After the Snow (6 page)

Read After the Snow Online

Authors: S. D. Crockett

BOOK: After the Snow
12.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The light outside blind me for a second.
Big dog jump up from the snow. He been mighty surprised cos I start shouting to the sky and waving those torches around. I got to get really big and loud and mean cos dogs sense it. The just-grown pups turn and hide their tails at the god of fire and anger I become right then, so the Number One dog got to show them why he been Number One, and he curl his lip real nasty.
I know that. I know he gonna come at me straight with his dirty red mouth all angry. His lip pull back and I see the bloody teeth and spittle for the second time today.
He come fast and straight across the snow.
I flail my torch at him, the girl shrieking on my back.
“Keep on tight, Mary!”
The big dog bounding through the snow loud and nasty. My heart screaming to run but I got to stand. Number Two bitch coming from behind clever and sneaky again.
The girl scream and sway, hang on with her legs and near take the breath out of me.
Big dog circling and snapping for a weak spot. I strike out. He sway to the left but lunge at my arm. Snap. The bitch get real close and hungry seeing that scrawny girl on my back. She-dog gonna bring down my flank if I aint clever.
I lash out, the blazing arc of fire rushing in the air. The torch crash down on her shoulder blade. I smell the singed fur. She-dog stumble and scream. Big dog leap to her side and come in at me. But I got that bitch hurt and I strike out again.
“Down there!” Mary scream again. Young runt full of teeth come in low and fast like a spear. He grab that bony Mary on the leg but he just get rags and he’s pulling and she’s screaming and I thrash out with the other torch but the weight of the girl and the dog tugging on her pull me down to my knees in the snow.
Down on my knees surrounded by the pack.
Aint today though. Aint gonna get me today.
I beat at the runt with my stick. I been so close I can look right in those eyes. There aint nothing there.
The she-dog take a lunge but this time I got angry inside from somewhere—and the anger make me strong, and I rise up from the ground as the slathering bitch leap up and when she do I hold the torch high and bring it down.
This is the book of the generations of Adam.
The chair leg been sharp under the flame.
She been soft between her shoulders.
I bring the point down and she fall at once—legs just crumple—and she wimper loud and high.
The big dog stop when he see her down. Cos now it been dog blood on the snow—
I shout out the words my good dog taught me. The pack fall in on that dead bitch. Tearing at her. That hungry pack so hungry they gonna eat their own. The young dogs fighting over the carcass.
It been our chance.
Number One dog aint too sure what’s gonna happen if he try me so he’s staying back a step but it won’t last long I don’t reckon.
“Keep looking behind,” I say to the whimpering girl clinging on my back like a squirrel.
The snow pretty deep but I been on top of it cos of the snowshoes. I look back. Big dog bounding toward us up to his chest in the snow.
“Run,” scream the girl.
I come to a narrow pass between two rocks, and I stick down one of the torches. KEEP BACK DOG COS I GOT FIRE.
But it aint gonna keep him back for long.
“Run! They’re all coming!” It’s the girl screeching. She’s hammering on my back like mad now and screaming
run
at me like I can’t hear her.
If I run I’m gonna be quarry.
I got to front him again cos I been a man.
And the dog got to understand I aint dead so he got to do what I want, not the other way round. He got to have a bit of dog left in him. He aint all wolf yet.
When I turn around in the pass, I see him come—brave in the deep snow, the others with hungry bloody mouths at his back. Girl still screaming like mad but I push her off behind. I get down then, low like a hare. But I got my knife out my pocket and I got my eyes looking right at that big dog. He still got a bit of brindle on his back from his mother. He aint bad. I don’t want to kill him but he don’t listen too good to what I been telling him.
 
 
I got fire, dog. I got fire and hands and snowshoes, and I kill your mate like I can kill you so keep back and let me pass. Let me pass.
 
