Gregory Norminton - The Devil’s Highway

‘Will you be wheedling all morning or have you things to do? Now that your brother’s at the hole game with his idiot friends.’

‘There’s no playing in winter.’

‘Men are always at play.’

His mother reached down a bundle of mugwort from the rafters and tossed it into the fire. The medicinal fumes filled the hut and Nyfain’s scowl tightened, for she hated the smell, though she knew better than to complain of it.

‘You will be trapping again,’ his mother said as she handed Andagin the pot of gruel.

When he had eaten his share and a mouthful of heather honey, he crawled to the bench and felt under it for his shoulder pack. His fingers found the arrows he stowed there: antler tips that Judoc had carved for him, back in the summer, before the strangeness took him.

‘Vala. Vala .’

‘Hush.’

‘He’s out again.’ The coughing was long and liquid. ‘Those hotheads …’

‘Drink this and lie quiet.’

Andagin took up his bow. He looked to where his father lay, hoping for a glance, a raised hand – some gesture that still had blood in it.

He left the hut disappointed.

To the east the cloud was stained with light. He bathed his gaze in it as he shrugged the pack more comfortably onto his shoulders. He sorted mentally through the contents. The knife was there. Some water in a gourd. Cordage. Her stone. He sensed, as if it were an old dog watching him, the hill fort at his back. He did not have to look at the smoking thatch and dilapidated fencing; he knew the talismans hooked on what had been battlements, wooden heads to keep evil spirits at bay. Andagin had rarely entered the fort. He knew only the cattle enclosure where livestock and brides were bartered, and the open field hedged with gorse where the dead were returned to the sky. There was also, forbidden to him and to all males, the shrine where his mother went to give him life, where Judoc was born and two others that never drew breath.

He thought about the dead babies. He could picture them only as dolls for an offering. ‘She took them back,’ his mother said. ‘You must not be angry. She can take, for without Her we would have nothing to give.’

Andagin recited the story. He did it so that the dead might lie easy.

Long ago, when the world was young, there was nothing but forest from sea to sea. The sea was blue and the land was green, a sea of leaf and wood. There were many wolves and bears in the forest and men were their prey – for men could not find their way in the shadows and they never saw the face of the sun. One day our Mother took pity on men and sent a great wind to open up the forest. In the clearings made by fallen trees, corn and barley grew and heather for cattle to browse – and into these places men stumbled, giving thanks to she who had lifted the darkness. So to this day we worship our Mother for her mercy, and leave her corn dolls and a knot from the first sheaf. And we tread lightly on her mantle, for she is our parent that loves us, and will return us to life when our lives come to an end.

The hill fort burrowed out of sight. Andagin tracked south through croplands, praying to the hare that might sacrifice itself, to the woodcock and the fox. His belly was full only of hunger. He was sick of cutting the pith and seed from rosehips, of watery soup and stale hazelnuts.

Deep heather gathered like a rampart. He shook spumes of snow from its dead flowers.

He waded a mile towards the oak wood.

His first snare was untouched – rope taut and sapling flexed as he had left them. The same sight awaited him at the next. A third had a squirrel snared about the midriff. Death and the cold had stiffened it. Pink haws of blood lay in the snow where it had struggled.

Andagin untied the squirrel. Mere scraps, yet he gave it thanks for giving what it had. He inspected the russet fur to assess its condition. He took off his pack and extracted the cordage. He trimmed off a length with his knife and bound the squirrel by its neck to the strap of his pack. He swung the pack over his shoulder, feeling the sway of the corpse behind him.

He inspected his fourth snare at the woodland edge and found that one of the nooses had come undone. He set to replacing it and soon his eyes were so fused to the running knot, his mind so bound up with it, that it took a gasp to break his concentration and name that shape as it burst, in a spatter of snow, from cover.

A hare. Sprinting to close open ground. Passing so near he fancied he could see the ember of its soul rushing to catch up with it.

Andagin’s heart pounced and his body followed. Already the bow was in his left hand, an arrow in the right, its flights crushed between his fingers and the haft.

The hare was quick – it leapt into a bank of heather. Andagin watched for tremors that might break the crust of snow. He began, with arrow poised, to close in on its hiding place. He let his feet do the thinking. Snow and brittle winter grass creaked beneath him. Closer each step, his eyes bridging the heather and the blunt tip of his arrow. It was like a raindrop on the edge of a leaf – at any instant the bond would break. Now. Or now. He trailed his foot in the snow. He stamped the ground.

The hare broke cover. It bolted and his arrow followed. He was in that flight. He felt it strike and the hare leapt as if the ground were a snake rearing up to bite.

The hare was not dead but knocked awry. Andagin gave chase, the animal in his chest hammering against its cage of bone. The hare stumbled, thwarted by a modest bank of earth. He saw, or thought he saw, the white blizzard of its terror as he fell upon it.

He was in the snow, his arms full of kicking muscle and tendons and fur. He managed to kneel and the snow was churned up and there was blood in it. He gripped the hare between his knees; more than its teeth, he feared those amber eyes. He hooded them with his hands and wrenched up and sideways. The hare shuddered. Andagin shut his eyes and swallowed his cry of triumph lest it spoil the gift.

He contemplated the hare in his lap. The light passed out of it. It was his duty to witness this, and not merely in beasts. He recalled the efforts of his aunt to be gone, the fever-light sharp in her eyes when he was brought to tell her goodbye. She had tried to touch his face and he remembered Judoc’s grip on his nape preventing him from shying away.

Other deaths were not to be witnessed. His grandfather had walked one frozen night into the heath. Men found the corpse and took it to the hill fort for burning. Andagin had wept at the flames, though his mother told him that life had two gates and both led into the world.

Was this true? Had he walked the heath before as another? Would he again? He poked with his finger at the dead hare. If only he could see its spirit run on into the heather. Into the earth, like a seed in darkness to germinate there and rise again.

His father would cross that threshold soon. Andagin would have to keep his face strong as they lit a pyre in the place of ancestors. The lintel of their house would fall and who but he remained to keep the other timbers from following?

His mind left the wood. It flew like a roosting crow to his father’s sickbed. He saw the ribs stark in that ruined chest. Saw his father’s roiling eyes as the coughing hacked him. And Judoc had turned against them all. Had they not been taught to walk their anger until it was spent: to shed a grievance on the heath and mark the spot of release with a stake plunged into the ground? Yet his brother disappeared for days without explanation. He seemed to crave his heart’s burden. He let the rage walk him.

Andagin squirmed the pack off his shoulders. She beckoned to him. She promised him comfort.

His fingers fastened about Her stone. He brought it to the light and held it to his nose. There was lightning locked inside. He rolled the stone in his palm to give it the heat of his body. The likeness turned to flesh against his flesh. Opening his hand and lifting the stone to his face, he traced with his thumb the indentations, the beads about her breast and crown.