Not Alone, page 30
The shore is several metres away still. Just a few more strokes.
‘Mummy!’ A long hairline crack at the nose of the canoe is seeping, Harry shuffling back from it.
I cut the paddle into the water, pushing and pulling, my body screaming to stop.
The seep becomes half an inch of murky water, then an inch, reaching my boots, Harry crouched and swaying.
As soon as I can, I grab hold of a silvery bankside willow and hang on with numb fingers, heaving us closer to the bank with every spent burning muscle. The canoe swings away from me as I step out onto the mud, the nose beginning to sink under the surface.
‘Mummy!’ Harry slips in the canoe, scrambling on hands and knees away from the water.
My heart is squeezing white-hot constantly now, the pain making me feel faint. But I hang on to the plastic hull with one hand, grabbing Harry’s little hand with the other. ‘I got you!’ The mud glitters around me, pocked with grey deposits.
I’m slipping and sinking deeper in the mud, sweating and gasping at breaths, blackness edging my vision.
‘It’s getting me!’
I let the canoe go and swing Harry up with a grunt, falling backwards with him into the wet earth as I try to hold him clear. But my left foot stays stuck in the mud at the edge of the bank, my ankle popping, a horrible dizzying numbness instantly throbbing through it.
‘Mummy?’ Harry is screaming as I open my eyes again, the fuzziness still slipping from my head.
‘I got you,’ I groan, forcing deeper breaths, ‘the mud’s bad.’
Harry stares down at it and back at my foot, bottom lip trembling. ‘Did it swallow you?’ He cringes his own boots clear, his knees digging into my thighs with all his weight, as if there might be fangs under that undulating surface of muck too.
Hissing between my teeth, I sit up, try to pull my boot out of the sucking mud. I cannot sprain my ankle.
‘It’s OK,’ I say, in my best everything’s-alright voice. ‘It’s just really deep and my foot got stuck.’
Eventually I get up, holding on to Harry so his boots don’t sink too much, and try placing my boot on the next bit of more solid-looking mud. I can’t. The ankle is too numb. A hot, sweaty light-headedness is coming over me in waves. I focus on holding Harry upright – though he is beginning to get heavy.
‘It might not be so deep up ahead. If you fall, don’t touch the mud with your mittens, alright? And especially keep your face clear. Promise?’
He nods solemnly, checking his mask. Yet even as I say it, the wind is pummelling us with still-clear rain, those dark clouds overhead.
He sinks to his waist on his first step, shrieking, and I hurry to yank him up, his hands and face held as high as he can away from the mud.
We go with small hop-steps, so my bad ankle doesn’t take my weight for long. I keep wobbling, yelping every time I have to reach a hand down into the glossy mud to steady myself. Harry tries to follow where I place my feet on the more solid bits, slipping to his knees every other step and awaiting my help to haul him back up.
‘You’re doing great,’ I tell him, panting.
‘I know,’ he says, his tired little legs trembling. ‘I can do it.’
When finally we make it up across the mud, the ground slowly becoming firmer and then drier and sandier, we pause before we enter the darkness of the pinewood. The trees tower high into the sky. Rich beautiful green – the needles glossy with their protective waxy coating, just a peppering of orange and yellow tips amongst the outermost needles. There are windblown dead trunks at our feet. They look orange-brown and bent – the soldiers taking the brunt along the woodland boundary. But the trees still standing look thicker and healthier the further inside the wood I look, trunks wide like great barrels, crowded in rows and lines, tall and straight, shading out the light, like they’ve been able to thrive together in the post-storm world.
‘This looks an old wood,’ Harry whispers, his face worried, eyes flicking at every creak and rustle.
And I know he’s thinking of the Wild Wood, that finally, this is it. To me, even though it’s old timber plantation and not wild pinewood, it still looks prehistoric, like we’ve looped back in time to when everything was gigantic and lush and green. This is the very sort of place I’d expect one of Harry’s dragons to come out of the shadows for real.
