Journey XVI – The Last Resort

And now I must prepare myself. I know soon I must walk down to the sea and keep walking and then I will be gone and then I will be reborn in a new life. I don’t want to know any more about it.

This is a nice place here. My chamber is bright and airy. The staff (who are a special kind of guide) look after us quietly, tenderly, prepare us for what comes next. We are all dressed in a flimsy white material (the guides are in silvery grey) and my body feels smooth and flawless underneath. I can already feel myself becoming less solid, less flesh. My mind is flowing around things, becoming simplified. I perceive directly without the use of sense organs. I am moving into the sunlight and passing out into the air where a million crystalline slivers of song and colour pierce me deliciously. I am the heat and the perfume and the buzz of insects.

Time passes. Some take a very long time to ready themselves, and we are assured that we can stay here as long as we like. Our accommodation seems to have been made by the same extraordinary process as those exquisitely sculpted Japanese seashells – of white translucent aragonite with a pinkish glow within. We rest on finely sculpted balconies and doze, or view the infinite expanse of coral sea beyond, or else turn over and look to the lagoon on the landward side, fringed with mangroves on the far bank. Travellers play quietly or sleep on the sand or on boardwalks below. It is like the most brilliant hotel ever, designed by geniuses, staffed by angels, occupied by spectres. I am still enough myself to joke that this must be the last resort but humour is fast going the way of arousal and tiredness and embarrassment and frustration and mucus and sweat and pubic hair.

I am a little anxious I must admit. I think we all are. We are all putting it off a bit – looking at the sea, going for a walk, chatting, having something to drink, having a swim. But we won’t discuss it – what comes next. I don’t know why. I could see a counsellor but I don’t want to and they won’t push. I want to go but I’m somehow not ready yet. I watched two people go yesterday – I didn’t know them. It looked like dying. I go for another walk, this time into the trees behind the beach and find a chameleon to watch.

Some ask a guide to go with them down to the edge. Some have made friends and they have them around for support. Some go down in groups, hand in hand but I want to do this alone and so at dawn I find somewhere up the end of the beach and sit on a coconut palm trunk that slants out over the water and I look down at the waves, and I have never felt more heavy and corporeal. There are tiny fiddler crabs scurrying about on the sand below, each waving his one outsized claw at the rest.
‘Wanna fight?’ or ‘Wanna fuck?’
Life eh?

So here I am. I think of the life I will be launching myself back into and it all seems horribly immediate. My only positive thought is that I’m sure I can do better than last time. I can’t just give in. I crawl a little way out along the trunk and slip gracelessly into the unexpectedly cool knee-deep water. I can feel the sand and little bits of sea detritus between my toes. I stop and look about but I know it is time not to think – it is time to move on. I slip out of the gown and it drops into the water, immediately becoming invisible there. I look around. I can’t see anyone watching. I begin to move deeper.
When I am down to my shoulders I realise with a shudder that I can’t see my body under the water, can’t feel it any more and yet I can keep my head out a little longer and I look at the sky. There’s a vivid turquoise bird flying past...

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Thank you
Steve

Journey XV – Down to the seaside

As I kept on walking I felt the climate gradually turn hot and heavy and the vegetation became richer and more exotic. The birds, insects and flowers got bigger and brighter and the noise and odour of the place became more and more overwhelming. I’d never been to the tropics in life but I had no doubt that this was exactly what it would be like.
Increasingly, I came across other travellers along the route too – some in groups with their guides, others alone. I saw myself among the loners and they – we, all had that same weary exultant expression on our faces – we’d made it. We’d arrived.
The traffic was increasing too – mostly mules and other animals pulling various sorts of rough carts but also some vans and bicycles – and I got a lift some of the way. Settlements became more common too – clay and wood walls and terracotta or thatch roofed cabins usually set around a well or a fireplace in a clearing among the trees. At night the locals welcomed us in and brought cushions and rugs and spicy food and we sat around the fires or crowded into rooms if it was raining and ate and drank and sang or played games until dawn when we slept for a while, got breakfast and moved on.
After one particularly entertaining night, ten of us collapsed into the back of a truck with our belongings, a small pig and a fruit tree in a pot and took the dusty track through the fields to the edge of the forest. At that point the land fell away steeply and the road was nothing but bends.
A little later we came round a curve and the sea was there far below us – electric blue and shimmering in the heat. We walked or rode the remainder without resting, jubilantly singing and laughing along the dusty track among the whitewashed houses, under the flowering trees and palms.
And so the realisation of what was going to happen next gradually became unignorable. I’d hardly thought about it since Joe told me about it all those years before. I wondered briefly what had become of him.

