Lark

by Anthony McGowan

  “I think it’s a bit bleak up here for rooks,” I said. “They’re softies, really. Rooks like it down on the farms where the fields get ploughed and there’s lots of beetles and worms for them. Up here is crow country.”

  “I don’t like crows,” Kenny said. “They always look pissed off.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “And it always sounds like they’re telling you to get lost.”

  The path climbed steadily, so you were always a bit out of breath but not enough to feel knackered. Our feet crunched over the snow, making a sound like you were eating biscuits.

  The trees and hedges lined the path at the start and kept the wind off. But after twenty minutes we’d left most of the trees behind and were up on the high moor. That’s when it really began to feel cold. Partly it was because what was left of the warmth from the bus had seeped away, but mainly it was because of the wind. It was one of those clever winds that knows how to get into you, sneaking under your collar and up your sleeves.

  I got the hat and gloves and scarf out of the bag and held them out to Kenny.

  “Put these on,” I said.

  Kenny hated hats and gloves and scarves. I don’t know why.

  “You put ’em on. I’m not cold.”

  It was impossible to get Kenny to do anything he didn’t want to. Well, you could bribe him, sometimes. But you couldn’t force him. And I couldn’t have made him, anyway. He was as scrawny as a streak of piss, but he was strong, with hands like spades and big bony feet. When we were kids, I could always beat him in a play fight by tickling him, and he’d beg me to stop before he wet himself. But now he always pinned me down before I could get anywhere near his skinny ribs.

  “Fine,” I said.

  And the truth is that it felt good having the hat and gloves and scarf on. Like getting a cuddle from your … Well, like getting a cuddle.

  Four

  So me and Kenny chatted, and Tina had a sniff at everything that could be sniffed. And she peed on almost anything that stuck up out of the snow until she had no more pee left in her.

  “Never eat yellow snow,” I said to Kenny.

  “I’m not gonna,” Kenny said. “If it was really cold, would your piss freeze in mid‑air?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. Yeah, hang on, I remember watching something on the telly about Siberia, or somewhere like that. A man poured boiling water out of a kettle and before it reached the ground it had turned to ice. So that must mean your piss would, too.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Kenny said. “Your piss turning to ice in mid‑air …”

  “But your willy would freeze and snap off like an icicle if you got it out in Siberia,” I told him.

  “It wouldn’t!” Kenny said, horrified.

  “Would, definitely. If it was a clean break, they could probably sew your willy back on again. Or superglue it.”

  “Superglue’s rubbish,” Kenny said. “Dad tried to glue the bottom of my shoe back on and it just fell off again. It doesn’t stick anything together, apart from your fingers.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Fingers and willies – that’s all it’s good for.”

  That was the sort of chat we had, and it was a laugh, for a while.

  The footpath was pretty easy to follow, despite the fact that the snow covered everything. There were stone walls on both sides, and even when there weren’t, the path had its own shape, different to the fields around us. There was a high bit in the middle of the path, and then a lower bit on each side, and then high again at the edges. It looked like tyre tracks, but it might just have been from thousands of feet walking over it for hundreds of years.

  Here and there we’d see sheep huddling against the field walls or spot their mucky arses as they ran away from us. Well, I suppose they were really running away from Tina, who barked and growled at them.

  I don’t know how much damage she could have done to the sheep, but she definitely wanted to have a go. I don’t think dogs really know how big they are. I read that the only animals that can recognise themselves in the mirror are chimps and dolphins. They do this test where they put a blob of red on the chimp’s nose, and when it looks in the mirror the chimp sees the blob and wipes it off. Other animals just think the thing in the mirror is another dog or whatever. So maybe in Tina’s head she was as big as a wolf.

  While I was thinking about how you can have a wrong idea about how strong you are and what you can take on, Kenny said, “This is rubbish. Can we go home now?”

  “We’ve got to get to the next village to pick up the bus,” I said. “We’re probably nearly there.”

  Just as I spoke, the snow started to fall hard again. I looked at Kenny and noticed for the first time how cold he was. He was badly dressed for a walk like this, on the hills in a blizzard. Just a sweatshirt and a denim jacket and his jeans. And trainers that were already sodden. His nose was red and a line of thin snot dripped down, dabbed every few seconds with the back of his raw hand. He’d folded and hunched himself inside his jacket to try to keep out the cold, but it was like trying to get full up by eating soup.

  I felt an idiot. It was my job to keep Kenny safe. I’d let him down. I should have thought ahead and planned for the worst. I unwrapped my scarf and yanked off the hat and gloves. Instantly the chill bit into me, like rats at cheese.

  “Here,” I said, “put these on and don’t bloody moan about it.”

  Kenny used to act like having to wear warm clothes was some terrible punishment, like being made to eat his vegetables. But this time he stared at the bundle in my hands for a moment and then took it. He put the hat and gloves on, and I helped him with the scarf.

  “I can do it!” he snapped, and pulled away.

  Tina looked from one to the other of us, not knowing what was going on.

  Then Kenny said, “Ta.” And then, after another pause, “You’ll be cold now.”

  I shrugged. “Nah,” I told him. “But let’s get moving. Can’t be far to go.”

