The Angel in the Stone
Page 26
‘A single day is never the end of anything,’ Dougie said. He shouldered his own pack and locked up the car. ‘Are you ready to go?’
‘As I’ll ever be.’
The walk in was a steady climb for over an hour, the path breaking and eventually giving way to heather, scree and boulders. Alison kept his mind occupied with conversation, just as she had on the way down Ben Alder, but she fell silent as they stepped over the brow of the corrie and looked across the little dark lochan. Calum glanced back down at the route they’d come up. Dougie had run all that way back down for help. It was a longer way than he’d remembered.
He couldn’t remember the spot where Finn had landed with any clarity, but Dougie and Alison did. A small hummock of grass and heather surrounded avalanche-strewn boulders, high up the shoulder of the corrie. Falls of sharp scree spilled all around. The buttresses towered above them, empty except for a couple of ravens.
He eased the rucksack from his shoulders and hoisted out the sculpture. Dougie, Alison and Catriona lingered behind, waiting for him to find the right place for it. A flattish slab of granite seven or eight steps up the slope. He set it upright there and piled some smaller stones around it, making a cairn to anchor it in place. He’d considered bringing a tub of pre-mixed cement to hold it down, but something about the permanence of that felt wrong. Finn would never have wanted to be stuck down anywhere. It was secure enough in its little cairn, but it might fall eventually if other rocks tumbled from above or if heavy snows avalanched over the top of it. Or it might sit there until the elements eroded the details and reduced it back to the rough, shapeless lump it had once been.
He took a photo and walked back down to where Cat stood with Alison and Dougie. Silently, he sat down, slipped the hip flask from his pack and swallowed a mouthful of whisky. They climbed up to look at the sculpture, the three of them standing side by side. After a few minutes, they came back and sat beside him, sharing the flask and a bar of chocolate, speaking quietly. Catriona leaned into his side and allowed him to place his arm around her shoulder. The angel and Finn stretched out their fingers and almost touched, and wind skimmed like a flat stone over the surface of the water.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks go first to my family, who inspire and encourage me, even though it means sharing me with an evolving cast of fictional characters. Thanks once again to the editorial team at Sandstone Press, Keira Farrell and Moira Forsyth, for their patience, insight and attention to detail. Finally to my writing buddies, Moira Cormack and Stella Hervey Birrell: writing can be a lonely road and I am very grateful to have good friends to travel it with.