Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

Chapter 48

With the mountain stream behind me, it was my lone footsteps crunching through the gravel that I was overly aware of. Somewhere amongst the mass of forest ahead, was our little tent. I stared out to the other side of the loch, but Harry was gone.

The emptiness inside that tent was gaping. I pushed my bag into the middle and threw some of my stuff over to Harry’s side, then I opened the door and looked out, at the sodden, grey world. I wondered if I had always been this insecure. I cast my mind back, and it seemed that I had, even before my mum fucked off with that other man.

As much as I’d tried, I had never really gotten used to being alone.

But you have God, I thought. You prayed in the hospital for a friend, and He brought you one. He won’t let you lose him again. God will look after Harry. It’s a miracle you got here in the first place.

I thought back to the train journey. No-one had bothered me, or Harry, for a ticket, and we’d gotten past two ticket barriers each. Getting up here was pretty crazy. Maybe God was looking out for us.

What to do?

I looked around the pale, green walls. Birds chirped away outside. The stream gently gurgled away.  There wasn’t much wind, and it was very quiet. I closed my eyes and prayed out loud, about the hospital, Harry, my discomfort at being out there on my own. My dad, Nina and Sandy. All the other patients at the hospital. All the kids in Glasgow- the gang kids on the estate, Gary’s brothers, the brothers smashing stones into the steel shutters. The poor boys at that abbey in Fort Augustus. The poor, oppressed and beaten down souls all over the world. I talked for a long time, releasing my pent-up brain into the open air. I prayed for all those people. And for the beautiful places of nature like this, that they’d stop being desecrated. That man could wake up and see what he was doing to the earth and his fellow beings. I prayed for all the humans of the planet, and that we could all live together in peace. I asked for strength. I prayed for a light. For a direction to follow, “Show me which way to go, and I will go.” I said.

I opened my eyes. The daylight was dismal, but it was still daylight. I thought I should get out while I still had it.

I took my bottle out with me and filled it from the stream, savoring it’s refreshing coldness. It’s probably from the snows of a few days ago, I thought, imagining the water falling from God’s sky and running down the mountain and into my bottle. I drank and refilled and drank again, thinking what a con packaged bottled water was, especially in Scotland. I drank and filled it again and sat down at the edge of the stream, listening to it as it fell through the trees above and ran down through the bracken and heather.

Underneath the transparent water, I contemplated the big, grey rocks. Then I bent over and lifted some out. They were heavy, but I carried them on my shoulder down to the fireplace and dropped them, then went back for more. I knocked our old fireplace down and moved it five yards further along the hill. Then I re-laid the stone circle, piling the stones high until they were up to my knees. I put a flat stone in the middle and I gathered the wood we had left inside the tent, then went around the branches for more.

I worked slow. The rain drizzled softly around me while I broke the branches into straight sticks, then broke them again into smaller sticks. I built a little twig pyramid, keeping a gap on one side. Most of the wood still felt pretty damp. I held the lighter underneath. A flame sparked…but wouldn’t burn long enough. I tried again. Nothing.

I slumped down and stared at it. Then I looked around at the moss and bracken and trees. I noticed a strip of white, papery bark peeling from one of the birches. The way it was curled up reminded me of woodworking class in school. It was worth a try. I pulled the piece off and took it back and held it under the pyramid and lit it.

It caught straight away. The flame spread so quickly it was like it was soaked in petrol. The twigs cracked and snapped and whistled as the orange flame grew. One by one I fed in more twigs and the fire ate them like a hungry baby.

I sat back from the intensifying heat. My morale boosting with it as I watched the sparks kicking up above the smoke, and the flames dancing red-blue-orange-yellow. Amongst the grey weather and landscape, it was spectacular. This is better than any TV, I thought. The only thing that would make this any better is some food cooking over it, and maybe if Harry was here.

But I didn’t let myself linger on that too long. Well done Aisha, I told myself. You should be proud. You can’t rush these things. Look at those trees that grow so slowly. Drink and eat slowly too. It just takes patience.

I held my hands up to the heat. I wondered how far Harry was along. Maybe at Cannich by now? The world was slowly turning black. The mountains turned into shadows. But the flames mesmerized a calmness into me.

The birds soon stopped singing. The wind went silent. Only the fire was talking. But I didn’t feel lonely. As I sat ensconced in that remote forest, the more I watched the flames the more content I felt. I fixed my eyes on them