C Fletcher - A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

And simple as that, he laid down on the bedroll and closed his eyes, and the dog lay down between us and kept hers open and looking straight at me.

I knew I was too uncomfortable to sleep, so I concentrated on calming my breathing and watching right back.

An hour later I was more uncomfortable than I had ever been in my life, and my hands seemed to be going numb.

I thought about waking him and telling him, but then just when I knew I’d never sleep again, I did.

Waking wasn’t a bit good. I was so cold and stiff I heard my joints crack as I tried to sit up. I ached everywhere. And the pain in my head was worse. My eye had swollen half shut and was so gummy it took a lot of scrunching and stretching to get it open at all. But there was thin warming light coming through the arched windows even though the fire was now grey ash. And Saga was gone.

Brand sat on a chair, packing up his bedroll.

So here’s what’s going to happen, he said, and I stopped breathing for a couple of heartbeats as he pulled the knife out of the chair. I must be on my way, and just in case you’re telling the truth about the others being behind you, I’d best be going soon. Dawn’s up and there’s light enough to see the rocks in the water.

He used the knife to quickly gut a couple more of the red books and put them on the embers. Then he kicked another chair to bits and put it on the fire.

You blow on that, you’ll get it going again, he said.

I could see he was in too much of a hurry to fan it back into life for me.

I’m not a monster, he said. But I cut my own way through this life, Griz, and that is a truth. I don’t want you or yours following me. You all stay up here, away from the world. You’ve got a safe enough thing going. Just sit tight. World might come by and take a few things from you every now and then, but mostly you’ll be fine. You know what a tax is?

I did, but I shook my head.

Well, it was a thing people used to pay, like a money sacrifice. They paid it to be left alone and helped to live easier, I was told, he said. So when I come by, or someone else does, what we take’s like a tax.

That made no sense to me at all. I was much more interested in the way he was weighing the knife in his hands.

I see you moving about before I go, I will take it badly, he said.

You can’t leave me tied up, I said.

It’s just rope, he said. And I’ll not even take your knife. There’s a graveyard you maybe came through on the way up? There’s one stone unlike the others. I’ll leave the knife there. You won’t find it till it’s full daylight, but you will find it. Stone catches your eye because it’s different. I’m not a monster.

Saga clinked into view behind him. She clinked because she had Jess joined to her with a length of rusty chain, neck to neck, just enough play in it to let the bigger dog bite the littler one if she wanted, just enough to allow Jess to run hobbled alongside Saga, two steps to the one. Jess wouldn’t be able to bite back because she was wearing something on her snout that kept her mouth covered.

It wasn’t tight enough to stop her whining excitedly when she saw me, and her tail began wagging so hard her whole back end waggled from side to side and buffeted Saga. Saga snarled and bit her, not once, but twice. The muzzle didn’t muffle Jess’s yelp of pain. She tried to bite back, because being a terrier that was what she had to do, not having an inch of back-away in her, but all she could do was punch her muzzled nose into the side of the dog towering over her, and all that did was get another snarl and a single precise bite in the same place as the other ones.

Shackle the new dog to the old dog, said Brand. Teaches them how to be. Won’t take long till she’s broken to our ways.

Seeing the pain and confusion in Jess’s eyes was worse than the image I’d created in my head, the one of her drowning alone. She stared right at me and the question in her look—why aren’t you helping me?—could only be answered one way and my body was answering before my brain knew what it was going to do. I lunged to my feet and tried to get to her and then Brand stepped forward between us and straight-armed me in the chest with the open palm of his hand which hurt bad and winded me worse. It knocked me back so that I stumbled wildly to keep my balance, suddenly aware that without my hands to help me I could easily dash my brains out on the hard church floor.

As if he realised this, Brand jumped forwards and caught hold of my sheepskin. For an instant, we were eye to eye and I thought about hitting him in the face with my forehead, but then Jess yelp-snarled and tried to lunge at him, defending me, and Saga bit her again and then turned and ran, dragging Jess out of the building.

Again, Jess’s instincts were better than mine, and again it was the worst thing I’d seen, Saga just yanking her alongside her like a broken limb.

Brand sat me on one of the chairs. Then he shouldered his pack and picked up a long case that I guess held the violin and his other self.

Breaking her doesn’t mean she’ll be damaged permanently, he said. Just means getting her head right, knowing who to be loyal to now. And don’t fret. I’ll be good to her while I keep her. She’s full of piss and vinegar, same as you. I like that in a dog.

The cloud came back over his face.

Doesn’t mean I want to see it in you. In fact I don’t want to see you at all. Ever again. Because if I do, young Griz, if I do, things will go badly and there may be some dying to be done. So you stay in here until the sun’s full up and I’m over the horizon.

He pointed with his chin.

You just find your way home and stay there. World’s not what you think it is, but that needn’t bother you out there on the edge of it. It is empty enough though, so don’t you go looking for me. Once I’m gone, I’m gone.

You stole my dog, I said.

That all you can say? he sighed. Doesn’t get better the more you say it.

And with a half-wave and the ghost of his earlier smile he turned and walked out of the room, leaving me alone with the chairs, the mouldering pile of books and a fire I could not be bothered to work on. Instead I got up and walked around the church looking for something to get the rope cut.

There was a glint of metal behind the altar table, but it was just a cross on a stand and the metal had no edge sharp enough to help. I tried rubbing the rope against the corner of the altar but the stone was too dull and the rope too tough to get it done.

And then I got angry again and found I was standing in the door looking towards where the boat had been moored and looking at nothing but water. I decided there and then that if I couldn’t see him then he couldn’t see me and so I went out of the church and looked for the graveyard. It wasn’t as overgrown as I thought it might be, and the reason was obvious, though it gave me a shock when I first saw the sheep move out of the corner of my eye and thought it was Saga. There were wild sheep on the island and three ewes and a ram watched me suspiciously as I walked carefully into the garden of gravestones. It was a smaller graveyard than I expected, but then it was a small island and what buildings remained intact apart from the church wouldn’t have supported a big population.

The stones were all rectangular and weathered and I didn’t bother to read names as I usually did when walking past grave-markers on the Uists. I just made my way to the one different grave which was a round boulder, not shaped by anyone.

There was writing carved into it, writing that told me I was standing on the grave of someone who had been called Smith. My knife was in the grass in the shadow of the boulder, and I used Mr. Smith’s stone to carefully sit on, and slid down so my hands could find the knife behind me. Then I used it again to lever myself upright. I said a silent thank you because even though ghosts aren’t real and when you’re dead you stay that way, it seemed the polite thing to do.