Fraser's Voices (8 page)

Jim Douglas took up the story. He came round to see Fraser after school one day, bubbling with excitement.

“Jet! You mind Jet, the black tomcat? Yesterday he went for dad. Jumped at him and bit his hand. Then, know what? Dad locked mum and me in the house and got the gun. Then he went and shot Jet. Then he went to see the doctor and he sent him to hospital. Lot of fuss over a scratch.”

Jim didn't seem particularly upset about the death of one of the farm cats, but then there were lots of cats on the farm.

“Funny thing, though. They got Cathy the vet to come and take Jet's body away. I'd just have dug a hole for it.”

Fraser realised that Jim had not been told the whole story.

“Oh, another thing. There was this weird dog. We heard this howling all night and in the morning here was this dog dead outside the front door. Cathy took it away too. Funny sort of dog.”

“How?” asked Fraser.

“Sort of long-legged. Funny colour – yellowish. I never saw a dog like that before.” Jim added a few stories about Misty and Tess killing rats in the barn and then went off home for his tea.

That night Fraser threw a lot of tit-bits out of his bedroom window in the hope that One-eye would turn up and give his version of these events, but his only visitor was Nephesh the owl.

“What moves, Nephesh?”

“Strange times,” answered the owl. “The game are uneasy. The weasels have all gone mad and all the other folk in the burrows are disturbed. I don't remember a time like it since I learned to fly.”

“Do you know anything about a strange yellow dog?” asked Fraser.

“There was one, a newcomer to our territory, howling all night not long ago. There must have been something wrong with it. I think it died.”

Nephesh couldn't add anything to this and had never heard the story One-eye had told the other night.

“Madness of the wolves? What is a wolf? Your farm dogs are mad enough that run about all day in the sun. And so are the weasels just now, running about slavering and biting everything in sight. I've stopped eating them – though they're easy enough to catch, the way they are.” Nephesh flapped off to hunt for something which still behaved normally.

The next week was frustrating for Fraser. Trapped behind the glass prison of his window with a view to the garden he could not walk in and the trees he could not climb, he had to wait until people or animals or birds came to him with news. And when the news they brought did not tell him what he wanted to know and he had to wait in the hope that another visitor would appear with the missing pieces of the jigsaw, he longed to be able to get up and wander at will along the wood trails until he found what he was looking for, or some bird or animal who could tell him.

One-eye came to visit regularly these cold, cruel nights, but the more he came to rely on the boy's leftovers, the less hunting he did and the less news he had to offer.

Nephesh was about most nights and by day there were all the birds of the garden – blackbirds, starlings, magpies, jackdaws – and Klamath flew overhead from time to time on his way to fresh fishing grounds, but apart from Nephesh none of them knew much about what was going on in the wood.

There were human visitors too, of course. His mum and dad were there every day, but their talk of the business of adults in Dunadd or Glasgow didn't interest Fraser. Jim Douglas came occasionally when he had some particularly exciting information to share, but Jim was bored by being indoors – he said he had enough of it at school – and never stayed very long.

So it was to Rona, the vet nurse, that Fraser had to turn for more news of the strange goings on in the wood and around the farms. She visited him regularly, usually bringing Sandy, and then Fraser found himself translating between dog and girl while Rona could only look on in envy of his gift of talking with animals.

One day she came alone. “Do you know what rabies is?” she asked him.

Fraser had never heard the word.

“It's a horrible disease. Animals get it and they run about biting other animals and that spreads it. Sometimes animals with rabies bite people and if the people get the disease from them they usually die.”

“Jim's cat!” Fraser suddenly realised what all the fuss had been about.

“Jet. Yes, he had rabies.”

“He bit Jim's dad.”

“I know. He went to hospital in Oban. They're giving him a course of injections. They think he'll be all right.”

“You said people usually die.”

“They do if they catch the disease, but you don't always get it even after you've been bitten. The doctors say Mr. Douglas will probably be OK, but they won't be really sure for a few more days. The only thing is…

“What?”

