The Long Walk Home

by Will North

  He sat on the floor of the hut, unsealed the box with his Swiss army knife, and looked inside. The material was gray and grainy. It was the ruins of Gwynne, not her remains. It was nothing more than the ground-up bits of a superstructure, a skeleton that could have been anyone’s—it had nothing to do with Gwynne. His own ashes would look exactly the same. He jostled the box and the contents shifted and rattled against the sides, a chaos of chalky pumice, nothing more.

  Chaos. It was precisely this he had fought against and feared all his life: the collapse of order, the triumph of confusion, the havoc caused by irresponsibility. The aspects of himself that he had long believed were noble—his vigilance, his caretaking, his thoughtfulness—were not so much meant to benefit those he loved, he realized suddenly, as they were to reduce the thing he feared most: chaos. It put him suddenly in mind of Jack herding the sheep—the watchfulness, the intensity, the split-second response.

  And he realized that what had attracted him to Gwynne in the beginning—her playfulness, her abandon—was what had repelled him in the end. She was his opposite. She was chaos to his order, carelessness to his vigilance, impulse to his rationality. And when they separated, he became, once again, half a human: competent, conscientious, caring—and safe. Vigilance elbowed aside joy; protectiveness squeezed out love.

  If the pulverized particles in the box were not, in any meaningful way, his Gwynne, then scattering them on this bleak, weather-shattered summit was not abandoning her after all. She was still out there. Her remains were what resided in the hearts of those she loved. Perhaps this strange request of hers was really meant to say, “Leave these stony shards of me among the rocks from which my family rose, long ago. Then take the rest of me, the things I was, the things I tried to teach you, wherever you go from here.”

  He was crying now, for the first time since her death. Crying at the stupidity of their separation and divorce. At the years they had both spent alone. At the waste of Gwynne’s death. And perhaps at the enormity of the task before him: taking Gwynne’s lessons to heart. Living them.

  Alec had no idea how long he’d sat there holding the box, but in the meantime the weather had begun to clear. The clouds had shredded and the sky was milky blue above. It was time. He rose and carried the box a hundred yards or so across the icy boulder field to the concrete pillar and slowly circumnavigated the summit, tipping out a thin stream of the brittle dust as he went.

  He told her again how much he loved her, about how he’d never stopped believing in her, about her courage at the end, about the beauty she had brought to the world, about the joy she found in it, and about how desperately he missed her. When he’d completed the circle he returned to the pillar. He put the lid on the now-empty box, slipped it under his arm, and called out across the summit, “Croeso!” It was the Welsh word for welcome. He’d found it in the dictionary Fiona had given him. He wanted to welcome Gwynne’s bones home.

  He looked up and saw a peregrine falcon hovering high above him. The raptor hung motionless on the updraft rising from the cliff edge. Then it slipped gracefully off the wind, wings still motionless, and ghosted west toward the sea. When he looked at the ground again, he found he could no longer distinguish Gwynne’s ashes from the rocks on which he’d scattered them. It put him in mind of the first law of thermodynamics: energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed. Somewhere, Gwynne’s energy still radiated.

  He returned to the shelter and picked up his pack, so light now without the ashes he felt he could almost soar like the falcon. The wind had dropped, but it had gotten much colder. He thought about the lambs that weren’t penned in the barn and worried whether they’d make it. Life is so inexpressibly delicate. He picked up his walking stick and set off to the west, staying close to the northern rim of the cliffs. Fiona would not have to worry; there was plenty of time for him to get down this afternoon.

  He had gone only a few hundred yards across the frost-shattered granite wasteland when he caught a glint of light off to his right. In the expanse of gray, fractured rock, it was something jarring, something that shouldn’t have been there. Alec clambered over the rocks and soon discovered that what he’d seen was an empty whisky bottle. What he hadn’t seen before, because it was curled up on its side behind a massive block of stone near the cliff edge, was a man’s body. The body, wearing only trousers, boots, and a shirt, was crusted with tiny hailstones. He brushed the rime of ice off the shoulder and head and turned the body upon its back. He knew the face immediately, although he’d never met the man. It was the face in the photo in the breakfast room at Tan y Gadair. It was David Edwards.

  eleven

  HE CALLED DAVID’S NAME. No response. He slapped the man’s face gently to see if he could get him to open his eyes. Again, nothing.

  Alec pulled up David’s ice-stiffened shirtsleeve and placed a finger below the bony edge of the man’s left wrist, feeling for a pulse. He couldn’t find one. He pressed his fingers into the side of David’s neck and, to his amazement, felt a faint, desperately slow throbbing there. He knelt for a moment beside the inert body of Fiona’s husband. In another hour, maybe less, David would be dead.

