Fraser's Voices

by Jack Hastie

  He also knew how he had got it back again. But this he did not tell her.

  “But Fraser, you’re cured. You’re all right now. So how have you got the speech back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But if you’re only able to speak to the animals when you’re sick, you must be sick now!”

  “I stopped taking the pills,” Fraser admitted grudgingly.

  “You mustn’t; you’ve got to go on taking them always; you could be seriously ill. Does your mum know?”

  Fraser was determined. “You musn’t tell mum. I’ve got to find out what killed the otter.”

  “Does that really matter?”

  “The fish are dying; the frogs have had to leave the water. You’re a vet; don’t you care?”

  Rona did care; more than that she was fascinated by Fraser’s wonderful talent and realised how valuable it would be to a vet; but Fraser might be risking his health, perhaps even his life and she knew that he would have to give up his gift.

  She also knew that he understood the animals in a way that neither she nor Cathy could ever really appreciate; so she struck a bargain with him.

  She would help him to find the “house on wheels”, as Klamath had put it, and whatever poison was coming from it. And when they found out she would tell Cathy who would know what to do about it.

  Until then Fraser would use his ability to converse with the animals to get as much information as possible. But once the mystery was solved and the poison cleared away he would start taking his medicine again and would promise her that he would never, ever stop taking it.

  FLIGHT FOR LIFE

  This meant another expedition for Fraser.

  There was no point in going back to Kwarutta’s pool. According to Klamath the trouble in the burn started further up, on the moor above the wood. So that was where to start; at the point where the burn tumbled through a hole in the wall that divided the wood from the moor, near the spot where he had first seen Eye of the Wind.

  To get to the edge of the wood he had to follow a trail that ran beside the upper reaches of the burn and this was worse than what he had seen already. Stains in strange colours sagged gently downstream and here and there were the silver bellies of upturned, dead fish.

  Then he was over the wall and on to the open moor. He had been up there once before, the day he had clambered up to the foot of the crags of Sgurr Mor and had met the eagle face to face.

  It was very hot and still and a dull haze hung over the moor so that, although the sky was clear, Fraser could scarcely make out the ghostly outline of the Sgurr.

  The place stank. The burn dropped across the moor in a series of steps with little waterfalls and deep rock pools succeeding each other. In the pools there was the same coloured scum and Fraser couldn’t see any water boatmen on the surface. The waterfalls had dried up to a drip and the rocks on either side were plastered with a dry, grey, papery substance that seemed to have dried onto them.

  Fraser climbed up the bank, taking care not to touch the grey stuff – just in case. After about ten minutes he heard a noise above him and was able to see, on the other side of the burn, perched dizzily above him, a small caravan, and, leading to it, like a fresh wound in the side of the hill, the new Range Rover Track.

  As he watched, a man came out of the caravan with a basin in his hands and walked over to the edge of the burn, just above a point where it plummeted fifteen feet clear into a rock pool. The hands came up, the basin tilted and the water launched itself like a diving snake into space to splash against the rocks below.

  Dyer turned and disappeared back into the van.

  Fraser climbed closer for a better look. Surely a basin-full of dirty dishwater wouldn’t kill fish?

  Then the man re-appeared, carrying something heavy with difficulty. He balanced it on the ledge above the fifteen foot drop. This, whatever it was, Fraser realised must be the cause of the poisoning further downstream.

  “Stop!” he screamed.

  Dyer looked up in surprise.

  “Don’t! You’re poisoning the fish.”

  Dyer ignored him and tipped the contents of the container over the edge.

  Fraser was wild with anger. “Murderer!” he yelled. “You killed the otter and the fish and the frogs.”

  “Sod off, Sonny,” growled Dyer.

  “You’re killing animals. You’re a murderer.” Fraser danced with rage.

  “I said sod off,” Dyer snarled, “before I put my toe on your backside,” and he took a step forward.

  “Murderer! Rotten rat!” Fraser turned and fled as the Australian jumped the burn and bounded towards him across the hillside.

  He fled for his life down that steep slope; rocks and heather and black peat leaped at him from left and right; rowan branches slapped his face; and then the bracken; he was floundering head high in the bracken like in one of those nightmares when you have to run for your life and find yourself rooted to the spot.

  The speed, the dizziness, the helplessness were all so much like the tumblings of his mind that Fraser was afraid he would black out, to be pounced on, not this time by rooks, but by that murderous ogre who, he knew, was only a strangler’s step behind him.

  He didn’t black out, but just as he was almost in reach of the boundary wall of the wood he landed awkwardly on a loose stone, felt his ankle turn sickeningly and fell, face down, with his mouth full of ferns.

  THE GOAT TRAIL

  Bhuiridh*, the bearded, shaggy-coated patriarch, surveyed his domain and his subjects. From a rock overlooking the sparse scrubland of the lower moor he watched for any sign of a challenge to his authority, and his magnificent scimitar horns signalled a threat to anyone foolhardy enough to dispute his rights. That one horn had been broken off near the tip was proof that they were not for ornament.

