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<h1>14</h1>

<p><em>Summer 1991</em>.</p>

<p>Sausages sizzled in the bottom of the old, battered frying pan, sending up a delicious aroma that combined with the oak twigs that hardly smoked at all as they burnt in the little circle of stones.</p>

<p>'Sausages is the boys,' Colin said, sniffing the tang of crackling fat. He was stirring the embers on the other side of the fire to make a flat space for the equally battered little saucepan that was filled with baked beans.</p>

<p>'I'm starving,' I said. 'I haven't eaten for hours.' That wasn't exactly true, but it sure felt like it.</p>

<p>'Real commandos can go for days without food, and still fight,' Colin asserted. Today he was a commando. Today, we were on a three-man mission of derring-do. Our gang hut was now our foxhole beside the stream. Sausages and beans were iron rations. My bow was a rifle. Colin's spear of rowan was a bayonet. Barbara was so far unarmed, because her father had confiscated her slingshot after he'd lost a pane of glass in his greenhouse. That miss-hit had almost put paid to our adventure in the woods at Strowan's Well.</p>

<p>Doctor Foster disapproved of his daughter hanging around with the likes of us kids from down the hill, but we kept a diplomatic distance between ourselves and him, and the one-and-onlies were still a threesome.</p>

<p>'They live off the land, ' Colin said. 'You can send them anywhere and they can find their own food, rabbits and deer and everything.'</p>

<p>'And berries and mushrooms, ' Barbara said. 'I can find berries and mushrooms. '</p>

<p>'Berries don 't go with sausages,' I chipped in.</p>

<p>'But mushrooms do,' Barbara said. 'I know where there's plenty. I could live off the land. '</p>

<p>
    'They're probably poisonous toadstools,' I told her. Barbara was already starting off down the path. 'Some of them can kill you just by looking at them,'</p>

<p>'Naw, you have to touch them first, ' Colin argued. 'And then you can make a cut where you've been touched and suck out all the poison.'</p>

<p>'What about the poison in your mouth? '</p>

<p>
    'That's easy. You just spit it out. '</p>

<p>'I don't fancy that much. If you touch one of them, you can suck your own poison out. '</p>

<p>'Some commando you are, ' Colin snorted. 'They're supposed to defend each other to the death. '</p>

<p>'What if your tongue got poisoned when you sucked it out? '</p>

<p>'Then you'd go dumb, dummy. 'And then you wouldn't be able to ask a lot of stupid questions.'</p>

<p>He got a slender stick and started rolling the pink sausages over, exposing the dark brown, sizzling undersides. Then with the same stick he stirred the beans. They were just starting to bubble.</p>

<p>'Look what I've got, ' Barbara called from a little way down the track. 'There's hundreds. '</p>

<p>She came striding up, bright and smiling, her hair bobbing with her gait. She had an armful of big oatmeal-capped mushrooms.</p>

<p>
    'They're toadstools,' I said. 'They'll make you dumb.'</p>

<p>
    'Don't be daft, that's only after you suck the poison out,' Colin retorted.</p>

<p>'No, they're mushrooms,' Barbara said. 'They're just the same as the ones my mum gets. Isn't that right, Colin? ' she added, looking to him for support.</p>

<p>Colin stood up, backing away from the fire, and he wiped the smoke out of his eyes. His face was streaked with the tears from when we first lit the fire and the smoke had billowed into all our faces.</p>

<p>'Let me see, ' he said. Barbara knelt down and let her load spill onto the grass.</p>

<p>'They look all right to me,' Colin announced. 'My Aunt May picks mushrooms up here, and they 're just the same as them. They're okay.'</p>

<p>To prove it, he picked up one of the big mushrooms and sniffed it, then bit a piece off chewing quickly, like an expert tasting truffles.</p>

<p>His tongue didn't go black at all and that settled it.</p>

<p>I used my penknife and sliced up the caps and we threw a lot of them into the fat with the sausages. They quickly went from white to grey, fat mushroom steaks that added their tantalising smell to the already mouthwatering mix.</p>

<p>We ate the lot, along with the beans and the sausages, scooping them out of the pans and on to the enamelled tin plates that formed part of our survival cache in the little hidden lean-to. Every mouthful was a delight. Afterwards, Barbara brewed up some tea in an old tin with a wire handle. We debated as to how much tea we should put in, because none of us were experts in that field, and there was a brief argument over who forgot the milk, but the argument faded as we sat in the shade and scalded our mouths on the tarry brew.</p>