In quieter moments I take the opportunity to try to think back to my so-called life: England, Sussex – that job I had, and those people... It all seems an incredibly long way away and yet I know it’s just around the corner now and I am going back there somehow and I haven’t even thought to find out how that is supposed to happen. I try to recall the things Joe and I talked about, and what Miranda said, and Jim, and I wonder if he is still there, tending his goats for all eternity. Then I take a seat on a log and look across the treetops and wonder impatiently what I’m supposed to have been getting from all this.
I gather myself up and try to really think about it seriously. What has it all been for? Joe said people tend to get what they really want here, whether they like it or not, or words to that effect.
I’ve met a woman who wanted to have sex with me. That’s certainly something. Ok, she was only ten inches tall, but still... And I wonder where Lucy ended up. She just seems sort of ridiculous now by comparison – immature, selfish. I don’t know.

What else? Well I could probably grow all my own veggies if I needed to, and raise chickens and goats. Jim was a really nice guy, resigned and enthusiastic at the same time. I miss him most. I wish my dad had been more like him... And I find myself lost in sadness again and almost in tears. I check to see if anyone’s about but the road is quiet at the moment. It’s about midday I suppose. Most people will be indoors having their lunch or crashed out in the heat. I hear a man laugh somewhere across the way among the trees – a friendly, warm laugh, but I can’t see anyone. I sniff a bit and wipe my nose and eyes on my sleeve. It’s covered in grime. Nothing I have on is even slightly clean. The front of my shirt is stiff with fruit juice and sweat stains and the creases in my shorts are drawn in with soil and crushed vegetation. I can imagine Justine’s smiling face looking down at me and giving me her own bright female version of that laugh because I’ve got myself in a mess again. I was always in such a mess.
Shit, what am I going to do? I cast my mind back as fleetingly as possible over the last year or two of my life and then quickly around at the thick vegetation on the slope below and the sea beyond. There’s a boat out there with a triangular sail the same burnt sienna as the soil around here. When I think back about all those other people in the sixth form, Camille and Carly and Gareth and Tom and the rest, getting on with it, sorting out their careers and their university places, it seems like everybody else knew what to do. I lean back propped up on my elbows with my head hanging back and feel the sun roasting my face, evaporating my tears away, and I listen in to the insects and the birds going about their business around me.
I don’t want to think any more.
Joe, I know, had big ideas for me and my career but I really can’t imagine what I will be able to do to make any difference whatsoever. All I know is that I’m not going for a walk after that party. After that, who knows? I haul myself into the standing position and pull my pack onto my back.

Right on cue, a cart pulled by a cow with enormous curved horns rounds the corner. It is driven by a very dark skinned man and he seems to have a few passengers already, sitting up on top of a lot of sacks and crates. I stick my thumb out and he grins at me, his teeth so brilliant white, in such contrast to the rest of his face that I can hardly make out the rest of his features.
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Journey XIV – Spirit journey

I have just a few things to tell about the last part of the journey. The weather was bright and the path was broad and rutted, suggesting that something with wheels travelled this way. When I’d started out the trees had still been leafless and the spring sunshine lit the woodland floor intensely, illuminating the cushions of moss and piles of leaves and the elegant nodding flowers that emerged through them, sometimes in their thousands. Later on I came across massive ruins half hidden among the trees and ferns and I once spent the night in the roofless shell of a vast chamber, under a monstrous tree that had rooted into the wall. I didn’t get much sleep because there was too much murmuring and movement in the stones. It was quieter out under the sky.
I never did tell the others what I’d seen on my way to the retreat. I wasn’t even sure it had really happened. One spring day Jim had taken a party outside around the wall on one of his ‘nature rambles’. I went along as well, for a laugh. He admitted himself that he wasn’t very knowledgeable about plants and animals, but found it fascinating and wanted to pass on some of the observations he’d made over the seasons. He needn’t have bothered. Half the party had gone back before we were even a hundred yards from the main gate and we hadn’t even begun to descend the rocky path down into the trees. The other half were too scared to concentrate. What they imagined was down there I never really discovered. Jim was mystified as well, although he too had been warned of the dangers lurking ‘out there’. He’d never witnessed anything conclusive but swore nevertheless that ‘things’ lived out there. Some days the place was swarming with life and you could hardly take a step without crushing something. Other times, under apparently identical conditions, there was nothing – nothing but the sense of being accompanied by something powerful and unfriendly as he put it. I asked if he believed in God. He said he used to. I mentioned what Joe had told me about the lost spirits and he said he thought that sounded plausible. Some of those bright, silent days, the place had felt very ‘busy’ nonetheless. There was a ‘clamour’ to it we couldn’t explain.
We never really became close, Jim and I. He liked to tell you things, often at great length and mostly you just had to listen and as time went on I got a little tired of that. He was a bit too much like my dad to be honest so in the end I was glad to get away.
And so I walked. The high broadleaf forest covered itself in leaves and then gave way to a flatter landscape of meadows and streams and marshes.

