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

Son day loo! said John Dark and plunged the loo garoo stick into the fire. The pitch-soaked material blazed into light and she literally jumped right over me as she raced down the steps towards the noise, carrying her gun in the other hand.

She either did not notice or she didn’t care that my hands were free.

A boom like a thunderclap split the night as she fired her gun at something that set off a new series of howls and yipping and then I was on my feet, grabbing my bow and arrows. I strung the bow in one fast tug, and quickly looked around for my knife.

Then I heard Jip bark again and then snarl, and followed John Dark hurtling down the steps towards the light of her flaming torch that was now arcing back and forth on the pitch below.

The steps were very wet and slick with rain and moss, but I kept my footing by a miracle until I tried to stop myself at the bottom and slipped and half tripped to a halt on one knee, hitting it so hard that I later found I’d ripped the knee out of my trousers. I snatched an arrow and nocked it and only then—panting and shaking but finally still—was I able to make sense of what was happening.

At first I thought they were dogs. They weren’t. Nor were they anything you would have expected to find roaming free on this island when you were alive. As a kid, I read a whole book about how they returned to the country after centuries of being extinct, but that was a fantasy. They were something much older than the tamed land you knew, older still than the empty one that we have inherited from you. But there’s no question they do fit the wilderness that time is turning it back into.

Wolves.

In the circle of light cast by the flaming torch in her hand, John Dark stood with the horses, one of which had a sheet of blood washed down its flank. A dead wolf lay in front of her. And Jip stood at bay beside her, snarling out at the loose ring of wolves circling them. The wolves moved all the time, never still for long if they did stop, always pacing and watching. I could see the glint of their eyes on the other side of the horses, behind John Dark. The circular movement masked the fact that they were slowly but definitely getting closer. She seemed to realise this, and kept on turning herself, cutting fiery swathes through the night with her torch, trying to force them back. The horses were terrified, eyes rolled wide in their heads, but they stayed close to her. At first, I thought it was because they trusted her to protect them. Then I remembered she had hobbled them so that they wouldn’t stray.

There was one wolf that was bigger than the others, and where they circled left, it circled right, which added to the confusion and the difficulty in keeping track of them. It kept its belly close to the ground as it moved. John Dark was trying to keep her eye on all the wolves at once. Jip just watched the big wolf. The dog was stiff and quivering with bottled-up tension, almost fizzing with the fight building up inside him. It was a look that terrified me almost as much as the wolves themselves. It meant Jip had decided that when the wolves got too close, he would kill the big one first, before going on to the next and the next. That was how his mind worked. He was born without an inch of back-off in him, and I think—being a terrier—he always assumed he’d win and would never stop until he did. Until he didn’t. At which point he’d be too dead to care much.

It was a big wolf. About the size of two, maybe two and a half Jips.

I realised there was a sort of plan to the way the wolf pack moved. It kept John Dark just distracted enough trying to keep track of them all so that they could each move a little bit closer every time her back was momentarily turned. I wanted to shout a warning, but didn’t want to distract her. Now I realise that I too was getting mesmerised and immobilised by the movement of the pack.

I was certainly distracted enough to miss the first lunge the big wolf made at the rear of the already bloodied horse.

Jip was un-distractible. He hit the wolf broadside on, like a small snarling battering ram that bit into the wolf’s neck as the momentum of his attack knocked it over and the two of them somersaulted across the grass. The wolf threw him off and rolled to his feet before Jip did. Now Jip was stuck between the big wolf and the others. The big wolf snarled and stepped towards him as two smaller wolves slunk behind Jip, into his blind spot.

John Dark swung the torch towards the big wolf who turned and looked at her, just in time to see the gun come up and point at his head.

It went click.

Any ammunition that remains from your time is so old and unreliable that it is always less likely to shoot as hang fire, which is why I was raised to the bow. The look the wolf gave her, even as it cringed away from the swinging flames of the torch, was almost human in its contempt.

Then one of the wolves behind Jip darted in to try and bite out the hamstrings in his back leg, and as Jip jumped and turned so fast that I heard the wolf’s teeth clash on the empty space where he had just been, the big wolf twisted away from John Dark as if it had had eyes in the back of its head all the time, and sprang for the back of Jip’s unprotected neck.

The wolf jerked in mid-air and hit Jip solidly in the back, hitting him like a sack of bricks, just as heavy—and just as inanimate. The back of the arrow stuck out of the base of its skull, buried to the fletch. Even if I were to touch a bow again, I’d never make another shot as good as that. And the funny thing is that I don’t remember thinking I should fire, or aiming, or drawing or loosing the string. All I remember is the arrow in flight and the sure knowledge that it was not going to miss, and then the sound of it hitting which was like the noise an axe makes when it bites into the wood. It must have severed the spinal cord at the very top, killing the wolf as it leapt, so that it was dead on landing.

Jip must have known the wolf was dead before the wolf did, because he didn’t even try to fight it as it landed on him. Instead he shrugged the body off and scooted beneath the horses’ bellies to take up his previous position, keeping guard with John Dark, watching the bits of the circling pack she couldn’t keep track of.

She looked across the darkness at me. If she was surprised to see me free and with a new arrow nocked and ready, she didn’t show it.

On core de fur , she shouted, gesturing with the guttering torch. On core de fur!

It was clear what she meant. It was also clear that her eyes were not the only ones now looking at me. I turned and pounded back up to the campfire as fast as I could. I grabbed the other loo garoo sticks and lit one.

I heard her shout from below.

Veet! she shouted. Veet!

Jip barked to underscore the urgency of whatever she was saying.

I went back down the steps three at a time, and when I got to the bottom I didn’t stop, but hurdled the fence and ran at the wolves with the fire held in front of me, waving it back and forth like a scythe. They parted and then I was inside the ring with Jip and John Dark and the three horses. There was no need for talking. Her stick was dying in her hands, so I handed her the other one and took over keeping the wolves at bay while she lit it. Jip barked at me, exulting in the midst of all this danger. I think he was happy because even though there was a bigger pack out there, now he had his own pack with him.

We were together, but the night was still going to last longer than the remaining two torches. John Dark fumbled with hers, holding it in the same hand as her gun which she broke and tried to reload with two more cartridges. I understood why she was doing it, but took little comfort from it when she snapped it closed again. There was no guarantee either of the things would fire, and the illusion of safety is a danger all of its own. Out of habit I went to retrieve my arrow from the big wolf. I swung my torch to keep the others back and flipped it on its back with my foot. It was solid and much heavier than I expected. It looked doglike enough for me to feel a pang of something close to guilt as I reached down, put my foot on its neck and pulled the flat-headed arrow all the way out. The other wolves seemed to growl a little deeper as I did so. The shaft was red from tip to butt by the time I got it out, and I snapped my wrist to clear the blood off the feathers, sending a spray of red arcing towards them. This seemed to enrage them further, and two began to howl.