‘Big woods can protect themselves,’ I whisper back. It’s why lonely city trees and tiny copses died during heatwaves or pollution events, Before, and there was a desperate rush to rewild and replant lost woods. Bigger became better. Dips in oxygen levels at higher altitudes overseas fed that rush too – after new waves of climate refugees arrived.
Limping awkwardly over the thick exposed roots and old needle litter and into the pinewood, I worry, even in these foothills, that we’re higher than we’ve ever been. The rushing river and growing wind are muffled inside the trees, the air still and heavy, and it takes a good few minutes before I can catch my gasping breath and my heart is bearable again, and I can reassure myself the air is still breathable. I don’t blink, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Harry stands close, mask hanging down from his neck already.
My ankle throbs against my boot and I’m suddenly anxious enough to forget about the air and stinking mud on my clothes, and to ease myself down to the ground. My ankle tingles with numb pain as I pull on the heel of my boot, and it is all I can bear to just loosen the laces instead. The flesh is puffy and swollen, the skin itchy and tight.
‘How can we make it better?’ Harry says quietly, leaning over like he wants to kiss my ankle like I would with a scuffed knee or splintered finger of his, back at the flat, but he stands with arms and legs held awkwardly, eyes big.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, my voice wavering as I try not to cry. ‘Other than rest it.’ I remember Jack fractured an ankle once, had lots of exercises to build strength back into the ligaments, but I can’t picture any of them now – not that those would help me walk tomorrow.
‘It’s OK, Mummy.’ Harry pats my shoulder.
38
With my ankle resting on my backpack, it’s Harry who collects the pine branches from the gold and green moss and needle floor and drags them to our camp, carefully brushing down his mittens each time. It’s Harry who finds softer fir branches to make a mattress with. I let him rummage in my pocket and pull out Andy’s flint and steel.
‘Do you know how to do it?’ I rasp.
He shows me, scraping the steel along the flint.
‘Harder and faster,’ I whisper.
He tries again, his fingers trembling but face determined, and after a couple of goes, gets a spark and looks at me triumphantly. He lights the dry needle kindling all by himself and sets it under the branches, blowing until flames lick up through them.
The warmth takes the edge off the pain in my chest and the throbbing in my ankle.
I fall asleep without meaning to.
I wake to the welcome sound of the kettle whistling. It smells of pine-needle tea. The filtering tap-attachment I took from the cottage kitchen lies next to the fire.
Sitting up, dried mud crumbles from my clothes. I peer around me. ‘Harry?’ The pinewood trills and chirrups with tiny birds, flitting between the old creaking trees. ‘Harry!’
‘Coming!’ I hear his voice and relax back against a tree trunk.
Harry comes back to the camp, and I have to laugh. Pale-faced and tripping on his clothes, yet he’s hauling the ‘dirty’ saucepan, which is filled to the brim with pine cones, mushrooms and long fleshy green leaves.
He grins as he sets it in front of me. ‘I’ve been finding dinner.’
I smile. ‘I can see that.’
I tap the air meter until it flashes a reading – it’s OK just here, and Harry’s face bears red marks from his too-big mask, so I don’t tell him to put it back on. I should have taken him foraging when we were in Hitchin, shouldn’t have kept him cooped up.
‘The water, where did you get it?’
He points. ‘Over there, it was trickling up through the rocks and grass.’
‘A spring?’ I think of going to investigate, to make sure, but my ankle throbs a warning.
He shrugs. ‘It wasn’t muddy or dirty. And I put it in the saucepan for dirty things first and poured it through the tap into the kettle, for filtering.’ He fidgets, looking worried as I brush myself down as best I can.
I pour a mugful. The water comes out clear, a hint of green from the pine needles. All groundwater must be contaminated. But there’s no unpleasant smell. So I smile and take a wonderful warm mouthful.
As we clutch our tea, I wash our faces and hands with warm water and brush down our clothes, the ritual making me feel a little better. It’s the best I can do right now. My hands and legs are itchy and red where they’ve touched the mud; thankfully Harry is OK.
I pick through Harry’s findings. The cones have to be bashed open with a rock. Inside, the pine nuts are encased in their own hard shells, and so tiny, my heart sinks.
