The Missing Link (14 page)

‘Strange talk coming down from Bettyhill these days,’ she said. ‘Very strange talk.’

‘What kind of strange talk would that be?’ asked Tina. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

I chewed some more on the pen, and a bit of the plastic broke off in my mouth. Maybe I should have gone for the card after all.

‘Weird children living up there,’ said the old woman. ‘And animals talking. Some say it’s a sign of the end of the world.’

Oggy sat looking innocent and utterly dumb beside the door. By now my mind was a total
blank
. Recklessly, I wrote the first thing that came into my head:
WISH YOU WERE HERE!!! Luv from Christie and Danny xxxx
. Then I scrumpled it up and shoved it into the envelope.

Tina was saying, ‘I wouldn’t believe any of that old chat if I were you.’ I handed the letter over the counter, and the postmistress turned a withering look from Tina to me.

‘Here in Scotland,’ she said, ‘we usually put a name and address on the front.’

Blushing with shame, I addressed the letter and paid for a stamp. But the old woman’s confidence in us had been somewhat eroded.

‘You’ll be sure to deliver those letters, now, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Would you like me to read you the addresses?’

‘It’s all right,’ I said.

‘We promise,’ said Tina.

‘Syre and Skail!’ the postmistress called after us as we tumbled back out on to the street.

A few miles later we stopped to gnaw on some more of the mutton. Oggy was uneasy.

‘I don’t like those rumours,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how they could be getting out.’

‘What was that about the weird children?’ I asked. But Oggy slunk off with his share of meat and didn’t answer.

As we ate, Darling spied out the land. We had taken the turning for Syre and Skail and were walking beside the long shore of Loch Naver. By our reckoning it was not much more than twenty miles to Bettyhill, and with luck we
would
reach there tomorrow. The day had been clear and the waters were blue as the sky, but in the short time it took us to eat, they changed to an ochrish grey. When Darling returned she was worried. Behind her, the sky had gone black.

‘Another blizzard,’ she said. ‘And it’s coming in fast.’

We all drew in to try and decide what to do. Darling and I were for holing up somewhere and sitting out the storm, but the others were afraid we’d get snowed in for the winter and favoured pushing on through. We were all so intent upon our deliberations that no one noticed the new arrival until a voice said, ‘Is that you, Oggy?’

Oggy’s head went up so fast that he hit me in the jaw and made my teeth crack like a gunshot.

On the shore of the lake stood a huge, white bird. I could tell it was a seabird of some kind, but it was bigger than any gull I had ever seen.

‘Albert,’ said Oggy.

‘Albert,’ said Darling.

They both sprang at the white bird, and for a few terrifying moments the rest of us witnessed a lurching, flapping tussle of monstrous wings and flying fur. Little Darling vanished altogether in the frenzy, but when the action eventually ceased, all three of them emerged unscathed.

‘I’ve been looking for you for weeks,’ said Albert, stretching and refolding his enormous wings. ‘Mother has almost given up on you.’

‘Tough road,’ said Oggy. ‘Tough mission.’

Albert surveyed us carefully with one dark eye, and then with the other. ‘I was never very
good
at counting,’ he said. ‘But I think there’s more than two of them there.’

‘You’re right,’ said Oggy. ‘There are three.’

‘Three,’ said Albert. ‘That’s a lot, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ said Oggy. ‘It’s only one more than two.’

Albert nodded gravely. ‘Are they nice ones?’ he asked.

It was strange, being talked about like that, as though we were cattle Albert was thinking of buying.

‘We’ve got ears, you know,’ I called. ‘And we can talk as well.’

‘Of course,’ said Albert, slightly flustered. ‘Of course you can. And very nicely, too.’

He was stupid, I decided. A big, stupid waddling lump of a thing.

‘What’ll we do?’ Oggy was saying. ‘About this blizzard, I mean. Should we wait or keep going?’

‘You’d better keep going,’ said Albert. ‘I’ll go on ahead and tell them you’re coming.’

Oggy and Darling returned to us, and we all watched as Albert walked slowly over to the road.

‘What’s he doing?’ I asked.

‘He just needs a bit of a runway,’ said Oggy.

‘A runway?’ said Tina. ‘What kind of a bird is he?’

‘A goony bird,’ said Darling.

