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

looked at its incredible, sprawled out character, silhouetted by the green-needled pines and grey-barked birches beyond it, I remembered something else I’d read in that Tolstoy story, War in Peace- when the characters were riding in a carriage through the forest, and they came to a giant oak, described just like this. And I thought of a week ago- up the mountain it was the huge sky that reminded me of that book. Someone saying, “That sky, that great sky, why hadn’t he realized it before?”  I read that book about three years ago, why is it all coming back to me now? I wondered, and then I thought, there must have been a point when he was writing that, that he had experienced the same things I have experienced, and in quite a similar way- the same awe of the oak tree, the same awe of the sky, it’s almost as if our thoughts are linked to the past.

And after I had that impression a few days ago too, that I was living in a timeless realm.

I almost tripped as I turned back up the hill, and I noticed, just before a beautiful red-berried rowan, lots of little mushrooms poking up through the fallen leaves.

I knelt down before the log that they were fruiting around. There were brown ones. Cupped ones. Ones that looked like ears. I dropped the bag from my back and took out Harry’s Edibles book.

I came to the small section on edible mushrooms and compared the illustrations to what was below. The one that looked like an ear was similar to what the book called an oyster mushroom. I picked off a small piece and nibbled. It felt like heaven in my mouth. I’d gone almost a week of rice and porridge and soup, and it tasted so nutty and warm. I wasn’t sure about the others. There were quite a few very small ones with creamy white stems and brown on top. I picked a couple and chewed them too, letting them melt on my tongue. “Delicious!” I praised aloud. I ate one more, then headed on towards the grey mountains presenting themselves beyond the tree line.

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Their base was only five minutes ahead, where the gorge ended at a sheer cliff face, from which the water shot down to create the river. To my right, the wall was uneven, but was sloped to my benefit and had plenty footholds. A thin, processional mist kept hiding the summit, but it allowed me little peeks of it.

I started to climb. The thin rain splayed into my face as I pulled myself up into a cleft and felt for a place for my foot. I knew it was quite stupid. And reckless. Especially with Harry not there. But I thought I knew what I was doing.

I stretched up about forty or fifty feet. If I slipped it was death or paralysis. Then I found a ravine and got in, the rocks tight around my sides. It led all the way up to flatter ground from which it was an easy walk to the summit.

A few clouds passed, and I looked back at the river that coursed into Affric, then I turned and stepped down the other side, coming out of the clouds into another glen. It was like a completely different land. Above Affric it had been grey, but here the black-clouded sky turned everything dark, almost like it had its own microclimate. To the left, bare brown hills led down to a bare valley floor with a small green loch in its middle. The far side was full of spruce, and below and to my right the hills rolled out a mix of deciduous and conifer trees. I stepped down from rock to heather, my boots splattering through hidden waterholes as I waded through the knee-high grasses into the gloomy forest. Avenues of pines stacked up over my head, and no light at all gave in from the sky.

I wondered around the dimness, trying to avoid the thick brambles. I had the feeling that I was being watched, similar to when we’d first put up the tent and the trees were hushing, except now the trees were silent, and nothing moved.

I looked around nervously, and the feeling got stronger as I walked on. My energy, which had plateaued when I came down from the mountain, started to rise again. My nerves sharpened. My hairs stood on end. Beyond the brambles was a grove of yew trees, about ten of them spaced out down the hill. It’s coming from them, I thought, and I slowly followed their route. It was like a current was running right through me. I felt full of power. I vaguely knew that I had felt this before, but not since I was a child.

 

I passed the eighth yew tree; they were all multi-stemmed and their snakey roots twisted up above the ground like hands coming up from the underworld. I could feel the energy running up my spine, until my head tingled, as the yews led into a primeval plot of fallen birches and scattered rowans and ancient, decrepit-looking oaks. It’s so hard to describe the feeling I had, and I don’t think words will ever be able to transfer the emotion, the energy of it, I wish they could, but it was everywhere, and my nerves were jangling. There was something spooky about that place. I kept expecting something to jump out at me.

I walked into the middle of the plot. Above me, between the trees, the black sky swirled with menace. I thought it was probably just me, my excited mind was creating all this, and then I froze. Something pounced out of the overgrowth.

I remained as still as I could as a huge stag, taller than me, with four-foot-long antlers, marauded across from the right. It stopped abruptly, ten steps away and right in