Page 82 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

Storm wanting me to get out of the way.

The new, strange dog braced in front of me, teeth bared, ready to attack as it barked its challenge in my face, hard to see clearly in the dark, but easy to feel as a noisy painful future about to happen.

Distant sound of whistling as Bear Shirt and the others try and get the dogs back.

And I have time to think that it’s good that the sound of that whistling is still far away, that they haven’t run wildly into the dark after their dogs. They’re being safe, they’re not being reckless, not like me, but we might still get away with it because they aren’t coming yet and so we have a chance to escape into the night.

And then much too soon, much too close the other dog bursts out the bushes behind the one at bay and bounds right past it.

And jumps for me.

And Storm hisses to move again,

and I don’t because this other dog, the old strange dog, Digger’s friend who might be called Jip is all over me, whining and wagging and licking and I turn to tell Storm it’s OK and as I do so I open up her view of the barking dog that is not barking now but looking at me and Digger’s friend and before I can say No she lets loose with the arrow she has ready

but thought is faster than words and I’m already raising my hand to stop her

and I see everything in detail as she lets go of the wet bowstring and the rain sprays off it and the arrow is heading for the dog

and then my hand feels like a hammer hit it, a brutal, blunt impact that is – even before I realise exactly what just happened – irrefutably serious and irrevocable, a life thing that cannot now be undone

and it is a dull, numbing blow even though I see now that the sharp tip has sliced its way neatly through the hand that I have thrown out to try and block the arrow from killing the dog

the arrow that now sticks out halfway on either side of my hand

it almost looks funny, and I hear myself grunt and choke off a half-laugh as I stare at it. It wasn’t a proper kind of laugh of course. More like the sound of my mind catching up.

The dogs are silent. Like they sense something really different has just happened and don’t know how to react either.

The only sound is the wind and the drizzle in the trees, and the distant whistling of the three round the campfire.

Storm seems frozen in horror. And because it is too new a wound to have had time to make itself at home and settle in to the serious business of really hurting, I acted like nothing important had happened.

It’s OK, I lied and turned back to the dogs.

Digger’s friend whined at me and licked my good hand as I reached down and turned him around by main force.

It’s OK, I said again. Good boy. Go now.

I shoved him away towards the distant glow of the fire, and then I turned and grabbed Storm, pushing her in the opposite direction, and ran on after her, hoping the dogs wouldn’t follow.

They did for a bit, running with us, not chasing, and my memory goes blurry again, maybe because I was trying to run and not catch the arrow that was sticking a foot out of either side of my hand on anything as we passed. I ran with it sort of cradled against my chest, point down, the feathers rasping against the crook of my neck.

I don’t know how long we ran. But by the time we stopped the dogs had stopped following us and when we held out breaths and tried to hear any whistling or other noises of pursuit over the pounding of our hearts hammering in our ears there was none, and the dogs were gone. We hadn’t seen them peeling off and heading back to the fire. Too busy trying not to fall over what was in front of us to see what was falling off behind us. We sat back on a fallen log and tried to suck enough oxygen back into ourselves to feel like humans and not just frightened prey.

Dogs are gone, panted Storm.

I didn’t have the breath to do anything but nod. At the time it felt like a miracle. And some miracles happen without you noticing.

Your hand, she said.

I nodded again.

Sorry, she said. I—

I shook my head and snapped my fingers at her.

Knife, I said.