‘A goony bird?’ I said. ‘Why isn’t he called Moony, then. Or Loony?’

Oggy didn’t answer, and I didn’t press him, because the entertainment had begun. With huge, reaching strides and flapping wings,
Albert
had begun to run along the tarmac. It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen; like an aeroplane with long legs instead of wheels.

‘No wonder they call him a goony bird,’ I said, bursting myself laughing. But the next moment, a completely different emotion overtook me, as the great wings found lift and he rose, with heart-stopping grace, into the skies. Just once he circled above us, the immense wings almost motionless, a perfection of airborne design.

‘He honoured us, Christie,’ said Darling. ‘He rarely sets foot upon land.’

‘Albert,’ I said, watching him glide away effortlessly towards the North. ‘Albert Ross.’

6

AND THEN WE
were into the blizzard.

We made the best headway we could, and a few hours later we delivered the package to an astonished woman in Syre. By the time we reached Skail it was after dark, and we might have kept going all night if it wasn’t for the other four letters.

‘Just leave them,’ said Tina. ‘Just shove them through any old door.’

I was about to object, but the
Goody-Two-Shoes
charge had hurt. I said nothing, and we posted them through the door of the first lighted house we found. Before we had reached the end of the garden wall, a voice called out after us. An old man was standing in the doorway, peering at the letters.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

We went back and I apologised.

‘We didn’t have time to find out where they were supposed to go,’ I said.

He nodded, slowly, then said, ‘You’d better come in.’

‘No, thanks all the same,’ said Tina. ‘We just want to know where to take the letters.’

‘I’ll tak’ them myself in the morning,’ said the man. ‘Come in, now, and out of that cold.’

‘You’re very kind,’ said Tina, ‘But we’re on our way to Bettyhill and we won’t stop now.’

The old man filled his lungs with night air and bellowed like a Highland warrior.

‘No man, woman nor beast will go to Bettyhill this night. Not while I have a roof and a fire to share with them. Come in before I catch my death waiting on you, and bring your wee dog in as well.’

While the others traipsed inside, I hung back, waiting for Darling. She came to my outstretched arm, but she decided not to come in with us.

‘I want to keep watch,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure why. I just have a feeling.’

I made a little tent by hanging my scarf over the handlebars of the old man’s bike, which leant against the wall, and she roosted beneath it on the front mudguard. Then I followed the others inside.

At the old man’s bright hearth we had strong, sweet tea; the first cup we’d had for a week. He told us he wouldn’t leave Skail except in a coffin, and that most of the other villagers felt the same. He said that Scotland had survived worse challenges and that life would go on, come what may. Then he took himself and his little dog off to bed and left us to camp down beside the fire.

Darling’s feeling proved to have substance. In the early hours of the morning she woke us,
flapping
at the window like a demented bat. I got up and opened it a crack. Snowflakes blew in on top of us.

‘Get up, quick!’ said Darling. ‘Tony’s here!’

‘Tony?’ I said, but she was gone, back into the snowbound dark.

Between us, Oggy and I roused the others into action and then, still groggy with sleep, we stumbled out of the house.

There was nothing to be seen in the street except snow, but Darling came back for us and we followed her. Around the next bend stood the smartest little pony I had ever seen. He wasn’t very big; his withers barely came up to my chest. But what there was of him was pure power. His shoulders were broad, his quarters were round with hard muscle, and the steam which rose from his sweating coat melted the snow as it fell. Best of all, he was harnessed to a neat little trap with a canvas hood to keep out the weather.

As we approached, his bright little eyes settled on Oggy and he snorted with glee.

‘Hi there, dog face,’ he said. ‘What’s the story?’ His voice was strained and grunty, emerging before the pressure of a huge amount of breath.

‘Hi, hobnail,’ said Oggy, dancing up puffs of snow beneath Tony’s nose. ‘Can you handle us all in that thing?’

‘Three people?’ said Tony. ‘No bother. But I don’t carry dogs. You can walk.’

We took down the hood while we clambered
aboard
, then pulled it back over us again. The trap springs creaked and it seemed like an impossible load for Tony to pull. But as soon as we were all aboard, he swung round in the street and took off through the snow at a brisk trot.

‘Dingle bells, dingle bells,’ sang Danny, over and over again.

