The Devil’s Highway. Gregory Norminton

      They worked in the byre by torchlight. In the stalls the cow bellowed. Andagin feared she would wake their father, who had succumbed to sleep like a warrior to his wounds.

      ‘I looked for it,’ he said, ‘where I left it on the heath.’

      ‘You mistook the place.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘The wind carried it off.’

      ‘My cord was strong. She unfastened it. That means spring will come.’

      ‘Spring always comes.’ Judoc buried his fork in straw and dung. ‘Corn dolls are for children.’

      ‘But Ma says –’

      ‘Ma says.’ Judoc’s voice was fierce but he took care to whisper: ‘Will you stay her whelp for ever or would you become a man?’

      Andagin felt the heat rise in his face. ‘Do not call me whelp.’

      ‘Why not? You whine like one. We need strong gods. Male gods like Taran. Thunder, not Earth. There – enough shovelling for me.’

      They contemplated the steaming baskets. Judoc’s face was hard to read for the torch burning behind it.

      ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘for barking at you. But dreams will not save us.’ He pulled Andagin into his arms and held him. He reeked of sweat and damp wool. ‘Be strong,’ said Judoc, and releasing Andagin he hoisted a basket to his midriff. Then he was gone.

      Andagin patted the cow’s hot flank. Taking the torch, he left the byre and walked into a weeping wind.

      Snowflakes clung like burrs to his cloak and the stung tips of his eyelids. Winter searched for every rent in his gear. After the smoke and fug of the hut, after his father’s nightlong coughing, the cold was welcome, a familiar enemy. Andagin contemplated the shuddering pelt of the heath. He pissed into the heather, expectorated as Judoc had taught him – a lusty hoick into the wind. He returned to the sorrow of the hut.

      His mother was up and doing. He ducked out from under her tousling hand and sat beside the fire, where Nyfain greeted him with her habitual scowl.

      ‘Where’s your brother gone? Back to his pack again?’

      Andagin shrugged. To think about last night’s shouting made his heart clench. He watched Nyfain’s fingers weave a basket of heather stems.

      ‘Will you patch my cap for me?’

      ‘Why would I do that?’

      ‘It has a hole.’

      ‘You made the hole.’

      She was angry because Judoc was missing. Were he near she would have been no happier.

      ‘The snow will get in.’

      His cousin huffed and pulled the cap off his head. She inspected it and pushed a little finger through the gap. He watched her reach for the bone needle she kept and some thread.

      ‘Will you be wheedling all morning or have you things to do? Now that your brother’s at the hole game with his idiot friends.’

      ‘There’s no playing in winter.’

      ‘Men are always at play.’

      His mother reached down a bundle of mugwort from the rafters and tossed it into the fire. The medicinal fumes filled the hut and Nyfain’s scowl tightened, for she hated the smell, though she knew better than to complain of it.

      ‘You will be trapping again,’ his mother said as she handed Andagin the pot of gruel.

      When he had eaten his share and a mouthful of heather honey, he crawled to the bench and felt under it for his shoulder pack. His fingers found the arrows he stowed there: antler tips that Judoc had carved for him, back in the summer, before the strangeness took him.

      ‘Vala. Vala.’

      ‘Hush.’

      ‘He’s out again.’ The coughing was long and liquid. ‘Those hotheads …’

      ‘Drink this and lie quiet.’

      Andagin took up his bow. He looked to where his father lay, hoping for a glance, a raised hand – some gesture that still had blood in it.

      He left the hut disappointed.

      To the east the cloud was stained with light. He bathed his gaze in it as he shrugged the pack more comfortably onto his shoulders. He sorted mentally through the contents. The knife was there. Some water in a gourd. Cordage. Her stone. He sensed, as if it were an old dog watching him, the hill fort at his back. He did not have to look at the smoking thatch and dilapidated fencing; he knew the talismans hooked on what had been battlements, wooden heads to keep evil spirits at bay. Andagin had rarely entered the fort. He knew only the cattle enclosure where livestock and brides were bartered, and the open field hedged with gorse where the dead were returned to the sky. There was also, forbidden to him and to all males, the shrine where his mother went to give him life, where Judoc was born and two others that never drew breath.

      He thought about the dead babies. He could picture them only as dolls for an offering. ‘She took them back,’ his mother said. ‘You must not be angry. She can take, for without Her we would have nothing to give.’

      Andagin recited the story. He did it so that the dead might lie easy.

       Long ago, when the world was young, there was nothing but forest from sea to sea. The sea was blue and the land was green, a sea of leaf and wood. There were many wolves and bears in the forest and men were their prey – for men could not find their way in the shadows and they never saw the face of the sun. One day our Mother took pity on men and sent a great wind to open up the forest. In the clearings made by fallen trees, corn and barley grew and heather for cattle to browse – and into these places men stumbled, giving thanks to she who had lifted the darkness. So to this day we worship our Mother for her mercy, and leave her corn dolls and a knot from the first sheaf. And we tread lightly on her mantle, for she is our parent that loves us, and will return us to life when our lives come to an end.

      The hill fort burrowed out of sight. Andagin tracked south through croplands, praying to the hare that might sacrifice itself, to the woodcock and the fox. His belly was full only of hunger. He was sick of cutting the pith and seed from rosehips, of watery soup and stale hazelnuts.

      Deep heather gathered like a rampart. He shook spumes of snow from its dead flowers.

      He waded a mile towards the oak wood.

      His first snare was untouched – rope taut and sapling flexed as he had left them. The same sight awaited him at the next. A third had a squirrel snared about the midriff. Death and the cold had stiffened it. Pink haws of blood lay in the snow where it had struggled.

      Andagin untied the squirrel. Mere scraps, yet he gave it thanks for giving what it had. He inspected the russet fur to assess its condition. He took off his pack and extracted the cordage. He trimmed off a length with his knife and bound the squirrel by its neck to the strap of his pack. He swung the pack over his shoulder, feeling the sway of the corpse behind him.

      He inspected his fourth snare at the woodland edge and found that one of the nooses had come undone. He set to replacing it and soon his eyes were so fused to the running knot, his mind so bound up with it, that it took a gasp to break his concentration and name that shape as it burst, in a spatter of snow, from cover.

      A hare. Sprinting to close open ground. Passing so near he fancied he could see the ember of its soul rushing to catch up with it.

      Andagin’s heart pounced and his body followed. Already the bow was in his left hand, an arrow in the right, its flights crushed between his fingers and the haft.

      The hare was quick – it leapt into a bank of heather.