Winter Damage

by Natasha Carthew

  ‘It’s not so big, is it?’

  ‘Ten by ten miles if you want to count them, but it’s not so easy when you’re walkin the rough and the snow and everythin.’

  ‘A hundred miles of dirt roads and snow.’

  ‘Somethin like that. You can keep the map.’ Sonny bent to clean the pan and plates in the snow and she got up as if to leave.

  ‘You goin then?’ Ennor asked.

  ‘Looks like it, why?’

  ‘Just with your map and everythin, you might want it back.’

  ‘Maybe, what’s your point?’

  ‘Nothin, I’ll see you round.’

  ‘You got somethin to ask, just ask it.’

  ‘Just if he’s alive, what then?’

  ‘Dunno, finish the job?’ Sonny laughed and when she saw how serious Ennor was she laughed even more.

  ‘If you ask me, I’ll say yes. But you gotta ask me.’

  ‘Ask you what?’

  ‘You know what. Just ask me.’

  Ennor sighed. ‘Will you come with me? Help me find Mum?’

  Sonny kicked her boot into the snow to pretend she was having a think. ‘Well some kind of magic word would be nice, hell.’

  ‘For God’s sake, please.’

  ‘Why not? Headin to the north moor, int you?’

  Ennor nodded.

  Sonny took back the map and smiled. ‘We’ll find her, greenhorn. Aunty Sonny knows a short cut by a lake.’

  ‘Which lake?’

  ‘Siblyback.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know. Get packed up and I’ll show you.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ennor watched Sonny stride towards the horizon and she shouted for her to wait. ‘What makes you think you’re right in any case?’

  ‘Cus I got smarts plus I got the map.’

  Ennor rushed to pack up her things and she wished she had a streak of nerve that would have her turning in the other direction, but Sonny was right. She was a greenhorn.

  She stood with her hands on her hips and waited for her to look back and when she was nothing but a head bounce on the snow horizon she shouted for her to wait and ran after her.

  ‘I was waitin but now I int. Come on,’ Sonny shouted back.

  ‘Why you comin if you gotta be so mean?’

  ‘I said I’d help you and I will, but you gotta put a little faith in me. Besides, this way we get to go fishin.’

  ‘You better not be leadin me all ways for your own entertainin.’

  ‘It’s a short cut. Hell, loosen a little, won’t you? We’ll be there in an hour.’

  They walked side by side where the land allowed and Ennor half-eared Sonny’s elaborate fishing stories. Her other half of listening was to her natter-chat mind and she wondered which was worse, this or Sonny.

  When Sonny stopped to read the map Ennor stood idly by and watched shadow upon shadow of cloud eclipse each other in a race for dominance.

  In those clouds she saw faces she knew and ones she didn’t. The familiarity of kin and the menace of strangers, all sluiced together like pigswill.

  Sonny was telling her something and she nodded and smiled.

  ‘You listnin or no?’ Sonny asked.

  ‘Course, you were sayin bout the fishin.’

  ‘What about the fishin.’

  Ennor smiled. ‘Just that.’

  Sonny put the map away and said her way was definitely the quickest and she set a course to skirt a cluster of trees.

  Ennor didn’t have the energy for arguing. She was aching from their fight that morning and she thought she might be getting a cold. She followed behind like a half-obedient dog, dragging her heels a little to hint at her mood. She blew her nose into her glove to keep the run from freezing into icicles and she thought maybe the dry sting in her throat was the beginnings of a cough.

  ‘I think I’m gettin a cold,’ she shouted into thin air. ‘I’ve got a sore throat, you hear me?’

  ‘I hear somethin.’

  ‘It’s hard to talk.’

  ‘Then don’t. It’s really no biggy.’

  Sonny climbed a line of barbed wire and Ennor followed and she made sure to keep to the track the girl was stomping through the undergrowth. Both girls carried sticks and they thrashed the briar that snatched at their legs with violent blows.

  Ennor counted out each smack of her stick and she told herself that when she reached a hundred they would be standing at the edge of the lake and she was right.

