Bigfoot Mountain
Page 15
Kaayii kept low and listened to the humans. He could tell from their speech they were surprised to see the crow lying on the deck and they were curious about it. He heard scrabbling and flapping, then more scrabbling of sharp talons on the wood, and a loud indignant ‘caw!’ He watched the crow fly away.
He grunted once, long and low, ‘Oooshh…’ Then he straightened up from his squatting position, slowly, and there they were – looking right at him! This was the most thrilling and strange moment in his short life. The girl, the special spirited girl, was smiling at him. The others, the woman, the man and the boy, all had their mouths open and were standing as still as a dead redwood tree. He made eye contact with the girl and was happy.
He slowly lowered himself out of sight. He heard them make the same sound, each one after the other, and the dog barked once. He crawled round the side of the cabin and, when he got to the back of it, he stood up. From behind the cabin he had a good view of his clan as they crept from bush to tree down to the shore, following the ancient migration path where the cabin used to stand. Then he silently walked up the grassy slope. At the standing stumps he turned and looked back. There she was. The girl, alone, silhouetted against the darkening grey sky, her mass of curly hair highlighted by the full moon’s silver glow. She was looking straight at him. He knew at that instant that she was the one human who would always be welcome in his forest and that he would always keep her safe.
He turned and walked up the trail in the darkness, up to his wolves, to his forest, to his mountain.
MINNIE
Chapter Nineteen
Though it was almost dark there was still a shimmer of reflected sky on the water. The tide was in and the jetty was floating, securely resting on its support posts, able to rise and fall with the swell of the tide. Near the jetty was a hulking black lump that wasn’t usually there. It looked like a rock or a very dense bush.
‘What is that near the jetty?’ asked Billy with a tremor in his voice.
‘Look. There!’ said Dan, pointing across to the bushes in front of the other cabins, as two large figures, really just two huge black masses, like black shadows within the shadows of the night, were moving smoothly away from behind a bush, making no sound as they ran. The moonlight struck them as they flashed between the shadows cast by the tall pines on the rocky rise and their shape was outlined briefly – a sloping head with a cone-shaped skull, huge shoulders, and long arms, as they loped swiftly and silently across the ground.
Minnie joined Dan at the top of the steps. These figures were moving down towards the jetty – huge, dark, upright figures.
‘Bigfoots, Dan,’ she said. The four people watching the scene unfold were stupefied, stunned into silence by what they were witnessing.
The strange black mass near the jetty slowly unfolded from its haunches and stood tall. Its head was level with the top of the lamppost. It moved with a high-stepping fluid gait, its massive arms hanging below its knees. The whole jetty structure shifted in the water, under the weight of it, making the sides of the platform roll, and dip, and heave.
Without hesitation the creature jumped off the end into the sea, making a huge splash. Another two-legged creature ran along the jetty and jumped in to the sea.
‘The lights, Dan! Hit the lights!’ said Connie.
‘I disconnected the switch when I took the cabin down! My torch is here somewhere!’ He scrabbled on the deck amongst the boxes of belongings.
More creatures were stepping out of the long dark shadows between the cabins and the water, and more were coming. Another ran along the jetty, leaping and yelling with what was either alarm or delight, into the sea.
‘How many’s that?’ asked Dan switching on his torch.
‘They are impossibly large,’ said Connie.
‘I’ve counted three and here comes another,’ said Billy. ‘This is so cool!’
‘It’s carrying something,’ said Minnie. Dan’s torch was just strong enough to illuminate one end of the jetty. There was clearly a much smaller creature clinging to the back of one them. The torch lit up the last four huge figures standing there, waiting their turn. All turned to look back at the light source and their eyes glowed red, like eight large red dots.
‘Oh, good Lord,’ said Connie.
Dan stepped towards the cabin door. ‘No, Dan, not the gun!’ insisted Minnie.
‘I’m getting binoculars!’ said Dan as he rushed in to the cabin. In turn each Sasquatch leapt in to the water.
‘Where are they going?’ asked Billy.
‘To the other side. To Echo Island,’ said Connie, as the eight animals, plus a young one on its mother’s back, swam steadily away, splashes of spray catching in the light of the full moon.
‘I've heard reports of people seeing them swimming,’ said Connie. ‘Swimming across the bay to the other islands.’
‘Will they ever come back?’ asked Minnie.
‘I hope so,’ said Connie.
‘Me too,’ said Billy.
‘Me too,’ said Minnie. There was a pause. They all looked at Dan staring through binoculars.
‘I’m good. They can have the island.’
They were down by the jetty in the morning, Minnie, Dan, Connie and Billy. ‘So the crow was a distraction. Smart,’ said Dan. Minnie grinned.