<p>We decided to wait until it had cooled dawn. The plates were lying at the edge of the stream, lightly covered in the gravel which would help scour them clean of our outdoors dinner. Colin asked to borrow my knife and I warned him not to lose it and he promised to guard it with his life. He strode down to the stream edge and cut off a stem of saxifrage that swayed over the water of a sunlit pool. He brought it back to where Barbara and I were gingerly taking sips from the smoke-blackened tin.</p>

<p>'Making a peashooter?' I asked. Colin cut the corrugated hollow stem into a little open-ended tube.</p>

<p>
    'Nope.'</p>

<p>'What then? ' I asked.</p>

<p>'Wait and see, nosey,' he said, cutting the fragile tube with the sharp blade. Barbara and I watched as he took a piece of bread from the slices I'd filched from the kitchen and nipped off a morsel between his finger and thumb. This he jammed into the base of the tube.</p>

<p>'Right, now watch this,' he said. Colin took the bag of tea and poured some out into his hand. He concentrated on the delicate task of funnelling the tea into the open end. When he was done, he reached over to the fire, shielding his face from the heat of the flame, and stuck the thing into the red base where the coals gleamed red. It immediately started to smoulder and he hissed as the heat started to sear his hand. He pulled back quickly.</p>

<p>'Right. Watch this.' He sat back against the bole of the tree and put the end in his mouth. From where I sat, only a foot or so away, I could smell the aniseed aroma of the smouldering plant, and another, bitter-sweet smell which I assumed was the tea. Colin sucked hard through the plug of bread, and we watched in amazement when he blew out a thick cloud of blue.</p>

<p>'Great smoke,' he said, and then coughed a little.</p>

<p>'Where did you learn that?' I asked. 'I didn't know you smoked.'</p>

<p>'Trade secret, ' Colin said. 'Want to try it?'</p>

<p>Barbara screwed up her nose, then reached out and took the smouldering stem from Colin. She sucked in hard, and then went into a paroxysm of coughing.</p>

<p>'Too much,' he said, and started pounding on the back. As far I could see it wasn't helping the cough any. Colin took back his home-made cigar and said, 'Watch this.' He put it to his lips and his cheeks caved in with the vacuum. Then, to our astonishment, he blew out two blue plumes of smoke from his nostrils. It reminded me of a picture in a book where a dragon puffed out jets, and I started to giggle.</p>

<p>'Here, you try it, ' he said, and handed it to me. I did. There was a definite aniseed taste from the smoke, and another that was strange, and not at all unpleasant. As soon as the smoke filled my mouth, I could feel saliva welling up, and when I blew out the cloud, I had an immediate need to spit. It landed on one of the hot stones and sizzled loudly.</p>

<p>Barbara had another try, and this time she didn't cough, then we all had shots each, passing it around like I would much later in sociable company.</p>

<p>'Right. Take in some smoke. Not too much,' Colin said, demonstrating. His voice was wheezy when his cheeks were full of fumes. 'Then, suck in.'</p>

<p>He took a big breath and it all disappeared inside him. When he blew it out again, it was grey, not blue. I wondered how that happened. It took Barbara three tries, and me five, to get the hang of it. The smoke burned my throat, and I could feel my lungs starting to swell, but it was a nice sensation. The saliva ran, and we all spat intermittently into the fire.</p>

<p>I blew a smoke ring, and the other two fell about, helpless with laughter. I tried, but I couldn't repeat the action. We giggled together, sharing the tea-filled steam, and didn't notice at all that everything was getting hazy.</p>

<p>'Great shmoke,' Barbara said, and Colin nearly wet his jeans.</p>

<p>'Triffic, ' I agreed, to another gale of laughter. Colin laughed so hard he fell over, and lay staring up into the trees, his belly shaking in spasms. I leaned back against the tree and wondered why everything went in and out of focus. Barbara, who had been sitting on a gnarled root, slowly slid off landing with a gentle thud on the dry grass, and that set us all off again.</p>

<p>And a few moments later, the world started to sway and spin and I shot away from it in a blaze of colour that swirled and sparkled in front of my eyes and ....</p>