My final encounter with the lost spirits happened a couple of months later. I’d been walking solidly, doggedly determined to arrive at wherever it was. Every day I awoke with the sun, made my coffee, thought a little of Miranda and packed my things together. Then I started walking and I didn’t stop until it was getting dark. That’s how it was. It had been maybe eight years since my death, or more perhaps. Often it seemed like much more. I could barely picture what life had been like.
All around me the land became arid and the heat more intense. The plants were brittle and grey and the air smelt of lavender and pine. I was really very content.
I came across more settlements along the way, as Miranda had told me I would. Mostly they were quiet, gentle communities made up of a few houses or shacks in various styles and with or without gardens or fields. Mostly people were friendly and generous and offered a place to sleep and food if it was available. Some places were lively with music or brightly coloured ornaments and plants. Other places were rather serious and inward in temperament. I usually stayed for just a single night, used the shower, perhaps did some chores and treated myself to a meal but I had no wish for luxury or company. In any case I’d never felt entirely alone even in the most deserted spots. The spirits were everywhere. Some evenings as the sky turned purple I could feel them resting in the stones and the trees around me, aware of my passing but profoundly unmoved by it.
I found a rocky place surrounded by some extraordinary trees with thick grey trunks that branched only at the top, making an impenetrable dome of spikes way above my head. The leaves were like thick grey claws. I found a place where a rock had fallen against the bark and there was blood leaking away, red and sticky. I sat among them for the night and looked across a vast stony plain at the mountains in the distance.

In another place, I found what appeared to be a fortified town, deserted and still. Its thick white walls enclosed a cluster of low box-like dwellings, all built against one another without any streets or pathways in between. In one I found an iron stove, in another, a small ceramic pot. I climbed up through a square opening in one of the ceilings and walked across the flat roofs. The place felt like it had been deserted hundreds of years ago, perhaps thousands. And yet the walls and floors were not silent. All night I could hear them talking among themselves and I had to leave in the dark and lie down nearby in the open until it got light.

Finally there was a place where I sat beside a cool clear pool under some palm trees and took all my clothes off to swim. The spirits there were more tranquil and when they came to join me I sensed they simply wanted to pass the time. I never saw them properly – just from the corner of my eye I would sense a movement and turn but there’d be nothing to see. That seemed to amuse them. They told me things about the world they had come from, the things they remembered. Their memories were mostly of hardship and brutality but they told me about it without any real bitterness or recrimination. It was too long ago. That was just how it had been for them at that time. It was nobody’s fault. I told them what I could remember about the world I’d come from and that kept them amused for a time but none of them seemed to envy me. As I lay there under the night sky I could hear them gossiping to each other about me, patronisingly agreeing that I had a lot to learn about life. By morning they were silent again and I moved on. 
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Journey XIII – But when your heart is full of love...

Of course I was still young in spirit, and I got bored of pretending to be an old lady quite quickly.
As I mentioned before, I stayed at the retreat for more than three years, although, as usual, it was impossible to keep track of the exact number of days and weeks that had passed, but we worked according to the seasons, which seemed to turn much slower than in life. Looking back it feels like a much longer time spent there – as much as five years perhaps.
That first winter dragged on and I intended to move on in the spring. I didn’t know what I was doing for the most part and found the work messy and clumsy and thoroughly infuriating. Jim’s constant cheerful encouragement got on my nerves as well, although I couldn’t very well complain. He meant well. At any rate I just felt stupid a lot of the time, and muttered to myself as I worked that I couldn’t see the point of this or that, and why didn’t we do it some other way, which made much more sense to me, and generally what was the point, given that we didn’t actually need to eat, or if we really felt like it, food would somehow turn up anyway, without our having to work for it? To his credit Jim heard me out when I had a suggestion and explained his way of doing things without putting me down. Somehow, by the end of these discussions I usually didn’t mind having been mistaken and was happy to go along with the established method. I guess I just needed to spew. My dad would have been dumb struck. We’d always ended up in a bad mood when we’d tried to do things together. It always pissed me off that he thought he knew best about everything, when I knew he quite often didn’t.
As time went on though, that first winter, I’d find myself in the middle of some repetitive chore – maybe digging a bed or shovelling shit – and realise I’d completely lost track of the time. There I was, out in the wet and cold, humming to myself or with my mind wandering about and I’d notice quite suddenly how elated I felt. I’d stand up straight, foot on my shovel or fork and look about me. There’d be no one else about, or maybe just a light from Jim’s shed as the daylight failed. I’d look at the tree tops in the fog beyond the walls and know that I’d never been so quiet in my head in my life nor since I’d died. At times like these the gardens seemed to stretch on indefinitely. The various trees and shrubs had been arranged long ago according to some long obscured plan and now grew apparently randomly in the maze of grass paths, hedges, irrigation channels and empty beds. It was easy to get lost wandering about and come across some unexpected corner with a little pond or bird table or seat, either neatly maintained by someone, or totally overgrown. I never found a complete plan of the gardens. Like most things in the afterlife, trying to account for everything simply leads to getting distracted and losing count.