“It's almost as if he's got it already.”

“How?”

“He's turned all nasty. He's started setting gins – you know steel traps that don't always kill the animals that get caught in them – and he goes out with his gun and shoots at everything he sees. It's as if he wants revenge on the animals for being bitten.”

“Maybe he
has
caught it then,” suggested Fraser. “So he'll die.”

“I don't know. Even when people do get infected there's supposed to be a cure; that's why he's getting all those injections – only it doesn't always work. You see it's so long since there was any rabies in this country that nobody seems to know. Anyway, an inspector from the government has been to Kilrasken and disinfected the whole place. He's put up a notice to warn people that there's rabies about and he's made an ‘Infected Area Order'. That means all the other cats have to be rounded up and put in quarantine. Misty and Tess have been vaccinated and have got to be muzzled and kept on the lead – just in case. And everybody's got to be specially careful about letting out their cats and dogs. That's why I didn't bring Sandy. I don't want to let him out any more than I have to.”

Then Fraser told Rona what he had heard from One-eye.

“So the weasels are spreading it,” muttered Rona. “I'll tell Cathy. Maybe there's something that could be done. In the meantime, if you see any animals behaving strangely around the garden don't go near them.”

“I'm not supposed to go out at all.”

“I know. But just in case. Don't take any chances.”

“OK.”

The next morning she was on the phone to him: “Fraser! Sandy slipped his lead last night and ran away. He's been out all night…“ her voice broke down. “If you see him don't touch him. Don't talk to him. Keep away.” She hung up.

Donald Douglas stalked the dry stubble of the autumn field, 12 bore, double barrelled shot gun under arm, like a god of vengeance.

The red weal on his hand itched a little and the hand felt warm; the weal in his mind burned like a branding iron and his brain blazed. At the far corner of the field, where the dry stone dyke was partly ruined and an animal trail ran across it, he had set a gin, a grim steel trap like the jaws of a bear. Today's victim was a rook, still flapping, trapped by one leg.

“Not worth a cartridge,” he growled and broke the bird's neck with his heel.

One by one he checked and re-set his traps, killing any prisoners who were still alive and scouring the field for mild-eyed rabbits or hares which he would not bring home for the pot in case they were diseased. Then he headed for the wood where he could only hope to bring down pigeons or rooks which were not affected by rabies and which, away from nesting and lambing time, could not hurt him or his beasts in any way.

“They're all diseased,” he muttered to himself, lighting a cigarette and kicking viciously at roots and stones and banks of dead leaves. Then he patrolled what he had made his beat for the last week since Jet had bitten him, firing off his gun at dry leaves dancing in a sudden gust of wind or bare branches groaning above his head as if all nature was possessed by rabies and he had a holy mission to cleanse and purify the countryside.

Fortunately he made so much noise stamping furiously along the dry, rustling trails and mumbling savagely to himself that the creatures of the woods were well able to keep out of his way.

Some of the bolder rooks knew that where there is a man with a gun there are sometimes wounded or dead animals to feast on. So a group of them followed him as they might have followed a tractor ploughing a field for the worms it turned up, or as gulls will follow a fishing boat at sea.

“Madness of the wolves,” croaked one – the story had got about since One-eye had told Fraser and Fraser had asked Nephesh and the day birds of the gardens for news – “Do men have it too?”

“This one looks as if he has been bitten by a pack of weasels,” said another.

“It was a cat,” chipped in a third. “One of his own farm cats bit him. He turned the tame lightning on it and ever since he has been looking for some of us to kill in revenge.”

“Idiot!” said the first bird, “Does he think he will ever catch anything with all that racket?”

A fat pigeon, crouching in cover, couldn't help chuckling to his mate, “When did you ever hear a rook noticing that someone else was noisy?”

Then, with a final curse and blast at nothing in particular, the man was off, out of the wood, on the path that led back to Kilrasken where he would sit all night by the fire and brood and stare at his swollen hand and think about his next painful injection at the hospital tomorrow.

