Runt (7 page)

There was a Sad on me the size of the mountain. There was a Sick on me the size of the world.

We were walking again, me and Arrn and Drunkle, around the ridge of the mountain and we were all without words even Arrn wasn’t making His Words inside my head except for Drunkle who asked me lots of times if I was okay and I’d just tell him that I was but I wasn’t and I picked up a twig and put it in my pocket and I found a big brown feather from a buzzard and put that in my hair. I found a small bone and put that in my pocket too and another bone with some teeth still on it and I stuck that in the loop of my jeans that the belt goes through and I found another feather black and white so from a magpie then and I put that in my hair as well with the buzzard one and all this stuff the bones and twigs and feathers made me feel a bit better as did the bits of moss and stones
I
picked up off the mountain and put in my pockets as well. Drunkle also picked up a bit of stone when we were on top of the ridge and it was dead windy up there and we stopped with the windness around us and he showed the stone to me and it was like a dice with a sharpy edge like we play that game Monopoly with sometimes at night-time in winter only it had a sharpy edge. Drunkle said:

—It’s a microlith, see? Long time ago, very long ago, men used these little stones as tools to make larger tools with. They’d get these wee stones and sharpen them on other stones cos the little stones are made from flint or chert, which is dead easy to sharpen. Then they’d use them to sharpen other, bigger stones to make weapons or bigger tools. See?

He rolled the little sharpy dice on his palm under my eyes then he put it in my pocket and I felt it go all warm against me and I could hear it start to make a kind of purrsome noise like Charlesworth does when she’s happy or a hummy noise like Drunkle’s computer does just before it brings Bala Lake into the room and I liked it doing that.

—Your great-great-great-great-great-great-
great
-grandfather might have touched that very stone. Amazing, innit, eh?

I could tell Drunkle was trying to happy me and I
was
made a bit better by that little sharp-edge dice and by the thinking of my great-loads-of-times taid touching it and it lying there for ages on this mounain and me coming along and picking it up or no
Drunkle
picking it up and I was a bit happy’d because it told me that there
is
a future-ness and times-to-come
because
there I was with the little sharpy stone, wasn’t I? So there
was
a future-ness which meant that things
could
get happier no matter how much of the sadness or the sickness was on you and in you. And I felt the little toolstone in my pocket going glowy and going
mmmm
or
prrrr
and oh on the mountain I felt things moving through me deep in me moving like the brown river on the other side of the village all that way below, moving yes through me like that brown river the gravy Teifi or like all the things broken down to mush ages old and sunken in its gravy waves. Like them like
it
like them
in
it they moved in
me
or
it
moved in me.

I felt my head go funny. All kind of floppy and wobblesome like mud and I felt worried.

—Uncle …

The mountain flopped from side to side. Bad taste sicky feeling in my mouth.

—Uncle …

—What, bach? What’s happening?

Drunkle held my moving head in his hands and I could see his face all big and close but not like Arthur’s I
liked
Drunkle’s face being big and close it made me better and it wasn’t like Arthur’s, no.

—What, bach? Tell me what’s wrong. Are you going away? Are you having a Time?

I shook my head cos I didn’t think I was but I wasn’t sure only that everything had gone flopsome on the mountain and in me. Arrn was looking up at me all worried with his red ears down and a mucky face and Drunkle was still holding my face.

—Deep breaths now … breathe deeply now … relax, bach, it’ll pass …

Innnnn. Ouuutt. In. Out. Wind on my head and passing over it like the mountain breathing like me the wind on my head was the mountain’s breath. Innnnn. Ouuuutt.

—Aw fer Christ sakes … your mother should’ve given me some pills. Jeez that bloody sister of mine … bloody useless she is …

—It’s okay, I said to make his face push at the worry I could see in it. I didn’t like seeing Drunkle’s face like that nor Arrn’s either so I told him it was okay too but only in my head but the worryment stayed in both their faces so I told them again it was okay both with my tongue and in my head which I could do cos my tongue had then stopped tapping in my mouth and the bad sick taste had gone away and my head had then stopped wobbling in the mountain’s breath.

