many times. I look at Cat.
He had a child, I say.
The treacherous lightness I was beginning to feel by concentrating on the novelty of seeing a dog for the first time has gone. The dark cloud has returned and now it feels like it’s made of lead.
You don’t know that, says Cat.