Mad Dog Moonlight

by Pauline Fisk

  Phaze II shook his head. It made no sense to him either. But Abren shook her head because it did make sense. Perfect sense, she said – and she was shaking with anger.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ she explained. ‘Don’t you see? This is his way of telling us he owns it. Plynlimon, I mean. By charting the mountain on his skin, he thinks he’s staked his claim to it. All its woods and roads and mountain glens – he thinks they’re his. And its rivers and their journeys to the sea. He’s had them drawn up in his blood, Red Judge that he is, according to a law of his own making. And his claim is indisputable, or so he thinks, because this tattoo here is their title deed.’

  She shivered. A little bit of night breeze got up behind her. It came rustling across the hotel garden, fetching the first few leaves of autumn down from the trees and blowing them across the lawn. Dust flew up between the kitchen and the cliff, and the map trembled, caught up in it all. For a moment it seemed to hover, inches above the ground, then it started breaking up and there was nothing any of them could have done to stop it, even if they’d wanted to.

  Suddenly, like a snowstorm, a thousand tiny flakes of skin filled the air, swirling round and round. For a moment the air was thick with them, then the wind died down and it was as if the title deeds to Plynlimon Mountain had never existed. The flakes disappeared, every last yellowing little bit of them. Then leaves rattled along the ground again, and dust blew over the place where the map had lain, leaving nothing behind, not a single tattooed line.

  Mad Dog stared at the bare ground, afraid to speak for fear of what might happen next. ‘This is over, isn’t it?’ he whispered at long last. ‘He has really gone this time? This really is the last of him? Promise me that nothing like this will ever happen again.’

  Abren put an arm round him. She closed her eyes and said she wished she could, but, ‘There’ll be other people,’ she said, ‘other places, other seesaw struggles for possession and control. It isn’t only here that these things happen. They happen everywhere – battles for land and wealth and people’s sense of who they are. The world is full of it. It’s full of managers and conjurors, tricksters, thieves and judges red in tooth and claw. But at least the struggle’s over for Plynlimon Mountain. And down here on the Rheidol, it’s over too. The mountain’s free, and so are we.

  ‘So let’s live like it, shall we?’

  30

  Silver River

  Mad Dog didn’t know the first thing about living as if he was free but, that night – sitting through the long hours until dawn with Aunty, Uncle, a sleepy and thoroughly confused Elvis and the sailors – he made a first stumbling step towards it, opening up the dark places in his life and bringing out his secret stories one by one.

  By morning, every last thing he could tell about himself, his past, his memories, his family and his fears, the things he’d done, the things he’d failed to do and even his hopes for the future had all come spilling out. Beyond the windows of the vardo, the birds started singing and sunlight heralded the new day. But, in the little living room, Mad Dog was too tired to notice. He could scarcely keep his eyes open and couldn’t sit upright any more.

  The sailors, who’d been telling stories too, weren’t much better, saying that all they wanted now was to return to the hotel and find their beds. Uncle said that after a night like this, full of strange stories and even stranger lives, he needed bed as well – not just to sleep, but to spend a few hours on his own getting his head around some of the things that had been said.

  But Aunty said she had a business to run and there could be no bed for her. It might be Sunday, and everybody else’s day of rest, but there’d be guests wanting breakfast before too long; crises in the kitchen that only she could deal with; old arrivals who needed signing out and new ones needing signing in; even friends and family needing phone calls to assure them that Mad Dog really was all right after yet another of his disappearances at the campsite.

  Mad Dog slept all day, awoke for Sunday afternoon high tea – which was a special occasion at the Falls Hotel – then slept again, not waking until the following morning when he found a newly labelled school uniform laid out at the bottom of his bed and realised it was time to face yet another change in his turbulent life.

  He couldn’t have felt less ready for the new school that awaited him, but faced it in true Trojan spirit. The key, he decided, pulling himself into his new clothes, was to put into practice what Abren had said about living as if he was free. Running wild on lonely mountaintops wasn’t all that freedom was about. Sometimes it was about thinking hard thoughts and making hard choices. And that was what he was doing now, picking up his new school bag and allowing himself to be driven down to Aberystwyth to start something that, if he gave it a chance, he just might like.