Through the rest of the night the pony laboured away, uphill and down, delighting in his own strength and wanting nothing more than to use it. The trap soon warmed up with the heat of our bodies, and the swaying and bouncing was hypnotic. Feeling safe at last, totally confident that Tony would get us to Bettyhill, I slipped down in my seat and closed my eyes. Before I fell asleep, I promised myself that I would, one day, retrace my steps, call on all the people who had been so kind to us along the way, and make my way home to Mom and Maurice.

PART EIGHT

1

SOMEBODY PULLED BACK
the hood and the morning light woke me. We were still moving, but more slowly now, and there was some kind of uproar ahead. I sat up and peered into the wirling blizzard. I could hear a babble of voices, all kinds of them: shrill, piping, gruff, blaring, sing-song, harsh. But when I saw who they belonged to, I nearly fell through the floor.

Like a dam-burst, the animals of Fourth World emerged from the white air and flowed around the trap on all sides of us. In the midst of them Oggy was a spiralling dervish, all but concealed by the explosions of snow he created. I lost sight of him as a mob of small creatures swarmed over Tony and jumped or clambered or flew into the trap. And all of them were talking.

It was overwhelming. Tina hid her face in her hands and squealed, but she was laughing at the same time. Danny spread his arms and got covered in birds; a snow-powdered, feathery angel.

There were finches and buntings, robins and magpies, rabbits and rats and goats. All of them were bombarding us with greetings and questions:

‘Welcome to Fourth World.’

‘How old are you?’

‘How far have you come?’

‘Is that as big as you get?’

‘Do you eat eggs?’

‘Are you Sprog’s brother?’

‘Have you got sharp teeth?’

A large, pink mouse grabbed hold of my ear with his front paws and yelled into it at the top of his tiny voice. ‘Are you a boy personality or a girl personality?’

While I was trying to work that one out, he set off into my underpants to find out for himself, and I had to haul him out by the tail.

‘Don’t you have any manners?’ I said.

A small badger took him gently from me and they sat on the door of the trap discussing the difference between ‘person’ and ‘personality’. Meanwhile, the questions continued.

‘Have you got any children?’

‘Are you house-trained yet?’

‘How many is three?’

‘Can you see colours?’

‘Will you be staying in the house or the woods?’

‘What’s a personage, then?’ I heard the pink mouse say to the badger.

‘It’s a place where a parson lives,’ said the badger. And before I could set them straight, Oggy jumped in and knocked them both off the door, and they vanished among the heaving hordes on the floor.

Then Oggy jumped in again. Or that’s what it looked like to me.

‘This is my sister, Itchy,’ he said. They were both wagging their tails so hard that several small birds and something that looked like the pink mouse got launched out into the blizzard again. I tried to give Itchy my attention, but a squirrel had just run up my sleeve and a persistent goat kid was throttling me with my scarf and saying, ‘Can I borrow this? Can I borrow this?’

And then we had come to a stop, and Maggie was coming down the steps of Fourth World to meet us.

‘How wonderful,’ she kept saying. ‘How wonderful.’ A lot of the littlest voices joined in like tiny echoes. ‘How wonderful. How wonderful. How wonderful!’

I was first out of the trap, and Maggie came forward to meet me.

‘Hello, Christie,’ she said. ‘Good to see you again.’

She was exactly as I remembered her; tall, straight-backed, magnificently self-possessed. I had never come across a woman like her.

‘Hello, M . . . Maggie,’ I said, boldly, and all the little voices said, ‘He’s Christie. Christie. He called her Maggie. He’s Christie.’

Maggie offered her hand and I shook it. The squirrel shot out of my sleeve and ran up her arm, but she didn’t take any notice. ‘You’re a brave boy, to come all this way,’ she said.

Danny came next, still covered in birds. They
rose
like dust as he and Mother embraced and then, like dust, they settled again.

‘Are you the brother?’ I heard one of them ask him. ‘You don’t look like the brother. Not very. Are you Colin’s brother?’

Tony was steaming like an overheated engine, but Mother passed him and went to greet Tina.

‘How wonderful,’ she said again, and again the chorus swelled after her. She turned to Tina, who was descending gingerly from the trap, trying not to stand on the scuttling creatures which surrounded her.