Authors: Kate Thompson
By the time we had finished digging, I was feeling OK, but Danny was in a bad way. He was talking nonsense and wanted to keep walking, so we had to drag him off his feet and lower him down into our little bivouac. With freezing fingers I unpacked the space-blanket again, and Tina helped me to wrap Danny up in it like a Christmas turkey. Then we settled down, one on each side of him, and pulled the two blankets over us all.
It was only then that I remembered Darling.
I
called out to her in the darkness, but she didn’t answer and she didn’t come. Frantic, I got up and searched with numb hands across the rocks and snow. I couldn’t bear to lose her; I just couldn’t bear it. But I couldn’t find her, either, and eventually, snuffling with hot tears, I returned to my icy bed.
8
I DON’T KNOW
whether I slept and dreamt, or whether Death kept me awake while it showed me its works. I don’t remember half that I saw, but the visions were clearer than day and vast as the sky.
I lay on a battlefield watching my blood drain away, and I sank down through fathoms of ocean to where the
Titanic
was resting, her lights still blazing, her dead gazing out of her portholes. I scaled an ice mountain and met a black crow, who showed me the nest of white knuckle-bones where her seven rotten eggs were lying; never to hatch. I followed tunnels with no exits, climbed ladders to the dusty stars, experienced the terror of infinity beyond them. And I sat alone in a great wilderness, where the red eyes of wolves waited in a circle for the last, dim embers of my little campfire to die. The last thing I remember was hearing Tina’s voice out there in the infinite darkness, crying out like a drowning sailor.
It shocked me, and I propped myself up on hands that had lost all feeling. The black crow’s wings were beating around my head. Then one of the wolves shot out of the darkness and knocked me flat. There was no struggle left in
me
. I remember giving up; that extraordinary sense of abandonment, and the lack of fear as I waited for the beast’s teeth to take that final, deadly grip on my throat.
But it didn’t come. Instead a warm, wet tongue licked the frozen drips off my nose, and a voice that sounded like a panting breath said, ‘Christie, Christie, Christie, Christie, Christie.’
It wasn’t a wolf. It was Oggy.
PART SIX
1
‘HOW ON EARTH
did you find us?’ I said.
‘Picked up your scent in the snow,’ said Oggy. ‘Been tracking you for hours.’
I hugged him tight. ‘Fair play to you, Oggy. Fair play to you.’
He licked my face again, then squirmed out of my grasp. ‘Darling has found a shed,’ he said. ‘Got to get the others up.’
He was already working on Danny, who sat up, saying, ‘What? What?’
‘Are you OK, Danny?’ I said.
‘Fine,’ said Danny. ‘’Lo, Oggy.’
The space-blanket had served him well, and he seemed in better fettle than I was.
‘Up you get,’ I said. ‘We’re on the road again.’ I got up, all my limbs numb, and started to help him to his feet. But then I saw something which sent a hot shock through my cold blood. Oggy was snuffling and scratching and whining around Tina’s face, but he wasn’t getting any response. She was showing no signs of life at all.
I couldn’t believe it. Not Tina. She was the street kid; the tough one; the survivor among us. That’s what I had always assumed, anyway. But I hadn’t taken into account the effect that
years
of hardship and undernourishment can have on the human body. Tina was wiry and strong, but she hadn’t an ounce of spare flesh, and in conditions like these, she had no resistance at all.
I knelt down and felt for the pulse at her throat.
‘She’s OK,’ I said. ‘She’ll be OK.’ But it was more for my own benefit than anyone else’s. I was terrified.
I shook her hard. ‘Come on, Tina. Get up. We have to get up.’
She turned and moaned. I could just make out the flicker of her eyelids in the darkness.
‘Oggy’s here, Tina. We have to get up.’
‘Oggy?’ she said. ‘Oggy doggy.’ She sounded like a drunk.
‘Come on, Tina.’
My fingers felt huge and useless, but I managed to make them grip her arm.
‘Up, Tina. Up.’
I pulled, but she was like a sack of potatoes. I remembered hearing her voice calling out in my dream. But she wasn’t going to die. Not if I could help it. I knelt in the snow, grabbed her by the shoulders, and shook her as hard as I could.