  And his first day in the new school was better than Mad Dog expected. He returned home full of news about the number of playing fields, the rugby cups on the wall, the size of the art block, the sheer scale of the library with all its books and computers and the dizzying array of fellow pupils and teachers whose names all had to be learnt.

  Aunty, in turn, had news about the sale of No. 3, which she’d put on hold, until they’d had time to talk about it properly. And the sailors had news too, having done a bit of hard thinking and choosing of their own – and now stood, coats on, ready to depart!

  Mad Dog felt as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him. Where were the sailors going, he demanded to know. And why were they going? How could they do this to him? Didn’t they know that their lives were bound with his? The three of them together, Plynlimon’s children, breathing the same air, and growing old together. They couldn’t leave, he said. Didn’t they know that? And surely, after all they’d been through – all the stories they had shared, and the things they’d faced together – they wouldn’t want to leave!

  The sailors tried explaining that being children of Plynlimon didn’t necessarily mean hanging to the mountain’s skirts, as if afraid of growing up, and being bound together didn’t mean staying together all the time. The way they put it sounded worthy and excusable. They said that it was possible to be as close-knit as a family and yet still live separate lives.

  But Mad Dog failed to be impressed. Beneath their fine-sounding words, he reckoned, the real truth was that the sea had got to them. He could smell it on them, and smell a new adventure far beyond the rivers of Plynlimon, and hear its siren call.

  They were off for fun, weren’t they? Off to their boat, harboured at Aberystwyth, thinking only of themselves. Anger welled up in him. The sailors promised they’d be back, but he felt betrayed. When they tried giving him a farewell gift, he thrust it back at them, saying he didn’t need any more porcelain teacups, thank you very much.

  But it wasn’t cups the sailors were trying to leave behind this time. Again they pressed their gift on Mad Dog, insisting that he should have it. And this time he took it – but refused to open it.

  ‘I’ll leave it until later,’ he said.

  ‘If you do that, you may regret it,’ the sailors said.

  Finally Mad Dog was persuaded to open the beautifully packaged little gift, tearing off the wrapping paper to find a silver necklace inside. A silver chain necklace stuffed full of charms!

  Mad Dog dropped it, as if it was on fire. ‘You must be joking!’ he cried out. ‘I don’t want it. Take it back. You promised me. It was over. Over – that’s what you said!’

  Abren picked up the necklace. She said that it was over, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still things that needed laying to rest. Mad Dog asked her where they’d found it, and she said on the ground, the night of the map, but that they hadn’t mentioned it before because the time hadn’t been right.

  ‘And now’s right?’ Mad Dog said. ‘You’re all ready to leave, and I’m left behind, and you call this the right time?’

  Abren held out the necklace, but Mad Dog backed away from it and not even her insisting that it was a trophy, won in battle, fair and square, m
ade any difference.

  ‘You’re the victor here,’ Abren said. ‘You’re the boy who set Plynlimon free. So, by rights, this trophy’s yours.’

  Again she held it out, but Mad Dog didn’t want a trophy any more than he wanted the necklace. Besides, it didn’t look like a trophy as far as he was concerned. It looked horribly like what Aunty had once called a poisoned chalice, and how could he forget all the trouble the last poisoned chalice had brought into the family?

  ‘If you’re right and this is a trophy,’ he said, ‘then it can’t just be for one of us at the others’ expense. We’re all inheritors here, not just me. The three of us are victors, which means you can’t go off and leave me. There’s a job here that needs doing, and we’ve got to do it together. This necklace has to be taken back up Plynlimon, where it belongs, and buried deep in the darkness where it will never see the light of day again.’

