WILDFIRE

by Mary Stewart

  "Good morning, mistress. It's a grand morning for it, forby at bit of mist coming up frae the bay. Are you wanting to go right away?"

  "Go?" I looked at him blankly.

  "It was today I was taking you fishing, Mistress Brooke. Had you forgotten?"

  "Fishing? Oh—" I began to laugh, rather weakly, and then apologized. "I'm sorry; but it seems odd to be thinking of fishing after—after all this."

  "To be sure it does. But ye canna juist be sitting round to wait for what's going to happen, mistress. Ye'll be better out in the clear air fishing the Abhainn Camas Fhionna-ridh and taking your mind ofi things. Fine I know it."

  "Yes, I suppose you do. . . . All right, Mr. Macrae, I'll come. Give me five minutes."

  Three-quarters of an hour later, as I stood on the heather where the Camasunary River flows out of Loch na Creitheach, I knew that Dougal had been right.

  The mist that, earlier that morning, had blanketed the glen, had now lifted and rolled back, to lie in long vapor veils on the lower slopes of Blaven and Sgurr na Stri. Just beside us, An't Sron was all but invisible in its shroud, and from its feet the loch stretched northwards, pale-glimmering, to merge with the mist above it in a shifting opalescent haze. Marsco had vanished; the Cuillin had withdrawn behind the same invisible cloak, but directly above our heads the sky was blue and clear, and the sun shone warmly down. The river, sliding out of the loch in a great slithering fan of silver, narrowed where we stood into a deeper channel, wrangling and glittering among boulders that broke it into foam or shouldered it up in glossy curves for all the world like the backs of leaping salmon. Close under the banks, in the little backwaters, piles of froth bobbed and swayed on water brown as beer. The smell of drying heather and peaty water, strong and fresh, was laced with the pungent odor of bog myrtle.

  Dougal was a good instructor. He soon showed me how to assemble my hired rod, how to fix the reel, and tie the fly, and then, with infinite patience, he began to teach me how to cast. Neither of us spoke a word about anything but the matter in hand, and very few, even, about that. It was not long before I found, to my own surprise, that the difficult art I was attempting had, indeed, powerful fascination, before which the past faded, the future receded, and the whole of experience narrowed down to this stretch of glancing, glimmering water, and the fly I was trying to cast across it. The timeless scene and the eternal voice of the water created between them a powerful hypnosis under whose influence the hotel with its inmates and its problems seemed far away and relatively unimportant.

  And even if my own problem did not recede with the others, it did—so passionately did I refuse to face it—relax a little of its clawhold on my mind.

  Dougal had put up his own rod, but did not at first use it. He sat on the bank, smoking and watching me, occasionally getting up to demonstrate a cast. Of course I never caught anything; I did not get even the suspicion of a bite. But so powerfully had the peace and timelessness of the place worked upon me that when at length Dougal began to unwrap sandwiches for lunch I was able to think and speak with tolerable composure.

  We ate at first in silence, while the water ran bubbling-brown past our feet, and a dipper flew zit-zitting up and down the center of the river. A fish leaped in a flashing silver arc.

  "That's just where I was fishing," I said humbly. "I must have been casting over him all the time, and never caught him."

  "You might yet. I've known stranger things happen," said Dougal. It could hardly he called an encouraging answer, but I supposed that, from a Highlander, it might even be accounted praise. He looked up at die sky. "It's a bit overbright for the fish, in fact. If the mist came down a little, and took some of the glare off, it might be better."

  "It seems a pity to wish the sun away."

  "You'll not notice, once you're fishing again."

  We finished our lunch in silence, then Dougal got out his ancient pipe, while 1 fished in my pocket for cigarettes. As my fingers closed over the remains of yesterday's rather battered packet of Players, they encountered something else, something metallic and unfamiliar.

  I gave an exclamation as 1 remembered what it was. Dougal turned an inquiring eye in my direction, through a small fog of pipe smoke.

