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

Say bon E. C. , said John Dark.

I know, I said. But I have to go.

I pointed to the east.

I have to get my dog.

Mime and pointing at the dictionary followed and then she went for a walk in the walled garden and I went to hunt rabbits with Jip but they were all gone or sleeping far underground. I sat with Jip looking out over the sea of trees to the west and south of us, and listened to the birdsong and the murmur of the wind. He rolled on his back at my feet, which is not something he does very often, and I took as an attempt to cheer me up. I scratched him on the special place on the side of his ribs and his leg jigged up and down as it always did.

And then we went back into the house and found John Dark with a pile of fresh pesh and a finger pointing at the dictionary, jabbing at the word for tomorrow.

Okay, I said.

Okay, she said.

We both made separate passes through the house before it got dark, looking through the neatly laid out objects stored away for those who came later. I decided to take a different set of books about trees and plants, and a couple more pocket-sized leather-bound ones that had thin paper like onion skin. Big, but light. They were books I had heard of from reading other books. One was The Iliad , one was Treasure Island and the other The Odyssey . Looked like a lot of reading in those slim volumes, and I thought we had many nights ahead of us.

I also took a hat and a long oilskin raincoat. Its collar had been eaten by something, maybe a family of moths, but the greeny-brown oilskin was thick and heavy. It would double as a groundsheet on wet ground.

We played Tannhäuser as we watched the sun go down, and then we stoked the fire and turned in, anticipating a big day come morning. I slept deeply and don’t remember any dreams, prophetic or otherwise. I woke with first light and found John Dark was already up and packing away her stuff and loading up the horses. I had a last look round the library, trying not to think of all the wonderful stories I was abandoning there, and then made my own preparations to leave.

The day began early and was tinged with sadness from the very start as we saddled the horses and strapped on their packs, and then said goodbye to the Homely House.

I hoped if all went well that I might pass by there again one day, but the world—big and empty as it is—still contains more surprises than you can imagine, and so even before what happened happened to me, I knew returning to that happy place was not something to rely on.

We had—as invited—taken things that were useful to us. We had enjoyed the comfort and calm atmosphere. We had argued about whether to take the record player, but in the end had decided to leave it. One day, someone else might find their way to the house and the rooms would again fill with music. I think the couple in the bath deserved that.

As John Dark was packing the horses, I took a bunch of lavender which I had cut from the hedge of it that divided the walled garden and went to say thank you. I know it’s an odd thing to do for an iron tub full of long-dead bones, but the fancy took me and I did it quickly and quietly, not wanting to have to explain it to John Dark. I wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed or anything. It was just too complicated a thing to explain in sign language and by poking at a dictionary. I wasn’t even quite sure why I was doing it, only that I should. Jip came with me up the stairs.

John Dark had been there before me. She had taken the dry stalks out of one of the vases and left it full of newly cut roses, big pillowy ones that grew on the sunny wall of the house. The smell of them already filled the room. I grinned at Jip and cleared another jug of dry stalks, half of which went to powder in my hands as I did so. Then I put my lavender in and nodded to the bath.

Thank you, I said. We were happy here too.

Only Jip heard me say this, and he didn’t seem to find it too stupid. I closed the door on the way out and we walked down the stairs. John Dark was waiting. She saw the remaining dry flower stalks in my hand and grunted. I don’t know if she was embarrassed by me having seen her roses, or thought I was shy of being caught with the evidence of my own parting gift, but we never talked about it.

Al on zee , she said briskly. Foe part ear .

We closed up the house and made sure it was as weatherproof as we had found it. And then we mounted up and headed east.

In the end the Homely House was a place of death, but its lesson was the dangerous and seductive one that death might not be terrible, but instead nothing more than a long-needed rest, an endless and gentle sleep. Those were the thoughts I had about it as I rode away, and though they weren’t exactly bad thoughts, I knew they were not useful thoughts for a person to have, not someone who had things to do in the world. They were later thoughts, to be filed and retrieved when I was older. They were thoughts that dulled the edge, and I still believed at that stage that I had years ahead of me full of unknown terrain through which to cut my way.

Ends happen fast, and often arrive before you’ve been warned they’re coming.

Jip ran happily in a big circle round us as we descended the slope and entered a flatter country that was not as thickly forested as the tract of land we had come through. It was still well wooded, but just thinly enough to make out the shape of old fields here and there, given away by the straight hedgerows that had towered into something more like natural fortifications. In the first hour, we had to double back on our tracks twice because we’d found ourselves bottled in on three sides by impenetrable blackthorn thickets.

And then we came to an open meadow that was passable, but totally overgrown with giant hogweed. I didn’t know what it was called then but between what happened next and where I now find myself there were enough lonely nights by the campfire for me to have found it in one of the books I’d brought from the Homely House. If you ever saw cow parsley, you’ll know what it looked like, only much, much bigger. Ribbed stalks thicker than my arm, bristly and purple-blotched, rose maybe three or four metres above us: these stalks supported a wide bowl-shaped spread of white flowers, like an upside-down umbrella, each about two metres wide. All the flowers faced up into the sky. It promised a clear enough passage, with plenty of width to weave our way through the stalks, and Jip bounded happily ahead of us. But John Dark pulled up short and turned to me. She pointed at the stalks and said:

Mal .

Which by now I knew meant “bad”. She mimed itching wildly, and then pulled up her hood and yanked her sleeves down to make mittens to cover her hands. I did the same. We were about thirty metres into the plantation of hogweed, and I was looking closely at the ribbed and bristly stalk of a particularly thick plant as I passed, wondering if it was the hairy bristles themselves that were mal , when there was a crack and a yell and then a horrible crunch and thud, heavy and meaty enough to feel it through my horse’s hooves, and I turned to find John Dark had disappeared off the face of the earth. I looked around the other way in case I hadn’t seen her cut around me, but I was alone beneath the strange-looking plant heads.

Then Jip barked and ran across and began to paw at the rim of what I now saw was a hole in the vegetation covering the ground. John Dark and the horse had not only vanished from the face of the earth, they had fallen into it.

I dropped off my horse and ran to the edge of the pit. They were both still moving and still alive at that point and, though it was hard to see down into the darkness, even before my eyes adjusted I could tell it was very bad. Even before the horse started screaming. Even before I saw it trying to stand on brutally snapped front legs, struggling to get itself off the vertical length of rusty pipe that had gone straight through it as it landed.