<p>...I squatted at the edge of the stream, watching the sunlight catch the expanding rings from where the fish had risen to dapple the surface.</p>

<p>Rings of gold, ever moving outwards. I was in a glade where the sun shone between the tops of huge trees. In front of me, the field was gone. Instead there were big beeches and massive firs, marching up and over the hill and on for ever. I could see between their great trunks, but only for a little distance, into that forest, for it was gloomy in there, dark and shadowed.</p>

<p>The sun shone where I sat by the edge of the water, watching the slow movement of trout, big and fat, lazy in the pool.</p>

<p>I looked around me, curious, yet accepting that I was alone. This was a strange place, yet not strange. Familiar and unfamiliar. The big stone where Barbara had sat like the little mermaid was still there, but the stream was different. The trees were tall, bigger even than the gnarled beech that we'd been sitting under.</p>

<p>Somewhere downstream a bird called, a hooting cry that echoed among the trunks, and there was a reply from further away. Behind me, something crashed through the trees, and I turned to look into the forest behind me, but there was nothing but shadow. I sat still for what seemed an age, and then a movement caught my eye, a flash of dark in peripheral vision.</p>

<p>For some reason, I did not move, only sliding my eyes to where the movement was. Out of the trees, slowly and majestically, came a huge stag, the king of all stags, bigger even than the huge Clydesdale horse that towered over the hedges up at Kilmalid Farm. If I had stood up, my head would not have even reached its belly. I stayed rock still, and so did the deer, standing like a dark shadow as it surveyed the glade. Its nostrils flared as it sniffed the air, and its ears turned and twisted, quartering for danger. Satisfied, it slowly emerged from the gloom, one step at a time, grand and dignified, and as it came out into the light.</p>

<p>I almost gasped in wonder. For its head bore an impossible spread of antlers that I hadn't noticed in the background shade and tangle of branches. They were immense, a two-handed sweep of pronged bones that were almost, to my eyes, as wide as a road. The far edge of one of them lightly scraped against the trunk of a fir tree, cutting a gash that started to drip resin.</p>

<p>Out into the light, one silent step after another, the giant stag came towards the stream. And behind it followed another huge beast, though by comparison much smaller. Walking carefully behind the second beast was a slender fawn, tawny and speckled, picking up its dainty hooves with light, jerky motions of its spindly legs. The stag was magnificent, the fawn simply beautiful.</p>

<p>It followed its mother down to the waterside where the stag scanned the clearing, then, satisfied, bent down to drink. The doe and the fawn followed suit, lapping thirstily. Then something seemed to startle the baby. With a smooth, clean jerk, it raised its head up from the water, its ears fanning like radar, and it looked round. Then one huge black eye found mine, and stared. It was like looking into a pool. For long moments we watched each other, the fawn standing stock still, and me afraid to breathe. Then it bent back to drink.</p>

<p>Finally, the stag lifted its magnificent head and shook its mane, sending droplets of water scattering, then it walked across the bed of the stream, its hooves clattering on the hard rock. The doe and the fawn followed and the three moved into the forest and were lost in the shadow.</p>

<p>Only the glistening water that their hooves had splashed on the stones of the stream, now quickly evaporating in the sun, marked their passage. For a long time, my eyes were fixed on the spot where they had entered the shadow, hoping that they would come back, but they must have been far away. From somewhere in that general direction, far in the distance, a deep, bellowing roar, that kind of rumbling growl that you hear from lions in the zoo, came rolling through the trees, muffled by distance, but powerful and hard. There was a tearing screech and another bellow, this time a lowing, high and despairing. The lowing sound suddenly stopped, cut off. Silence seemed to go on a long time, and then the birds in the trees started singing again.</p>

<p>I turned back to the stream and looked into the water again, and in the water I saw a shape looming, wavering on the surface. It was a reflection, and when I looked up, a man stood there, staring at me. Tall and broad, wearing an animal's pelt.</p>

<p>He carried some sort of satchel and in his hand was a long curved bow and a straight spear. The man's hair was long and tangled, just like his beard, and his arms were matted with a thick pelt.</p>

<p>Our eyes locked. I felt no fear. For some reason this was not a man to be afraid of He looked at me, right into the back of my mind, reading all of me that there was to be read.</p>