 
But he just keep coming. The hunger in his guts shouting loud in his head. That’s when I stand on my two man legs and I hold my torch up cos it still just about alight and I step right toward him. And I tell him again—
And that big Number One dog stop then.
Maybe his hungry guts hear me now.
Cos I been a man.
He get scared and drop his eyes for just a second and then I know that I won so I tell him pretty loud.
“Let me pass.”
Big dog remember what his mother taught him then and get proper frightened and stick his brindled tail between his legs.
He been a dog, not a wolf.
I get the girl on my back and run.
I run and run and run. My legs feel like stones wading through the snow but I aint safe, not til I get up to the winfarm. The breath inside me coming out hard and painful, but I got to keep running.
I look up on the ridge above us for a pair of dog eyes looking down. Aint no sign though and I get a full heart then. I feel Mary’s cold bony hands clinging to my neck. We been up high above the pass. I stop and get a breath. I stand on the hillside. Shout at the sky.
This shout been full of something.
It been full of me and my winning.
She whisper, “Are we going to be all right?”
“Yes,” I tell her.
Cos I aint worried now—the fire inside gonna get me up the hill before nightfall. I know it.
I shout out loud to the dogs and the hills and anyone out there who listen.
“Tommy isn’t with us, is he?”
“No,” I say. “No he aint.”
The Rhinogs turn red and orange behind me as the mossy dark of evening spread across the sky from the east.
Up ahead I see the Farngod rising, the towers of the winfarm all about at last. I drag myself up to the eastern ridge—toward the broken wincone. The sun drop fast this time of year and night gonna come up on us any second now.
The girl been moaning a bit. I get her off my back. I got to unpick her hands from around my neck cos they got so cold and stiff clinging on. She don’t move. Her lips got blue and her skin look like wax. With the last bit of strength I drag her inside the wincone and near collapse beside her.
I know I got to stay awake but the warmth of sleep been washing over me and I don’t care about nothing no more, just sleep and no more running. Just sink into the quiet dark. Floating in the blackness of the night with the stars all around. I try to open my eyes and get up, but the tiredness pulling me down. Pictures floating in my head. I start thinking about the never-ending stars and the sky going on forever with nothing outside it. That thought go round and round in a circle in my head cos it got no outside, no beginning and no end.
Once last summer when we been hunting up on the Farngod,
Dad and Magda lie close under the blankets in the heather and all of us just staring up at the sky. Big black sky and all those pricks of light up there just like now and I remember I tell them about that thought of the stars in the never-ending sky and they laugh and Magda say
the force is strong in this one, obi-wan
in a funny voice, and we all laugh together, even though I don’t know why it’s funny. But it been good when they been laughing together and not arguing about the trees growing under the door or Alice or God. Magda say maybe the world just been a speck of dust in a giant man’s pocket and outside been a whole other world of giants we know nothing about.
Think on that, Willo,
she say. And I do.
 
 
You can’t sleep.
 
