Winter Damage (17 page)

‘Get up,’ shouted Sonny. ‘Are you hurt? Hell, you int hurt, are you?’

‘I’m not hurt,’ said Ennor. She lay on her back and looked up into the black canopy of trees and wondered if she looked hard enough she might see more of a devil place waiting for her.

‘What’s wrong with you, are you sick?’

‘No why? What now?’

‘You fell over.’

‘No I dint.’

‘You did. You were diggin for wax and then slam.’

Ennor sat up and wiped her fingers over her lips and she tried not to lick them.

‘What’s it taste of?’

‘Sick, only not sick but that yellow stuff that comes after.’

Sonny smiled. ‘How many fingers am I holdin up?’

‘Two and two thumbs.’

‘What’s the date?’

Ennor shrugged. ‘Twenty-third I think.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ennor Carne.’

‘What’s my name?’

‘Sonny somethin.’

‘My real name.’

‘Summer somethin.’

‘OK, I guess you’ll survive, for now anyway.’

Ennor got up and attempted to brush herself off, then sat down on the tarp. ‘What now?’

‘We wait till mornin. Stupid question but still.’ She shook the last of the snow from their blankets and pegged them to branches she’d snapped into spikes to act as hooks.

‘These’ll stop the wind and dry out a bit,’ she nodded to herself. ‘If they don’t, we’re buggered cus I’m not draggin wet wool round with us.’ She turned to Ennor and clapped her hands. ‘You listnin to me?’

‘Course.’

‘I’m not draggin them wet blankets round with us.’

‘I heard you. What we goin to use tonight?’ Ennor asked.

‘We’ll have to pilchard up in the tarp.’

‘It’s freezin.’

‘Tell me somethin I don’t know.’

They lay rolled in the tarpaulin sheet like frozen sardines stranded on the shore and Ennor thought about fish. Caught, eaten and gone from the earth. She thought about her own meat hanging from her bones and all the wild things that might make a meal of her. Ennor Carne was half-dead anyway, a soon-to-be skeleton sinking into the ground. She imagined the slow decay and the tiny lives that might move in there, the worms and the maggots and the mites you couldn’t even name or see with the naked eye, chewing the rot.

She wondered if Sonny had the same thought and she would have asked but knew the answer well enough.

Ennor commenced singing under her breath. Ten green bottles down from sixty and she wouldn’t stop until she got down to none. No mean feat when your brain was closing down to hypothermia. Sometimes she missed whole chunks of numbers and had to go back to the beginning and sometimes she fell briefly to sleep, one lonely number stuck to her grizzly lips, on hold.

Ennor counted out her heartbeat, ‘One banana, two banana, three banana.’ She wondered what number banana would be its last and hoped to reach one hundred. A good clean number, a good one to go on. Number one hundred was a ‘finished business’ number and she counted out her bananas like a market trader, hoping to clear the table before closing time.

‘What’s with all the bananas?’ asked Sonny.

‘I’m countin my heartbeat.’

‘Do you have to do it out loud?’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘So how’d I know bout the bananas?’

‘Sorry I woke you.’

‘It’s too late now. I got bananas everywhere I look.’

‘You goin bananas?’

‘Gone,’ giggled Sonny. ‘Bleedin fruit-loop bananas.’

The girl’s splintered laughter warmed them a little and Sonny wondered if she might light a fire.

‘If you got the spirit to do it, then do it. Otherwise don’t.’ said Ennor.

‘Once it’s done it’s done, and it’s heat and light and tea in the mornin.’

‘Do it if you want to do it.’

Sonny sighed and then she buried her head under the tarp. ‘Hell, I’ll do it and then it’s done. It’s not as if we int shy of wood.’

‘Take the torch.’

‘Course.’

‘Don’t be long.’

Sonny rolled out of the rough-ready bed and Ennor watched her fade into the woods with the tying rope slung across her shoulders and the wind-up torch revving in her hand.

She must have fallen asleep because the sun had returned to her dreamscape and she could feel the heat on her face. Maybe this was death, or heaven. The smiling sun of God or the furnaces of hell, either way it was warm.

‘You asleep?’ asked Sonny. ‘Eh, bananas, you asleep?’

Ennor rubbed her eyes and then opened them. ‘You made a fire.’ She smiled.

Sonny nodded.

‘You made a big fire.’

‘I’ll burn this whole wood down if I have to. The downdraught’s blowin it good.’

Ennor sat up. ‘Maybe we won’t die after all.’

Sonny laughed. ‘Never thought we would. Did you really think that?’

Ennor shrugged. ‘Could be as easy as that. You fall asleep, then dead.’

‘Or you fall asleep and wake to a raging fire.’

‘Lucky.’

‘Luck’s got nothin to do with it. Called common sense if you int noticed. Dint I tell you I’d look out for you till you found your mum?’

Ennor nodded. ‘I’ll make some tea, got some pine needles left.’

‘I wish we had teabags and milk and sugar. Hell, if we had coffee, I’d probably die in ecstasy.’

Ennor looked in her rucksack for the pan and then looked in Sonny’s. ‘Where’s the pan?’ she asked. ‘My everyday pan, the one I use for boilin snow. We’ll die without it.’

Sonny agreed. ‘Can’t live on snow, get hypothermia that way. You sure it’s not in your huge everyday bag?’

‘No.’

‘In mine?’

‘I’ve looked. We must have left it on the shore. Damn, no hot water means no water at all.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Sonny. ‘It’s not far.’

‘No I’ll go, you collected the wood.’ She stood up and stretched the cold from her legs and took up the torch.

‘I won’t be long. It’s probably buried in the snow by the fire.’

She adjusted the scarf around her face and pulled the woolly hat down past her ears. ‘Wish me luck.’ She smiled.

‘Don’t believe in luck. Have fun.’