  "I ought to have given this to the Inspector, I suppose," I said, withdrawing my hand from my pocket with the cairngorm brooch. "I'd forgotten all about it. It's Roberta's, and—"

  "Where did ye get that?" The big Scotsman's voice was harsh. His pipe fell unheeded into the heather, and his hand shot out and grabbed the brooch from my palm. He turned it over and over in a hand that shook.

  "Why—up on the hill, yesterday," I said, uncertainly. "On the scree near the Sputan Dhu. I—I thought Miss Symes must have dropped it there."

  "It was Heather's. Dougal's voice was unsteady too.

  "Heather's?" Confusedly I tried to remember where I had picked it up. . . . Yes, it had been lying on the scree below the ledge where she had been found. Could it have dropped or been kicked off that little pile of metal in the corner? ... I turned to look back at Blaven, only to find that the mist was, indeed, rolling down the slopes behind us like a tide of smoking lava. Blaven was already invisible, and a great wall of mist bore steadily across the glen behind us, obhterating the afternoon.

  "I gave it to her for her birthday," said Dougal, his voice unnaturally loud and harsh. "She was wearing it when she went out that night. . . ." He stared at it for a moment longer, then thrust it back at me. "You'd best take it, mistress. Give it to the Inspector and tell him where you found it. God knows it won't help him, but—" He broke off, and turned with bent head to hunt for his pipe. By the time he had got it alight again his face was once more impassive, and his hands steady. He glanced round at the silently advancing mist.

  "This'll be better for the fish," he said, and relapsed into silence.

  The sun had gone, and with it, the peace of the place had vanished too. The finding of that pathetic brooch had brought back, only too vividly, the horrors which had beset this lovely glen. My own miserable doubts and fears began again to press in on me as the grey mist was pressing. The other side of the river was invisible now. We seemed, Dougal and I, to be in the center of a world of rolling grey cloud, islanded between the loud river and the lake, whose still and somber glimmer dwinded, by degrees, into a grey haze of nothing.

  I shivered. "Don't you think we ought to go back, Mr. Macrae? I think I ought to give the brooch to the Inspector straightaway."

  He got up. "It's as you wish, mistress. Shall I take down the rods, then?"

  I hesitated. Perhaps it was only the eeriness of the mist-wrapped glen, but, suddenly, violently, I wanted to be gone. I could escape this thing no longer; I must face my problem now, and take whatever uneasy peace was left to me.

  "We must go back," I said at length. "There are—other reasons—why I should see the Inspector. I mustn't put it off any more. And I—I don't like the mist."

  "We can't lose our way along the riverbank even in this. Don't worry your head about the mist. Just bide still a minute while I get my rod, then we'll get away back."

  He turned downriver, and before he had gone ten yards, was swallowed in the mist. I stubbed out my cigarette on the now chilly stone, and watched the grey swirl where he had disappeared. The obliterating cloud pressed closer, on heather, on rock, on the chuckling water.

  The dipper warned me first. It burst from under the fog, fleeing upstream with a rattle of alarm notes that made my nerves jump and tingle.

  Then through the blank wall of the mist there tore a cry. A curse. A thudding, gasping noise, and the sickening sound of a blow. And a sharp yell from Dougal.

  "Lassie! Run!"

  Then the horrible sound of harsh breath choking, rasping in a crushed throat; another thud; and silence.

  Chapter 20

  OF COURSE I SCREAMED. The sound was like a bright knife of panic, slashing at the mist. But the grey swirls deadened it; then they were all round me, clawing and fingering
at me, as I stumbled forward towards where Dougal's voice had been.

  I am not brave. I was horribly frightened, with a chill and nauseating terror. But I don't think anybody normal would unhesitatingly run away if they heard a friend being attacked nearby.

  So I leaped forward, only to falter and trip before I had gone five yards, so blinding now was the mist that shrouded the moor. Even the edge of the river was invisible, and a hasty step could result in a broken ankle, or, at best, a plunge into the rock-ridden swirl of waters. I put out my hands, foolishly, gropingly, as if they could pull aside the pale blanket of the mist. I plunged another four yards into it, then I stepped on nothing, and went hurtling down a bank to land on my knees in deep heather.

