Kit's Wilderness (8 page)

S
now. Not a breath of wind. The flakes tumbled thickly from the low white sky, filled the gardens and lanes, rested thick on the rooftops, carpeted the wilderness. Snowmen appeared: coaly eyes, carrot noses, pebble-studded grins. The slides lengthened and widened. Parents rushed across the snow, pulling squealing children on sleds and plastic trays and trash bags.

Each morning we woke to a brilliant new layer. It was wonderful to be the first across the fence each morning, to stamp the first fresh footprints there. It was great to trudge with Allie through it on our way to school, to hear her giggles muffled by the dead still snow-padded air. We made huge light balls of it, heard them thump softly onto fence posts and house walls, slung them at the others who walked around us. Snowballs everywhere, arching up into the misty air and down with a thump to the world again.

Allie danced across the snow in her brilliantly colored clothes, kicked a storm of white around her, grabbed my arm and tugged me and made me join in with her. We fell down with our legs and arms askew and printed the shapes of our bodies in it. We lifted our faces and opened our mouths and felt the single flakes melting gently on our tongues and laughed at each other and danced again. Our hands stung and our cheeks stung and even our hearts stung with the joy of it.

Even Dobbs joined in with the excitement of it. He put Pangaea aside. He told us about the Ice Age, when the great glaciers crept down from the north, scouring the earth, forcing valleys into the greatest mountains. He told us about our ancestors, who moved southward as the cold intensified, as the world around them froze. A brilliant white world, he said. A world of ice.

Burning Bush talked of how they sheltered in caves as they moved, how they gathered in terror around magical fires in there. Maybe this was how stories started, she said.

“Imagine them there, crouched around the fire in the smoke. They painted pictures of beasts on the walls, huge mammoths and bison, the tigers and bears that brought such terror to them. They painted little figures of themselves, little fragile men and women and children in a massive terrifying world. Imagine one of them, the storyteller. He wears animal skins. His hair is shaggy, his skin is blackened by smoke. He holds a burning torch. ‘Listen,’ he tells them, and they all lean closer to the fire, wide-eyed, staring at him, all agog. He casts the torch across the paintings on the wall, and the beasts, the terrifying world, the tiny men and women and children flash before their eyes. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘and I’ll tell you the story of the boldest of us all, his endless quest across the ice, his struggle with the Bear, his vision of the Sun God. His name was Lak . . .”

Burning Bush paused and looked at us.

“That’s your story for this week,” she said. “The first sentence: His name was Lak.”

I lifted my pen and pondered.

His name was Lak
, I wrote.

E
vening. The first break in the clouds for days. I climbed the fence. The sky was thick with stars. I stared up and found the Great Bear and Orion the Hunter. The flashing lights of an airplane moved beneath them. A shooting star streaked down toward the river. The snow was crisp, its surface brittle and icy, crackling as I walked. Many built fires out here now. They gathered logs, wooden boxes, pallets, lit them, sat in little groups around them, roasted potatoes in the embers, told jokes and scared each other with tales of ghosts and monsters. All across the wilderness the fires glowed and hunched figures leaned toward them.

“Kit,” called one group as I passed by. A bunch of little ones, little shining eager faces. “Come and tell us that story again, Kit.”

I laughed. “Later,” I said.

Walked on, into the deeper darkness above the river, saw by the light of the stars and the opposite house lights that the ice was taking over, beginning to creep out from the river’s edge. How long would it take for the ice from the edges to meet up and cover the river beneath? I hunched down and watched, and I heard again the tiny whispering all around me. I saw children shifting at the edges of my vision. I squinted and saw the skinny silhouettes, saw the round eyes catching the light from stars.

Maybe I knew he’d be there as well. There was no surprise when I heard him, when I saw him from the corner of my eye, hunched over, further along the bank.

“Down,” he whispered. “Leave him.”

Silence. Just the gentle running of the river, a distant giggling, far behind.

“Askew,” I said.

Nothing. I moved closer to him. I spoke his name softly, as if he was an animal in pain: likely to attack, but desperately in need of comfort and love.

“Askew,” I whispered. “Askew.”

He sighed, grunted something, pulled his collar close, yanked his woolen hat down. The dog stirred as I drew nearer.

“You’ll catch your death,” I said.

He grunted again.

Silence.

“What do you do all day?” I said.

He clicked his tongue.

Silence.

“You seen the ice?” I said.

No answer.

“It covered the whole river once,” I said. “They walked from bank to bank. A boy drowned when it melted.”

Nothing.

“Askew?” I said.

He yanked his hat again. “You’ll catch your death,” I said.