Ennor followed their tracks back through the woods towards the lake. Every now and then she’d look back to check that she could still see the home-fire burning and she could.

She walked with the torch in one hand and a stick in the other and she beat at the space in front.

The further she walked the stronger the wind became and their earlier tracks were close to gone as she neared the tree line.

Ennor took off her scarf and tied it to a tree as a guide for her return.

The storm would not get the better of her, not tonight and not ever. She climbed the fence and stepped out on to the wash of thick snow where the jewel stones lay like fossils beneath and headed towards the ice lake.

Exposure to the blizzard had caused all trace of their footsteps to disappear and even the lake was buried beneath a flat white skid of white.

Ennor dared herself to step out on to the ice and she stood to enjoy the luxury of having her boots and shins out of the freezing suck. She skidded her feet a little to feel the motion and when she stepped forward the wind pushed her back on to the snow shore of her desert island, stranded. She tried to guess where they had made their camp and poked her stick, kicking at irregular shapes in the snow until finally her foot sunk into the ashy remnants of the dead fire.

She dropped to her knees and with one hand clawed at the snow and pulled at the half-burnt timber until she found the pan. She raked through the frozen ashes for any other objects they might have lost.

In the debris of the fire she felt the ribbed zip of the fish backbone and yanked it clear of the snow. The fish that made Ennor eternally grateful. Life for a life. It had given her strength, strength to keep her heart beating, her mind from going mad. She snapped off the tailbone and cleaned it in the snow. A found object, beautiful, and she pressed it to her lips to make a wish.

When she returned to the woods Ennor realised she had been gone some time. Sonny was standing black against the huge dancing flames and she had her hands square on her hips.

‘You were ages.’

‘Sorry. It took time lookin.’

‘I was worried.’

‘Sorry, least I found the pan.’ She waved it in the air as proof. ‘Even filled it with fresh snow.’ She nestled the pan near to the fire and sat back on the tarp. ‘Snowin mad out there, worse than before.’

‘Don’t doubt it.’

‘It’s like all the planet’s snow quota got dumped on Cornwall in one swoop. I hope Trip and Dad are all right and Butch of course.’ Ennor had wished this when she kissed the fishtail, but it didn’t hurt to say it out loud.

‘What you got there?’ asked Sonny.

‘Bit of the fish. Part of the tail I think.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s my wishbone. Gonna bring me luck, like catchin the fish was luck.’

Sonny added branches to the fire and sat down beside Ennor. ‘You finally losin your mind?’

‘Maybe. Don’t hurt to have hopes and dreams, does it?’

‘Let me look.’

Ennor handed over the wishbone and Sonny turned it over in her hands. ‘It’s got a nice weight to it, nice and smooth too, make a good mini-dagger.’ She nodded and reached into her bumbag.

‘What you doin?’

‘Wait.’

‘Don’t carve it or nothin.’

Sonny pulled out the ball of baler twine and unclipped her knife to cut off a good length. ‘See this hole here?’

Ennor nodded.

‘It’s perfect for a necklace, int it? That way you won’t lose it.’ She wound the string twice through the hole and tied a double knot at the end.

‘There, now you can make wishes all day long.’ She smiled as she passed it over and Ennor put it on.

‘What’s it look like?’

‘Like a bit of fish caught on some twine.’

‘Like how I caught it.’

Sonny nodded her head. ‘Somethin like that.’

‘You int so bad, are you?’

‘Worse.’

‘All hard but soft in the middle.’

‘Shut up. Just dint want you to lose the bloody thing, hell. Couldn’t stand you all weepy and feelin sorry.’

‘Feelin sorry is your job,’ said Ennor as she moved to make the tea, ‘that and buildin fires.’

‘Yours is feelin sorry and makin tea.’

‘We got most things covered then.’

‘Guess so.’

Ennor passed her a mug of tea and sat back with her own and they watched the fire burn almost out of control.

‘I thought I was gonna die back there,’ said Ennor.

‘Where?’

‘Earlier, before the fire.’

‘But you dint.’

‘Dint but I might of.’

‘That’s two of our lives gone, first the frozen lake, then here in the blizzard.’

‘How many lives we got?’

‘You got three.’

‘How many you got?’

‘Nine, like a cat.’

‘Why’d you get nine? That int fair.’

‘Girl, life int fair.’

‘How’d I get nine? Some kind of gypo spell or somethin?’

Sonny shrugged ‘Maybe. Maybe you should get wishin on that fishbone of yours.’

‘All right I will. How many wishes make up one new life credit?’

‘Bout a thousand, just to be safe. Nine thousand in all should do it.’

‘You don’t think I’d do it?’

‘Don’t really care to be honest, but for a girl who likes countin, it’s somethin to do.’

Ennor smiled. ‘You’re right, best go for ten thousand though.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a good clean number, a good one to start on.’

CHAPTER TEN

Some kind of lesser sun limped ragged and untrusting towards dawn and crept up on the girls as they walked through fresh drifts of snow. Sonny called it an early bird start and that was exactly what it was.

She was convincing her new friend that nothing was without reason and if it wasn’t for certain circumstances they would never have met. She walked with wide determined strides out from the woods and held the paper map in one hand and a rope for tying found timber in the other.

‘You walkin slow for a reason?’ she asked.

‘Course not.’

‘Guess you only got biddy legs but still.’

‘Guess so.’

‘Still you could pick um up a little, put some gumph into the thing.’

‘I’m goin as fast as I can, I’m stiff from the cold.’

Ennor laughed at Sonny’s big hair bouncing wild as she walked. Her leather jacket tight and too short for her arms and ancient biker boots split sideways and hard as nails. She wanted to ask her if she was cold but couldn’t stomach another sideswipe and she wondered if the temperature was anything above freezing.