  It was only then that I noticed how complete was the silence. The sounds of the struggle had ceased. Even the river, cut off from me by the bank, ran muted under the mist. I crouched there, shaken and terrified, clutching the wet heather stems, and straining with wide, blind eyes into the blankness around me. I found I was turning my head from side to side with a blind weaving motion, like a new-born beast scenting the air. The mist pressed close, the bewildering, sense-blotting nothingness of the mist, so that I no longer knew which way the river ran, or where I had heard the men fighting, or—where the murderer might, now, be supposed to be.

  Then I heard him breathing.

  There was a soft step; another. Water spattered off the heather; the stiff sedge rustled, and was still. Silence.

  He had been ahead of me, to the right. Of that I was certain, but how near . . .?

  The breathing surely came from behind me now. My head jerked round on neck muscles as tight and dry as

  rope. I could feel my eyes straining wider, my mouth slackening in panic. My hands tightened on the heather stems till 1 thought he must hear the bones cracking.

  And now the breathing had stopped. Somewhere, the river poured its unheeding waters along under the peat banks. Behind me? Before? To the right? 1 found 1 could no longer trust my senses, and on the heels of that betrayal panic came.

  All at once the mist was full of noises. The rustle of heather was the murderer's breathing, the thud of my own frightened heart his footstep; the surging of blood in my temples blended with the rush of the invisible river, eddying, wavering, distorted by the dizzying mist into the very stuff of terror.. . .

  There was salt on my tongue; blood. My hp throbbed painfully where I had bitten it, but the pain had checked the panic. I flattened myself in the long heather, closed my eyes, and listened.

  He was there; there had been no illusion about that. He was fairly close, moving towards me, but a little way to one side, between me and the river. I could hear the water now, quite clearly, some few yards away on the right. I went lower in the heather, flat in my form like a hunted animal, glad now of the bewildering mist which was the friend of the hunted more than of the hunter. I had only to keep still; perhaps, when he had passed me, I could break cover and run, and . ..

  He was level with me now, between me and the river. His breathing was shallow, rapid, excited. He stopped.

  Then, farther away, down along the riverbank, I heard something else. Footsteps, heavy, uncertain footsteps that thudded on heather and then scraped on rock. Dougal Macrae's voice called, thickly: "Lassie . . . lassie, are ye there?"

  A great sob of thankfulness tore at my throat, but I choked it back, wondering wildly what to do. If I answered. .. . The murderer was within six yards of me, I knew. I heard his harsh indrawn breath; sensed the tensing of his muscles as he realized that he had failed to eliminate Dougal. If I called to Dougal, was there anything to save my throat from that bright butcher's knife not twenty feet away? A knife which could dispatch me in a matter of seconds, and then turn its dripping point to wait for Dougal to answer my call....

  But I must call. . . . Not for help, but for warning. I must cry out, and tell Dougal that he is here, the killer is here, just beside me. Somehow I must cry out, and then run, run into the lovely blinding mist, away from the knife and the excited hands of the butcher coming behind me.

  And Dougal was coining. He plunged towards us, as bold and heavy as an angry bull. I was on my knees, and my mouth was gaping to shout a warning, when suddenly the murderer turned, and was running upriver like a stag. I could hear him bounding, sure as a deer, through the long heather. And Dougal heard him too. He let out a yell that was a curse, and flung himself after the escaping man. I saw him looming through the fog. 1 caught the gleam of a blade in his lifted fist, and I saw in his face such a white blaze of anger as to make him unrecognizable. He looked like some avenging giant out of an old myth.

  I gasped out something as he plunged past me, but he paid no heed. He brushed by me as if I were not there, and blundered on into the mist after the killer. Even as 1 cried, in panic: "Dougal!" he vanished upriver into the fog. He must have glimpsed or heard his quarry, because my cry was drowned in a harsh eerie yell that startled the sullen heather with its pagan echoes, and sent a flock of oyster catchers screaming up into the mist like witches.

  "A mhurtair! A mhich an diabhil! Aie! You bloody murthering bastard! Aie!"

  One of the birds rocketed over my head with the screech of a damned soul, the mist streaming from its wings in swaths like grey grass under the scythe.