  ‘What you reckon?’ shouted Sonny. ‘The lake’s big, int it?’

  Ennor nodded. ‘Half frozen too.’

  ‘Don’t be such a killer. We got ways to fish, hell.’

  They crouched in the undergrowth and Sonny made them snap thorns from the twisted bramble vines.

  ‘You think these’ll stand for fish hooks?’ asked Ennor.

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Only my fingers are bleedin and I hope not for nothin.’ She flicked the droplets of blood on to the snow.

  ‘Watch what you’re doin then. I’m not bleedin.’

  ‘What you got for line?’

  ‘Baler twine.’

  Ennor thought for a minute. ‘Int that too thick?’

  ‘I’ll split it course. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  They dumped their things high up on the thin pin shoreline and Sonny made a square for sitting in the snow. She used a flat rock to scrape it clear and not until the pretty shingle stones blinked up at them did she allow them to sit down.

  ‘They’re like jewels,’ said Ennor as she knelt to them with a crunch. ‘Trip would love these.’ She turned them over in her hands and counted out seven of the prettiest and put them in her pocket.

  ‘How’s your fish-hooks workin out?’ she asked.

  ‘Shut up. I’m concentratin.’

  ‘How you makin a hole in the barb?’

  ‘With another barb.’

  ‘Genius, int you?’

  ‘Yep and really I am.’

  Ennor sat back and watched Sonny split the twine into lengths of fishing line as thin as cotton.

  She threaded half a dozen of the biggest thorns they’d collected and wound each one round a section of her walking stick.

  ‘You wanna go find us some rods?’ she asked. ‘That’s if you’re not weighted down by them stones in your pockets.’

  Ennor climbed up the bank of snow and looked down over the lake that skated out before her in a spin of spectrum blues and the clay sediment that lay on the lake’s bed flashed turquoise. A tropical island shore in the middle of the cold moor that made Ennor smile and close her eyes to an imaginary sun.

  If she concentrated hard enough, she could hear the warm water inch up the shoreline and feel it lap around her ankles and she wiggled her toes, remembering a memory that wasn’t and never would be hers.

  She heard squawking crows swing close above her head, seven parrots red and green across the deep blue sky, and she watched them swoop over the beach where her parents were laughing, playing with Trip. Everyone smiling and healthy like in photos, snapshot happy.

  Ennor thought she might sit down on one of the sand dunes and write herself a poem, but her mother was calling her and then the calling turned to shouting.

  ‘Ennor, hell.’

  She snapped open her eyes and the bright of winter made her squint.

  ‘What you doin, girl?’ Sonny stomped up the bank of snow and stood squarely in front of her.

  ‘What?’ asked Ennor.

  ‘You got the sticks?’

  Ennor looked blank.

  ‘The sticks for the fishin rods?’

  ‘I was just goin to –’

  ‘No don’t worry your pretty fussy head bout it, I’ll do it.’

  Sonny stormed off into the undergrowth and Ennor watched her and listened to the snap of branches peppered with swear words.

  She tried to recreate the daydream but it had all but disappeared and the beautiful azure shore that stretched before her was now j
ust an optical illusion. The crows circled the lake one more time before moving on. Ennor counted them over and over until they dipped from view and there were six and only six, no matter how many times she went over it.

  When Sonny reappeared with two thick poles of greenwood they walked down to the shoreline, Ennor tying the thread into a knife split at the end of each stick while Sonny needled a nip of pork rind for bait.

  Ennor waited for Sonny to take the first step on to the ice and when she was ten steps out she followed.

  ‘This is safe, int it?’ she asked.

  ‘Course.’

  ‘You’re not goin to get us killed, are you?’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘Cus all for one fish, I’d rather try for a rabbit or a squirrel.’

  Sonny stopped abruptly like she always did when acting outraged but she continued to slide forward on the ice. ‘A squirrel?’

  ‘Just sayin, a rat then, whatever.’

  Sonny shook her head and waited until her skidding slowed to a stop.

  ‘Why you stopped?’

  ‘I’ve lost my flow, I was following the patterns in the ice and now I’ve lost it.’