‘Nooo,’ she moaned. ‘I’m tired. Leave me alone.’
‘Get up, Tina. Get up.’
I hauled her up again, and this time she found some energy somewhere and helped. Danny had got himself up, and came to my assistance. He
grabbed
Tina’s other arm and between us we succeeded in getting her to her feet.
‘Come on,’ Darling sang, somewhere off to our right. ‘This way.’
Oggy went after her, to blaze the trail for us. I slung one of Tina’s arms around my shoulders, and Danny took the other side. We staggered along for a few steps, but Danny was too unsteady in the snow and Tina cried out as her arms got wrenched apart.
‘I’ll take her, Danny,’ I said. ‘You get the blankets.’
He gathered them and went on ahead, lumbering like a walrus through the drifts, and I tried to keep in his footsteps. Tina wasn’t quite a dead weight, but she didn’t seem to know where she was. Her head kept dropping on to my shoulder, as though she wanted to sleep. But I couldn’t let her. I stopped, and shook her again, then slapped her across the face.
‘Ow!’ She flailed at me with both arms.
‘That’s it, Tina,’ I said. ‘Give me a box.’
But she just slumped against me again, and would have fallen if I hadn’t held her up.
In the end I had to practically carry her. Ahead of us I could see Oggy’s tail flying up and down as he bounded through the drifts. Behind him, Danny floundered and fell, but got himself up again, and ploughed on.
‘Where is this blasted shed?’ I called out. But no one answered. They just kept going. For an awful moment the snow tempted me. It would have been so easy, so comfortable, to go Tina’s
way
instead of mine; to slide down into the sleepy cold and let it take us. Life was such a struggle. My eyelids drooped.
‘No,’ I said, aloud, as if Death were in the air around me. ‘No, no, no.’
I hitched Tina’s arm more tightly around my neck, and stumbled on.
2
THERE WAS A
house there as well, but it had been abandoned for years and had no roof. But the shed was in good condition. It had been used to store hay for the upland cattle, and there were still quite a few bales left. I set about making a nest for us, and soon we were all bundled up in it. Danny and I lay one on either side of Tina, and Oggy sprawled across the top. We pulled the space-blanket over the lot of us, and tucked it in at the edges.
It wasn’t until I felt the heat of our bodies beginning to collect in the insulated space that I realised how close to death we had been. Only then did my body begin to shake.
In the morning, Oggy and I retraced our tracks and retrieved the rest of our gear. I noticed that he had a piece of frayed rope tied around his neck, and I took it off for him. But when I asked him how it had got there, he just snarled and shook himself, and then snapped at the snow as if it was alive.
The food had suffered from being frozen, but it was all we had, and we eked it out over the
three
days that we were snowed in up there on the mountain-side.
For the first day, Tina was still very shaky. She slept a lot, had no appetite, and her colour was always shifting; sometimes pale, sometimes beetroot red. She improved as time went on, but it was quite a while before she returned to her usual, carefree self. Danny, on the other hand, was doing really well, despite the frustration of having to stay so still. I saw that the journey was changing him, giving a purpose, perhaps, to his previously purposeless life. But I didn’t know what it was doing to me. I found that I was torn between a fierce curiosity about Danny’s mother, and a powerful desire to return to the familiarity and security of home. If there had been a phone, I would have called Mom; I would have shopped us all, for the possibility of being safe. But there wasn’t, and those fiercely decisive moments always passed, and the other side would start to assert itself all over again. What was Maggie doing up there in Bettyhill? What could she do in her lab that would make animals talk? And what was she supposed to have done to Danny, which made him the way he was? I wanted to know so badly, but I couldn’t see any way in the world of getting to Bettyhill, right up there in the North; light years away.
And then I would start thinking about home again.
I was in that kind of mood when I tried to get some support from Tina. Danny had gone out for a pee, and Oggy and Darling were out
scouting
, trying to plan a route for when the thaw came. I knew Tina was still feeling pretty poorly, and I felt like a bit of a heel as I started to speak.
‘If you came home with us, Mom and Maurice would let you stay. You could be part of our family.’
She tried to look shocked and horrified, but I could tell that there was a bit of her, the vulnerable bit, that really liked the idea. I pushed my advantage.
