A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

by C. A. Fletcher

  The sound of gulls was distant, but immediately recognisable, and the noise sent a treacherous wash of nostalgia through me to soften the hardness I had been practising. I’ve read that smells are the most evocative things, but the right sound can take you out of yourself too. For a moment my mind went away, back to Mingulay and my simpler life. And then Jip barked and I jolted back to the present.

  He was looking up at me, head cocked. Like I was missing something. Then he barked again and looked out at the landscape again, nostrils flared, tasting something on the wind.

  I pulled out the map and tried to make sense of what I was seeing the marks the map makers had made, but it was very hard, especially because I had only a sketchy sense of where I was. I took the time, because I was still on slightly higher ground. Once I approached the new coast, it was all going to be flat and wooded and impossible to make out any remaining landmarks.

  It was the low sun that gave the overgrown town away. I saw a flash and looked at it, and saw the house windows dully reflecting the light back at me through a stand of willows, far in the distance. It was so far that I hadn’t been able to see the river beyond. But once I fixed on the houses and the overgrown ruins beyond, I scanned slowly around them and saw two things. The first was a wind turbine turning very slowly. And then, just beyond it, there were uprights that were too regular to be trees that I first took for headless light-poles, and moving further on from them I saw another dull flash of water, which must have been the river, and just seaward from that I saw the thing that made me realise the light-poles were masts and I was looking at a mooring along a river’s edge.

  I was thinking it was perhaps not more than a morning’s ride away when I saw the sails further along the bank.

  The red sails.

  Chapter 30

  Be careful what you ask for…

  It was always a gamble.

  Ever since I’d stolen the map, a little part of me had known I might be making a huge mistake. The lines that radiated from the place I was now overlooking might not have been Brand’s home at all, and even if they were, there had never been any real guarantee he was heading back there. He might have been off on another years’ long voyage to other unexplored parts of the world. Or they might not have been lines that marked his comings and goings at all—they might have been someone else’s lines, some long dead sailor’s tracks left on an old map that Brand had later viked.

  As I had travelled down across the broken spine of the mainland, I had certainly had enough lonely nights and days to consider these possibilities. I’d begun to ask myself whether my quest was more to do with what I wished than what I could rationally expect. And as the wear and tear and the losses had mounted up—not just the loss of Jess that began it all, but the Sweethope, and even John Dark—I had started to dread rather than wish for the moment of arrival. I had reason enough to suspect very strongly that my luck had gone, but since my boat was burned I had no choice other than to try and finish what I had started. And then when the accident with the buried water tank happened, I think I knew for sure that fate was against me. And still I had plugged on, not really through doggedness or the courage of my convictions, but because I didn’t know how to make sense of those horrible losses—other than by playing out the hand I’d chosen, clinging to a wild hope. Which is another way of saying I was too stupid to know what else to do and I should have cut my losses, but I didn’t know how.

  I had always been bad at card games. Ferg or Bar almost always won because I usually held on for a bit too long, forever sure that the next or even the final card would be the one in fifty-two chance I needed to complete my own winning hand.

  Hope less, count more! Bar would say.

  But keeping a tally of cards like it was a maths problem never seemed like a game to me. It was more like a chore. And so I enjoyed playing for the companionship of it, but seldom won. Though on the rare occasions when I did beat them, the infuriation that it sparked in my more careful siblings made victory all the sweeter.

  Seeing the red sails was like that. A hoped-for but actually totally unexpected win. Very, very sweet. So sweet that I shouldn’t have dropped my guard and stopped expecting it to turn sour.

  I had to get closer. I had to lie low and spy out the land. I had to be clever and quiet and match the headlong recklessness of my decision to set out on this hunt in the first place with a cautious and well-thought-out plan to make it end well. I had to not squander this unlikely turn of luck.

  I went forward carefully now, making sure the horses and I stayed in the woodland and didn’t expose ourselves in the open areas. I wanted to get close enough to lie up and watch before I did anything else.

  Now I kept Jip close by putting a long rope on him. As I did so, I explained we needed to be quiet, that he shouldn’t bark and this was just to stop him running off on a hunt and giving us away by mistake. Of course I was really talking to myself, but I had always spoken to the dogs and explained things, and I think even when they didn’t understand the details, they understood the tone in my voice. Jip hated being leashed, but after a bit he gave up tugging the line taut and trotted beside me, the rope slack between us. Every now and then, he would look up at me as if to ask if it was time for this game to stop, but I shook my head and told him it was necessary.

  After a couple of hours of quite slow progress, I hobbled the horses and climbed a tree. You probably climbed lots of trees. Maybe you even had a tree house. For me this was a first. Jumping into a tree to escape the boar didn’t count. I tested each branch as I hauled myself higher and higher, and then I stopped, held myself steady with one arm around the trunk and peered east through the thin screen of leaves. Towards the mooring.

  Again, at first I thought I had gone astray, because I couldn’t find it. There was a light breeze, and the branches moved in a slow heave like the sea that made the clouds of leaves all around me murmur and rustle. It was quite peaceful. I took another look through the binoculars and this time I found the sails and the buildings, which were closer than I had expected.