—You sure?

I didn’t want to nod cos that would make my head feel wobblesome again so I just gave him a yes.

—Think you can make it down the hill? The stones are there. The spring is there.

No nod just a yes.

—I’ll put the tent up and you can have a sleep.

No nod just a yes.

—You can make it, aye? It’s not far. Want me to carry you on my back?

No shake just a no.

—I’ll carry the tent, then.

Drunkle took the tent off my back and made me not a snail any more and he put it over his shoulder and then he had the clanky sack on his back and the
tent
over one shoulder and the gun over his other shoulder and bottles in his pockets too and it looked too much but he still held my hand and took me down off the ridge and along the dry path made by the sheep and Arrn stayed by my side too and I was happy like that with Drunkle and Arrn and holding Drunkle’s hand even tho I wasn’t little any more I was sixteen years old and a man My Mam Bethan would say and NotDad would say those words too but in a different way. And we all three in Our Little Army went down off the mountain into the bottom of the valley where it went all squishsome again so we walked around that bit and around a big hole in the ground a big dark square hole where an old mine tunnel had fallen in and there was no bottom to that hole and we went around a small hill and I heard water laughing and then saw that water coming out of the ground in a little spring and it better’d me very much cos the squishsome bit was bad and the spring wasn’t, everyone knows that. And there were two big stones standing up out of the ground and taller than Drunkle more tall even than Arthur and I sat down with my back against one and ate some biscuits with Arrn and Drunkle put the tent up on a dry flat bit of ground and unpacked the stove and got some water from the spring and boiled it and made tea and I drank a cup of tea out of a cup made of metal which burned my lips a bit and all the time Drunkle was asking me if I was okay and it started to rain a bit even tho it was summertime and Drunkle told me in a nice and not a NotDad way to go into the tent for shelter and I did and I felt happy in that tent with Arrn with the
soft
rain outside and very soon I fell asleep. I liked them stones, named after Arrn. I liked that spring with the laughing water. I liked being in the tent with Arrn lying by me and Drunkle outside with his gun against the monsters and I liked Rhiannon bringing me soup in the futureness and I liked being in the High Places miles away from NotDad in the Town in the belowness and all of them things were why I fell asleep so very soon and easy.

I was waked up by a drummy noise, the noise of the rain on the tent sounding like a drum. The noise was in my head too between my ears and my hand went out for Arrn but he wasn’t there so I sat up and moved on my bum to the door of the tent which hadn’t been zipped up so it was open and I looked out at the watery world, the mist and the mountains and rain falling down all over everything and I saw Drunkle sitting up against one of them two tall stones and he was wearing an orange anorak thing with the hood pulled up and he was drinking from a bottle cos he’s my Drunkle and Arrn was with him too and Arrn saw me then there in the tent-door and he came over to me doing a wag and I patted his head and he came inside the tent with me and sat by my side. Drunkle saw me and smiled.

—Feeling better, bach? Bit of sleep sorted you out, aye?

I didn’t know the answer to that cos I’d only just waked up so I just drank some water from a bottle instead and asked Drunkle if he’d seen any monsters or beasts while I’d been asleep.

—Not out
here
, boy, no, he said. He kind of waved
his
bottle at the mountain and he said the word ‘here’ as if it weighed more than his other words. —There’s some food in a bag there for you. See in the pocket?

He pointed to the side of the tent and I saw a bulge in that-sided-ness and I reached over Arrn and took out the bulge and it was a white Co-op bag with some food in it, a Mars bar and a pastie and an apple and some crisps. I opened the pastie and Arrn’s red ears and his eyebrows too went up at the rustlement so I gave him a bit of the crust and he ate it and I ate as well.

Pat pat pat went the rain. Pat pat pat on the tent.

I asked Drunkle if he wanted to come in the tent with me and Arrn out of the rain but he said no he was okay. Said he liked the feeling of the rain on him and that the stone he was leaning against was all the shelter he would ever need altho I could not see how that could be cos I mean what if it was to go all of a sudden stormy? No roof on the stone it just went up and didn’t stick out or anything nor did the other one next to it. They were both just two tall sticky-up stones like an eleven.