The rest of the community were an odd lot. Apparently, I discovered, they spent their days in meditation, using some rooms I found on the ground floor. I saw them at meals and occasionally on their way from place to place, and they were always civil to me but never encouraged conversation. I went along to a meeting once and there was some quiet chanting and loud breathing and uncomfortable postures but I couldn’t get anyone to explain to me what the aim of it all was. At any rate it seemed to make them feel better about themselves so I left them to it. I'd just spent the whole time fidgeting and trying to chase away the memories that invaded my head the more I tried to relax and focus. Some of the people there also painted or practiced music but the results seemed vague, pointless exercises and I never felt inclined to join in. Some of the others who worked in the kitchens and gardens were friendlier but I sensed that Jim and Jo were the only people actually enjoying themselves. For the rest, it seemed like some kind of penance they were enduring.
It wasn’t until spring was well under way and I had been working more-or-less non stop, dawn to dusk (and beyond, with a hurricane lamp), sowing seeds, pricking out, potting on, planting, harvesting the earliest crops and of course weeding, that I realised I didn’t want to leave. Jim was in a frenzy of activity too and delegated some of the organisation to me, slyly getting me involved in planning next year’s crops and in the supervision of some of the other volunteers. This freed him up to work more with the animals, so of course I had to stay then.
I did manage to get Jo to talk briefly about the other residents one night when a bunch of us were up enjoying her best wine and cheese. There were a couple of the other kitchen staff there, and someone from the gardening crew. None of them was very easy company but they wanted to stay up and chat so that was something. Jim had enough energy for us all – he loved to talk and was usually worth listening to, so that was fine. Jo sat with her glass and fag and smiled and nodded. She was a big woman with a long plait down her back and looked about fifty, I suppose. I’d asked her about her life (a subject people usually avoided – I could never see why) and after initially demurring she’d told me she was ‘just a mum’ and I asked her about her kids and so on. As usual it was a sad conversation, full of regrets (it had been her own stupid fault, her death she said, indicating the cigarette) but her two lads were quite capable of taking care of themselves she thought and she looked away, hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes. ‘Good boys...’ she said and blew her nose on a cloth handed over to her by Jim. Then she asked about me and I said I was fed up of talking about me, and what about these other people here – why were they the way they were? I was aware we had some examples here with us and we both looked at them – deciding whether to go on with the conversation, but Jim was on a roll and they didn’t seem to be paying attention to us. We spoke in a whisper anyway.
‘They’re all looking for God’ she said, grinning.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Did you not have a faith, you know, in life?’
‘I don’t know. I always believed there was something...’
‘Nothing in particular though?’
I shrugged. I’d thought about it a lot. There had been a Christian union at school and there’d been some interesting discussions. I even went to church with them for a while, but I’d never really been one for joining things. I’d liked the sound of Buddhism.
‘Probably just as well’ she said. ‘Means you’re not disappointed, you know, when it’s all over.’
I thought about this. I hadn’t met anyone overtly religious since the start. It really hadn’t occurred to me what a problem this place would be for them.
‘God’s let us down badly’ she added, finally, taking a drag from her cigarette and turning to join in the other conversation, which seemed to be about bats.