‘The shells will still make good kindling for the next fire,’ I tell Harry, who’s looking mournful. I stuff handfuls into an outside pocket of my pack.
I pick through the mushrooms, but I’ve never trusted my ability to identify them – too many with awful reputations. I look at Harry, the shadows making his little face bony, lacking any of the lovely roundness his cheeks once had. Maybe we’re that desperate.
The bracket mushrooms and the brown and red umbrellas look too difficult to identify. But the third is more unique; the size of my fist, and shaped like an egg, if softly dimpled. Feather-light but solid, and a startling clean white – in the gloom of the forest, it almost seems to glow.
‘So magic egg ones might be food?’ Harry whispers in awe, squatting at my side.
I smile. ‘No, it’s the colour and shape, see . . .’ I point to the image in Wild Foraging, scanning the text. Even edible mushrooms can be very bad, if they’re decaying, or contaminated – which I always felt ruled everything out.
I’m already imagining this roasted, covered in the crushed wild garlic leaves Harry found – a brilliant green the colour grass used to be. Though now I sniff them, I can’t smell anything at all . . . perhaps it’s something dangerously similar.
My brain’s too fuzzy to think.
Harry examines the little umbrella mushrooms. His fingers come away covered in black soot-like dust.
He freezes. ‘Mummy?’
‘Wipe it off. Mushroom spores could be poisonous.’
He kneels, his hand sweeping a frantic arc across his just-cleaned snowsuit, until I have to tell him to stop.
We drink more tea. At least we have plenty of pine needles – plenty of vitamin C. I flick to the pages on Scots pine. Just-in-case. I grin at Harry, who’s watching the fire dejectedly, sipping at his tea. ‘It’s called “famine food”! We can eat the inner bark of the pine trunk, a carbohydrate!’
‘What’s a carbohydrate?’
‘It means energy food!’ I grab my knife and hobble to the nearest pine tree. The outer bark takes a bit of scraping off, blunting my blade, but underneath I can see the white film of the inner bark. It peels away from the wood in rough strips.
‘Has it got poisonous dust inside too?’ Harry asks. Grey-black granules of oil pepper the white film. The book doesn’t mention them, so I assume it’s new, since the toxic storm. I scrape the granules off as best I can and wash the strips with tea water from the kettle.
We both munch a piece. It tastes sweet. I make my way through the nearest few trees, until I’m hacking with the knife completely blunt and I’m barely able to grip the hilt anymore. All the trees have the granules.
Pleased with the haul, we eat strips raw while I experiment with roasting some over the fire and sharpen my blunted knife on the most suitable rock I can find.
‘Tastes better cooked,’ Harry says, smiling.
‘Everything usually does.’
‘I think I feel the energy!’
Darkness has crept in as we’ve been eating – the thin strips of food barely touching that gnawing hunger. When I look up I can’t see anything but black surrounding us.
Harry scoots closer still, practically sitting in my lap. He fights to stay awake, but I soon feel him getting heavier and hear his breathing slowing and I slip his mask over his face for the night, leaving me with just the fire and the darkness.
The silence and the crackling fire are good. Restful after all those days of storm and crashing tides and wind. And the heat seems to make breathing easier, soothes my chest. And if I don’t move, my ankle doesn’t feel too bad. This reminds me of so many nights spent staring at the wood stove with Harry, feeling finally safe and relaxed for the first time that day as we watched the flames, even if we are outside now. Reminds me of mountain camping with Jack too – cosy and happy and looking forward to sunrise views.
I am exhausted, but again I barely sleep. Pain keeps pulling me out of it. Rain drips straight off the pine needles onto us, filling the air with a sweet damp smell. I hold the groundsheet over us, leaning forward towards the fire, which is fuelled well enough that the drips have yet to put it out. Despite the warmth of the fire, there’s too much cold and damp, and soon there’s no position I can fidget to that helps. Worry nips at my earlier relief and peace. We’re not eating enough food to sustain us, my ankle might not take my weight in the morning, and how long can I keep going with my chest? What if this rain’s not clear but milky and full of pollutants that I can’t see in the dark? All night my mind turns over the problems.
