Page 75 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

Hoof marks, I said.

I told you! she said.

Goat hoofs, I said. Not horses.

I turned to look at her; she almost seemed disappointed and then I watched her take a breath and allow herself to see the bigger picture. She nodded.

OK, she said. That’s good. Sorry.

When you see someone actually in the moment of conquering their fear and doing what they know is right despite it, it’s hard to stay angry with them. So I decided to take the lead and forgive her.

I dropped to one knee and pointed at the tracks.

I’m going to have my eyes down trying to follow these tracks, I said. The goat will follow the existing animal paths so we’ll be extra careful every time one crosses another one so we don’t miss it turning. Your job is to keep your eyes up and around. You watch the bigger picture so we don’t run into animals that might startle and run off and spook the goat into running as they do so.

Despite the breeze it was muggy pushing slowly through the vegetation, trying to think like a goat and not lose contact with the animal track in front of me. Every now and then I’d think I heard Devil’s bell, and then remember he wasn’t wearing it. And the further we went, the less confident I was that Storm had taken enough care with the hobbling. The point of a hobble was to tie one front leg to the one on the back on the other side, which made it hard for the goat to run or travel far. But as the distance mounted up I began to wonder about Storm’s competence, or if in fact we were fruitlessly following a wild goat’s track instead of our own goat’s trail.

A goat’s hoof prints are like two commas facing each other, with the sharp tails of the commas pointing in the direction the goat is going. They’re easy to mistake for deer tracks, but the deer have two sort of back-toes that leave an extra pair of dots in the ground, so the commas look like semi-colons instead. Deer track criss-crossed the muddy path, so I had to keep my mind sharp and focused so as not to get mixed up. It was hard work and it began to give me a headache. The thing was, I really wanted to find Devil. Everything we had planned seemed to hinge on it.

Sometimes you can want something so badly that you see it where it isn’t. That’s how I nearly made the mistake that might have meant I never saw Cat again. I don’t think I’d have made it if I wasn’t so tired and angry with Storm.

Cat said we always want what we haven’t got because of course if we had it, we wouldn’t need to want it. And she said that what I want, what I’d always wanted, because I don’t remember ever having had it, is a family. I thought she was wrong about that because I’ve always had her as my family, but she said that wasn’t the kind of family she meant. She was talking about a real family, bigger than her and me, not just an only-one. She said that was why I stubbornly carried on trying to get Storm and Freya to like and trust us, even though it was clear as anything that they didn’t because they just couldn’t.

They can’t trust anyone except each other, she said. Because of everything that’s happened to them. It’s not personal. We should just be friendly enough and back off. Maybe in time they’ll come forwards into the space we leave them. But you can’t keep wanting it so much. You can’t keep crowding them. Being too—

Too what? I said,

Too nice, she said. I mean I know you can’t help it, Mouse. It’s just how you are, but you can see Freya especially just doesn’t want us. Not to be nice. Not to be friends. Not to be anywhere near her, if we can help it, not really. I mean, you see her, she only just tolerates Storm, and she’s her only-one. Try not to be too nice, and maybe she’ll come to trust you more, even though it seems a backwards way of doing things.

I was remembering that conversation as we tracked our lost goat through the dense overgrowth of the suburbs, because I was pretty sure that I’d been anything but nice to Storm since she’d lost it. I’d allowed my angry face to show. And strangely, she seemed less hostile, almost like she was trying to be nice to make up for what she had – or hadn’t – done.

My eyes were so busy following the hoof prints and my head was still too busy trying not to be angry with Storm that my other senses must have dulled. Because my nose had noticed it long before my thinking brain did, and eventually the unthinking part just stopped me walking without knowing why I’d done it. I should have halted earlier. I could have walked right into them. That was my mistake. Luckily it wasn’t the fatal one it might have been.

What? said Storm, her voice almost a whisper behind me, so quiet it was nearly inaudible over the wind in the leaves.

I held my hand up and dropped to one knee. She did the same. We both stayed low and very still.

The wind was in our faces. And somewhere ahead of us someone was cooking meat. The smell was unmistakable, woodsmoke and charring fat.

I looked at Storm and mimed sniffing the air. She nodded.

I’m sorry, I whispered.

She looked a question at me.

You did see people, I said. You weren’t lying about that.

We should go, she said.

We stay still until we know where they are, I said. Easiest way to get seen is to move. And anyway, just because you saw people, doesn’t mean they’re dangerous. Doesn’t mean they’re Russians.

They are, she said. We should go.

Not before I take a look at them, I said. I think maybe they found our goat.

I sniffed the air again. It could have been Devil they were roasting. Storm squatted back on her haunches and glared at me. Her face was white with tension, whiter than it would have been in daylight because the sun was going down and, as always happens when it dips below the horizon, the first colours that leach out of the day are the red ones. But even without that you could see from her tight mouth and dark eyes how pale the fear had made her.

It’s not safe to leave it like this, I said quietly. Not knowing what they know. If that is our goat they are cooking, then it was wearing a hobble, and that will have told them there are other people about, won’t it?