‘I fixed these lights myself,’ Dan was standing with his tape measure by one of the posts on the jetty, ‘and they are all at eight feet. The tallest ones, the biggest of the, er, creatures, they were level with these lamps.’
Minnie was inspecting the ground near the steps down to the jetty. ‘There’s footprints everywhere,’ she said, ‘in the dust at the end of the path.’
‘That smell, I will not forget in a hurry,’ said Connie. ‘It was really strong.’
‘I read that they can give off a really foul stench when they want to,’ said Minnie. ‘Like Billy.’
‘Hey!’ said Billy, but he couldn’t help laughing.
‘I was out there on the deck most of the night,’ said Dan. ‘I watched to see if anything swam back this-a-way.’
Minnie asked, ‘Did you hear anything? See anything?’
‘No. It was real quiet. They’ve all gone.’
Minnie looked up at Bigfoot Mountain, and smiled a knowing smile.
Later, after Connie, Billy and Musto had gone back up to their cabin, Minnie sat next to Dan on the jetty. He was looking through his binoculars, across the water, at Echo Island. He took Minnie’s hand. This had never happened before in all the years she’d known Dan and she was not sure what it meant.
‘Minnie, I should never have doubted you. Somehow you knew they had a kind of ancient migration route, and we were blocking it and you were right and I was wrong, all along.’ He smiled at Minnie. ‘You are your mother’s daughter and I see so much of her in you, and that has sometimes been hard for me, Minnie, but I need you, and I think you need me…’
Dan was struggling to get his words out and Minnie thought he might start crying which would be weird and so awkward. ‘And you may just be the bravest, wisest, most exceptional young woman I’ve ever known. Your mom would be so very proud of you…’ he squeezed her hand, ‘…and so am I.’
Now this made Minnie cry, which took her by surprise. She gazed at the wooden jetty where a few hours earlier eight Bigfoots plus a baby one, had run and jumped into the sea.
‘Dan?’
‘Yes, Minnie?’
‘Can I change one letter of your name?’
KAAYII
Chapter Thirteen
The two wolves trotted out of the jagged black gap in the base of the cliff. They ran through the yellow flowers and the pale grass, then stopped and waited. The young Sasquatch emerged from the cave and ran towards them. As he passed, they fell in beside him and Kaayii stroked their smooth black heads, and they closed their eyes in appreciation.
They ran on, across the streambed, through ferns and underbrush, passing redwood, cedar, spruce and pine. They ran across and up an
d up, and up to the summit to the stand of pines at High Ridge, where the Sasquatches used to meet and sleep. Kaayii climbed his favourite tree, nostrils bristling and scenting, the pine resin sticking to his palms, as he heaved himself up from limb to limb, never missing his grip, at home in the tree as it swayed.
He looked down the mountain, out over the tops of the trees at the water, and the hilly green island lying long and low, lit in a blaze of sunshine near the far side of the bay – far but not too far away, as the crow flies.
MINNIE
Chapter Twenty
The next day Minnie was perched high, high, high up in her favourite tree, swaying gently in the breeze with Dan’s binoculars hanging round her neck by slim leather straps. She raised them to her eyes and scanned the forested mountain. The skies were clear blue and the smoke that was over the mountain just ten days ago had all gone.
She twisted round on her perch and looked out across the bay to Echo Island. Grasping the trunk with one hand she leaned out and yelled down…
‘Hey, Dad! Can we take the boat over to the island?
Acknowledgements
Great thanks to my siblings, Richard, Jo and Annabel, for your support, advice and love.
Abi Sparrow at SP Agency who read a short story, saw a novel and encouraged the big push, thank you.
Penny Thomas, and all at Firefly Press, for believing, and for who making it happen.
Jess Mason for her beautiful artwork and patience.
Wise friends who read early drafts, James Nutt, Cristiana de Melo, and Emma Lyndon-Stanford. Thank you!
And Patrick and Mairi, without whom…
At Firefly we care very much about the environment and our responsibility to it. Many of our stories, such as this one, involve the natural world, our place in it and what we can all do to help it, and us, survive the challenges of the climate emergency. Go to our website www.fireflypress.co.uk to find more of our great stories that focus on the environment, like The Territory, Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds and My Name is River
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Copyright
First published in 2021
by Firefly Press
25 Gabalfa Road, Llandaff North, Cardiff, CF14 2JJ
www.fireflypress.co.uk
© Roderick O’Grady 2021
The author asserts his moral right to be identified as author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-913102-41-8
ebook ISBN 978-1-913102-42-5
This book has been published with the support of the
Books Council of Wales.
Typeset by: Elaine Sharples
Cover and internal illustration by Jess Mason,
www.jessmasonillustration.com
Printed and bound by CPI Group UK