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

But she didn’t burn it, I said. And if you work hard, the Falki can take you home again.

His eyes burned into me.

I know where you live, he said.

And I know where your home is too, I said.

You believed that story, did you? he said.

Yes, I said. Now you’re trying to make me doubt it like that, yes, I do.

He looked at me, long and hard. Then his beard split and revealed that infuriating flash of white that came when he smiled.

If I come after you, he said, what of that?

If you bring these people, it’ll go badly for you, I said. I expect then there will be blood at the end of that story.

And if I come alone, he said. Griz?

Don’t, I said. It’s not that kind of story either.

Joy looked at us.

You heard, she said. Don’t come with them. And don’t come alone.

He just stared at me. I don’t know what he was thinking. And I hadn’t seen that thing in his eyes before.

Maybe it was doubt.

Don’t come alone, she said. Bring your sisters.

Joy, I said, my head whipping round to look at her. She shrugged.

Ferg might like to meet them, she said. And no one knows the end of their own story, not except the very end, where they die. Not even you, Griz. Now we have to go.

Leaving happened in a fast, furtive dash through the darkness towards the stable and what must have been the paddocks around them, the dogs running beside us, Jip’s limp improving with every step, staying silent as if they instinctively knew we should not draw any attention to ourselves. Joy had my bow and arrows strapped to the saddle, and our horses ready to go. We turned loose the Cons’ other horses so they couldn’t follow us, but we kept the two best ones to carry any useful things we might vike on the journey ahead, and then we rode hard into the night, taking them and my horses north, back the way I had come, following the happily reunited dogs all the way.

Until we lost sight of the settlement over the first low rise of land, I had my shoulders hunched and hardly breathed, as if expecting a bullet out of the dark with every hoofbeat. Once out of view and lost in the night, I relaxed. No one came after us, the next day or any other.

The journey that followed is a whole other story and there is no room in the pages remaining here to tell it properly. But we made two stops that belong in this one:

First, we stopped at the Homely House to bury John Dark.

Maybe because we were nearing somewhere I already knew was a place of death, my thoughts turned a little blue as we got closer to it. I think Joy found the same thing happening to her, so perhaps it was just the comedown after the relief of our escape.

Should we have freed the other women? I said as we carefully crossed the expanse of giant hogweed near the house.

They were free, she said. Most of them. Two of them held me down when Ellis tried to scare me with the poker.

We rode on a bit more.

It will be easier on the softer ones now Ellis is gone

she said.

And as we started up the slope to the house she sighed.

I don’t know, Griz, she said. Maybe we should have tried to persuade them, but then maybe we wouldn’t have got away. Maybe I was too scared to do all the right things.

Maybe doing most things right is good enough, I said.

Maybe, she said.

And then, after a pause:

Perhaps one day we should sail back and see if I’m right.

We weren’t able to bury John Dark as I’d planned to. Mainly because John Dark thought it was a bad idea, as she hadn’t quite managed to die. Instead she’d gained a limp, which she didn’t like, but which didn’t seem to slow her down. So she came north with us too, and she is sitting beside my mother and Joy and Bar in front of the fire as I write these last words. She is scratching Jess behind the ears.

Jess seems to have become Joy’s dog now. And I couldn’t be happier about it. It feels right. It’s a good sight, and if I had the knack I would sketch it and leave it as the last image of this story. The once dead daughter who never died but was gone returned to the mother, and the grieving mother whose girls have gone but who finds herself with a new family. There is a mismatched symmetry in there somehow, a patched-together happiness. Maybe that’s what we have to make do with now, here at the end of the world. Or maybe that’s just what people have always had to do since time began.

The second stop was Glasgow, where we camped in the library where Mum and Dad once slept in a fortress of books. The roof was still on, and there I found the Freeman’s book. It was the other reason we stopped there. Other than looking for a boat to vike and repair and sail home. I have the book on my lap now, under the thin last pages as I write. It’s a wonderful book, about science—which we’ve lost—and hope—which we haven’t. There is stuff in it I don’t understand, but what I do makes me happy and sad in equal measure. It’s about spirit as much as science, and about life, not just humanity—how it’s strange and tenacious and good at adapting to almost any circumstance. Like us, really, when we’re at our best. It’s called Infinite in all Directions and that first Freeman’s other name was Dyson. I can see why he inspired the Freemen to try and put life in computers before we all died out. Even though I believe they failed, I think trying made them human. And I think I’d have liked him.

Life on the islands is the same and different. There is more laughter but more carefulness too. Having been in the ruins of your world, I feel the fragility of life like I never did before, but also the glory of it. I want to see more. Jip and I will make more voyages, I think. But maybe not on our own. Perhaps Joy will come too, and Jess.

I do not think the Cons will come here. But I still watch the horizons for sails more than I once did. Jip and I find time to sit on the top of the island most days, and from there on a clear one you still feel like you can see for ever.

Joy says if I’m looking for red sails they will likely come from the north, and I tell her to go boil her head.

She also told me no one knows the end of their story, other than at the very end we all die. But I have half a page to fill and then this book is full.

I never really told you why Brand and I stopped talking, before the book was stolen by Joy, and now there is no room. That’s fine. It was maybe not such an important reason as I thought at the time. As either of us thought. I don’t know.

But on this last empty page, here’s what I do know.

I know I’m tough. And I know I’m stupid. I’m clever too. I’m scared of things. I try to be brave. Mostly I succeed. Sometimes I spend so much time thinking that I don’t actually do anything. Sometimes I work so hard I forget to eat. Sometimes I don’t plan ahead. I just jump in and do things impulsively, without working out what happens next. I talk too much. I don’t always say what I mean. I don’t always mean what I say either. I kill things. I make things. I break things. I grow things. I lose myself in stories. I find myself there too. I read them because I like getting lost. And I wrote this one because I thought I was lost, for real and for ever. And maybe because I had no hope and no power and was entirely alone, I made up a friend and talked to them in a world I made out of nothing but words.

And then a book saved me. Because Joy read this and found the truth. So here I am, writing much more than I knew I was going to be able to, right to the end of the last page.

That makes it look neat, but it didn’t work out like I planned. Nothing’s perfect. Especially not me. I’m just like you were. Human. Hanging on. Holding out for a happy ending. But knowing it ends badly.