In progress

Precious Blue, novel (excerpt)

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1. The Lane

 

 

Thoughts began to sprout in my head again. Osten—my name. Eighth of October, Wednesday—today’s date. My left hand was clutching my right hand, sticky and slippery at the same time. I knew why it felt like this. Blood. Torrents and buckets of it. But I refused to look.

Did this really happen? Only minutes ago? Left turn at the diversion sign. Unpaved lane bordered by pines. Something big and hairy lurching out of the woods, across the bonnet, and back into the woods. Accelerator instead of brakes, thud of the grille hugging a tree, seatbelt squeezing the air out of me, severed branch smashing the window, skin on my hand busting open.

I shuffled back to the blocked T junction. Diverted Trafic, the sign read, in crooked letters hand-painted on a board nailed to a wooden barrier. I should have steered around it and stayed on the B road. A rusted-out digger slumbered in the ditch; tree stumps decorated the roadside, but the tarmac looked intact as it snaked into the first slopes of the Highlands.

Despite the sun, I could not stop shivering. Not a single car on the road, not since I left England hours ago. I kicked the sign over but, seconds later, pushed it up again using my feet. Nothing existed except the grey dust, the ringing of the midges, and my hand. It was swelling up. Goddamn it all. The letter, the trip. And now what? Death from blood loss. Or infection. Gangrene, the wet kind, with a rainbow of colours like in Dad’s medical textbooks. Then sepsis.

On the way back to the car, I found shade under a colossal, resin-smelling pine.

‘One look. Maybe it’s not so bad,’ I said, though my hand started to hurt a lot. My neck and shoulders ached too. I told myself to sit down and then look, in case I fainted.

Sitting against the tree, I decided to count to ten. No, fifty. Better yet, a hundred. ‘Thirty, thirty-one.’ My eyes would not stay open. The breeze cooled my sweaty forehead. ‘Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two.’

 

 

‘Anyone home?’ Asked a woman’s voice, calm and dry.

I snapped awake. She was standing over me in a grey, hooded trench, dark hair loose about her thin shoulders. Frown lines notched her high forehead. She moved her eyes, green and tired behind thick-rimmed glasses, from my hand to my face.

I almost burst into tears. ‘Does it look like minced beef? Do you see maggots?’

The woman’s eyebrows narrowed. ‘Negative. You’ve got a gash alright, but ninety-nine per cent chance, it’s nothing to fret about.’

I pressed the back of my head into the tree and darted a glance at my hand. Fat, with a jagged smile near the knuckles, and red, as if dipped in paint. A film prop-looking monstrosity connected to me by pain.

‘God! Nothing to fret about?’

‘Affirmative. Never had bumps and bruises when you were a kid?’

‘Heaps,’ I lied.

I rolled my shoulders and willed my body to relax. The woman disappeared in the undergrowth and returned with a leaf. I must have slept for hours. The day crept towards twilight, and against the pinks and purples of the sky, her face sharpened with all the symmetry and cheekbones of a Roman bust. Under her coat, she wore a grey shirt and dark trousers, and a belt hung with old-fashioned leather pouches and vials of carved bone.

‘Little beauties,’ I whispered. Mountains of trinkets had moved through my workshop over the years, but none as glorious as these.

‘What was that?’

‘No, no. Sore and tired, that’s all.’

 She pushed a waterskin strapped across her chest out of the way and squatted by my side. Her old leather boots groaned. She placed my bad hand on my stomach and crumpled the leaf. It smelled green. The slimy wad, pinched in her skinny fingers, hovered an inch above my wound.

‘You know, there might be a first-aid kit in the car.’ I pointed to my poor old Viva, whose boot stuck out of the underbrush a little way down the lane. Trying to get up, I propped myself on one elbow.

‘There’s positively no need for it.’ She gestured for me to lie back down.

‘Really? A leaf from a ditch?!’

With a quick breath, her mouth became a button, her nostrils arched.

‘But then again, a leaf is all you need sometimes. Right?’ I pulled a smile across my face. ‘Thank you for saving me.’ I wiggled back into my spot by the tree.

The colour rose in her cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t call it saving. This will need closing.’ She nodded at the wound. ‘But as I said, the odds have been in your favour.’ Holding my arm by the wrist, she poured water from her flask on the bloody mess. Then, squeezed a few drops of the green juice onto the gouge and wiped my hand with the leaf. ‘It will dull the pain.’

‘I see.’ It did not dull anything. It stung. I turned the other way.

The pines creaked and swayed, brushing the gathering clouds. Everything here had bark and moss, and weight. And I was a foreign body with no roots or leaves, wrapped in flimsy skin, intruding on a special kind of peace.

‘I’m Osten. I am going to visit my parents. They had the excellent idea to move to some forsaken hole way north of here. No offence,’ I said to the forest and to the woman, who was now sitting next to me on the carpet of pine needles, fumbling at her belt.

‘None taken. Technically, the place is full of forsaken holes.’ She freed one of the engraved vials and smelled its contents, screwing up her face. ‘My name is Hester.’ Our eyes met for a moment before she went back to digging in her pouches.

‘You don’t sound Scottish. Sorry. Hope I’m not prying.’

Hester smiled with a corner of her mouth. ‘Inquisitiveness is not a crime. I live here now, but I’m from the south originally.’ She motioned in the direction of the B road.

The sky had grown fuller and rumbled with thunder. I wanted my slippers, my armchair, and a hot drink. Or, at least, proper shelter. The idea of sleeping in the car made me shiver as much as the mushroom-scented damp that had got into my jumper and trousers.

