Boneland (2 page)

Wolf! Wolf! Grey Wolf! I am calling for you!

Far away the Grey Wolf heard, and came.

Here am I, the Grey Wolf.

The woman. The child.

That is not Trouble. The Trouble is yet to come. Sit up on me, the Grey Wolf.

He sat up on the shoulder. The Grey Wolf struck the damp earth and ran, higher than the trees, lower than the clouds, and each leap measured a mile; from his feet flint flew, spring spouted, lake surged and mixed with gravel dirt, and birch bent to the ground. Hare crouched, boar bristled, crow called, owl woke, and stag began to bell. And the Grey Wolf stopped.

They were at the Hill of Death and Life.

Get down from me, the Grey Wolf, and gather the red rock, the white rock, the green rock, the blue rock, the brown rock, the black rock, and bring them here.

He got down from the Grey Wolf and went about the Hill of Death and Life. He gathered the red rock, the white rock, the green rock, the blue rock, the brown rock, the black rock, and brought them to where the Grey Wolf was.

He sat up on the shoulder, and the Grey Wolf struck the damp earth and ran, higher than the trees, lower than the clouds, and each leap measured a mile; from his feet flint flew, spring spouted, lake surged and mixed with gravel dirt, and birch bent to the ground. Hare crouched, boar bristled, crow called, owl woke, and stag began to bell. The Grey Wolf came to the great cave above the waters.

Hold the Stone. Grind thunder.

No one, not the living, not the dead, has touched the Stone. It is a spirit thing.

Long hair, short wit. I, the Grey Wolf, am speaking. Do it.

He got down and held the Stone in his fist. He put the rocks in among the flakes and bore on them with the Stone’s point; twisting their roughness, grating, churning. The rocks crumbled to sand beneath the weight. There was no moon but the cry of the grains of every hue, swirling, streaming about him, in him, through him, which became wind and thunder that picked him so that all that kept him was his hand on the Stone, his body tossed by the wind, until he could hold no more, and the thunder took him through the hill in a ball of rainbow and set him on the ground, by the river, under the sky.

He tasted lightning. He smelt it. The air was jags and spots. The Stone came as a cloud with flame from the Tor of Ghosts. The sky was riven in noise enough to break the hills. The land changed colours, and what was flat was black and what was steep was white; and the Stone flared and rent the slot of Ludcruck.

He dropped, his eyes shut, seeing only the wind. He sang, and with each song the earth shook. He lay, and was quiet; the earth stilled. His breath sounded in the great cave. Yet he lay a while, until the last quake died and his hands felt only the grasp of snow.

He opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor and the lamp shone. His hands bled from clutched shards. The Stone was in its place among the powdered rocks and had not moved.

Wolf. Wolf. Grey Wolf.

There was no answer.

He cupped the lamp in his palm and climbed, not feeling the pain as he pulled on the cliff.

Ludcruck was filled with summer. The ice had gone and the green mist of growing lit the spirit faces that looked out from the walls among fern, grass and holly along the twisting length.

The woman and the child lay in beds of eight-petalled white avens flower. He touched their faces and held their hands. The bodies were soft. He carried them out of Ludcruck to the hill. Here was snow and knars of grit stood draped.

He went to where a stack rose on ground above the valley and laid the bodies down. He snapped the icicles, clearing the way. He took the woman and climbed, and rested her on the snow at the stack top and opened her clothing.

She was lovely. Her cheeks were sunken, but had been so before when meat was late. Her nose was pinched, but he had seen that in winter. Only the hollow middle of her eye, the jaw and the stain on her shoulders her buttocks and behind her legs said that she would not come back. He loosed her hair, and laid it to either side of the sweet face.

Then he brought the child, wrapped in hare skin, and unbound it.

He left them together on the stack, where no beast would reach and steal, but birds could take them to the circle of life in air and earth, and he turned to the lodge. At the end of day, he looked out and saw that they were safe under ravens.

‘Risselty-rosselty, hey pomposity,

Knickerty-knackerty

Now, now, now.’

Colin took his bicycle and pedalled along the track to the road, adjusted his helmet, and crossed into Artists Lane. He stopped, lifted his feet and let the gradient take him down the dip slope of the Edge.