 
But I don’t want to open my eyes. Just lie here dreaming in the dark with my heart pounding in my chest and the sweat drying and my shoulders aching from carrying the girl up the hill. I don’t know if it been the good dog or the mad dog, but something in my head been tugging on my sleeve, saying I got to wake up. Got to get the firebox going cos the girl dying of cold right next to me.
And it feel like Magda’s there shaking me to get up.
“Think on that, Willo.”
She’s trying to say something but I can’t hear her.
“Wake up, Willo. No time for sleeping yet.”
I sit up. Just like that. But it aint been Magda talking, just the girl moaning. I look down at her bony shape, shivering and breathing shallow. I got to warm the girl up before she forget I aint carried her
from that house just so she can die. No way. Her clothes are all wet with the snow so I got to get them off slow and easy and get her dry.
Without those rags she look like a worm do when it fall in a puddle. Scrawny and white. And when I pull her body under the rug she feel like a lump of ice sucking my warm blood up and that feel good cos I don’t want her to die like the leveret.
“Mary. It aint good to sleep and dream of the stars—you got to wake up a bit and have a brew. You just cold, Mary.”
I feel a bit of a movement in her legs, just a twitch, and her eyes flickering a bit. Got to warm her blood good and slow and get some brew inside her.
“Mary. You all right now. Aint no dogs here. Don’t go to sleep again cos it aint good.”
“Da,” she mumble all quiet.
“I aint your dad. I been the one who got you out the house, remember?”
“Tommy?”
“No, I aint Tommy.”
I aint got much to say to a girl really. I just aint, and I been sick with tiredness. But I got to keep her from going back to sleep.
So I tell her the rhyme my dad always tell me when I been small. He got it written in his book. I know all the words.
“‘I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head, and cut and peeled a hazel wand, and hooked a berry to a thread. And when white moths were on the wing, and moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream and caught a little silver trout.’
“You like that Mary? You gonna like it when you wake up proper. Cos I’ll tell it again if you like. Mary, you hear me? I say you gonna like it when you wake up.”
“Are the moths on the wing, Da?”
She still got her eyes closed, but I know she gonna be all right when she start talking.
“I aint your da but you gonna be all right, Mary. Ask me some more questions if you like.”
“I’m cold.”
“You gonna be all right though.”
“What’s your name if you aren’t Tommy?”
“My name’s Willo.”
“Willo,” she repeat it soft. “My name is Mary.”
“I know that,” I say. “You got to keep talking, Mary, cos it’s good, and then I’m gonna make you a brew and it gonna get right inside you and melt the ice in your stomach.”
“I’ve got ice in me stomach?”
“No it aint real ice just cold that feel like ice but the brew gonna make you good again and after that you gonna sleep warm and safe.”
“What about me da? Our kid Tommy?”
“We’re gonna talk about them tomorrow,” I say. “You just look at the fire and talk to me, and maybe I’m gonna tell you the story about the silver trout again.”
Well, I aint gonna bore you with all the stupid kid stuff she talk about. I near fall asleep with it cos I been tired and done in after that kind of day. It been hard to think only a few days ago I been at home with Dad and Magda and the others and now they
all gone. Just gone—and I aint got no clue where they are, and they aint got no clue about me either.
Except now I got the girl Mary. Even though she’s just a pesky starving girl who gonna eat my food and get heavy on my back, she still gonna know where I am and what I been so I aint quite alone. That’s it—I aint alone now I got the girl here and it feel better than before even though I don’t know her or nothing.
I close my eyes easier thinking that.
 