“You,” he whispered. “You, and that stupid pretty one.”

“What?” I said.

Nothing.

We watched the water and the ice. I felt the cold creeping into me, into my bones, saw the starlit eyes watching from the dark, heard the shallow breath, the whispers. Shuddered.

“I’ve done more stories,” I said. “You could do pictures. We could be a team.”

Askew grunted.

“Team. Bloody team!”

“The other one you did was great,” I said.

He lowered his head, gazed down. I saw the starlight caught in the dog’s eyes, in its teeth.

“Afterward,” I said. “I dreamed about it. I dreamed that I was with Silky.”

Long silence.

“That’s the way of it,” he said. “You draw what you dream. Then you dream what you draw.”

“That’s the way with stories, too.”

Silence, just skinny bodies shifting in the darkness.

“You see them?” I whispered.

“Them?”

I squinted, saw them, black silhouettes within the dark, starlight catching in their eyes, starlight glistening on their skin.

“Them,” I said.

Askew grinned, turned his face to the dark. The bodies crouched, stared. I heard the intake of their breath.

“There’s more than them,” he whispered. “There’s things from further back. You’ll come to see them with your dead eyes, Kit Watson.” He stepped closer. “I was going to find you out here. I was going to bring you down here. Throw you in, or let Jax on you.”

“Askew, man. Why?”

“Why? ’Cause I was. ’Cause everything was fine till you came here. ’Cause you were the one that brought the teacher running. ’Cause you were the one that got the game ended and me chucked out.” He laughed.

“But mebbe it’s better this way. Mebbe it’s what I’ve always wanted. Mebbe you’ve done me a favor, Kit Watson. Pushed me further out toward the dark.”

I heard how his breath shuddered as he breathed, how his body shuddered. Closer to him, I saw how he was growing, how he was thickening, how massive he was becoming.

“Why don’t you go home?” I said. “You’ll freeze out here.”

Nothing.

“Heading out soon,” he whispered. “Me and him. Getting out.”

“Where to?”

“Don’t matter. Nowhere. Somewhere. They’ll wake up, we’ll be gone.”

“Askew, man,” I said.

Silence.

“I’ll bring a story round,” I said. “Like you brought the picture.”

He grunted.

I felt the ice deepening in my bones.

“I will,” I whispered.

“Silky,” he said.

“Eh?”

“Eh? That Silky. I see him too. He shows himself to both of us, Kit Watson.” He didn’t turn, just stayed hunched, facing the river. “You’re closer to me than you think,” he said.

“I know that. I’ve said I know that. So we should get together more, eh?”

“Together! Aye, mebbe we will. But it’ll be me that chooses the time and chooses the place and we’ll see if Kit Watson’s brave enough to really get together with John Askew.” Askew spat and turned away.

“It’ll be in deep darkness,” he muttered. “It’ll be where there’s nobody, just John Askew, Kit Watson, and many many of the dead.”

I watched him fade into the dark. I walked home, heard the distant whispering behind me. The snow crackled under my feet. The little ones had gone, the glowing embers of their fires left behind.

A shooting star streaked toward Stoneygate’s heart.

H
is name was Lak. He was fourteen. He wore the skin of the bear he’d killed. Deerskin was wrapped around his fret. He gripped a stone axe that had once belonged to his grandfather. The baby Dal was wrapped against his chest. The dog Kali lay at his side. He squatted on the crag and gazed down to the river of ice below him. Ice was everywhere, in the valleys, in the cracks of stones, in fissures of the rock, in his hair, in his eyebrows. It covered the world: bare rock above, ice beneath. It glistened and gleamed in the morning sun. Lak narrowed his eyes against the glare. He peered across the world, searching for smoke rising, for a sign of humanity, of his lost family. He saw nothing, just the white ice, the dark rock, the great blue sky, the low yellow sun.

He called out: “Ayeeeee!”

His voice came back to him from the ice and rock, it echoed and died away as it traveled down the valley:

“Ayeeeee! Ayeeeee! Ayeeeee!”

The dog lifted its head, stared out, ears pricked.

Lak laughed. “It’s only me,” he said. “Me echoing forever on the ice.”

He reached into the bearskin, touched the baby, felt her swaddled close against his skin, felt her warm lips, her warm cheek.

“It will be fine,” he whispered. “Keep calm, my love. It will all be fine.”

He crawled on the crag. He found the tiny thorny plants that grew sparsely there, the only things that grew now. He picked them, shoved them into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, twisted his face, spat. Bitter-tasting things. Sharp on the tongue, acid in the belly. He took a tiny blossom, the only sweet part of the plant, moistened it with saliva, held it to the baby’s tongue. He felt her lick.