I try to imagine Jack in the Cairngorms, not moved on or dead, but just standing at a rustic front door, waiting for us. Me and Harry walking towards him.
We have to make it.
And that makes me relax again despite everything. There’s nothing to decide.
Something wakes me later. I ache with cold. Harry’s sleepy form is snugged next to me. The fire is a low pile of embers, still smoking, and the rain has stopped, though it drips still from the needles.
The trees creak around us.
I lean forward and stoke the embers, adding more semi-damp branches. The fire grows again, sparks in the air fizzing and smoking.
There’s a deep, short ‘hoo-hoo’ and a scratching in the pinewood somewhere.
I shiver, still wary. The thick cushions of moss near the fire have dried soft and fluffy. I feel for Harry next to me, his skin cold, and carefully start piling the dried moss around him like a duvet, just as I feel hot moist air on my cheek. Teeth yank at my hood, tearing at my hair.
My scream is garbled. I grab a smoking branch and thrust it wildly into the darkness, jumping to my feet, all pain forgotten for a moment, expecting to see lupine eyes. A sparking grey circle of frantic branches imprints in my eyes instead. I can’t see anything else.
After I’ve settled a bleary but frightened Harry again, I bank the fire up and sit alert all night, staring blindly out at the darkness, wondering if my blocked nose really can smell musk and hay.
It’s not until dawn light filters through the thick pine branches that I look around and spot the prints in the mud. The owner walked in a half-circle around our camp before continuing.
Harry gets up and peers over my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Mummy,’ he whispers. ‘Some dragons are friendly.’
The prints have blurred in the mud. Elongated and distorted, and as sleep-deprived as I feel, they could look reptilian.
But I think I can see two toes, like a deer, not three or more. Or I convince myself that I do. My head is too foggy to not take Harry’s thoughts seriously.
‘Whatever it was,’ I say, ‘it was bold, came right up to our fire.’ I shake out my blanket-mask, perturbed by the dust wafting into the air.
I keep Harry close all morning as we hobble through the quiet pines, looking over my shoulder at every rustle and squeak. Vigilant, like I was in bear country in Canada with Jack, knowing something bigger and stronger might be watching or following. I keep startling at antlers that turn out to be just pine branches. My ankle feels sickeningly loose, like my foot is hanging to my shin by a thread. I managed to get the heavy walking boot off this morning and have it tied to the outside of my pack – my left foot cold but not throbbing so much in just a sock. Harry finds me a good – if spiky – stick to lean on.
We’re slow, though, and we pause at the top of an incline, where the pinewood turns orange-red and abruptly ends in saplings and fallen trunks. Wind gusts in our faces. There’s a flooded town below us, water gushing through it. Golden gleaming tree trunks with deep red canopies on the banks, dripping bloody palms into the water. We slump down in the shelter of a fallen pine and consult the map. The road that should run through the town and north-east parallel to the River Spean is also flooded, criss-crossed with streams and tributaries into the distance – the tops of its nearly submerged snow-time marker-posts winding north-east. That road would, in sixty-five miles, have taken us straight to Aviemore in the Cairngorms.
Instead, I trace an alternative route across the squares of the map.
‘What’s all the brown?’ Harry asks, leaning in.
Dark to indicate height.
I swallow, sinking, the jagged bark digging into my back. ‘Mountains.’
39
As we near a ridge, days later, a hoarse bellow carries through the damp silence of the Highlands. I drag Harry down on his front into the rushes – my ankle sparking as my foot hits the ground. My mind leaps from lions and bears to wolves and lynx. Instead, as I peer over the rocks, two stags face off, with what must be the peaks of Creag Meagaidh above them. They stamp the ground, sending a tremble up the slope. They are silvery instead of red, like the hind at Arisaig, limbs long and delicate, antlers branched but crooked and broken off in places. Tufts of fur float from their backs as they move – maybe they shed more often than Before, like the trees.
Another roar, louder this time. It rumbles right through my inflamed chest, drawing out the point of pain where my heart is.