‘Risselty-rosselty, hey donny-dossity,

Knickerty-knackerty, rustical quality,

Willow tree wallowty

Now, now, now.’

He swept round the blind corner at Brynlow, past The Topps and The Butts to the Cross.

‘Risselty-rosselty, hey bombossity,

Knickerty-knackerty, rustical quality,

Willow tree wallowty, hey donny-dossity,

Risselty-rosselty

Now, now, now.’

He reached the main road and without looking right or left or touching the brakes went straight over from Artists Lane to Welsh Row. He coasted past Nut Tree and New House as far as Gatley Green until he came to the bypass and the railway bridge and had to pedal, after two point seven eight four three kilometres of free energy; approximately. Then it was Soss Moss, Chelford and Dingle Bank, to the telescope.

He punched the door code and went into the control room.

‘Afternoon, Owen.’

‘Hi, Colin.’ The duty controller turned in his chair away from the encompassing desk, the monitors and computers and the clocks of other time. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I want to check the data.’

‘You’re a liability. You know that?’

‘Have you got the printouts?’

‘And R.T.’s after your head.’

‘Wellaway.’

‘He’s found you’re spending time on M45. Says you’re wasting the budget.’

‘Am I, now?’

‘Don’t push it. He thinks you’re not here.’

‘I can change that.’

‘Colin. You’re off sick.’

‘So I don’t feel sick.’

‘Listen. We worry about you. You’re irrational.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘M45 is not a priority.’

‘Not for you.’

‘Listen, Colin. I don’t give a corkscrew chuff box for the budget. It’s you I’m bothered about, my friend.’

‘Thanks, Owen. I appreciate that. Is R.T. in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. I’ll see whether he wants my head on a charger or as it comes.’

Colin left the control room and went to the Director’s office. He knocked on the door.

‘R.T.?’

‘Whisterfield. Come in; you already have. Take a seat. Aren’t you on sick leave?’

The Director was his calm self. He turned a stone paperweight under his hand: the only sign; and the blue of his eyes.

‘You’re not happy,’ said Colin.

‘Correct.’

‘M45.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Why?’

‘Look here, Whisterfield. You are an able fellow. You have the potential to expand our understanding of the cosmos. Yet you fritter the budget on a cluster of adjacent stellar trinkets that is more the stuff of students.’

‘And if it isn’t?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘The fact that M45 is a local phenomenon may be irrelevant.’

‘But it is science that others less creative could do.’

‘“Creative”? R.T. You built your contraption outside to look for something you never have found. Now it finds what wasn’t even guessed at and wouldn’t have been discovered without you. Was that only science?’

The Director’s hand on the paperweight was still.

‘All I ask is a chance,’ said Colin.

‘I hear you, my boy,’ said the Director. ‘Watch your back.’

‘Thanks,’ said Colin, and closed the door behind him.

‘And?’ said Owen.

‘He’s fine,’ said Colin. ‘He understood when I explained what I was doing.’

‘Well, I’d not have put money on it, choose what you say,’ said Owen. ‘Here are the printouts. And you’re still sick, lad. Go home.’

‘I shall. Oh, and by the bye. The chough,
Pyrrhocorux pyrrhocorux
, builds its nest of twigs, roots and plant stems, lined with grass on cliffs or in old buildings; Slater, Williams and Whisterfield page 102. It would not, and could not, use a box.’

Colin wheeled his bicycle across the grass to the security fence and looked up at the white dish. It was parked in the zenith. He heard the wind among the struts. A klaxon sounded. The hum of the drive motors started, and the amber warning lights on the bogies flashed. The three thousand tonnes of steel began to move in azimuth and elevation and the red eye of the central focus mast tilted into view. The two towers that held the dish crept along their rails. The note of the wind changed, the stresses of the girders and of the dish made their own music as the telescope tracked, slowed to the measure of the Earth’s turning, and the motors died near to silence.

Colin checked. 15.15. He squinted. Azimuth 157·6°; Elevation 58° 20´; Right Ascension 3h. 46´; Declination +24° 11´. Good old Owen.

So the day shrank and night stretched. The clonter of the cobbles in the river was silent, and the river fell to sleep.