  Five

  I was wrong. Another twenty minutes of trudging and we were still in the middle of nowhere. All along, the footpath had been skirting the edge of the higher hills. I wondered for a moment if we’d just been going around in circles.

  “Hang on, Kenny,” I said. “Let’s see if we can’t work this out from the map.”

  I took the map out of my pocket. My hands were so cold I dropped it in the snow. Kenny picked it up for me, his hands warm but clumsy in the gloves. I found the path on the map and followed it with my finger, trying to work out how far we’d come. Then I remembered my phone. It had Google Maps on it, which would tell us where we were.

  But, of course, when I checked, there was no signal. I went back to the paper map and tried to guess where we were.

  “Can we go back to where we got off the bus?” Kenny said.

  “Dunno,” I said. “Maybe. Yeah. At least we know the way.”

  But I hated the thought of retracing our steps. It would be like we’d given in, letting the stupid moors and the stupid snow beat us.

  I looked again at the printed‑out map. The path went in a big curve. The village we were heading for looked like it was exactly on the other side of the hill we were going around.

  “I’ve got an idea, Kenny,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Shortcut. Up and over.” I pointed up the side of the hill and did a little whistle that went high then low. “What do you reckon?”

  I thought Kenny would be all for it, but his face was strangely blank and his eyes were dull.

  “Looks rotten up there,” Kenny said. “And there int a path. What if we get lost?”

  “We can’t get lost. The path goes right round this hill. We go up, we go down – there’s no way we could miss it. In fact, when we get to the top we should be able to see the village.”

  “All right,” he said. “But quick. I’m dying of this cold.”

  To get up the side of the hill we first had to clamber over a stone wall. It was one of
those walls that are made of stones just piled up on each other, with nothing sticking them together. Well, I say “just piled up”, but you could see how cleverly they were stacked, with no spaces in between them.

  “See, Kenny,” I said. “It’s like a stone jigsaw puzzle.”

  But Kenny wasn’t in the mood to enjoy the craftsmanship.

  It was easy enough to climb over the wall, apart from having Tina. I scrambled up first, then got Kenny to pass her to me. I jumped down and thought Tina would follow, but she just paced nervously along the top of the wall.

  “Getting a bit old for this sort of lark, aren’t you?” I said, and I picked Tina up and put her down in the snow on this side of the wall. The snow was deeper here, where the wind had blown it into drifts.

  Kenny followed us, but as he jumped down he knocked one of the stones off the top. Kenny has always been a bit clumsy. He bent to pick it up.

  “Just leave it,” I said.

  Kenny gave me a dirty look.

  “Gotta fix it,” he told me. “That’s only fair.”

  The stone made a satisfying clunk as he laid it on top of the wall. Then he straightened it up, so it looked nice again.

  “Don’t be all day about it,” I said.

  I had a flashback to when we were young ’uns – Kenny five, me four, or something like that. It was before Mum left, and things were still OK at home. We had these wooden building blocks and a little wooden cart thing with red plastic wheels to push them around in. It was Kenny’s favourite toy. He used to spend hours piling the bricks up. He always tried to make a tall skinny tower, with just one block on each level. But because he built it on the carpet, the tower would never get very high before it fell down. I was too young back then to understand that Kenny didn’t always get things the way other kids did. I used to tell him to build it wider, with four blocks at the bottom, but he didn’t like that.

  “Want it high!” he’d yell. “Up. Up. Up.”

  Each time the tower fell, Kenny got more upset. He wanted to do it himself, but he just couldn’t. So in the end I’d help him. I’d find a flat surface on the kitchen floor or on the tiles around the gas fire. And we’d take it in turns, one brick from him, one from me. And I’d make little adjustments so that it would stand.

  And then, when all the blocks were used up, Kenny would lie down next to it and gaze up at the tower of wooden blocks. I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe imagining a tiny version of himself climbing up the tower and then standing at the top to look down over the world. After a while, he’d reach out and knock the tower down. The blocks would tumble over him, which always made him laugh. And it’s true that the best thing about building a tower is knocking it down. But only when you’ve decided the time is right.

  Six

  It was much harder walking up the hill. My feet sank out of sight in the snow with each step. And under the snow and the grass, the mud was frozen solid into hard ruts. The uneven ground caught and tripped you or made you twist over on your ankle. And after a few minutes, the wind got up even higher and the snow blew around. It wasn’t easy to tell what was coming down from the sky and what was blown up from the ground.

  I looked ahead. We weren’t far, now, from the top of the hill. Beyond it was just that endless grey nothing of the sky. I imagined the fields sloping down to the village beyond.

  I turned and saw Kenny stumbling through the snow. “It’s OK, Kenny,” I said, almost shouting it. “We’re nearly there.”

  Kenny looked up and half smiled. He walked a bit faster, dragging Tina along behind him. In five minutes we’d made it to the top of the hill.

  Except it wasn’t the top of the hill.

  It was just a ridge. Beyond it the ground fell for a few metres and then climbed again.

  My heart sank. But I had to hide my disappointment from Kenny.

