Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

No. Purgative, she says. Yucky.

She gives him another piece of banana. While he is occupied, she takes the small, aluminium case from the boot of the car, and checks its contents, checks the expiry date of the drug, again. When she can get reception, she calls Lawrence, leaves him a message.

I’ve a huge favour to ask. You’ve probably heard already. Can you call me back as soon as you get this?

He will know what she needs. She sits for a few minutes with Charlie between her knees, looking at the handheld receiver. They are close, close enough. She should probably call the police and give them the coordinates in case she needs a transport van. The light is fading, but there is perhaps half an hour. She thinks for a moment about leaving Charlie in the car. What are the penalties for abandoning a bawling or sleeping infant in a locked, secluded vehicle, on a defunct road? But the decision is already made — she knows what she is going to do, and speculation is academic, a kind of decoy of the mind. She sets the baby down, attaches the papoose, and fits him snugly inside. She takes the dart case from the boot of the car, picks up the receiver, and walks into the Galt.

She takes her bearings, follows an animal track through the trees. It’s cool and dim and high, like being inside a dense, overgrown cathedral. Guttering seraphs in the leaves as the last of the sunlight lifts through the canopy. Charlie gabbles away in front of her — narrating the journey, the shapes, the sights, some unknowable part of the experience. There’s a slight buzz to her nerves — she should probably not be doing this. She continues on, softly along the forest floor, following the signal. Moss and drifts of burnt leaves underfoot. Fading light. The ground begins to create difficult shadows, the occasional looped root is thrown up, and there are illusory corridors between the trees, false pathways. She takes her bearings again. The smell all around is of the organic world dressing for evening: earthen, amberish. The signal is strong, but she knows, deep down, that she will not find them; and she would not be able to see well enough to aim the gun. Still, she walks for another few minutes. Now and then she stops, listens. There is immense quiet to the hardwoods but no real silence — rustles, pecking, the ripple of underground water. A bird on the cusp of night, its trills almost desperate. Charlie is quiet, too, thinking his own thoughts or mesmerised by the gloom, falling asleep. She strokes his hair. It was not a glitch in the locking device of the gate, she is sure of that, though it may never be proved. Someone let them out. Only a dozen people knew the codes, Michael among them, but it was not him. The certainty surprises her, but she is sure. Who, then? It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that they are found.

At a small clearing, she stops again. The light is thin and pouring away fast. She turns and looks behind. A smirr of shadow. Bark the colour of grey and white fur. Nothing is there. It is better not to allow the imagination liberty, she knows; twilight senses will assist with any lurking conceit. She’s not in any real danger. That is to say, the risks are very low. She adjusts the receiver’s antenna, but she is on borrowed time. The forest is extinguishing itself all around her.

You OK? she asks Charlie, and strokes his hair again.

He mumbles something, shifts a fraction.

Me too, she says. Time to go back, I think.

She follows the path back through the trees. Dusk, the time of border patrols. She half expects to hear them somewhere close in the forest — a declarative chorus, in minor key, sounding the new territory, but there is just the great, imperfect silence of the trees. She is not lost, but when she encounters a piece of fence with an old checked shirt attached to the wire, looming like a man, her heart lurches. She stumbles a little and gasps. She is in a different part of the woods. Shit, she thinks, this is stupid; this is reckless. She takes her bearings again, starts forward, walking as quickly as she can without tripping. Can she hear voices? Men talking? It is then she begins to panic a little; not because of the dark or the wolves, but because there might be humans — and they are far more likely to do her, and the baby, harm. She is just a moving shape. A hunter might mistake her for something else.

She breaks onto the road a few hundred yards short of the car and walks up the track, a little breathless, relieved.

Look, Charlie, she says. We’re back. We made it.

Speaking more to sedate her own nerves than to calm the baby. A new moon hangs above the forest. Despite the modern shine of the paintwork, the car looks as if it has been parked in this place forever. An artifact or caravan left stranded in the Galt by some older tribe. She opens the boot and puts the aluminium case inside. She takes out a bundle of blankets. It is not very cold and she has slept in far less comfortable places.

Home sweet home, she says to Charlie. What shall we do now? Have some milk? Read a story?

She changes him again by the light of the open car door — there are three clean nappies in the supply bag. She talks to him, tells him the plan, trying to convince herself at the same time.

We’re going to camp. We’re going to snuggle up and have a nice time. You’ll see Uncle Lawrence tomorrow.

He resists being put in the car seat again, so she sits with him on her lap on the back seat, telling the same stories from the two books in the baby bag, over and over until he is asleep. She sits for a while thinking, then sleeps, upright, leaning against the door, with Charlie in the crook of her body — the rough, musty blankets drawn around them both. Outside, uniform blackness, the moon has gone and there are no stars. At 10 p.m. — which feels like the middle of the night — her phone flashes. Reception enough that a series of texts have arrived. Several more from Huib and Thomas. One from her brother, saying, No problem. Tell me where to be and when . One from Alexander: Saw on the news. Hope you catch them .

Dawn wakes her, cold legs, and stiffness through her back. The car is cool inside and the door moulding feels damp with condensation, but against her side Charlie is a little engine of heat. The windows have misted with their breathing; she wipes the nearest one, looks out at the misty citrine light filtering through the woods. Small flocks of birds break above the canopy and disperse. She reaches onto the parcel shelf for the handheld tracker and switches it on. The battery is on half charge. There’s no signal. She switches to Ra’s frequency, but it’s the same. They have moved on.

She slides carefully from underneath Charlie, inch by inch, as if he’s a bomb she doesn’t want to detonate, and lays him flat on the back seat in the blankets. He stirs but doesn’t wake. Several times in the night he came round, confused, and she had to coax him to slumber again. She opens the car door quietly and gets out, stretches, walks about. The air feels newly laundered, fresh and green. She eats a banana, walks about to find reception, and calls the police number on the card given to her by Sergeant Armstrong, asks to be put through to the officer manning the enquiry. There have been no more reported sightings.

She opens the OS map fully and lays it flat on the dewy ground, charts the position from Annerdale to the point in the Galt where the signal was strongest, then continues the trajectory on into farmland and the hills beyond. Their tendency to travel in straight lines might help her to find them. There are few settlements on the other side of the Galt, mostly small lanes and B roads, until the A66, and the town of Cockermouth. After that, they will have to traverse Bassenthwaite and the North Western Fells. The rural tracts between towns will suit them, might give them cover. They will continue through Greystoke and Hutton, towards the border and Carlisle, the county’s only city. At the Solway Firth, they would be forced to follow the estuary inland and cross by road, where the water narrows, or perhaps at a shallow swim. Then, Scotland.