A few new groups of travellers came through while I was there, complete with their guides, and stayed for a few nights before moving on but besides Jim and myself, nobody ventured beyond the gates if they could help it.
Jim occasionally made short forays into the immediate surroundings to find mushrooms and wild herbs and took small parties out botanising from time to time when they could be prised from their introspection. I went out fairly often but never overnight. Maybe their collective agoraphobia was catching, but I was less happy to venture out after dark without my own personal pocket guide. The forests thereabouts were deep and dark once you ventured away from the walls. There were no paths that I could find and the landscape was not level anywhere, but ridged, with bleached and thorny outcrops and sodden, fern-choked gulleys. The slopes between were a tangle of briars and low branches, with jagged rocks exposed here and there. It was always a relief to reach the top of a ridge and look back and see the walls of the retreat. After a couple of trips I gave up on putting any distance between myself and there, and settled for finding a comfortable place to either lie in the sun or swim in the water. I found four places in particular I liked – a rocky throne facing the evening sun among wild rose and pine, a small grassy summit under a birch, a flat rock beside a clear pool, and another pool with a cascade falling into it. At each place I took the opportunity to look at the local inhabitants and observe their behaviour. Tiny long nosed otters dipped and dived, hunting the sparkling shoals of vivid orange and turquoise minnows. Dragonflies with wings two feet across and sounding like animated umbrellas zoomed up and down. I trod on an enormous salamander, four feet long and feeling like a slab of dead meat under foot. It made me jump, but in its stupid, leisurely way it launched itself up and over a submerged log and disappeared under the opposite bank. A long bodied dog-like animal with black blotches along its flanks and a black stripe running through the eye from ear to snout was sniffing about among the rocks. I thought I was unobserved, but then it looked nonchalantly up at me and continued on its way. A herd of what looked like miniature goats but with sizeable canine teeth came swarming over the boulders some mornings. Huge birds of prey soared overhead. I had nowhere near enough ecology to know whether these were creatures from the same world I came from, or specialities of this place. Many seemed pretty improbable to me but I was captivated and always reluctant to go inside at dusk.

I did see Miranda once more before I left but if I hadn’t known that there were no dreams in the afterlife I would have sworn that was what she was. It was during the last autumn. Jim was sorry to hear I was moving on the next spring but was not surprised. He said there was still so much for me to learn about the garden, and I said I knew that, but there were also other things I had to do, and he said he understood and was surprised I’d lasted as long as I had. Both the hard physical labour and the getting used to thinking about how plants and soil and seasons worked had fulfilled parts of me I hadn’t known even existed before, but I needed other things. I needed other people. I needed jokes and songs and arguments and sex. I’d never really been any good at dealing with people but being here, with these sad, empty souls, I realised I had to try again.
It was the summer that had clinched it – my third summer there I believe, with glorious weather and a garden flowing with more milk and honey, literally, than we could ever possibly consume, and there they were, the inmates as I’d come to know them, cooped up inside, thinking about their breathing. I wanted to (and often did) strip off at the end of the day and jump in the fishpond and run dripping naked along the paths, but nobody joined in. They didn’t even disapprove. They didn’t really react. It was, as Jim often remarked, very strange. He didn’t want to strip off, but was with me in spirit he said. Jo just looked amused.

So when the weather made that subtle turn toward autumn, and I woke up one morning and the room had chilled damp during the night and I didn’t want to get out of bed, I knew it was time. I didn’t know it consciously, but I felt different. I thought of what I had to do in the garden over the next few months and part of me said ‘Not again’. Miranda appeared a few days later.
I say ‘appeared’ deliberately. No one saw her come or go as far as I know. I didn’t ask many people – there didn’t seem to be much point, but no one commented anyway, and you’d have thought they would.
I’d come in late from work, had a shower, hung my work clothes up in the drying room and gone up to my room in my indoor robe. I knew something was strange when I opened the door. The room seemed dimmer than usual, misty, out of focus. It was getting dark earlier now and I hadn’t had a chance to light a lamp so I stood in the doorway, trying to accustom my eyes to the gloom. There seemed to be a figure in the far corner, adjacent to the window, by the book shelf, but not an ordinary figure, a very tall figure, its head reached almost to the ceiling and it was slightly stooped toward me.
Time passed very slowly as I tried to focus on it, absolutely unable to move, eyes wide, waiting for something to happen. Slowly its body turned from shadows to pale, and big grey eyes came into focus, looking directly down at me. It felt as if my eyes were getting used to the dark (although it wasn’t that dark), and struggling to focus (although everything else in the room was now clear and distinct). The figure was looking intently at me, and it was as I looked into its eyes that I knew who it was. I said her name and the long pale limbs and red hair began to emerge like a body rising out of deep water. Finally I saw her blink and a sad little smile move in her lips. Her body was towering over me. The image of a human giraffe crossed my mind, with her freckles and her big intelligent eyes. Then, somehow she was on her knees and I could look into her face and I put my hand out and touched her cheek and she smiled at me, and I just fell forwards onto her and lay against her. I was so happy to see her.
She stayed with me that night. We put all the soft things in the room on the floor and settled down as best we could in the small space and we talked a little about what had happened since we last saw each other but conversation was not what we needed. Her body was strangely cool but soft and fragrant – like a salty honey. I stroked her breasts and her belly and kissed her freckly skin but I didn’t feel very sexy. We spent the night curled up there, with her body curved around me, sleeping on the floor. It was the most cared for I had ever felt. I tried to get her to tell me where she was going to go next but all she would do was hush me and stroke my hair tell me everything would be alright. There were tears in her eyes but there was a smile too. I almost allowed myself to believe her. She told me that ultimately we are all lost souls, looking for a home.