‘Whereabouts is the nearest village? Town? A place with a surgery and a telephone?’ I squirmed. The mountains and woods were endless in the greying light.

‘The nearest place is Tigh Na Eun, ten miles away. They have no surgery.’

‘Ten miles and no surgery. No time to waste then.’ I looked at my wristwatch. ‘Surely, the car is in decent shape. Need to find some bandages. Drive to the village. Easy does it. Phone for help.’ I pulled myself to my feet. Drops of blood landed on Hester’s boots. She stood up too, and I found myself rising on tiptoe. She slouched, and we were almost eye-to-eye.

‘You can’t leave yet. You require assistance.’

‘Assistance is what I’m going to get.’ Slowly, I walked off.

Hester followed me to the car for more bad news. My Viva had careened into a hollow by the tree, got a puncture, and was leaking fluids everywhere. In the blur of the crash, I had not noticed any of it.

‘No, no, no.’ Flinging open the passenger door, I pressed my shoulder into the frame, dug in with my feet, and pushed against gravity and a tonne of metal. A stab of pain in my hand brought me to my senses. I searched everywhere for the stupid first-aid kit. The one time in twelve years I ventured out of Foxhills, I forgot to pack the most important item. ‘I’m fucked.’ I dropped my forehead against the doorpost. My chin trembled.

‘Don’t exaggerate.’ The bite in Hester’s voice was new. She rubbed the bridge of her owlish nose. ‘The car is scrap, but there’s another solution. I can put you up for the night. Then we can think of salvaging the rest of your expedition.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Do you want a roof over your head or not?’ She raised her shoulders and folded her arms.

‘Yes, sorry, yes, thank you.’ I tried zen breathing. In – hold – out – hold, nose only. It kind of worked. ‘I think I startled a deer.’ My Viva’s sky blue bonnet had a dent the size of a workman’s boot with five parallel scratches around the toe area. ‘I don’t know what else lives in these parts.’

Hester examined the crater. ‘Yes, those deer can be quite daft.’

The tree tops rustled louder as the wind picked up. One-handed, I struggled with the zipper of my suitcase. When it opened, I pulled out an undershirt and wound it around my hand.

‘Listen.’ Hester scratched her head. ‘We need to stop the bleeding.’ She reached for my hand and placed it on the bonnet, on top of the undershirt, already stained red.

‘Didn’t you say it was nothing to fret about?’

‘I said a ninety-nine per cent chance.’

‘I knew it was bad. Why didn’t you just say it? I feel kind of queasy or feverish—'

‘—Stop. Listen. I can help.’ Her eyes locked on mine. ‘This will look most unorthodox.’ She glanced over her shoulder and brought her lips to my ear. ‘But it works.’ Out came the two vials she had been holding in her fist. From one, she applied a dark, phenolic-smelling paste in a circle around my wound and put a dot on each swollen knuckle. She sprinkled beige powder from the other vial on top of the gash and stared into nothingness, eyelids fluttering. Her fingers massaged my hand, her mouth shaped silent words. Veins and a sheen of sweat appeared on her forehead.

‘Folk remedy?’ I forced a smile.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ She breathed out, keeping her eyes down. ‘Give it ninety seconds.’

I finished the count in my head. The wound kept beading with blood. ‘Is this good or bad?’ I asked, shifting from foot to foot. ‘Are we still waiting? I think it itched for a second or two. Or burned. Or, maybe, not. Was it meant to itch?’

Hester chewed her lip, tapping her fingers on the bonnet. ‘It’s not working. Shhhit.’ She lifted her face to the monumental trees. ‘The skin aspect takes the tar of man. The primary state…,’ she mumbled something else cryptic, then peered inside her vials. ‘Maybe they are too old.’ She snatched a notepad and a pencil from an inside pocket and started scribbling. ‘Maybe the cut is too deep.’

The rain interrupted her. Driving through the canopy, it hammered on my Viva’s metal body. Hester raised her hood and wiped her glasses on her sleeve.

‘Apologies. Got distracted.’ Arms crossed, she eyed the scene, with me as the centrepiece—rumpled, bloody, covered in pine needles. ‘Let’s apply a tight bandage and take you back to mine… to finish the repairs, as it were. The abbey is only an hour’s walk from here.’

‘That’s grand.’ I tried to sound cheerful. In the evening cold, my damp clothes stuck to me like a bodysuit of ice. I unpacked my waterproof jacket. Hester buttoned it up for me and dressed my cut with the undershirt. My intuition was still juggling the choices: go with her, walk off, or curl up inside the car. The pines sagged, and the rain poured through my Viva’s broken window. My hand throbbed. Daylight was seeping away. ‘Ready when you are.’ I pulled my red suitcase from the backseat.

‘Do you need all this? You can return for it later. It’s safe here.’

‘The suitcase comes with me.’

Hester shrugged. ‘Do you, at least, want help with it? It must be what—no less than eight kilos? Based on the dimensions and packing density.’

Blinking like mad I hid my eye roll, strangled the wet handle with my left hand, and did my best to stand straight. ‘No help needed, thanks. It’s light as a feather.’

After a few turns on the spot, Hester dived into the woods. Her long legs danced over the deadfall, and I dragged myself after her, feet sinking with a crunch into the cushion of moss and rotten twigs. Soon, she stopped at a thin dirt road vaulted by twisting boughs and waited for me.​