by Jack Hastie
There were often times, too, when Fraser was far too ill to go out with Sandy. During these periods his great delight was his conversations with Nephesh and Klamath who kept him up to date with all the interesting things that went on in the wild.
So after his quarrel with Jim, Fraser didn’t know whether he wanted to be sick or well.
It was a difficult summer too for Bhuiridh. The deposed monarch had felt too ashamed to return to the herd as an ordinary subject at the court of the new king, so he had wandered off into exile, bitter and brooding, and worst of all lonely, for goats are sociable animals. Occasionally he met Fraser at the edge of the moor, but these had always been at times when the boy was well and could not talk to the animal.
Bhuiridh was not looking forward to the Dead Time ahead, alone, without company in the drizzle and sleet of winter, but the Autumn rut, when all the bucks were boasting and strutting and challenging was the worst time for a defeated champion to reappear.
* * *
It must have been difficult too for One-eye, if he was still alive. From time to time there were rumours, brought to Fraser by Klamath, of an old fox, sick and crippled, driven to eating slugs and beetles when he could not poach farmyard hens, skulking somewhere to the east beyond the moor.
“Bird gossip,” Fraser thought and dismissed the reports, but when Klamath told him one day that the mighty Eye of the Wind himself had said that One-eye was hunting somewhere towards the moonrise beyond Sgurr Mor he felt that it must be true. Nephesh, however, still assured him that his old friend had never come back and that Feargal and Sionnaidh were hunting his territory.
* * *
It was also a difficult summer for Thorsa. In the green oasis of Bolstadur surrounded by the great lava desert of central Iceland the pinkfoot geese had discovered a perfect breeding ground where neither men nor arctic foxes could find them. Here she was hatched in the spring, the last from the egg, the smallest of the brood. As late as July she could not fly properly.
Then autumn, the shadow of winter, crept across the land. The low slant of the sun and the encroaching darkness warned the geese that the Dead Time would soon be upon them and they began to long for the lush water meadows of Islay and Dunadd.
When Ansar, the captain of the flotilla to which Thorsa belonged, saw the low sun at midday just fail to light up the white peak of Olafsfell to the north he knew that it was time to go.
Thorsa had to go too as skein after skein of geese took off in long wavering chains to escape from the darkness, the ice and the eerie northern lights. Although she did not realise it at first this was no flight to a neighbouring water meadow a few hundred yards away. It took her out over the tortured waste of lava and ashes and then across five hundred miles of unending ocean before the landmarks Ansar was looking for began to appear below – the white beaches of the Hebrides, the wicked saw-toothed ridge of the Black Cuillin on Skye – and he led the whole flotilla down in one breath-taking swoop on to the wetlands below Dunadd, by the side of the loch.
It was a journey Thorsa did not complete.
A TIME FOR DECISION
In the same week that Ansar decided to do something he had done year after year, seven hundred miles to the south in a medical laboratory in Glasgow, the consultant decided to do something nobody in the world had ever dared to do before; to inject deliberately a serum based on adders’ venom into the veins of one of his patients as a last hope of curing his illness.
He was frank with Fraser’s mum and dad. “There has been no time for proper clinical tests, but it’s a gamble we have to take – and if it succeeds we may have a permanent cure. I have your permission?”
“There’s no other hope?”
“None.”
So Fraser went back to Glasgow.
Rona saw him off before starting work at the vet’s surgery.
“That’s Fraser away back to Glasgow to start a new course of treatment,” she told Cathy. “He’s going to be completely cured,”
Cathy said nothing.
“Isn’t that good news?”
“Rona, this treatment Fraser’s going to get, it’s not a standard prescription you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It might not work as well as they hope.”
“So he’s not going to get better?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What’s going to happen to him? Is he going to die?”
Cathy had turned away; she was calling up the computer file on a pony they were going to visit on one of the farms that afternoon.
“I just said the treatment might not be as successful as you imagine. I don’t think you should build up your hopes.”
That afternoon they had to put the pony down.
Rona cried for the animal… and for Fraser.
* * *
Just two miles short of the wetlands by the loch where Ansar brought the geese down Thorsa fell behind the pace, lost height and clipped an electricity cable with one wing. Exhausted and in pain, she flopped down into a field of sheep belonging to Donald Douglas of Kilrasken. For a long time she crouched, as if sitting on a nest, her legs folded under her, and then at last she rose and waddled unsteadily across the field picking hungrily at the grass after her long flight across the sterile sea.
She had never seen sheep before. In Bolstadur there had been only geese and a few pairs of whooper swans. But the strange creatures kept out of her way; so she ignored them.
On the day after her landing, however, she met a new four-footed creature which seemed more threatening.
“Ho! Ho! Look what I’ve found,” barked Sandy dancing round her in excitement.
“Keep away,” she hissed stabbing at him with her long neck like a snake.
“I’m not scared of you,” roared the dog, but he kept his distance, just out of range of that darting head. “If she’d run away I’d have a good chase,” he thought, but with things that stand their ground and strike at you, you have to be careful.