  His six wives grazed docilely under the protection of those horns and the jealous stare of his yellow eyes. His innumerable children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren rooted and pawed and bleated in the coarse hill grass.

  The other billy goats knew their places, and he tolerated them; even Gobhar# who had once almost dared to challenge his position and would probably one day succeed him; but that day was a long way off. No hunter, fox, wild cat or even eagle, dared approach the flock openly and tradition on the moor related that Bhuiridh had once driven a fully antlered stag off his territory.

  Several times a month, as the mood moved him, Bhuiridh led his six wives and the camp followers of his flock along the ancient goat trail that led from the woods across the Ballagan Burn and up on to the higher parts of the moor.

  Bhuiridh’s predecessor, whom he had defeated and deposed in a bitter skull-butting battle so long ago that no-one else remembered, had done the same. And so had that predecessor’s predecessor.

  Sometimes, in severe winter weather, deer, coming down from the top of the moor, used the trail, but normally they kept to higher ground; and in the traditions of the animals of the moor it was known simply as ‘the Goat Trail’.

  Man respected it too. It was too steep and rough for the ponies that used to bring down the carcasses of stags shot on the hill and they used a gentler route. The tracks crossed at one point, just beyond the Ballagan Burn, but men and goats march to different rhythms and they seldom met.

  Recently, Bhuiridh had noted, the pony track had been widened for a new beast of burden that growled and whined ferociously as it took the steep gradient. But that traffic, too, was occasional and posed no threat to his authority.

  Sometimes, in his long experience as leader of the flock, Bhuiridh had known the track to become blocked; a fall of rock after a severe storm had washed away the footholds of the boulders, had covered it for a while. But the goats had picked their way through the obstacles and eventually the biggest boulders had worked loose again and trundled further down the slope till they lodged against the boundary wall of the wood.

  Very long ago, so tradition on the moor told, a new man, an incomer who did
not know the customs of the country, had built a fence across the track. But the goats had leaned and shoved and scratched and levered and in time the fence posts had come out and the wires had snapped, the fence had fallen and the goats had resumed their immemorial pathway.

  So now the presence of a man-made thing, a small cottage on wheels, didn’t concern Bhuiridh. At present it was possible to go round it; eventually it would rot away and break up; or the autumn floods would wash it away; or the winter winds would hurl it across the hillside.

  The younger billies felt differently; too young to see things in the long term as Bhuiridh could, they saw the caravan as a challenge; it had no right to be there; it must be moved; and hard skulls and horns were the tools for this kind of work.

  Gobhar, in particular, saw this as his opportunity to gain in status and prestige. If old Bhuiridh couldn’t lead the flock any more when there was an enemy to be faced, then perhaps it was time for a change in leadership and he, Gobhar, would not be afraid to take up the challenge in the time-honoured custom of the goats – head on.

  Bhuiridh was well aware of this challenge to his leadership. He knew that the things men make are for the moment, lasting only until they go chasing off after a new idea. But a challenge to his leadership was another matter. His horns were the mightiest; his strength was the greatest; he would lead by example.

  * pronounced Vooree

  # pronounced Gower

  RETREAT

  Fraser waited, doomed, for the grasp of heavy hands at his throat. Or perhaps the end would come with a knife or an axe or a gun.

  But nothing happened.

  His ankle was sore. He couldn’t run; probably he couldn’t even walk. Fearfully he turned his head and looked behind him. The moor was blank. The ogre was gone. The immediate danger was over, but Fraser still faced a painful hobble home with one ankle feeling as if it was packed with little sharp needles which stabbed a hundred ways whenever he put any weight on it.

  Slowly he went on, sometimes crawling on hands and knees, sometimes hopping on his one good foot, over the wall and away from the moor; till he saw Kwarutta’s pool, glinting like copper where the light chequered through the leaves and wondered if his tumblings of the mind would come back with the heat and the stench.

  Then agonising along the trail through the wood, often having to rest from the pain, yet each time he stopped fancying he could hear, above his thumping heart, the faintest rustle, the slightest breathing as Something stalked him through the shadows of the trees in the gathering dusk.

  When he held his breath to hear better, the Thing stopped breathing too. When he was forced to breathe again with deep gasps, he was sure that he heard its hot pant just behind that tree or the bush over there. And once he was so sure that he heard It gathering Itself for the final spring that would bring It on top of him that he leaped, one legged, in his terror into a bramble bush and fell, scarred and scraped, with the red scrawls of the thorns stinging on his skin.

  But the blow never came; and at last he could see the lights in the windows of his home and he knew that, if it came to the worst, he was within shouting distance.

  In fact Dyer, having made a demonstration of ferocity which had had the intended effect, had turned back with a chuckle, picked up the empty latrine of his chemical toilet, replaced it and sat back with a pipe and a dram to watch the sunset. Of course, by the conditions of his rental of the site, he should have buried the latrine’s contents higher up on the moor, but that would have meant carrying the thing a hundred yards along the goat trail. In any case, you couldn’t reasonably be expected to dig a hole in the baked clay of the dried out peat bogs. Dyer had only tried it once.