She disappeared while I was out getting some water early in the morning, and I had to think it had just been some sort of dream. The fact was though that I could smell her on everything. I still don’t know what to make of it.
I needed it though. As dawn came on we had lay there and talked – nothing very important, just silliness, for most of the night. In fact I can’t remember much of what we said at all. I know we laughed a lot, like before. She did say it was about time for me to move on, and I couldn’t afford to get stuck there. I asked about guides and she said there would be groups coming through I could join, or I’d be ok alone now – there were plenty of places to stay along the way if necessary.

My work did not go well for a while after that – my heart wasn’t in it really, but then there was a new gardening volunteer who seemed keener than most and Jim liked her, so I worked hard to help her with the arrangements for the coming season and I was ready to go just as the first spring greens were coming through. I packed my rucksack and Jo gave me some of her cheese and marmalade to take with me, and there was a somewhat choked-up farewell from her and Jim at the main door. Then I was on my way. It was bloody miserable wet overcast day, but it felt wonderful to be out again.
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Journey X – The Temptation

Miranda tells me firmly that we must find me a place with other people that’s safe and comfortable and where they’ll take good care of me. Then I’ll be able to maybe find a new guide and move on. She gets up, looking considerably closer today, purposefully striding about, in the rain too, gathering up our stuff, talking to herself. Meanwhile I’m sitting on a stump half asleep, sipping my coffee. It’s all a little too busy for me. It’s barely light yet and we had a visitation in the night – silent thankfully. They just hung around watching me swearing at them. I got the impression I’d hurt their feelings more than anything. Well, if they will hang around looking spooky all night what do they expect? Miranda said I shouldn’t take the piss. Things are bad enough for them already but I think (I didn’t say this out loud) if they want to get lost they should just go and get on with it, not keep bothering us non-lost types. They’re really beginning to get on my wick, keeping me up all night...

We pass on through more of the same forested, mountains-and-valleys landscape as before. Miranda says it reminds her of the place she grew up, with lots of heather and bracken and little streams. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m really just beginning to want to get somewhere. I told this to her and she gave me an odd little smile.
Meetings with the lost spirits are getting further and further apart. Miranda tells me they tend to gather in some areas more than others and she seems decidedly livelier here, away from them (‘although there’s always a few loners about’ she says). The countryside’s still pretty wild out here and we have the place to ourselves. Once again my thoughts turn to the proximity of her scantily clad little form. All in all, maybe I prefer it that she’s too small (or far away) to actually have sex with. I like the way we get on and chat and flirt and look after each other and I think maybe sex would spoil it, or anyway, I’d probably mess it up somehow – make a twat of myself. It’s better this way.

Our final encounter with the lost spirits happens on a night of heavy rain – another night of total darkness and we’re camped in a bog. Miranda is convinced this is the right path but is very frank with me – there will be lost spirits again, and they might not be so easily dissuaded. I don’t ask how she knows.
For a few nights now she’s been running off at night like before and I am once again unhappy about it but not so easily fobbed off with her reticence on the subject. I pester her and tell her I’m not going to ‘leave it’. So she gives in and tells me she’s been protecting me, going out and keeping them away. I ask if that was how she got hurt that time before. She goes very quiet.
‘With some of them you have to be prepared to give them something in return’ she says vaguely, not looking at me. ‘There has to be some sort of offering. That’s the way it is.’
I look at her. I don’t know what she means. I don’t think I want to know.
Then suddenly she looks up at me and says brightly ‘We’ll soon be there. It’ll soon be over.’
She turns to go and I catch her arm and hold her back. She looks at my hand, at first wearily, then irritably. I let her go.
‘It’s ok’ she says, and is gone into the darkness.
I never did find out what it was they got up to out there. The thought made me feel sick, especially in the light of what we saw later. I didn’t sleep. I sat and waited for her to come back and we slept together in the morning.