  Alec looked at David’s fingertips and was both surprised and relieved to see only the beginnings of frostbite. But he knew he had to get the man out of his wet clothes and into something dry. He opened his knife and carefully sliced off David’s wet shirt and undershirt. He took off his own expedition shirt and patiently inched it over David’s stiff, unresponsive limbs, taking care not to jostle him. He buttoned the dry shirt over David’s chest and then removed the man’s shoes and socks. Not far from David’s body was a nearly new waxed cotton Barbour coat, but it was wet, ice encrusted, and useless. He unbuckled David’s belt, unzipped his wet trousers, and eased them off. Alec always kept a spare pair of socks in his pack and now he pulled them over David’s feet, noting that the toes were beginning to redden. The nylon shorts Alec wore hiking had zip-on legs; he took the legs from the pack and pulled them up as high onto David’s thick thighs as they would go. Not ideal, but better than being wet. Then he took out his first aid kit. In it was a small, tightly compacted parcel roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes. It was a space blanket, a thin expanse of plastic fabric covered in a film of aluminum. It had been invented for NASA’s space program and had an almost magical ability to conserve heat in a human body under the most extreme and prolonged conditions of exposure. He’d resisted buying it when he was outfitting himself for his long walk, but the salesman had persisted, and now he blessed the man. Very gently, Alec pulled David’s body away from the cliff face and onto the space blanket, wrapping it around his body, mummy fashion. The blanket would not warm David, but Alec hoped it would keep him from getting colder. At a minimum, getting a layer of insulation between his body and the rock ledge upon which it lay would slow the heat loss. Just for a moment, he looked over the cliff edge. Far below, deep in the valley, was Tan y Gadair. And then Alec understood. David had come here to die. He’d known, because he knew this place so well, that the weather would turn. He’d come up here by way of the Pony Track—knowing he hadn’t the strength for the Fox’s Path—swallowed most of a bottle of whisky and, while looking out over his beloved farm, waited for the cold to kill him.

  Hypothermia is a gradual and remarkably gentle way to go. First there is the slow, insidious chilling, then the desperate, uncontrollable trembling—the body’s built-in attempt to generate heat through movement. When that fails, there is a gradual slide into unconsciousness—peaceful, almost blissful. David’s suicide was well thought out and competently executed. He wondered if David had a life insurance policy. If he did, this was a way of ending things that would be unlikely to be questioned: a hill farmer caught out in the elements.

  Alec had no way of knowing how long David had been here or how far the shutting-down process in his body had progressed. He wondered whether David had greeted the hailstorm with gratitude, hoping it would speed him to his chosen end, or w
hether he’d already been unconscious by then. The best Alec could do, he knew, was try to keep David’s condition from deteriorating further. He scanned the sky: scudding clouds but more blue than gray, and no immediate sign of rain. He checked the blanket, threw on the pack, grabbed his walking stick, and raced west along the summit rim, back to the Fox’s Path again. Descending it was dangerous, he knew, but the easier Pony Track would take too long. He needed to reach help as quickly as possible.

  Alec started down the steep scree slope, picking his way as quickly as he could, afraid more than anything else of wrenching a knee or breaking an ankle and being of no use to anyone. In some places he slid for several feet in the loose rubble, as if riding an escalator. Far below him he could see the black water of Llyn y Gadair and beyond that Llyn Gafr and the farm. He started sliding again, but this time it didn’t stop and he realized with horror that the slide was taking him to the cliff face. He dropped to the ground, flipped onto his belly and, with both hands, dug the hooked horn handle of his walking stick into the scree, like a mountaineer’s ice axe. A moment later the handle snagged a corner of bedrock. The scree slide clattered past him and over the edge, but Alec stopped.

  He didn’t move. He rested, his face and body pressed into the slope. Then, continuing to grip the stick with his right hand, he let go with his left and scraped away the rubble around the handle until he found the bit of ledge upon which it had caught. Then he pulled himself up into a kneeling position and looked around. He hadn’t slid far; then again, there wasn’t far to slide before you tipped over the edge and dropped to the shore of the lake far below. He pulled up his right knee and dug his foot into the hollow of the ledge. Then he rose to a standing position, stabilized himself with his walking stick, and stretched his other foot to what looked like another bit of firm rock. Slowly, in this crablike manner, he regained the path.

  It was barely midafternoon, but he was thinking ahead. In a few hours the light would begin to fail. David needed to be brought down immediately and hospitalized. Even if he could get him down to the farm, there was no way to safely revive him there.

  When Alec finally reached Llyn y Gadair, he started running down the steep, grassy hillside toward the farm. It was farther than he could run in one go, so he walked partway, then began running again. The grass was wet and several times he fell. When he crested the last ridge he was relieved to see Owen still in the lambing pastures below. He called out, but was too far away to be heard above the bleating of the sheep. It was Jack who saw him first and started barking. Owen looked up the hill and knew immediately something was wrong. He scrambled over the ladder stile and met Alec on the hillside, Jack at his heels.

  Alec’s chest was on fire; he wasn’t used to running. He bent over, palms on knees to catch his breath.

  “David,” he heaved when Owen reached him. “Dying.”

  “What?!”

  “Up there,” Alec panted. “On the rim. Tried to kill himself. Whisky and exposure.” As he caught his breath, Alec described how he’d found David and what he’d done. “I left him wrapped up, but he’s unconscious and I don’t know how long he’ll live. Don’t know how we’ll get him down, either.”

  Owen looked up at the mountain. “Good Lord.”