  THE GREAT GALE

  The heat and drought lasted another three days. Then with August came the thunder; at first distant rumblings as towering clouds massed over the hills; then the steady ‘spit, spit’ of big drops of rain; then the wind rose and the rain turned to hail as the full blast of the storm hit the van. It rocked and rattled under the bombardment, and the thunder cracked and the lightning flickered all around. But it stayed in place, held by the extra anchors Dyer had put in.

  Then the mist closed in. It was as if the god of the storm realised that the fortress could not be taken by assault and that siege tactics would have to be employed. The thunder and lightning grew fainter and dimmer and faded away, the wind died down and the hail turned to rain, a steady drenching downpour.

  By early evening the pools on the top of the moor were brimming and soon the whole hillside was awash as the water ran straight off the rock hard ground. Dyer had started to prepare his evening meal when he noticed the first trickle of water coming over the rocks above. At first he continued with his cooking, but the trickle became a torrent and the torrent a cascade and soon the whole ledge on which the van rested was awash and he could feel his home shudder under the force of the flood.

  When he went outside to investigate he saw to his horror that part of the ledge and whole sections of the Range Rover Track were starting to collapse and crumble into a thick red paste, which was oozing onto the hillside below.

  Then the van shifted and lurched as the ground to which it was anchored began to dissolve. Dyer decided to leave. A four mile hike in this downpour along the track while it was still light was something he could handle. But if the van turned over in the night, during the dark, with the track by then perhaps washed away… so he put on his boots, waterproof trousers and cagoule and slurped off down the crumbling pathway.

  Tomorrow JCBs would be brought up to rebuild the track and the next day Archie would come up with the Range Rover and a squad of men to repair the damage to the caravan site.

  * * *

  Bhuiridh and his six wives and innumerable offspring huddled under trees and behind bushes in the lee of the boundary wall of the wood and rode out the storm. The Ballagan Burn threw itself like a rabid animal at the wall and by morning there was a gap six feet wide where there had been only a small opening the evening before. The level of Kwarutta’s pool rose until it burst its banks and surges of angry water slapped against the stonework of the ruined cottage. The scums and stains were churned and scattered and spread far and wide as the whole wood became one wide river.

  Further downstream burrows were flooded and mice and voles had to take their chance above ground and fly for their lives, while slower moving creatures like slow worms were drowned.

  At the bottom of the wood Sebek’s pool filled fuller than even he could ever remember until it too overflowed its boundaries and the force of the water falling from above churned up the peaty bottom until the water looked like cocoa.

  And lowest of all, the wetlands beside the Loch flooded and Klamath stepped delicately to a delicious feast of frogs and fish flushed out from the mud and stones where they had been hiding.

  THE CHALLENGE

  The next day the cloud lifted a little and the downpour eased to a drizzle. Bhuiridh mustered his wives and his kinsmen and led them, as he had done for years, up the Goat Trail to their moorland pasture. When they reached the caravan they found it tilted precariously, one wheel overhanging what was left of the ledge. It was still blocking their ancient right of way. Bhuiridh stepped aside when he reached it; there was room enough to pass.

  “I’d knock it over.” The speaker was Gobhar. “It’s got no right there. I wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “It’ll rot away in time,” said Bhuiridh as he scavenged for anything edible that the flood water might have left.

  “Scared to take it on then?” insinuated Gobhar. “Want me to do it for you?”

  Three of Bhuiridh’s wives and several younger females were watching with interest. Gobhar was a good-looking buck with fine, circling horns and a heavy mane and beard.

  “Want me to show you how?” he repeated.

  Four or five of the younger billies had gathered round by now, their interest in grazing temporarily suspended as the tension between champion and challenger riveted their atten
tion.

  “You can’t teach me anything,” Bhuiridh was scornful.

  “Then get on with it or I’ll do the job myself.”

  For a moment the two faced each other, foreheads lowered, horns swinging, like two boxers sparring for an opening. But Gobhar knew he wasn’t ready to take on the older billy and Bhuiridh knew that he couldn’t afford to lose face by standing back and letting his challenger topple the van.

  “Here we go.” He reared on his hind legs and then, with lowered head, crashed against the side of the van. His horns scratched the paintwork. Another heave and the van juddered and balanced, rocking like a logan stone. At this Gobhar rushed forward, charging the van and with a sudden creak of resignation it lurched over the edge of the platform and somersalted in leap after leap two hundred feet down the slope, until it lodged – what was left of it – against the strong trunk of a mountain ash.

  Dyer, toiling up from Kilrasken on foot to inspect the night’s damage, was appalled to see the savage horned heads of the two goats staring down as his home toppled and careered to destruction.

  Had he come back after dark he would have heard the eerie cry as Cruach hunted over the very spot where he had slept for two months.

  THE PROMISE

  Fraser’s ankle had only been sprained and, at the time, that had seemed a small price to pay for not having been chopped up and eaten alive by the murderous ogre of the moor. As soon as he could escape from his mum’s worried fussing and could walk without too much pain he went to see Rona.

  “I’ve found out who’s poisoning the water,” he told her and went on to explain about Dyer’s caravan and the new road on the moor.