 
When I wake at dawn, she’s still asleep. But alive. Curled up tight. I’m gonna make up some warm clothes for her out of an old coat. She’s gonna freeze otherwise.
But I aint gonna stick my nose in and ask a thousand questions. She’s gonna see that. She’s gonna be fine with me. Magda gonna be proper pleased with me if she see how good and kind I been with this kid.
Tomorrow we’re gonna have a good walk to my place on the Farngod, and then I got to take her down to the road under the power lines. Power lines run from Wylfa all the way into the city. Trucks always coming by. I reckon Mary can get a ride back that way.
After working on her clothes a bit I go outside on the ridge. The sun shine out. My eyes blink it shine so bright out here. I can see the whole of the Rhinogs behind me and the craggy white mass of the Farngod up in front. Can’t believe there been such a snow in the night.
“Are you there?” come the girl’s voice from inside. “Where are you, Willo?”
“I been outside on the ridge.”
“Are there any dogs out there?” she ask.
“No, there aint no dogs. Just you and me.”
“No dogs?”
“No, you been safe here from dogs I reckon. But I’m gonna come in—I make you some gloves and things. You want to see?”
“Yes.”
I crawl back inside and she’s sitting up, eating from my pan of yewd.
“I make you a warm pair of gloves and fix up Magda’s coat so you aint gonna be cold again. Look. I done it all myself while you been asleep.”
She reach out and I show her the gloves. They aint no work of art and only an old cut-up rabbit, I know, but they’re warm gloves all the same.
“They’re magic,” the girl say. She just stroking those shoddy old rabbit-skin gloves.
“And I fix up the coat, see. All the same, nice and warm. Do you like it?”
She put the coat on, her cheeks a bit rosy now. It been a pretty good thing to see after her being so waxy white and near dead yesterday. I pull the coat over her head and she got to put her skinny arms up in the air and she laugh quite a bit and so do I. She’s all swamped in it and she look like a big rabbit. It really got a laugh up inside me good and proper. It been the first fun I had in a fair while really.
“Thanks,” she say, and it make me feel clever and useful even though she only been a stick-thin girl.
“I can make them much better—if I got more time,” I tell her.
“Well, I think they’re magic. I’ve never had fur gloves before, never had nothing made wi’ fur.” She look at me all sad. “Is me da coming back?”
It’s all she been thinking on I reckon.
I shrug.
“Me da—” She stop a bit. “He came out to the hills wi’ us on the pony. Da’s a ponyman, and he said we were going to grow some oats and trap some animals til the spring. We camped down by the water north of here, by the power lines.”
“So you’re stealers,” I say.
But she aint listening.
“Tommy was happy there. Da found the little house then. It was cold, but we had the fire to start wi’ when we had wood. The woman wanted to go back. ‘Callum, I want to go home,’ she was always saying. She always wanted to go back.”
“Where?”
“To the city—where d’you think? And the food ran out, and we ate the pony, and me da only talking about the boat that’s going across the sea. And Tommy started to get sick.”
“Why didn’t you get to the power lines and wait for a truck—I seen them go along under the pylons there. Government trucks.”
Mary look at me serious. “But they’re going to want to see Da’s papers and know then he took the pony. And if we go back to the city … how are we going to find the boat back in the city?”
She scrape the bowl with the spoon now, but she gone a bit quiet-looking all of a sudden, thinking bout her dad again, I guess.
“What boat?” I say.
“The boat that’s going to take us away.”
“There aint no boats on the mountain.”
“I can’t eat wi’ all this on,” she say, and she take the gloves off. “But thanks for making them.”
“It aint nothing.”
“Wish our kid Tom had a coat like this. He wouldn’t have died from the cold then, would he?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
Maybe he’s dead cos he got no food and no dad,
I think to myself. Or maybe it just been sick bugs inside him, who knows?
“Do you think the dogs got him by now?” she say, eyes open all wide.
I want to say yes, cos it’s true—they gonna snuffle in that old house and tear his dead flesh apart pretty quick—but I look away and tend the fire a bit cos it seem better like that.
“They will, won’t they?”
I shrug my shoulders again.
Mary lie down and pull the coat over her head all quiet—I reckon she knows. I see her from the corner of my eye. I got a bit to think on though cos half my plan is taking the girl to the road and leaving her there, but if she’s right about needing papers and everything I aint so sure.
I mean I can spot a hare run and tie up a good snare—I can do that in my sleep—and there been plenty of things I can do good better than that, but I aint really got no clue about papers and trucks and city people.
“Mary? … Mary?”
“I want me da.”
Mary been crying again.
I go outside, cos that’s another thing I aint got no clue about. Crying kids who lost their da and Tommy.
I reckon the world been a scary place full with gruesome things, but I aint seen much of it. I aint even been to the city. I mean even that girl inside the wincone been there. My dad live in London before, and he say that’s the biggest place—but I aint seen that either, just what he tell me cos London been a proper long way under the power lines, and I been born on the mountain, but he come up here around about the time of the troubles, before the snow got so deep only government trucks gonna make it.
He come up here long before that, cos he say he can see how London look after a few long winters and no food, and he aint never going back, and I say,
How it gonna look, Dad?
cos I really want to know.
He say
it gonna look bad, Willo,
with people all mean and angry on the streets cos they been pretty mean and angry before the food stop coming in big trucks. They been pretty mean and angry when they got hot water and power coming out the wall, he tell me.
It sound like London aint been too great even before the snow and the troubles come, but Dad say no it aint been that bad. Just all the bad things been waiting, kind of hiding under the ground like the grass wait under the snow for summer to come. Except they aint been good things like grass but bad things—all the angry things and hungry things, and my dad say
the animal bit
inside people’s heads.

Other books

Edge of Betrayal by Shannon K. Butcher
Watchlist by Bryan Hurt
Quarrel & Quandary by Cynthia Ozick
The Kill Order by James Dashner
Side Effects May Vary by Murphy, Julie
Wild Bear by Terry Bolryder
Fall by Candice Fox