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

It was a hot day and the blister from the pack straps became uncomfortable by lunchtime, when the sun was at its highest. It was berry time of year and I’d been grazing and picking blackberries as we went. We stopped by a small pool and sat under a willow for a rest. I ate the berries I’d picked and some of the dried meat that remained. Jip drank noisily from the water, and disturbed something that splashed and then rustled off into the long grass and docks on the other side. Jip looked after it with his ears up, but then he dropped to his haunches and panted in the shade of a nearby hazel tree.

I looked at my arm, which seemed fine to me, and thought about how to deal with the painful pack strap. I’d seen tufts of wool on some of the brambles as we passed, and now wished I’d picked enough off to make a pad to spread the pressure. I decided to do so as soon as we set off. Since wool on the thorns mean there were sheep somewhere around, I also wondered if I should shoot one if I came across them. Fresh meat would be good, and I could perhaps smoke some to carry with me. But there were plenty of rabbits and berries everywhere, and killing such a big animal and wasting the bulk of the meat seemed a waste at the time. I did not intend to be on the mainland for so long that I would need to lay in stores, let alone carry them. I could live off the land as we went, I thought. I didn’t know as much about hunger then as I do now. But at the time I thought I was moving fast and travelling light. I didn’t know that some journeys are best taken slow. At that point, I even felt guilty for resting in the shade of the trees and using my new book to identify them. I felt I should be up and walking every hour of daylight.

I remember all these details about that stop by the pool very clearly. Even down to the bright colours of the dragonflies hovering and zipping over the water. I remember lying back and looking up at the blue sky through the pale green screen of willow leaves and thinking that rather than killing a whole sheep, maybe I could air-dry rabbit meat on my pack as we walked so that we had some food in the days when Jip might not be able to catch our dinner, or I shoot it. And then I remember we were walking towards the notch again, and I don’t remember much about the next couple of days because it turned out that my arm was not getting better at all.

I walked in a sort of daze, counting paces and pebbles and sleeping under trees. I know we passed houses, lots of houses, but I don’t remember going into any of them. I do remember realising I had forgotten to transfer pebbles to keep track of my pace-counting, even though I had not forgotten to keep track of my steps. I drank a lot of water and stopped talking to Jip. My arm had given me a fever, I think. All I do recall is the notch in the hills that seemed never to get closer, and the counting. And then I went to sleep one lunchtime under an oak tree and when I woke I was shivering and it was dark and Jip was barking at me. I got into my sleeping roll and stayed there. For a couple of days all I could do was sleep, shake, stumble out of the bedroll to shit and then when there was no food left in me to come out, I swallowed the last oatcakes and lay there thinking this was a very stupid way to die. Jip just stayed beside me, giving me his warmth in the nights and his companionship during the day. He’d disappear and return with rabbits, but I didn’t have the strength to light a fire and so he ate them while I watched.

I don’t know how many days I was sick, but I do remember when I decided it was time to go. I had crawled to the edge of the water to refill the bottles, and was doing so when all the noise in the world seemed to stop.

The birds went quiet and even the breeze seemed to slow so that the leaves above us were silent. I turned to look at Jip who was standing rigidly, looking into the bank of woods opposite. All the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I saw nothing and the noise slowly bled back into the world, but just for an instant I had the absolute conviction that I was being looked at. And not looked at kindly. And even though I was still feverstruck and retching out most of what I drank, the thought of remaining in that place became impossible. I stumbled back to my lair and the first thing I did was string my bow and lay an arrow ready. Then, keeping my eye on the woodland opposite, I re-stuffed my pack and slipped out from under the willows and slunk away on to the rising heathland. My head was splitting with pain and all the joints in my body seemed to have grit in them, so that any movement was both stiff and painful. But despite that, the feeling I’d had by the water was so intense that I had to get away from it as fast as I could.

Maybe there had been nothing there. Maybe it was the memory of the large unseen thing that had rubbed noisily around the corner below us in the night at the museum. Or maybe I had been looked at by something that saw me as prey, in much the same way that I looked at rabbits or deer. Or sheep.

Sick, shaking and stumbling, I walked the whole day with the bow in my hand and an arrow nocked and ready. When I finally stopped at nightfall, my hand had frozen into position and I had to massage it back into life.

I stopped at a house. I wanted doors and walls to be safe behind. It was brick-built with two floors and an intact roof, and it stood beside a big pond in the middle of a stand of trees which had overgrown whatever garden it had once been surrounded by. I climbed in a broken window on the ground floor and looked around. The trees had sprouted so close to the house that their leaves pressed against the glass that remained, making the interior dark and claustrophobic. The stairs were sound enough, and I carefully creaked my way to the upper floor where there was more light. There were two rooms and a bathroom. The bathroom had a fireplace. Strangely the bedrooms didn’t. I was feeling terrible and was realising that the full day’s walk was a mistake. I couldn’t stop shaking. Jip must have thought I was in trouble, because he hadn’t set off on the rat hunt that usually marked his entry into a new house. Instead he stayed close, looking up at me with his head cocked.

Sleep, I said. Just need sleep. And fire. Cold.

The sun had not set on what had been a warm enough day, but my teeth were chattering. I kicked a couple of chairs to bits and kindled a fire in the bathroom fireplace. The chimney drew well, and the flames took. I went back into the bedrooms and took the drawers from a chest of drawers and stomped them to more firewood, which I laid in a stack by the grate, and then I shook out my bedroll and, in a house with two bedrooms, lay down on the bathroom floor. I would have gone to sleep right there had my arm been itching as badly as it had been ever since I came ashore, but the very fact that it had stopped began to worry me and go round and round like a worm in my head. I wondered if that meant it had got worse, that the infection had poisoned the arm so much that it had begun killing off the nerves. I wondered if I had come so far, so impulsively, only to end up another unnoticed tangle of bones and rags on the floor of a house no one would ever visit again, friendless, forgotten and far from the sea.

I sat up and made myself unravel the bandage on my arm, painfully conscious I had not changed it for days. I think I expected to see blackened flesh and rot, but in fact the honey had begun to do its job. I knew I should boil the bandage before re-applying it, and while I was thinking about what to do and if I had the energy to in fact do anything at all, I did the only thing I actually was able.

I fell asleep. And I don’t remember anything else except when I woke it was bright sunlight and my mouth was dry as old straw and something smelled dead and after a bit I realised that smell was me. I’d messed myself. I felt ashamed even though there was no one but Jip to see. He came over and licked my face to show he didn’t care and was glad I was awake, and then went out, presumably to go hunting.