  In the distance, at the very edge of my hearing, I thought I could hear a dog.

  I climbed down the tree as fast as I could, worried that Jip would start to answer the distant barking and give

  us away.

  The wind was coming over our shoulders, and down on the floor of the wood the noise was more muffled, so he didn’t get a smell or hear any sounds that might set him off. However, I was determined that he shouldn’t give us away by mistake, so I retraced our steps about a klick and then—greatly to his mystification and outrage—tied him to a solitary tree and left him with the packhorse. The tree was an old and very tall pine. Its red bark zigzagged into the sky and supported dark green shoals of needles and cones that were moving gently in the breeze. Older brother and sister pines had fallen around it, their greying trunks and roots making a kind of natural stockade around its base. It would be an easy landmark to find on the way back, and would be far enough away for Jip’s protesting barks to remain unheard. I left him a pan full of water and then I knelt and ruffled his neck fur with both hands as I looked into his eye.

  I’ll be back soon, I said. It’ll be okay. I can only do this by myself.

  And at the time, I meant every one of those three lies.

  I felt odd setting off without him. Naked almost. He always came hunting with me. Not having him cutting back and forth in front, looping forward to see what was ahead and then coming back to check on me, felt odd. Like I was missing a limb. Like it was making me walk funny. Self-conscious. Unnatural even. I felt lopsided. And unprotected.

  But I pushed on, carrying my bow and keeping my eyes and ears open.

  I was just scouting. I wasn’t planning on doing anything rash. This is what I kept telling myself. Though I did think if by some miracle Jess came to me we would make a run for it and trust that Brand, who wouldn’t have horses, would never catch me in the wide maze of emptiness and ruin that lay between me and home. In my
mind, even if I couldn’t find enough of a boat to mend and retrace my steps back once on the west coast, I could ride to the ruin of the old Skye Bridge and swim across to Skye with the dogs. From there it would be easy to get to the westernmost edge of the big island and start burning things until Dad or Ferg or Bar—or the Lewismen even—came over the water to see what was going on.

  Hope can keep you afloat in troubled times. It can also drown you if you let it distract you at the wrong moment. I was enjoying thinking about how surprised they’d all be to find me waiting on the beach with both dogs, when the tree in front of me spat bark shards into my face as an arrow thunked into it.

  Don’t move, said a muffled voice ahead of me. Or the next arrow is yours.

  On the plus side, it wasn’t Brand. On the other hand, I had been wrong about the horses: there were three riders, faces hidden by old gas masks and scarves. One had a gun with a long and curved magazine underneath it; the others had bows aimed right at me.

  Okay, I said.

  They stared at me. Not being able to see their faces was unnerving, but they somehow seemed just as unsettled as I was. Like they didn’t know what to do either.

  I’m Griz, I said, and raised my hand in the beginning of a wave.

  Don’t move, said the one with the gun. And don’t talk.

  I had the strongest sense he needed quiet to think what to do next.

  I nodded.

  Are you sick? one of the bowmen said. His voice sounded younger.

  Yes, said the gunman. Good. Are you sick?

  No, I said. Just tired.

  Have you been sick? said the other bowman.

  Not especially, I said.

  Where are the rest of you? said the first bowman.

  There’s just me, I said.

  The gunman snorted.

  And where have you come from? he said.

  North, I said. I come from the north. Who are you?

  Shut up, said the gunman as the second bowman began to answer. He turned to me again.

  Leave your weapons here, he said.

  I hung my bow and the quiver full of arrows on the tree.

  All of them, he said.

  So I took my knife and then my other knife and left them sticking in the tree too.

  No more knives? he said.

  I shook my head. My Leatherman wasn’t really a knife. I could pretend I forgot it if they searched me.

  But they didn’t search me. They didn’t come any closer than they already were.

  Who are you? I said. I don’t mean any harm—

  Plenty of time for talking later, said the gunman. He reached into his saddlebags and threw something at me that thumped into the grass at my feet with a clink of metal on metal.

  Put one of those on each wrist and close them until I hear them click, he said. Don’t play games.

  They were two pairs of handcuffs made to hold your wrists together. One was silvery, the other a dull black.

  Why? I said, wondering if they would get me if I turned and ran, or if that moment had passed.

  Because I’ll shoot you if you don’t, he said. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to.

  He did sound sort of sorry, but he also sounded like he’d shoot me anyway.

  I bent and put them on. The hinges were oiled and they clicked into place, and I stood and showed each pair dangling off a different wrist. It wasn’t clear to me why he wanted me to do that.

  Now click the cuffs together, he said.

  That made sense: I would have found it too awkward to cuff myself with one pair of cuffs, because my wrists wouldn’t have bent that way, but cuffing myself with two pairs was easy.

  They’d done this before.

  You don’t want to get close to me, do you? I said. That’s why you’re using two of these. Otherwise you could have come over and cuffed me with one pair. What are you scared of?

  We’re not scared, said the second bowman as if I’d insulted him.

  Don’t waste your breath, said the gunman. Like I said. Plenty of time to talk to him if he survives.