So we come to a place where the valley becomes extremely narrow and steep sided, with ranks of stunted oaks growing out of the sheer sides. The valley floor is narrow and sodden and thick with rushes and reeds. It sees the sun only briefly but floods regularly and we struggle to find a patch of dry ground to pitch the tent on, hoping not to get washed away if there’s a flash flood. Evening comes. We watch the mists come down and wait for frightening things to start happening. There’s nothing more, she tells me, that she can do to hold them off. We sit and wait to see what happens.
‘Will they hurt us?’ I ask quietly, the rain dripping off my hood into my lap. She’s hidden there, in my cape, peering out. She looks so tiny – barely visible.
‘Not necessarily’ she says, like there might be something worse they could do.
‘What then?’ I say. ‘Will they capture us?’
‘Something like that’ she says.
‘Something worse?’
She says nothing. We wait.
‘I could try swearing at them again’ I suggest.
‘Probably worth a try’ she says without much enthusiasm, ‘if it makes you feel better.’
More silence.
‘If I hadn’t lead you astray you’d have been somewhere safe a long time ago’ she says quietly.
‘But you tried. You took me to that hill town place.’
She shakes her head. ‘I was being selfish. I needed somewhere to rest, recover. I wasn’t thinking about you.’
I look down at her. She looks so sad, yet strangely defiant.
‘I really don’t mind you know’ I say, and I want to tell her it was worth it because I love her. It seems a stupid thing to say, while we sit there, peering into the darkness, watching for spirits.
‘I just didn’t want to lose you’ she says ‘and I wasn’t ready to go, maybe. I thought I was.’
‘Do you have to go? Can’t you change your mind?’
She begins to reply but instead says shush and holds her finger up. I stand and listen. There’s a low roaring sound coming from away up the valley. As it gets louder I can feel it in the ground. It’s different from last time, more like a sobbing or a pulsing, like a machine or a heart beating deep in the soil. We stand there together, listening to it growing in volume. It sounds like a flood. It occurs to me it might be a flood. I look about for an escape route but Miranda is not moving. She knows that it’s pointless to run. The sound gradually expands to fill the landscape, coming from all sides, surrounding us and then we see them, figures of all shapes and sizes emerging from the shadows, changing all the time, growing and shrinking, materialising and melting into the darkness all around us. There are so many of them. It is overwhelming. They cluster around us and press their faces into ours – repulsive, terrifying, seductive. A tiny spikey one with a slug for a tongue insists that I am no better than she is, deep down. A bloated giant bawls at me over and over again to listen to him. A wraith wrings her hands and grizzles that there was nothing she could have done. There is so much bitterness and recrimination. It bludgeons, seeps and injects itself into my innards like gas gangrene – the things they’ve been through, what they’ve suffered, and what suffering they’ve inflicted on others. For that is the difference here. The spirits that have collected here have done terrible things. They are not merely victims. These really are the monsters. I look about me, try to tell them what I think of them but the wind takes my words away. A groaning throbbing lament drowns out everything that I might have wanted to say. This heaving mass of the unforgivable before us is past all understanding.

It seems like hours we stand there as they heave and jostle around us. The noise and the stink are terrible. It is the sound of all the agony and the degradation and the abuse they’ve endured and caused and I can feel it entering me, probing, trying to find something in me to latch onto. They want to know if perhaps I could have done those things too, or if I’d have them done to me perhaps? Or would I like to watch? because that can be arranged. It’s intolerable and meaningless. All their stories are long lost. What they did has no explanation any more. They try to explain their actions away nonetheless.
I curl up and keep my eyes shut – try to keep it all out.  
Everybody has it in them they say. Every man has his price. What would I be prepared to do, hmm? If I was desperate enough? Hmm?
Who is to judge them? Who can blame them? After all, it had to be done. Everybody else was doing it. It was legitimate trade. They were just doing their jobs. They did what they did for the purity of the race, to the glory of God, for King and country, for vengeance, for the family’s honour, for the greater good.
And didn’t they deserve it after all, those scum, because they stood in the way of progress, because they were different, because they were weak, because they didn’t matter, because they happened to be there and they were alone and nobody to protect them.
It was the final solution. They were asking for it. They probably enjoyed it.
Wogs, Queers, Bitches, Pakkies, Kikes, Commies...
And on and on and on...
Gradually their jeers and harangues begin to wash over me, to have less and less effect. There’s no connection. It’s just noise.
I look down at Miranda, her hopeless eyes fixed on them and I sit down with her.
We sit and observe them, these horrors, impassively and I pull her toward me. She looks at me and doesn’t understand but realises that she is safe with me. We sit and look at them and they begin to seem small and ridiculous. The wind and the noise die down and just a frustrated grumbling and whining follows. I can sense them milling about, knowing there’s nothing they can do and yet unwilling to give up. Finally, as morning comes the last of them discretely disappear and Miranda and I pack up and move on as quickly as we can. She looks up at me with a new kind of expression, almost like she admires me or something. ‘We need to get you home’ she says.
The path takes us up to the top of the valley by late afternoon and there before us lies a broad rolling landscape of meadows and woodlands and lakes. It looks like heaven. 
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Journey VIII – In The Wilderness

We soon discovered why nobody had tried to stop us. They knew no one would be stupid enough to go running out into the wilderness.