<p>Then he nodded, big and broad, and as dignified as the stag that had come gliding out of the gloom. With one hand, he hefted the spear. The sun sent shards of light from the long, black head. He stared at me, without malice, but with an expression of infinite wisdom; then he swung his arm up high and launched his spear towards me.</p>

<p>And still I was unafraid. The wind from that spear tousled my hair in the passing, and I heard the hissing as it cut the air. There was a loud thud and I didn't turn round. I could hear the shaft thrumming as it vibrated with the impact. I kept looking at the man's eyes, and he kept fixed on mine for a long time until the reflections of the sun on the water made mine water and the world blurred in a riot of gold and green and then went right out of focus.</p>

<p>Everything slowly started to emerge from grey and I opened my eyes again.</p>

<p>The sunlight danced up from the ripples. The field, with its short, cropped grass and the buttercups and clover, was back, with its hoof-tracks and its cowpats.</p>

<p>And I was back again.</p>

<p>Colin was sitting with his back against the the beech tree. His teeshirt had risen up as he'd slid down against the bark.</p>

<p>His feet were splayed out and one baseball boot was slowly swaying from side to side. Colin 's eyes were half shut, and I could see a glimmer in the dark where his iris was throwing back the light. There was a half smile on his face.</p>

<p>Barbara was lying down, spread out on the short grass next to him, her arms wide and her feet together. There were leaves in her hair and, though her eyes were closed, there was a radiant smile, an expression of joy that lit up her whole face. Her jeans, newer and better kept than Colin's, had muddy patches on the knees.</p>

<p>My head felt full of cotton wool, clouds that were very slowly dispersing. There was a buzzing in my ears, a deep tickly vibration that was more of a feeling than a noise, as if a bee had got into the back of my head and was busy spreading honey in there.</p>

<p>Colin muttered something, low and jumbled, the way children do when they talk in their sleep. I couldn't make it out, but as I turned to look at him. His eyes were glazed at first, then seemed to find their focus. He shook his head, and put his hands up to his temples and screwed his eyes up tight, very much the way a man with a bad hangover does at the moment of awakening.</p>

<p>
    'Jeez-O,' he said softly. He looked around him, looking a little shaken and a bit bewildered.</p>

<p>'Where are we?'</p>

<p>I was about to answer when Colin said: 'At the gang hut.'</p>

<p>He nodded, confirming it to himself getting his bearings. 'The gang hut. I must've fell asleep. '</p>

<p>'Me too,' I said, and my voice was all cottony, sticking at the back of my throat. My lungs felt tight.</p>

<p>'Weird, ' Colin said. 'What a dream! A knight in armour with a big gold sword. Like Lancelot. Or Galahad. A black knight. He was
    <em>terrible</em>. '</p>

<p>Colin stopped and looked around. Barbara had made a noise, and she was trying to raise her head up from the carpet of green. It slumped back sleepily at first, then she too seemed to shake her head to clear it. The radiant smile was still there.</p>

<p>'Ooooh. Beautiful,' she murmured with a sigh. 'She was beautiful.'</p>

<p>'Who was?' Colin asked.</p>

<p>'The lady with the flowers. '</p>

<p>'What lady?'</p>

<p>'She came to me with flowers. Golden flowers, just like her hair. Didn't you see her?'</p>

<p>
    'Nope,' Colin and I said together.</p>

<p>'You must have,' Barbara said. 'She was there. Right <em>there</em>.'</p>

<p>Barbara pointed at the bank. There was nothing there.</p>

<p>
    'You've been dreaming,' Colin said. 'We must have fell asleep.'</p>

<p>'<em>Fallen</em> asleep, 'Barbara corrected him absently, her voice still soft and dreamy. 'Oh, she was so beautiful and kind. She put the flowers round my neck, like a daisy chain, and smiled at me.' Barbara's hand slipped up to her neck, feeling the skin.
</p>

<p>'It was there,' she said, and her voice lost the dreamy quality. Now it had the tinge of ache of a lost dream.</p>

<p>'I dreamed I saw a knight with a sword,' Colin said. 'And he was riding around waving it and shouting at people. He was fighting everybody and chopping at them and they were screaming. He was
    <em>terrible</em>.'</p>

<p>'The hunter,' I said, and they both looked at me. 'A hunter. That's what he was. He came here, to me, out of the trees, over there.' I pointed.</p>