  “Sorry, Kenny,” I said, putting on a bright voice. “False alarm. That’s the top, over there. Downhill all the way after that. We’ll have a cup of tea and some cake in the village.”

  “Sausage roll,” Kenny said.

  “Chips!” I added.

  We ran down the short slope, trying to get some momentum for the climb. Tina enjoyed the little run, barking and scampering along in our tracks. But soon the three of us were trudging on up again. We had our heads low, as if we could duck the wind, the way the hero in a film ducks a sloppy punch from a drunk guy.

  “Tell me more about what we’ll have to eat,” Kenny said when we were halfway up the next slope.

  “What have we got so far?”

  “Tea, cake, sausage rolls, chips.”

  “What else do you want?” I asked.

  Kenny considered this for a few moments.

  “More chips,” he said.

  “More chips it is, then. What else?”

  “Another sausage roll.”

  “Coming right up,” I promised.

  “And then more cake.”

  “Same cake as the first one, or a different kind?”

  “What was the first kind?” Kenny asked.

  “Chocolate. With Smarties on top.”

  “OK, then,” Kenny said. “For cake seconds I want more chocolate cake. And can I have the Smarties off of yours?”

  “No way!” I said.

  “Go on.”

  “Tell you what, you can have the Smarties from my second piece of cake, but I want the ones on the first. Deal?”

  Kenny thought about it for a while, weighing it up. Finally, he nodded, as if making a big sacrifice, and said, “Deal.”

  He stuck out his hand and we shook on it.

  Seven

  About then I noticed that the solid grey of the sky had changed. At first I thought it was just that the clouds had got even thicker, but then I realised that it was getting late in the afternoon. Somewhere out beyond the clouds, the sun was going down.

  Kenny was dragging his feet, going slower than a sloth with three legs walking in treacle. “Come on, Kenny,” I said, “we don’t want to be out at night with the gytrash on the prowl.”

  “The guy what?” he said, as I knew he would.

  “Gytrash.”

  “What the bloody hell’s a gytrash?” Kenny asked.

  “They sometimes call it the shagfoal.”

  Kenny laughed nervously. “You’re just making it up.”

  “Hah, it’s true,” I told him. “It’s a special kind of Yorkshire monster that hangs out on the moors. Sometimes it looks like a big black dog, and sometimes it looks like a horse – but a horse with claws, not hooves. But whether it’s in the shape of a horse or a dog, it always has red eyes, and that’s how you know it. You see them glowing in the dark.”

  “What does it do to you?” Kenny asked.

  “It leads you away from the right path.”

  “Then what?”

  “No one knows,” I said.

  “How come?”

  “Cos you’re never seen again.”

  There was a pause as Kenny thought about it, then he said, “What does it do to you?”

  “Eats you.”

  Kenny chewed that one over.

  “If you’re never seen again, how come you know it eats you?” Kenny asked.

  “Because sometimes they find what’s been left after it’s finished eating you.”

  “Why, what’s left?”

  “Something and nothing,” I said.

  “How can it be something and nothing?”

  “Just is.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Kenny complained.

  “It does.”

  “So what is it, then?” Kenny asked. “The thing that’s left?”

  “Your bum hole!” I yelled.

  Kenny barked out a laugh. “You mean the skin and, er, bits of bum?” he said.

  “No, just the hole.”

  “How can that be? You mean just the air where it was? How would you find it?”

  “Because it’s your bum hole,” I told him. “It’s black and
it smells.”

  And then I couldn’t keep it up any more and I started laughing. Kenny joined in, and this time he managed to give me a good shove and I fell on my arse in a drift.

  Eight

  A bit later, Tina stopped dead and refused to budge. Kenny tried to pull her along, but she dug her feet in the snow.

  “I think she’s too tired to walk,” Kenny said.

  “Come here, then, girl,” I said, and picked her up. She was shivering but felt warm against my freezing hands. She was only a little dog and no effort at all to carry.

  We came to another wall. This one was higher than the first, and I wasn’t sure I could climb over it while carrying Tina.

  I looked along the length of it.

  “There. There’s a gate,” I said.

  We walked to the gate and scrambled over it. It seemed easier than scraping the gate open over the frozen ground.

  We clumped down together on the far side, and then Kenny let out a scream of wild terror. He began to run at an angle across the field. At the same moment, I saw a flash of black fur, pointed claws and burning red eyes. The gytrash was upon us – I knew it, even though I’d thought it was just a stupid legend and that the gytrash didn’t live anywhere apart from in old books. I dropped Tina, her barks and my screams joining with Kenny’s. And I ran like a madman to catch up with him, Tina frantic at my ankles, the lead still attached to her collar and bouncing along after her.

  Then I heard the unearthly sound of some wild thing and glanced behind me, still half expecting to see the slobbering gytrash bounding towards us.

  Three or four black sheep bleated in alarm and skittered away from us along the line of the wall. Tina growled at them as they vanished into the whiteness. I thought she was going to chase them, so I grabbed her lead.

  “Kenny, it’s just sheep!” I cried out, my words breaking up into laughter. Kenny ran on a bit more, then stopped and turned, and I caught him up. We were both totally out of breath.