  She crouched to the ice and rubbed the thick frosted glass with her glove, then stood up and Ennor stood beside her.

  ‘Beautiful, int it?’ Sonny looked around at their surroundings as if noticing it for the first time.

  ‘Like another country,’ said Ennor.

  ‘Another world entirely.’

  The two girls stood shoulder to shoulder and almost breathless against the cold and beauty of the lake and Ennor realised they had walked a good bit out.

  ‘You could kind of die right now, couldn’t you?’ said Sonny. ‘Like right now, it wouldn’t be so bad.’

  Ennor didn’t speak. She didn’t want to spoil this one moment of being, but she knew exactly what Sonny meant. Maybe things weren’t so bad if you knew you could stop time, settle yourself into somewhere perfect, if you knew death and disaster were heading and say, ‘I’m here, I’m ready and I’m not scared.’ A moment of clarity, preparation.

  Something made her take hold of Sonny’s arm and it felt good to be close to someone, an anchor out there on the water.

  ‘Let’s catch ourselves some fish,’ said Sonny as she pulled away. ‘The quicker we get fishin, the quicker we’ll be sittin by a fire eatin the buggers.’

  It was hard work gauging the best place to stop to test the ice. Each footstep creaked and fractured and Ennor felt like she was walking a fine line tightrope between laughing and crying.

  They crouched together and Sonny drew a deep circle in the ice with the axe she wore looped into her belt. ‘I’ll chop into it the best I can.’

  She told Ennor to sit back and to grab her feet if she fell in and they both laughed because they painted a funny scene no matter which way you looked at it.

  The ice-chipping went without a hitch and they took it in turns to cup their ungloved hands into the moon of water and splash their faces and each other. The cold water brought rosy apples to their cheeks and burning warmth to their fingers. They made sure the bait was secure and for weights they used irregular-shaped stones that Sonny had picked from their circle on the shore and they tied the string a hundred times tight.

  ‘This better hold,’ said Ennor.

  ‘It will, have a little faith is all.’

  They lowered the weights and the knotted meat into the water and sat back on the ice.

  ‘Two regular Eskimos, int we?’ Ennor grinned.

  ‘Could do with one of them fluffy leather hats, made from a seal pup or somethin.’

  ‘And them stitched shoes,’ agreed Ennor. ‘What they called?’

  ‘Moccasins.’

  ‘Int they slippers?’

  Sonny nodded and laughed out loud. ‘Could just see us sittin here with slippers on our feet.’

  ‘And pyjamas,’ added Ennor. ‘Slippers and pyjamas and a dressing gown.’

  They laughed until tears fell from their eyes and their throats choked with childish squeals of delight and they were two girls out on a school field trip, messing around, with nothing serious about them except fooling.

  When the first bite tugged at Ennor’s makeshift fishing rod she ignored it because this was the last thing she was expecting. She held the stick casually in one hand and watched it bow with absent-minded amusement and Sonny watched too.

  They had been discussing fish recipes and speculated on the best way of cooking but neither of them expected to catch an actual fish.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Pull it, wind it and pull it.’

  ‘It’s a big un. He’s pullin me in.’ Ennor leant backwards and so did Sonny and they pushed their feet together as she pulled the stick backwards and twisted the cord around it.

  ‘Keep it up,’ shouted Sonny. ‘If you lose it, I’ll kill you and I mean it.’

  ‘Can’t do more than what I’m doin,’ shouted Ennor as she lay back on the ice. ‘I tell you the stick’s goin to break and it’ll be your fault.’

  She pulled and twisted until her shoulders wrenched from their sockets and her forearms burnt with fatigue but still she pulled because the pain wasn’t as bad as the thought of a lecture from Sonny.

  When she thought she might pass out the fish fired from the hole like a rocket and sent Ennor flat-backed and skidding across the ice.

  ‘That’s it,’ shouted Sonny. ‘You done it, girl.’

  Ennor lay where she fell, with the fish flapping close by and her heart in her mouth, and she stared up into the sky and could have sworn she saw a chink of sunlight flash at her through the clouds.