  The sailors’ departure was put on hold for one more night. Aunty allowed herself to be persuaded to lend them her Range Rover and a torch and a spade. Uncle wasn’t very happy about it – especially as it was a school day in the morning – but Mad Dog showed him the necklace, saying that not for a single night did he want it in the same vardo, hotel or even village as him. And there was something about it that set even Uncle shivering.

  It was getting dark by the time Mad Dog and the sailors were ready to leave. Phaze II drove. Abren sat by the window looking out into the night, her expression tight and faraway, as if it cost her dearly to return to Plynlimon. And Mad Dog sat between them, trying to feel safe but knowing he never would, not as long as the silver necklace weighed down his pocket.

  They drove as far as they could by road, Mad Dog directing them until he no longer recognised where they were, and then Abren directing until eventually even she admitted she was lost. A gate appeared ahead of them, with a cattle grid beyond it. She jumped out to open it and a vast wilderness stretched out before them. Phaze II cranked the Range Rover into gear and they set off across it, heading directly into the heart of Plynlimon.

  ‘When are we going to stop?’ Mad Dog asked.

  ‘When it feels right,’ Abren said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Mad Dog said.

  ‘It means that we want to make sure it stays buried,’ Abren said.

  Mad Dog shivered. He remembered late-night horror films that he’d seen on the telly when Aunty and Uncle were still working, and the curious ways of vampires and ghouls, who always sprang back to life in the final frame. Phaze II asked what he was thinking and, when he told him, burst out laughing. He used to watch those sorts of films too, he said.

  ‘But they’re just stories. Their purpose is to scare you. This is different because it’s real. And, in this story, we’re in charge. What we bind here will stay bound. What we end here will be over, now and always.’

  By now, the way had become so rocky that Phaze II could drive no further. He abandoned the Range Rover and they took to foot, wading across streams, climbing up sheep’s paths and struggling through patches of bog. Eventually they came upon a stretch of open grassland that Abren seemed certain lay directly between the ffynnons of Plynlimon’s three great rivers.

  ‘Here’s what we’ve been looking for,’ she said, grabbing the shovel and digging out a first turf. ‘Here, can’t you feel it? This is the right place. Let’s dig, shall we?’

  It was a beautiful night – far too beautiful for digging but they gathered round, with bare hands and the shovel, and got stuck in. The ground was soft and peaty, but the task was far more difficult than they’d expected. Even shovelling out huge clumps of earth made no difference. No matter how deeply they dug, or how quickly, their holes kept filling with black, peaty water.

  It was like trying to dig in a sea bed – only a thousand times dirtier. Soon Mad Dog, Abren and Phaze II were covered from head to toe in mud. They sat back on their heels, looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  ‘Are you sure you got the right place?’ Phaze II said.

  ‘Are you questioning my judgement?’ Abren said.

  ‘I’m questioning your geography,’ Phaze II said.

  Abren flicked peat at him, and he flicked her back. Above them, the stars were out and the moon was a great peach-coloured disc rising regally over hills and mountaintops. Mad Dog looked up. It was the first time he’d witnessed a clear night on Plynlimon and the sky was huge and wonderful. On one side of it he could make out the orange glow of Aberystwyth. On the other, he could see the richest, deepest, most luscious black. And in between – arching right over Plynlimon Fawr – he could see another sort of light altogether, which wasn’t starlight or moonlight or made by any city.

  ‘What’s that?’ Mad Dog said.

  The sailors stopped larking about and looked where he was pointing. Above Plynlimon Fawr, a sheet of what Mad Dog could only describe as lightness seemed to hang across the air, shimmering and shifting like the reflection of a landscape in a lake.

  Abren wiped her eyes. ‘It’s the Aurora Borealis,’ she said. ‘It has to be. Northern Lights, to you. A beautiful sight, isn’t it?’

  With a sigh, she turned away and started digging again. Phaze II said it couldn’t be the Northern Lights, not this far south. Abren said of course it was, and they started larking about again.

  Mad Dog left them to it and sneaked away, wondering what moonlit madness had got to them.

  ‘Hey, where do you think you’re going? Come back here!’ Abren called.