Then was the time when day and night were the same, and the sun tipped towards death. He went to the stack. The bones were clean and the wind had taken the hair to be found when birds built nests again; and the woman and the child were gone into life.

He brought the bones to Ludcruck. He eased them through the grit so they would not break. He reached to the nooks of the dead and lifted aside the old to make way for the new. And when they were quiet he left them.

The sun was dying, but hope would come. He counted as the cold gripped. If hope did not come, the sun would not turn, and there would be nothing but the wanderers, the curving of the stars, winter, and the moon.

At each clear dark he went above Ludcruck to the Bearstone and watched as the Stone Spirit, riding on the Bull’s back, the Bull that he had made new with the blade and with his hand, climbed the wall of the night cave. He watched the ring of stars that sat upon the Spirit’s brow, and watched until the Bull dropped below the hills.

And at the next dark he watched; and the next. If the Stone Spirit should see there was no one to care that the sun was weak it would not give the fire of its brow and the stars would end. Then where would be beasts to hunt? Where the hunters? Where the Hunter in the sky?

Once, when the world was full, the Hunter walked the sky. Above him was the Bull, and through the nights of winter it went before him with lowered horns. But when the world grew empty the Hunter left to follow the herds; yet the Bull stayed. And every night he rose above the hills. He hooked his red eye over, watching to see that there was life, and the Stone Spirit looked to send out eagles from its head to feed the stars. Then, when they had seen that the world was well and the stars were fed, the Bull and the Stone Spirit rested until night came again.

And each dancer in Ludcruck made new the Bull and the beasts on the wall of the cave sky for the time when all would be again, with the Hunter striding. But if the dancer did not dance and sing and make new the Bull on the sky wall, the Stone Spirit would not send eagles.

Yet there was a greater than the Bull, a greater than the Stone Spirit; for they kept the world and the stars through winter, but Crane kept through all Time.

Crane flew never resting along the River above the sky. It flew the highmost heavens and drove down upon the night. At deepest winter, when the sun could die, it thrust its beak to the dark above the Tor of Ghosts that lay under the star that did not turn. Then, when it seemed that it must strike the Tor, at the midpoint of the night, Crane skimmed the crest and rose to dive again in everlasting life. So the Bull cared for the world, the Stone Spirit for the stars, Crane for world, stars and the round of Time.

With the woman and the child gone into Ludcruck, he made a snow hole at the Bearstone and sat as the Bull lifted, to show that he kept watch and worked that the world would not be lost. And, as he sat, hope came.

Above the Bull’s back the Stone Spirit put up its hand and plucked eagles from the ring about its brow and sent them out. They flew as sparks across the night, gliding on their feathered fire about the cave, and the stars were fed. Every night he watched, until every eagle had flown and the sky was new though the sun sank.

Each year the sun went to die; and each year the Stone Spirit and the eagles fetched it back, though it had its trick to play.

With every setting, the sun drew nearer to death, the point of Moel, the Hill of Night, the hill from which there was no return. And at last it sank, big, into Moel and was gone. Then, if the Stone Spirit had not fed the stars, the sun had died. But now it crept behind the ridge of Moel until it came to the Nick in the hill, and blinked.

For five nights the sun played with the world, dying into Moel, and blinking at the Nick. Then it stopped its play, and climbed from Moel and death, so that night shrank and day stretched once more.

Colin locked his bicycle at the Health Centre and spun the combination. He rubbed disinfectant gel into his hands from the dispenser before tapping his details on the screen. He saw that he was expected and was invited to the waiting area.

He sat and watched the red LED dots cycle their information: welcome, statistics, chiding of appointments missed, a clinic for infant eczema, monitoring of blood pressure, electronic beeps of the summoning of patients to their doctors, please ask a member of staff if you need help.

A woman was reading a book to a child on her knee.

‘“So the little boy went into the wood, and he met a witch.” Don’t pick your nose. “And the witch said, ‘You come home with me and I’ll give you a good dinner.’” Now you wouldn’t go home with a witch, would you?’

‘I wouldn’t, Nan.’

‘But this little boy does. “The witch’s house stood on hens’ legs.” Isn’t that daft?’

He nodded.

‘“And the witch said, ‘Come in, and I’ll give you some dinner.”’ Would you go in?’