“Stand off,” she hissed again, striking furiously with her open bill but making no attempt to use her wings.
Then another creature appeared, not unlike herself, walking very slowly on two legs, but with wings that somehow didn’t look much use for flying, and a voice she couldn’t understand.
“Sandy! Come off! Come here!” shouted Rona. She clipped the dog’s lead into his choke chain and hauled him away, boasting over his shoulder about the number of wildfowl he had eaten alive.
By the time she got home Rona realised that a single pinkfoot goose all alone who did not open her wings even when tormented by a dog must have something the matter with her. So she went back without Sandy.
Thorsa wasn’t in the field, but she wasn’t far away. She had clambered through a gap in the field wall and was waddling happily down the middle of the road from Kilrasken to Dunadd. She was not used to motor cars for there are no roads in Bolstadur.
When Rona approached she soon realised that the goose had an injured wing and could not fly. So she escorted her a long, slow mile into Dunadd, herded her into the compound at the rear of the vet surgery where calves and sheep were kept while they recovered after treatment, and shut her in, knowing that the high wooden fence would keep out predators and keep her in until she was able to fly again.
* * *
Thorsa was not the only refugee to look for a home in that field of Donald Douglas’. A few weeks after Rona had shepherded the goose away to safety, Bhuiridh arrived as the first sharp frosts nipped at night on the higher moorland.
Down he came, avoiding the rough ground where Gobhar would be holding court. He was looking for sheltered grazing and even more for company and in his old age a flock of black-faced ewes was not beneath him.
The ewes might have been impressed by his past reputation, might even have been glad to have him around, he thought, with a new pair of foxes on the territory, but they didn’t show it. On the other hand they didn’t object to his presence and so he might have found
company and pleasant grazing for the winter.
Unfortunately, like Thorsa, he met a dog – Tess, killer of Kwarutta, and although he might still have stood his ground against the collie, when her master, Jim’s dad, came up behind her bellowing challenges like a rutting stag and brandishing the tame lightning, he felt that there was no point in heroics and trotted back, butting through a hedge, onto the bleak, inhospitable moor.
BECOMING NORMAL
Fraser began his course of injections. There was a weekly routine: lie down; jag in the arm; “How do you feel? Glass of milk? You’ve got to lie still for twenty minutes now, you know.”
Fraser was bored: bored waiting in hospital waiting rooms; waiting in hospital beds without his laptop or Xbox; waiting at home in Glasgow because he was not allowed out; waiting at night because he couldn’t get to sleep; waiting by day because he had played all the games, visited all his virtual friends, and there was poor reception on his mobile.
Waiting to get better?
Waiting to forget his voices?
His only consolation was that he could still listen to the gossip of the garden birds:
“Ground’s pretty hard today. Not much hope of picking anything up.”
“I see the starlings are back. Little enough for the regulars without a crowd of them coming around.”
“And the gulls. Why do they all have to come to our ground just when the feeding’s at its worst?”
“Lady in the garden three trees away hung out a bag of nuts yesterday.”
“No use to me. I can’t hang upside down like a blue tit.”
“I know. That’s why I’m telling you.”
“I sometimes wish I knew where the swallows go. They seem to have a wonderful place to visit in the Dead Time.”
“You surely don’t believe them? Making it all up, that lot.”
Nearly all of this was trivial stuff and Fraser found that he missed his conversations with Klamath and Nephesh.
* * *
Cathy examined the lost goose.
“There’s nothing seriously wrong with her,” she announced. “Her flight feathers on one wing are damaged and she’s pretty exhausted, but there are no bones broken.”
“What’ll we do with her?” Rona wondered.
“We’ll keep her here over the winter and see how she does. Maybe by the spring she’ll be able to fly off again.”
In fact, Thorsa recovered quickly and soon became tame. She followed Rona round the compound and even made friends with Sandy.
“I think we’ve got a permanent lodger,” said Rona one day.
“Well, if that’s the case we’ll have to see if one of the farms will take her. She can’t stay here forever,” said Cathy.
* * *
Fraser did get better. His tumblings of the mind became less common and much less violent. He first began to believe he might be on the way to recovery one morning when a large black-backed gull dropped into the garden. Gulls cover great distances and Fraser was looking forward to hearing any interesting news he might have, but when he tried to call to him the words refused to come.
Eventually he managed a “What moves?” so badly pronounced that the gull didn’t understand him at first, and when it did reply he found he was only picking up the odd word and couldn’t answer it properly.
Finally the gull gave up in disgust and flapped away.
“That’s it,” thought Fraser. “The voices are going.” But that same afternoon he found to his surprise that he was able to conduct a perfectly intelligible conversation with a pair of jackdaws.
“What moves? How’s the feeding?”
“Nothing much under the leaves,” said one. “I’ve only had a couple of beakfuls of centipedes and beetles all day and I don’t think I’ve had a single earwig.”
“You’ve been looking in all the wrong places,” said the other. “The lawn’s soft enough to work on just now. I’ve had a few decent worms and there’s spiders to be found if you know where to look for them.”