  Mad Dog replied that he wouldn’t be long. He climbed a bank that rose immediately behind them, and started walking along the top, his head tilted back. It was years since he’d seen so many stars, going right back to when he’d been a little boy living on the road, when his dad had taught him the constellations, shape by shape, and told him all their names.

  Mad Dog wheeled round for three hundred and sixty degrees, recognising shapes again, their names coming back to him. There was Orion, and there were the stars that formed its belt.There was its buckle and there, brighter than the rest, was Sirius the Dog Star. There was the Plough, sometimes also known as the Great Bear. And there, high above everything else, following a clear line drawn across the sky, was the great North Star around which everything radiated like the hub of a great wheel, or a Plynlimon in the sky.

  Mad Dog could have stood there for minutes, hours, days or weeks, feeling the sky circling over him and the mountain beneath. What did time count for, caught up in a thing like this? Finally he started walking again, ending up at that string of ponds he’d discovered on his school trip. The first was still full of cotton-grass and the second of lily pads. But the third pond – the crystal-clear one, where he’d stopped to drink – was now so full of water that it was bursting its banks and flowing off across the moss in a series of silver streams.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ Mad Dog said.

  He picked his way down to the pond, which was as silvery as the moon. Across the moss, he could see its streams finally joining together in one single strand of water that shone as if it had been polished, even lighting up the sky. That he’d found the source of the reflected light over Plynlimon Fawr, Mad Dog had no doubt. But what was the cause of all this water, spilling everywhere like molten silver? Where did it come from? And where did it go?

  Mad Dog looked out across the moss to the place where the land and sky were so bright that they became blurred and it was hard to tell one from the other. A shiver ran through him, as if he knew what he was about to discover. Knew too that, out there somewhere on the edge of this extraordinary mountain, all the answers to his questions awaited him.

  Mad Dog left the pond behind and started heading for the shining strand of water, following the path of the criss-cross silver streams. Brightness pressed in on every side and he found himself almost blinded by an excess of light. He walked until finally he could go no further, standing on a grassy hilltop with a drop beneath his feet and nothing but sky ahead. And there, before his dazzled, unbelieving e
yes, the single strand of shining water launched itself – out across space.

  As if Plynlimon was its fynnon, it simply flowed away!

  Mad Dog cried out. Before him, the single strand of shining water journeyed regally across the sky. It looped around the moon. It cut a path between the planets. It flowed amongst the stars, finally fading out of sight. And it was his mother’s silver river. The one he’d missed the night that he was born. Mad Dog was seeing it with his own eyes.

  How long Mad Dog stood there, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he’d found the river that had given him his name. Found the treasure too, that the Ingram sisters had told him about. No wonder the Manager had wanted to keep it to himself and make Plynlimon his! With a secret like this, who wouldn’t feel possessive?

  Suddenly, as if something had finally slotted into place, Mad Dog found himself digging into his pocket and pulling out the necklace. What was it the Ingram sisters had said about people going up Plynlimon and never coming back? He held the necklace up in the light and its charms clamoured, as if struggling to break free. Every one of them was shaped like a tiny person, and there were hundreds of them hanging from the same heavy chain. Every one was different and had a different face, and Mad Dog found himself rifling back through them all, his heart pounding as if he knew what he’d find.

  Sure enough, there they were at last – a little silver man, frozen in time with a bottle in his hand and a little silver lady with hair flying round her like a cloak of darkness. They could have been anybody because they were so small and their faces so indistinct. But Mad Dog would have known his parents anywhere, made of any substance and at any size. They were holding out their hands to him – and Mad Dog understood at last why the sailors had said the necklace was his.

  They’d known, hadn’t they? They hadn’t simply dumped this necklace on him, but had discerned its true nature and known what he’d find. Perhaps they’d recognised something from Mad Dog’s description of his parents, or perhaps they’d understood anyway. But, either way, in agreeing to help him lay this necklace to rest, they had taken upon themselves the role of undertakers.