‘You’re practically our sister now, aren’t you? After all we’ve been through together.’
For an instant I knew she was with me, longing to be part of a family with a permanent, secure home. But then I saw her close down, as though the hope itself was too much to bear.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she said.
3
WE HAD PLENTY
of time for talking. Oggy eventually told us the story of how he had escaped from the man in the car; how the man had tried to tie him to a concrete block and drown him in the river.
‘I wanted to bite his filthy hands off,’ he said, and Darling said ‘Yay, Oggy!’
‘I didn’t succeed, I’m afraid. Once I got nasty he moved pretty fast, back towards the car. I had to chew my way through the rope, but at least I was free.
‘I had a lot of adventures,’ Oggy went on. ‘I got shot at by a farmer and I killed a rabbit and ate it, brains and all. Then I got buzzed by a gang of starlings and they steered me north west. I thought they might be pals of yours, Darling, so I took their advice.’
Darling gave Tina a long look, but for once, she wasn’t ready with a snappy comment.
‘That’s all, really,’ said Oggy. ‘I followed that big main road, and I found a car where you had clearly spent some time. Then I just followed your trail.’
‘But didn’t the snow cover our tracks?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ said Oggy. ‘But you can see a lot with your nose, if you know how.’
Danny snorted. ‘See with your nose,’ he said.
‘I might talk,’ said Oggy, sourly. ‘But I’m still a dog.’
I hugged him tight and looked into his eyes. They were full of obsequious devotion, but after a moment he turned away, and as he did so I caught a glimpse of something else there; something darker that lay concealed beneath the friendly surface. It troubled me, and I did my best to put it out of my mind.
4
ON THE MORNING
of the fourth day we packed up and set out again. The going was still heavy, but the snow was softening and we could hear the trickle of meltwater running beneath it. Oggy found rabbit tracks and quartered around, snuffling and being macho. But he didn’t find anything, and we continued on our way as hungry as before.
For the whole of the day we slogged on through the slushy snow, and when we failed to find anywhere safe to sleep, we slogged on through the night as well. In the morning of the following day, we reached Aviemore, where troops of stranded skiers stood waiting for buses, looking gloomy despite their colourful gear.
The food shops were all closed, but there was a tourist shop near the bus stop, and we all slouched in. We each bought gloves and scarves and thick, hiking socks, and we stocked up on Edinburgh rock, slabs of mint-cake and fudge in tartan boxes.
I had had more than enough of walking, and plenty of time to make a plan. I intended to book us into a B&B, then find a phone and settle in to wait until Mom and Maurice arrived. I
didn
’t know how they’d get there, and it occurred to me that they might even leave it to the police to pick us up. I didn’t care any more. Anything had to be better than hunger and exhaustion.
But things didn’t go according to plan. As soon as we emerged from the shop, Oggy got lured into a fight by a belligerent mastiff, and before we could separate them a bus pulled in with
INVERNESS
written across its brow.
The skiers, like dancers, leant out from the pavement, read the destination of the bus, and leant back dejectedly. Tina grabbed me by the arm.
‘It’s our bus!’ she said.
‘Our bus. Our bus!’ said Danny, forgetting about chocolate and wading rashly in to drag Oggy out of his fight.
‘But I want . . .’ I began. Then my heart sank, as once again events conspired against me. The bus pulled up, and Tina and Danny were already beside it, with Oggy, still bristling, close behind. A few dozen people were getting off, looking sleepy and dishevelled, but there wasn’t a big crowd getting on and I had no choice but to join the others. Darling swept down from the rooftops and into my pocket and Tina, always the sharpest among us, had the presence of mind to take off her coat and drape it over her bag so that Oggy could hide underneath it.
The conductor stood with his back to the driver and confronted us like a bouncer.
‘Where are you going?’ he barked.
‘Inverness,’ said Tina.
‘What for?’
‘We’re going home.’
‘Address?’ he demanded.
‘Bettyhill,’ I said.
‘Bettyhill?’ said the conductor. ‘There’ll be no bus this day to Bettyhill!’
But Tina’s wits were about her. ‘Our mother is meeting us in Inverness.’
‘You have funny accents for Bettyhill,’ said the conductor. ‘Let’s see some I.D.’
We looked at each other.