“Where’s that then?” asked the first innocently.
“That would be telling,” said the other with a smirk.
Fraser was delighted that he had understood all this so well, especially as the jackdaws had used a lot of their own slang names for the creatures they ate.
Over the next few days the same thing happened several times.
One moment he would be unable to follow the gossip of street pigeons patrolling a car park; the next he would have no difficulty eavesdropping while a troop of starlings quarreled over some kitchen scraps, or he would be able to pick up the calls of rooks flying a hundred feet above his head.
Then the consultant came to see him specially.
“You’re going to be all right now, you know.”
“OK.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“‘S all right.”
“Your treatment’s nearly finished and you’ve responded well.”
Fraser realised that he should be delighted – over the moon. He also knew that he should be grateful to the man who had cured him, and started to mumble some sort of thanks. But he also knew that, if the consultant was right, it was the end, this time forever, of his secret life in the company of wild birds and animals.
“Maybe I might not get really better?” he suggested.
“Of course you will,” said the consultant, taken aback by his patient’s lack of enthusiasm for being completely well again.
“When will I be better?” asked Fraser for the answer meant the limit of time left to him with his voices.
“You’ve another three injections still to get; then up to your holiday place at Dunadd for a week or two to get your strength back; then back to Glasgow to get on with your schooling. It’s over now Fraser. You don’t have to worry. You’re going to be OK.”
He shook hands with Fraser as if they had contributed jointly to some great triumph.
“How does it feel to know you’re your old self again?”
“All right, I suppose.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?”
Fraser’s thoughts were far away from that antiseptic-smelling Glasgow hospital. In his imagination he was in Dunadd with the resin-scent of the pines and the keen moor air in his nostrils; and in his ears the voices of the friends he might never again talk to.
“When I’m better,” he asked, “will I be able to… “ His voice trailed away as he realised that what he really wanted to ask could not be explained to this clever man.
“You’ll be able to do everything you could do before,” the consultant assured him. “You’ll be absolutely back to normal.”
Back to normal!
Back to being a dumb human; speechless in a country of a hundred tongues, deaf in a land of a thousand voices!
“Already it comes and goes,” he thought. “I’m going to go back and talk and listen to them all again, before it goes for good.”
THE WETLANDS
It was Easter and the weather, though still rainy and blustery, was a little less cold and raw than it had been.
Fraser persuaded his parents that, to help in his recovery, he should go up to the cottage between his weekly visits to the hospital for his injections. The consultant agreed and so Fraser found himself back at Dunadd again three years after that first spring when he had found he could talk to the birds and animals.
As the consultant had said that he should get as much fresh air and exercise as possible he had no difficulty getting away to roam the wood and moor. As he tramped about he felt all his old energy surging in his veins and muscles in a way he had not felt for three years, and this gave him a new calm confidence in himself.
He didn’t tell Jim Douglas he was back and hoped he wouldn’t meet him with his gun and his murderous bloodlust. He did tell Rona and explained to her why he had come; first he had to meet his friends for the last time; then he would come and visit her and Sandy and the new pet she had told him about, the pinkfoot goose.
Nephesh still came to the garden, but the neighbours had arranged a festoon of netting over the goldfish pool which Klamath found impossible to penetrate; so he did not come. Still, Fraser gradually got up to date with the best part of six months’ news:
One-eye had still not returned a year and a half after his disappearance. Bhuiridh, too, had been wandering for nearly a year; he had been seen several times around Kilrasken, but Jim’s dad had chased him away. Nephesh said he had tried to join the red deer during the winter when they came down to more sheltered country, but now that they had returned to the high moorland he was not able to keep up with them and was now grazing, lonely and sadly in the wood where he would be unlikely to meet the triumphant Gobhar. Fraser needed to see for himself; so he planned his expeditions carefully.
His first visit was to Klamath down in the wetlands by the loch side. He followed the Ballagan Burn through the wood where the traces of the great fire of a year and a half ago were gradually disappearing under a second spring’s growth. There was Sebek’s pool, black and brooding with a pair of moorhens dipping about at one edge. As he could see nothing in the depths he lay down on one elbow on the bank and listened.
There was no sound.
“What moves?” he called.
There was no reply.
He pulled a tuft of grass with a little mud still sticking to it and threw it on the water. As it drifted across the surface he could see the metallic glint of scales as the big fish rose slowly to investigate.
“I said ‘What moves?’ Didn’t you hear me?” Fraser repeated.
“I move; I alone in the pool.” That voice! That horrible grating voice. The pike saw there was nothing to eat and sank out of sight again.
“That’s not what I came back for,” said Fraser to himself. “I don’t care if I never speak to him again.”
He moved down stream out of the wood, past the lowest of the burn’s waterfalls and on to the wetlands. He had never been as far as this before. From a distance it looked like a bright green field mottled by tufts of rushes and bog cotton. But the appearance was deceptive for the ground was sodden everywhere and the brightest patches of green hid places where there was no solid surface at all and the marsh plants floated on a bottomless sponge of ooze.