  If I survive what? I said.

  Quarantine, he said.

  Chapter 31

  Quarantine

  Quarantine was a cell, half underground, in a bunker. Or maybe it was the cellar of a building that had fallen down. Maybe a police station. Maybe an old army barracks. It was quite a distance from the mooring with the red sails, although you could see the masthead and the settlement next to it from the windows of the cells on one side of the bunker. There were six cells, three on each side of a hallway, facing each other.

  The distance from the settlement was on purpose. It was quarantine. They didn’t want to catch whatever I might be carrying. If I was infectious. Which I wasn’t, of course.

  They made me walk ahead of them as they shouted instructions, guiding me through the trees and into the edge of the old overgrown town towards the bunker building. Then they dismounted, and the bowmen made me walk down a flight of steps and then one made me stand as far as possible from himself as he opened a barred gate and stepped away as I was ushered through it by the other. They made me go to the far end of the hall before they approached the gate and re-locked it.

  The six cells all had heavy doors with slits in them so jailers in the old days could have looked in on the inmates to see how they were doing.

  Don’t you close those doors, said one of the bowmen, his voice indistinct as he backed up the stairs. You close them, you’re stuck for ever because we don’t have the keys. Use the toilet in the end cell on the right. The old drain’s clear but you flush your business away with a bucket

  of water.

  Wait, I said. What are you scared of?

  Not scared, he said. Prudent. Last visitor but one brought a plague killed three people. Fucking Freeman… You’ll stay here a month; we’ll see if you get sick. You’re still alive after that, we’ll be happy to let you join us.

  He doesn’t want to join you, said a voice from the deep shadows in one of the cells I had taken to be empty.

  The voice sounded tired, disappointed in me, and chillingly familiar.

  He just wants his bloody dog, it said.

  I turned and peered into the gloom. His beard split in a thin smile, showing me a flash of white teeth.

  I told you to go home, Griz. I did warn you.

  Brand. I felt winded and couldn’t speak for a moment. I heard the door at the top of the stairs slam shut and then the noises of the horsemen leaving.

  Brand didn’t get off the cot in his cell. And he didn’t say anything else.

  I went into the cell across the hall from his and sat on the cement ledge staring at him, framed in the two doorways. It felt like a lot of time passed in silence then, and maybe it did. But eventually all that silence seemed to be sucking the air out of the cells, and talking seemed like the only way to keep breathing.

  Where’s Jess? I said.

  She’s fine, he said.

  Where is she? I said.

  Took the chart, he said. That’s how you got here, right?

  Where’s my dog? I said.

  You find another boat? he said. Is that it? But then—how likely is it you found a boat that was ready to sail? You find a boat these days, you got to cannibalise twenty more to get enough lines and sails and tackle that work to make it go. No. You didn’t find another boat. You walked.

  He got off the cot and came and stood in the slant of light falling across the doorway and looked at me closer. He shook his head and grinned.

  I wanted to kill him. I don’t like violence. I think violence is a kind of stupidity. But right then, for that grin, I think I could have killed him.

  You’re a tough kid, he said. Stubborn. I mean, you’re like an irritating little cough I can’t seem to get rid of but I give you that. You have my admiration.

  I don’t want it, I said. I just want Jess.

  Jess is a commodity, he said. A bitch that can have pups is a rare thing.

  Bitches have
puppies, I said. It’s what they do.

  No, he said. No, that’s not so.

  I glared at him some more.

  You walked across the mainland? he said.

  I didn’t nod.

  Never saw a pack of wild dogs, did you? he said. Strange that, no?

  I shrugged.

  Sure we talked about this back on your island, didn’t we? he said. The Baby Busters put some kind of poison out for the packs of hungry dogs they got scared of once the population got small enough, and that poison messed with the bitches’ ability to have pups. Least that’s what I heard.

  The thought made me look away. It had the nasty finality of an unwelcome truth. I felt ashamed of being human.

  Dogs were with us from the very beginning. And of all the animals that walked the long centuries beside us, they always walked the closest.

  And then they paid the price. Fuck us.

  Maybe the Gelding wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was just desserts.

  That’s what makes her a commodity, he said.

  What’s a commodity? I said.

  I knew. Sort of. But I wasn’t sure he did. And I wanted time to get my thoughts together and get away from the sad thought of the millions of dogs that must have wondered why they couldn’t have litters any more.

  It’s something you trade, he said.

  And you’re a trader, I said. When you’re not being a thief.

  Sometimes, he said, nodding. Mostly I’m just a traveller. I don’t meet enough people to trade with.

  But you meet enough to thieve from, I said.

  Do I? he said.

  Yes, I said.

  That converter. For the wind turbine. The one I came to trade with your dad, he said.

  What about it? I said.

  You came aboard my boat, he said. Like a thief yourself. No invitation. Took my chart.

  That’s different, I said.

  You see that converter while you were there? he said.

  I let the silence suck a little more air from the room as I thought.

  I wasn’t looking for it, I said. It was dark.

  You didn’t see where I left it on the beach on your island then, he said.