The cottage was empty; Fraser's mum had gone shopping.

The sky and the trees were empty too; empty of clouds and empty of leaves. Fraser had only been at the cottage in summer before and the sight of all those bare, twisted branches, like witches' fingers, was a little frightening.

On the ground everything was a bustle. The exceptionally cold, still, dry October weather had allowed the leaves to cling to the branches unusually late in the season, but now November's first frosts had nipped them and they lay, like piles of pheasants' feathers, in heaps everywhere, so that everything that moved, rustled. A tiny robin, turning leaves over in the hope of finding a juicy slug, made as much noise as
a whole regiment of starlings; a squirrel scurrying back to his winter quarters with just one more acorn to add to his store sounded like the charge of a family of rabbits.

Fraser's trainers on the lawn crunched like the tell-tale footsteps of a giant. But this had to be the moment; so, with a guilty glance round the garden, he zipped up his leather jacket against the cold and rustled up the trail along which he had followed One-eye the morning he had rescued Barook from the trap.

If Sandy hadn't been seen, it could only be because he had gone to cover somewhere in the wood. If he didn't already know about the madness he must be warned and brought back home safely, if it wasn't already too late.

It was so cold as he crossed the field that each breath seemed to fill his lungs with ice, and yet when he breathed out, steam boiled from his mouth and nose. Fraser laughed. He felt like a dragon. He blew a cloud of steam in front of him and raced through it into the wood. If he could blow smoke like a dragon perhaps he could fly like a dragon. Like a great dragon in flight with powerful wing beats, breathing smoke in a cloud that shuts out the sun – hey! – watch out for those branches; dragons don't fly in woods – Klamath could have told you that.

Then the sickening thud of his head on hard ground.

No, he couldn't fly. Could he even walk?

Up slowly – easy does it – onto your knees first – there's a branch to hold on to. Funny how this cold makes you catch your breath. Take your time – that's better. Oh, oh! – the path's squirming underfoot; maybe better crawl a bit till you get your balance back. Rustle, rustle.

At least it was dry, otherwise his trousers would have been soaked by now.

One-eye's earth was near. Fraser wished he was small enough to wriggle down into its dark warmth and snuggle up to the fox, or that One-eye would suddenly appear to keep him company.

Or Sandy… if Sandy was still all right.

Donald Douglas tramped the trail, enraged, following the bullet holes of his eyes, inviting – daring – something to move and show itself so that he could blast it and add it to the tally of his revenge. Three rooks perched, like little vultures, above his head, waiting for the worst – like vultures always hoping for the worst – clattering their dirty blunt beaks in anticipation, like a dog licking its lips.

There was a rustle.

“Show yourself, damn you!”

Then, at the corner of his eye – a flash of yellow – a big bounding body exploding towards him. He swung the gun and, point blank, without taking proper aim or even seeing what he was shooting at, gave it both barrels.

There was a yelp, a twisting of legs and tail in mid air, and the animal crashed off, howling, through the bushes.

Douglas rested his gun against a tree. It was the first thing he had hit for days.

“Serve it bloody right,” he snarled. “Foxes, stray dogs – main carriers – need to destroy them all. That's one anyway.”

He re-loaded the gun, lit a cigarette and stumbled off in vague pursuit of his victim, for he had enough reason and decency left in him to remember that if you wound an animal you are honour-bound to go after it and put it out of its misery.

The blackened match fell on a little brown leaf and bored a minute hole in it. From the hole there arose the tiniest smear of smoke and then a ragged orange rim glowed round the edge. Slowly the orange spread; slowly the smoke thickened and curled round a twist of yellow dry grass. A puff might have blown it out like a candle. But there was no-one to puff. Then one of the strands of grass turned orange; and then the smoke was orange – and there was flame and a crackling – and a curtain of fire leaped like a leopard upon the dusty dry grasses and leaves of the wood; and then, rising through the bushes, it roared like a leopard.