  ‘What we get?’ shouted Sonny.

  Ennor looked across at the fish and the fish one-eyed her back. ‘A fish.’

  ‘What kind of fish?’

  ‘Ugly one.’

  Sonny reached out a hand and pulled her to her knees and then went to the fish.

  She sat cross-legged and smashed its head on the ice to knock it out, then attempted to dislodge the barb from its throat. ‘He’s a big bugger, only thing is, the meat got stuck in his throat and now I can’t get the bloody thing out.’

  Ennor got to her feet. ‘Let me have a go.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well cut its head off then.’

  ‘Damn, I wanted to cook it whole.’

  ‘Cut the head off. It’s my fish.’

  Sonny continued to wrestle with the hook then finally conceded and unhooked her knife from her belt. ‘Only cus I’m hungry.’

  She nestled the knife into the flesh above the gills and smashed her hand down on to the back of the blade, then gutted it and washed it clean in the circle of water that became a full blood moon.

  Ennor sat on the square of pebbles that Sonny had cleared earlier and held the fish in her lap. She thought about the head skating out there on the ice somewhere and guessed it wouldn’t be long before some bird or other swooped down to peck at the bloody lip of flesh where the body had been and its one exposed eye.

  She felt the cut with her thumbs and opened it up to inspect its belly and insides and she told Sonny she’d done a good job.

  ‘You sittin starin at that thing till dusk or you gonna help fetch firewood?’ Sonny asked.

  ‘I’m comin.’

  ‘Dark will be comin in soon and if we don’t find wood we won’t be able to cook fish and you know what that means.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sushi. You ever tried eat raw fish?’

  ‘No, you?’

  ‘Nope and don’t want to start tryin neither so let’s go.’

  They carried two lengths of rope with them and made their way back towards the woods they’d skirted earlier and although there wasn’t much in the way of trees, standing or otherwise, they managed to lift enough wood for a cooking and sleeping fire.

  ‘Good job,’ smiled Sonny when they returned to their camp. ‘Good job all ways, I reckon.’

  Sonny nodded her way and Enn
or knew she was close to saying something nice about the big fish without actually saying it and Ennor felt herself steam with pride when she looked at her catch.

  Sonny built her spit above the damp smoky fire and both girls bent and coaxed the flames until the glow came back to their faces and Ennor finally passed over the fish.

  She wished she had a camera to take its photo so she could show Dad when she got home. He would be so proud of her. Maybe even give her one of his trophies like he used to when she was a kid.

  She watched Sonny thread a thin greenwood spear into its muscular side with a satisfying stitch.‘You want to put it on the spit? Say goodbye in your own special?’

  ‘No you can do it. I’ve done enough, catchin it and everythin.’

  They sat and coaxed the fire some more and Ennor made pine-needle tea as they waited for what seemed like for ever for the fish to cook.

  There was still a little light to the sky and they watched as a kestrel circled the lake, suddenly dropping like a weight to claw up the fish head.

  ‘We were a long way out, weren’t we?’ said Ennor.

  ‘Maybe too far out, when you look at that bird, just a speck in the dust.’

  ‘Poor bugger.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fish. One minute he’s swimmin in his own glory and then bam.’

  ‘Flat on his back same as you,’ laughed Sonny. ‘Good fun though, weren’t it?’

  Ennor poured the tea and turned the fish and she agreed that she quite enjoyed fishing. ‘Guess I’m lucky you came along.’

  ‘I had to help you out. Couldn’t stomach comin cross your crow-pecked corpse when spring arrived.’

  ‘That the reason you come?’

  ‘Bit of adventure, why? What you pokin at?’

  ‘Just wonderin stuff, your home life and that.’

  ‘Well don’t.’ Sonny leant forward to turn the fish to a position that was more suitable and she kept from looking at Ennor.

  ‘You miss your family yet?’

  ‘Course not. You?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well what that say?’

  Ennor sipped her tea and settled the metal plate near the fire to warm. ‘Says I should probably mind my own business.’

  ‘Correct.’