Page 108 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

It was just a heron of course, but my mind had thought it was something less friendly, and strong thoughts leave an aftertaste, so as I slowly felt my way across the shallows burbling through the smooth tumbled rocks, I felt the roadway looming above my right shoulder like an ominous bank of storm clouds. The noise of the river was amplified as it bounced off the concrete stretched over it, and I think the sound made the horse a little jittery. Certainly the goats were unusually skittish as they were tugged along, straining against their lead-ropes and bleating in protest. I just kept my head down and continued testing the depth with my stick as I tried to plot the most hoof-friendly path across the river, avoiding the bigger boulders as I did so,

Flat and shallow curves of river are often deceptive; there’s usually a deeper channel someplace where the faster water has cut a groove, and this was no exception. I felt my way forwards using the stick to gauge the depth ahead of me. The current was strong and the water bracingly cold, coming straight down off the high land to my right, but it only came up to mid-thigh, so I decided it was safe enough to leave the babies in the panniers. Red whinnied and bucked her head a couple of times in protest as I led her across, but I kept a tight grip on the reins and within three metres of thigh-high water we were climbing back up out of the channel and into the ankle-deep shallows on the other side. I turned for a moment to watch the goats, who were being tugged along behind the horse, swim the last few feet back into their depth and start picking their way through the rocks towards me. I had my hand gripping the side of the pannier the babies were in as I did so.

And because I was turned away from the riverbank, I missed the thing that made Red suddenly buck and whinny and stop dead. But I heard and felt the snap as her jerking movement broke the girth-strap under her belly and I felt the pannier shift and slide heavily off her back. Instinctively I took the weight and tried to lessen the impact of it falling to the ground, and as I did so I dropped the reins and my stick which clattered among the jumble of stones and gravel on the strand of beach we had just stepped onto. The heavily laden pannier slumped into my leg, which took some of the impact out of its landing, but it knocked me off balance and I toppled sideways, corkscrewing towards the jumble of rocks at my feet. On instinct I let go of the pannier and threw my hands forward to brace myself. The good news is they hit the ground before the rest of me and I was able to brace myself. The bad news is they hit that ground on either side of a large smooth-domed boulder which smacked almost perfectly right between my eyes. They took some of the damage out of the hit, but not enough to save me from that crunching impact – and crunch here is exactly the right word. In the moment of impact, I felt bone crush and little granular fragments grind against each other as the rock did what felt like serious damage.

And then everything went black.

I don’t know how long I stayed in the comforting darkness unaware of what was going on around me, but I woke in pieces, as the jumbled shards of my mind tried to put themselves together in the right order.

Fragments of what I heard on waking:

The bone crunching impact, like an echo.

The sound of a dog growling a warning.

And Cat’s worried voice in my ear, Wake up, Mouse!

Fragments of what I saw:

The pale grey river rock that had hit me smudged with blood.

The pannier cocked on its side.

Sacks of food and baby-bedding spilled onto the beach.

Digger standing braced defensively off to my left, straddling one of the babies and snarling at something in the grass ahead of us.

I raised my head groggily and followed her eyeline.

Two wolves stared back at me from the top of the slope.

They weren’t the thing that fused all the broken shards of my mind into one complete and focused whole again. That was the flash of pure fear that burned all grogginess out of my system in an instant, soon as I saw it.

The third wolf.

Dragging something away from me, into the scrubby bushes.

Dragging it by the nappy.

Her.

Dragging the baby girl by the nappy as she looked back at me, strangely calm, perhaps too shocked like me to make any noise at all.

I lurched to my feet, shouting something.

I slipped and fell again, legs tangled in my stick. I bounced back on my feet only to find that wolf and baby had disappeared into the bushes, as well as the other two wolves.

Get her, Mouse! Cat shouted.

I didn’t have time to grab any weapon other than the knife on my belt which I yanked free as I tore into the bushes with every bit of speed my legs could muster.

Branches ripped and tore at me as I plunged onwards, zigging this way and that to avoid running directly into the trees, eyes reaching ahead of me, desperately trying to catch any trace of the wolf or the baby. A passing branch knocked my hand back into myself with enough force to wind me. I stutter-stepped and looked down involuntarily, horrified to see that I was covered in blood, more blood than I’ve ever seen coming out of me and for a moment I thought that I had stabbed myself, but then I realised the blood was coming from my head and soaking down the front of my clothes. Head wounds do bleed a lot. The patch of scrub I was hurtling through was turning into more and more of a maze, and the terror of not being able to get to the baby in time tore at me even more sharply than the thickening screen of twigs and thorns I was crashing through—

—and then my foot hit a root and I pitched forward – arms spread wide – knife bouncing away across the ground as I hit it hard in a bone-jarring body-slam that knocked what remained of my breath clean out of me—

—and I’m certain I didn’t hit my head at that point, but what I heard had a weird dream-like quality to it: It was a baby gurgling baby nonsense, as if she was talking to someone.

I raised my head to see that I had fallen into a small clearing on the edge of the scrubby copse, and right in front of me – on all fours with her nappy hanging half-off but no visible blood – there she was. And facing her were three wolves. They were lying on the ground, paws stretched out in front to them, ears pricked and attentive.