Drunkle was going to start speaking His Words, I could tell. Was going to start telling his stories like he does but they’re not really proper stories I don’t know what to call them I just call them Drunkle’s Words.

—See that? he said, making a point with his bottle hand into and through the rain which pat-pat-patted on the tent. —See that mound over there?

There were millions of mounds out there and I didn’t know which one he meant so I just told him yes. Arrn nose-nudged me so I gave him the last bit
of
pastie and I started to eat the Mars bar. I mean the whole High Places were moundy. A million massive mounds there are in these High Parts.

—It’s called a tumulus. It’s a burial mound. Some people call it a barrow but barrow, tumulus, it means the same thing. Inside it there are the bones of a person who was very very important to the people that used to live up here. There’ll be bones in there, and trinkets, things like jewellery and weapons and other bones too maybe of that important person’s dog or horse. Dogs were revered by those people, see. Cos of their role in hunting.

I put one hand on Arrn’s back the hand without the Mars bar and I felt his back go up and then down again in a softness as he breathed because he was alive and not just dead bones in the mountain and I was glad dead glad of that.

—Might even be the bones of the animals that were hunted, deer or something, boar, cos them people killed things not in the way we do today, no, they killed them to eat and wear and make things out of from their bones and sinews and hooves and stuff. Antlers and teeth. They saw it not as conquering other animals but more of an, an
acceptance
of a bounty from the prey species. Or the prey spirits. The
spirit
of that species. Understand me? Or does it sound like I’m talking shite to you?

One of them questions again and Drunkle not even looking at me as he asked it and oh Drunkle you are talking shite to me and pat pat pat went the rain the voice of the rain one of the sky’s hundred voices and no question in that at all or ever just pat pat pat pat
pat
. I looked out at the mounds from my dryness, looked out at the wet mounds from my chocolatey and doggy dryment and I saw them mounds as graves and thought of the bones in there for so long deep in the mud and stone and thought again that yes there
could
be a future-ness. And as I thought of that the future-ness and the past-ness when them bones
weren’t
bones but had skin and meat on them and were living walking things started to move towards each other and uh-oh I thought cos it might be bad if they met. If All Times came together it might get bad and turn into My Times.

Wobbly head? Yes a bit. Badsicky taste? Yes a bit but hard to tell behind the Mars bar. But the beaty voice of the rain on the tent and some flashing in the sky over the Highest Part which could just be some lightning but no thunder I could hear. And the Times coming together uh-oh FLASH behind the mountain top it came and went again.

I touched my head to feel the feathers in my hair and felt them there and was gladded they hadn’t fallen out while I was down in sleep. Felt the bits of moss and stone and stuff in my pockets and beltloops and stuff and was better’d a bit by them.

Pat pat pat pat pat.

—See, these people, they put their stamp on the landscape, on the entire country. Christ how they did that. Every lump in the ground can be significant, every bulge or hillock can have a meaning. These people, they drained lakes, burned vegetation, felled forests, enclosed huge areas of land with walls and banks and ditches and changed the pattern of the
landscape
and so changed the pattern of history. Tombs and barrows. Tumuli and standing stones put up a thousand years before the pyramids and for what purpose, eh? Aligned to face east, most of them are, face the rising sun and for why?

Drunkle looked at me this time as if he wanted me to give an answer but I couldn’t and not only cos of the chocolate and not only cos of the bad taste behind it and not only cos of the wobbling and not even cos of the Times moving to meet each other across the tops of the High Parts where the flashing was going on. Not cos of any of this, no.

—Vast applications of willpower and muscle-power to construct these things, see. And why the connections with the stars or the calendars? Why the correspondence to the equinoxes? Eh? Know anyone who can answer that?

Oh Drunkle I thought please stop these questions please they are making my head wobble more.

—Sun and moon and their movements all magical. We’ve found sheep bones drilled with small holes into flutes. Ancient fucking music, boy.