<p>'What trees? ' Colin asked.</p>

<p>'There was trees. Big forest there. 'He came out and stood there and looked at me, and then he threw something at me.' I paused. That wasn't right. 'No. He threw something
    <em>to</em> me. A spear.'</p>

<p>I had been sitting down. In my mind's eye, the man in the furs and skins was still standing on the far bank. I heard the swish and felt the wind again as the long spear raked the air. I heard the thud and the thrumming vibration, and I knew where the spear had hit.</p>

<p>I scrambled on to my knees and crawled a few feet away from the others towards the bank. The turf was dry and hard.</p>

<p>'It landed right here, ' I said, feeling the grass and earth.</p>

<p>'What did?' Barbara asked. The dreamy tone was gone from her voice. Colin was just staring at me as if I'd gone crazy.</p>

<p>'The spear. He threw it here. He wanted me to have it.'</p>

<p>'It was just a dream, ' Colin said. 'I'm not smoking any of that stuff again. It gives you scary dreams.'</p>

<p>'Mine wasn't scary, ' Barbara said. 'And it must have been the mushrooms. They give you a belly-ache and you get dreams.'</p>

<p>
    'That's cheese,' Colin said. 'Cheese makes you dream.'</p>

<p>'And mushrooms too, ' Barbara argued. 'I saw it in one of my dad's books.'</p>

<p>All this was going on in the periphery. I was still on my knees, and there was something inside of me that knew, with clear certainty, that I had to rip up the turf right here where I was kneeling. I opened my old penknife and started cutting a square of the turf</p>

<p>
    'You'll break the blade, idiot features,' Colin said. He'd recovered from whatever was scary in his dream. I hadn't quite recovered from mine. Barbara's was real enough for her to watch me non-commitally.</p>

<p>
    'Don't care. It was here. I saw it,' I said, sawing away rapidly, up and down, not caring if the old treasured blade was rasped down to a blunt nubbin. When the square was cut, I grasped the grass at the edge of one of the lines and started hauling, feeling my nails bend backwards under the strain.</p>

<p>'Oh, let me,' Colin said resignedly, as if he'd decided he wanted to humour me. The two of us tugged and then the turf came up with a rip, like wet cloth, and we fell backwards. The square of earth underneath was just earth. Nothing more. I started to dig again with the blade of my knife, but Colin stopped me.</p>

<p>
    'That'll break the blade. Here, use a stick, ' he said, handing me the one he'd cut for an arrow. He'd whittled a sharp point on one end and I started to hook the dirt out of the hole. In a few minutes I'd gone down about six inches</p>

<p>'Let me at it, ' Colin said. His arms jabbed up and down, hooking at the hole.</p>

<p>There was a little clicking sound and the stick broke halfway up. Barbara and I scuttled across to the hole. The broken arrow had reached rocks, two big quartz stones. Between them, jammed upright, there was a thin, black, smooth stone, lodged in the narrow space between the two rounded boulders.</p>

<p>I reached past Colin and grasped the stone and tugged.</p>

<p>
    'That's it! ' I yelled. 'That's what he had!'</p>

<p>'What is it?' Barbara asked.</p>

<p>'Just a stupid lump of rock,' Colin said. 'Not worth all that hard work.'</p>

<p>'No. You're wrong,' I said. It had been there. I walked to the stream, right to the edge where I'd been sitting, mesmerised by the sun in my dream, and knelt down with that flat stone in my hand.</p>

<p>It was long and smooth, and rimed with caked-on dirt. I plunged both hands into the clear water and rubbed at the black stone's surface, watching the water go cloudy and brown as the earth washed off It took only moments of rubbing with my thumbs to clean it, for the dirt had no crevices to cling to.</p>

<p>Then I lifted it from the water and turned to Colin and Barbara, holding the stone like a trophy.</p>

<p>The sun ricocheted off the polished surface, making it gleam bright and black.</p>

<p>'Hey man,' Colin whooped. 'It's a stone axe. A real cave-man's axe.'</p>

<p>'No, it's a spear. A point for a spear. And that's where he threw it in my dream.'</p>

<p>'I don't believe it!'.</p>

<p>'Me neither,' I said, and although I held the weight in my hands, marvelling at its smooth surface and beautiful simplicity, I didn't believe it.</p>

<p>'But it's ours,' I said.</p>

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