“Keep calm,” he whispered. “Perhaps there will be berries this day.”

He held a plant on his palm for the dog. It licked, didn’t eat, turned its hungry eyes forlornly to its master. Lak grunted, stroked the dog. “Perhaps there will be meat for us this day, Kali.”

He moved on, holding the bearskin close around him, heading south, sheltering the baby, holding the memory of his family within him, feeling the ice in his bones.

It had happened at night, days back, weeks back. They were in the cave, a shallow defenseless place above a frozen river. It was a stopping-off point, a night’s shelter in the endless journey south. They were all in there, his mother, his father, his brothers, his sisters, crouched together against the wall. They had a meager fire, built from logs he’d helped his father to wrench out of the ice. Lak leaned against his mother, stared at the entrance. His father snored, pale moonlight trickled in. His brothers and sisters slept silent, innocent.

“What is the bitterness he holds for me?” he whispered.

“Hush,” his mother whispered.

“What is it?” he whispered. “As I pulled the timber out I saw such anger gleaming in his eye. And when I stumbled as I carried it he hit me. He took my throat. There was the glare of a beast in him. I saw it again when I sparked the flint, again as the first flames flickered.”

She stroked his brow. “Hush,” she whispered.

“What is it?”

“He was once like you, but the perils of our world have changed him. He sees in you the strength that was once in him. The strength that in him is fading.”

Lak watched his father in the flickering light.

“And where is the love he held for me?” he whispered.

“Hush, my son. Leave these thoughts alone. There will come a time when you alone must be our strength and guide. Prepare yours4ffor it.” She stroked his brow. “Lean on me, my son. Sleep. I will watch the entrance.”

And Lak slept, and dreamed of his grandfather, of the old man’s tales of the time when the sun shone warm, and green grass and trees filled the valleys.

The snarling woke him, then the sound of his mother’s screams . . .

I stopped writing and watched the falling snow. I ran my fingers across the fossilized black tree on my desk. I went downstairs to find Grandpa. He was in the living room, in front of the television. Mum stood in the doorway with her arms folded, watching him. She put her finger to her lips. He was fast asleep. I sat on the sofa beside him. He snored gently, evenly. His eyes flickered beneath his eyelids. There was rubbish on the telly, some game show where they had to answer questions to stop a bucket of black gunge from falling on them. I grinned. There’d be much more interesting things going on behind Grandpa’s closed eyes.

I waited for him to wake.

He woke slowly, ever so slowly. Even when his eyes were open his dream continued. He continued to see it, even as his eyes looked toward the nonsense on the telly.

“Kit,” he murmured at last. “Kit, lad.” His eyes softened, he smiled at me. “Rubbish, eh?”

“Aye, rubbish.” I switched it off.

“Not out in the snow today, son?”

I shook my head. “I need to know about John Askew’s family,” I said.

“The Askews?” Grandpa rubbed his eyes, pondered. “Wait till I get it straight. Everything’s such a clutter in me head these days. The Askews, aye. I see them now. The grandfather was a good’n. Tough as old boots and a mouthful of curses and too much of a taste for the drink. But gentle enough beneath. Spent many a shift at his side, got to know his ways. He was a man that scared many around him, specially the new lads, but the true nature of him came out when the roof collapsed in 1948. Askew was the man that burrowed through till his hands was bleeding. It was him that carried out the lad that lay in there. Him that saved the lad’s life. The father? He’s just one of them that’s been wasted, son. No proper work for him to do, nothing to control him. Wild as a lad, got wilder as a man. A fighting man. Spent six months in Durham jail for thumping a lad half to death outside The Fox one night. Afterward, just took to the drink. Takes it out on his own boy now, and I suspect on his wife. He’s a bitter soul, Kit. In another world he might have been fine, but in this one . . .” He shrugged. “Ah, well. And I hear the boy’s heading the same way too, eh?”

“Could be,” I said.

“Thing is, he’s never had a proper childhood, not with that for a father. The baby inside him never had a chance to grow. You understand?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

Grandpa smiled. “Maybe the baby’s inside him still, still waiting for its chance to show itself and grow.”

I thought of Askew, of the fear and revulsion he caused around him. I recalled the desperation that could be felt within his violent grip, the yearning that could be seen in his violent eyes. Such a strange boy, such a strange mixture of darkness and light. Where
was
the baby in him? And I thought of Lak, whose baby was so obvious, held inside the bearskin.

“Everybody’s got the seam of goodness in them, Kit,” said Grandpa. “Just a matter of whether it can be found and brought out into the light.”