Read Online Winter Damage by Natasha Carthew - Free Book Online Page A

have to make estimates by this and that and by the rare occasions the sun appeared because there was no time for backtracking. She stood and looked about her and up at the flat bright sky and guessed at the time being somewhere around two o’clock. She had two hours of daylight walking time ahead of her before stopping to set up camp.
    She narrowed her eyes to the smear of sun and followed its arc to where she thought it might fall, that was west. She would keep the sun sitting on her left shoulder as she headed north and when it was elbow high it would be time to stop.
    Ennor counted her steps to make up a minute and then an hour and by hour number two the sun had set someplace other than her guessing and the cold that replaced it slapped her clean across the face. She tried to ignore it because she liked plans to go her way but it was later than she had first thought and dark was racing towards her like a hit-and-run.
    Ennor looked about for anything that might resemble a shelter and she walked close to blind with the dynamo torch crunching and stalling in her hand until she saw the familiar turned and bundled wall of a cairn. She went to it with a whoop and threw down her rucksack and laid her square of tarpaulin across the damp ground.
    Outside darkness hammered down on her as fast as she could spy twigs for lighting and she realised she would not even have a small fire to look at tonight let alone to cook, and she returned to the stone hut defeated and sat with the dumpy coat heavy across her knees and told herself red was a lucky colour despite it sitting in the unlucky black of night.
    Through the half-tumbled doorway Ennor thought she saw movement of light and she rubbed her eyes to check if she was seeing things and watched as the swish of colour and warmth crawled up on her.
    ‘Who’s that?’ she shouted. ‘Got a shotgun here.’ She picked up the gun and held it in the pool of light, the realisation that she hadn’t loaded it dawning on her slowly, but it was too late.
    ‘Don’t shoot bunny rabbits, do you?’ laughed the light.
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘It’s me, silly. It’s Rabbit.’ He flicked the beam on to his own face and the shadow complete with horror fangs pinned itself to the cairn wall.
    ‘What the hell – followed me, did you?’
    Rabbit continued to laugh. ‘Mother told me to come lookin so I come lookin. Knew you wouldn’t get far. Forgot to pack you a meal and all. Here, hold this.’
    He passed her the torch and swung a bag off his shoulder and a bundle of sticks tied up in rope.
    ‘Thought she was your grandmother.’
    ‘She is.’
    ‘And your mother?’
    Rabbit shrugged in the torchlight. ‘I dunno.’
    Ennor didn’t like him and didn’t much want him to stay but she was intrigued as to what was in the bag and she asked him.
    ‘Spuds and meat.’
    She kept the light gripped on him. He had a smile that said one thing and eyes that said another.
    ‘You my babysitter then?’ she asked.
    ‘Just goin to light you a fire is all. Mother would never forgive herself if she heard you’d gone hungry or cold or worse.’ He looked her over and smiled and told her that was all it was.
    When the fire was lit and growing Rabbit set about preparing the meat and he lifted it lovingly from the fold of newspaper it had been placed and speared it with two butcher’s hooks he produced from his bag.
    Ennor asked what meat it was and he didn’t know and she asked if he’d brought anything to drink and he had – the dreaded gorse wine.
    ‘You like that stuff?’
    ‘Not much.’
    ‘Why’d you bring it?’
    ‘Mother made me.’
    ‘Why?’
    He ignored her and continued to tend the fire and as it grew it decorated the cairn walls in splashes of orange and pinched her cheeks into a hot flush.
    The meat cooked slowly on a stick looped high above the flames and the smell was loaded with memories of her home kitchen and her mouth watered in anticipation. She felt the heaviness of thought and