  It vanished, and the mist swept down in its wake, and the sound of the men's running was blotted out once more by the muffled silence.

  I turned and ran blindly in the opposite direction.

  I do not know how long that stumbling terrified flight through the heather lasted. I had succumbed finally to pure panic—mindless, senseless, sobbing panic. I was no longer frightened of the killer. Reason had stayed with me just long enough to show me that he was no longer concerned with me. Attacking an unsuspecting man out of the mist was one thing; facing an armed Highlander, fighting-mad on his own ground, was quite another. No, the murderer had to lose Dougal very effectively in the fog before he dared turn back to me—and then he had to find me.

  But panic has nothing to do with reason. Reason, now, had slipped her cogs, and my brain was spinning sickeningly, uselessly, out of control. 1 ran and jumped and slithered, and the salt tears slid down my face with the wet mist drops, and flickered into my open mouth onto my tongue. The white mist met me like a blank wall; my hands were out like a blind man's; the skin of my face and my palms was wincing as 1 thrust myself wildly against the intangible barrier. And as 1 ran 1 chattered crazily to myself: "No— oh no—oh no. . . ."

  What brought me up, all standing, with the panic knocked out of me as at the slash of a whip, was the fact that the ground over which I blundered was shaking beneath my feet.

  Half-dazedly I peered at the tufted mosses over which I had been running. Tentatively I took another step. The ground shivered, and I backed quickly, only to feel the surface of the moor rocking like the bottom boards of a punt.

  I stood very still.

  There was a small dreadful sound beneath my feet, as if the ground had sucked in a bubbling breath.

  Chapter 21

  MY LAPSE FROM REASON had cost me dearly enough. I was well out in the bog of which Roderick had once spoken, and how far out, I had, I found, no idea. Nor could I tell at all accurately from what direction I had been running when I made this last frightening discovery.

  Fear flickered its bats' wings at me afresh, but I shook my head sharply, as if by doing so I could drive it away. I stood exactly where I was, trying to ignore the ominous trembling of the earth, and listened for the sound of the river.

  But it was of no use. The more I strained my ears, the more confused were the sounds that eddied and swung round me in the mist. I heard, faintly, the muted murmur of flowing water, but it seemed to come from every quarter at once, reflected off the banks of fog, and over it, all the time, whispered and clucked the invisible life of the bog— small lippings, suckings, a million tiny bubbles popping, uneasy breaths. . . .

  My feet were sinking. Willi an almo
st physical effort, I gathered the last rags of my self-control round me, then stepped quietly towards a tussock of heather a couple of yards away. The feel of its tough, resistant stems under my feet did much to steady my nerves, but my body was shaking uncontrollably now, and my teeth were chattering. I stood islanded on my little tump of heather, peering vainly along the ground in every direction and being met, in every direction, by the same few feet of boggy green, swimming and shifting under the treacherous mist.

  But I knew that 1 must move, must leave my little tuft of safety and go in some direction—any direction. I told myself that the bog was unlikely to be really dangerous, but here, again, reason was no real help. I think it was the fact of being blinded that brought panic pressing so persistently close. If I could have seen even four yards in front of me, seen where my feet were going five steps ahead, it would not have been so bad. But I should be moving blindly over this hideous, shivering bog, ignorant of the real gravity of the danger, and moving, possibly, farther out into a worse place. . . .

  I clenched my hands into icy knots, turned in what I imagined to be the direction of the river, and walked slowly forward.

  The sheer effort of self-control needed to make me move slowly was so enormous that, mercifully, I could not think about anything else. I wanted to run—dear God, how I wanted to run! But I made myself go slowly, testing each step. Once I trod unwarily on a patch of lighter green, and went up to the knee into black mud. And by the time I had skirted the fight patch, stepping warily from one moss hag to the next, I had completely lost all sense of direction again, so that, when a ghostly skeleton shape floated out of the mist beside me, my whole body jerked like a marionette's with fear. It was only the pale ghost of a young birch, a bone-bare branch that lay rotting on the bog— touchwood, crumbling to decay; but in that misty morass it looked solid, and where it lay the tufted reeds were tall and dark and promised safety.