  “Here’s what we need to do,” Alec said, getting his breath back now. “You go down to the farm and tell Fiona to raise the rescue people. I’ll go back up and try to keep him alive. You join me there. All right?”

  “Alec, look at you; you’re knackered.”

  It was true; he was exhausted, dirty, and bleeding.

  “No,” he lied, “I’m fine. I walked here from London, remember?”

  Owen hesitated.

  “Look,” Alec said, “I know how to take care of someone with hypothermia, at least until help comes. I need you to tell Fiona and to get me that help. Besides, with those young legs of yours, you’ll probably catch up with me before I reach him again. We have to get him down, Owen, very soon. Before dark.”

  “I can get the Land Rover up as far as Llyn y Gadair. Where is he?”

  “Just west of the summit, near the northern rim. You’ll see me, I’m sure. And Owen? Be careful on the scree slope, okay?”

  “Right. Come on, Jackie!”

  Owen sprinted across the fields toward the farm with Jack at his heels, the dog barking as if he knew what was happening. Alec turned toward the mountain, heaved a sigh, and started back up again. At Llyn y Gadair, he stopped and ate the rest of the sandwich. He’d need it.

  Fiona was upstairs tidying the Llewellyns’ room when she heard Jack barking and then someone pounding on the back door. When she got to the kitchen, Owen had already let himself in.

  “Owen?”

  “Something’s happened.”

  “Alec!”

  “No, ma’am, it’s David; Alec found him on the mountain.” Owen hesitated. Did she need to know David had tried to kill himself? He wasn’t sure. “Injured, I guess; then he got too cold and couldn’t come down. He’s unconscious, but alive. Or he was when Alec left him.”

  “Where’s Alec?”

  “Gone back up.”

  “Jesus.”

  “We need to call the Mountain Rescue.”

  Fiona ran to the front hall phone and punched in 999.

  “Mountain Rescue, please,” she said to the operator who routed calls for emergency services. As she waited to be connected her head swirled with images—David two nights ago, assaulting her; yesterday’s untouched food; the note he’d left by the door this morning: Fiona, I am so very sorry, David.

  A man’s voice came on the line.

  “This is Fiona Edwards at Tan y Gadair farm, Dolgellau,” she said. “There’s been an accident on Cadair ...”

  When she was done, she turned to Owen. “They’re sending a team from Outward Bound Wales and contacting the RAF to see if a helicopter is available. They’ve asked me to stay by the phone in case they need further instructions. You follow Alec and do what you can to help. Take the torch in the boot room to signal in case it gets dark before they get there. And be careful, both of you.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Will you be all right, Mrs. Edwards?”

  “I’ll be fine; be off now.”

  She followed Owen to the door and watched him race across the farmyard. He leaped into his old Land Rover and roared off toward the upland pastures.

  Fiona returned to the kitchen and sat heavily on a chair at the table, the table at which she had been so happy these last three nights, the table that had become a candlelit circumference of comfort that encompassed just her and Alec, a world of deep happiness. Now everything was changing again. Jack sat beside her and put his head in her lap. She stroked his fur and stared at the kitchen window, the window where she’d seen that first flash of blue from Alec’s backpack, blue as his eyes.

  She wasn’t at all sure she’d be fine. For the second time in a week, her world had been turned upside down. She had found the great love of her life, or rather he’d found her. They’d recognized each other instantly. She had never known it was possible to love anyone so quickly or so completely.

  Now David was on the mountain and Alec was climbing up again to save him. She did not believe for a minute that there had been an accident. There was no reason for David to be up there, none at all. There were no sheep there; ancient stone walls, newer wire fences, and iron gates kept them from the upper reaches of the mountain. David had gone up there deliberately to end his life, up to the mountain that was so much a part of him.

  She knew that depression was a common effect of the poisoning. The doctor had warned her. It wasn’t clear, according to the studies, whether it was a direct result of the chemicals or an indirect result, brought on by the sudden loss of function—the weakness, the loss of memory—and the imposed isolation from much of normal life. Some of the farmers who’d been affected by the poison had committed suicide. Not many, but it happened. But the changes in David’s mood had been so gradual. It had already been
three years since the sickness began. He’d been moody and distant ever since—morose, as if the spirit had been drained from him. She should have seen this coming.

  ***

  ALEC HAD JUST begun ascending the scree slope of the Fox’s Path when he heard Owen’s Land Rover grinding up through the steep pastures in low gear. It was slow going as Owen detoured around ledges and outcrops and avoided boggy areas. Once he got above the lower pastures where the sheep were penned for lambing, though, he could leave the gates in the walls open and continue without stopping to close them again.

  For the second time, Alec churned his unwilling legs up the last of the scree slope, finally reaching the summit plateau, more exhausted than he could ever recall. Owen was close on his heels. Alec rested until the young man flopped down next to him.

  “Bloody scary, that route,” Owen gasped. “Can’t believe people do it for fun. Where is he?”

  “Follow me, but watch your footing.”

  They picked their way westward over the rocks, past the little stone shelter, then headed toward the northern rim.

  David lay as Alec had left him: swaddled in the foil blanket, head to toe. He looked like someone in a body bag. Alec lifted the blanket from David’s face. The skin was a mottled blue-gray.