It seemed like the best thing to do was to move on as quickly as possible. Miranda agreed. I checked the equipment, took one last look the way we’d come and we set off up the slope into the forest.
Later on, sitting at the campfire, chewing on the bones of some sort of wild chicken that Miranda had chased down, I asked her, just conversationally, if that was how all after-life settlements were going to be. She looked at me with a troubled expression and said nothing. I was happy though. If that was the case then that meant I wasn’t going to be settling anywhere any time soon and we’d have more time together, but I sensed she didn’t feel the same way. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to spend time with me she told me and I believed her. It was just... ‘complicated’ she said and then I just felt sad again because I knew she would have to go at some time. I’ve never been any good at putting things out of my mind.
The night passed uneventfully but I didn’t feel sleepy. I watched Miranda sitting there. She was thinking but she wouldn’t tell me what about. It felt like she really wanted to be somewhere else. Sometimes she looked up or turned around – like I’ve seen small animals do when they’ve heard something inaudible to the human ear, or picked up a scent. Then she turned back, glancing over at me, propped up in my sleeping bag, to see if I’d noticed. I pretended not to. (I remember realising, with some surprise that she was about a foot tall now. When had that happened?)
We kept moving – she insisted on it. She said we’re not out of the woods yet and I thought of making a joke about it because obviously we were deep in the forest, but I didn’t say anything. I was just enjoying the scenery. I’d felt nothing of the ‘presence’ I’d felt before. As far as I was concerned it was just another fabulous spring day.
And I watched Miranda’s little body, no longer very thoroughly covered with my scarf. Its hem barely covered her bottom now and I stayed alert for glimpses of what lay underneath, following her as we climbed whenever I could. I couldn’t help it. Of course she knew what I was doing but I didn’t realise I was so obvious at the time. I felt guilty and horny more or less equally and very immature but after all, there were larger pieces of fabric in the bag. She didn’t have to keep on wearing that one. And it was wearing very thin in places too. She said she liked the colour.
Anyway, we travelled uneventfully for the next week or so and our conversation fell into the same half playful – half serious groove it had been in before. She told me more about her childhood and the friends she’d had and places she’d been when she was alive – things she said she’d not thought about for a very long time, things about her mother and the place they’d lived in when she was little, up in Snowdonia. She told me she’d finally ‘checked out’ in ’74, but she’d done everything, and didn’t regret any of it. I knew that wasn’t quite true but I didn’t argue. She had good memories of the sixties and a lot of parties and festivals. She’d seen Bowie and T Rex and The Small Faces and I was very envious. She described for me some of the parties and the bizarre things that had gone on. She didn’t talk about the drugs specifically but I got the impression that they were heavily involved.
And it was good that summer – sleeping in the sun, swimming in ponds, watching the animals and plants do their things. One morning we watched a vast herd of immense shaggy beasts pass by in the valley below, crashing through the undergrowth and churning up the ground. They were accompanied by tall, stocky grey giraffe-like animals and some long-legged birds. I thought it was all fabulous and Miranda was very excited too. She said she was so happy she could show me all this. Then she told me to keep very still and pointed out another animal, something like a cross between a wolf and a wild pig moving stealthily along, keeping pace with the herd.
‘It’s ok’ she said. ‘They’re not very bright and I still remember some of my old guide tricks, but better safe than sorry.’
I’d never been so scared in my life but I thought it was magnificent. Later on, after dark we could still hear the herd going past. There must have been millions of animals out there on the move, each as big as a bus. I asked her what she meant by guide tricks and tried to make a joke about baking cookies and doing the ironing but she ignored me and said some vague things about covering our scent and camouflaging ourselves but I knew that wasn’t the whole story. She was hiding something. I also asked if the animals were in their afterlives, like we were and she said they probably were. They ate and hunted and mated and migrated just as they had in life because they still had their instincts. But they never died, and they never reproduced. ‘They just keep on going, forever’ she said, a little sadly I thought. I wanted to ask how they could survive being eaten but decided I didn’t want to know.
Another night, a few days I suppose later on, we were sitting by the tent looking out across an infinite ocean of grassland with patches of woodland and pools of water like islands randomly scattered across it. It was a clear night and everything was picked out in silver, and quite suddenly I realised there was a sound coming from across the way. I suppose I’d been dozing or maybe just thinking. Miranda looked up at me to see if I’d noticed. The sound was so subtle, like the wind in the trees or rippling the water. It was hard to tell where it was coming from. We sat very still.
‘Best not to disturb them’ she said and nodded a little to our right. There was a ghostly movement in the grass. When I looked directly at it there was nothing to see but I knew they were there. I could feel them somehow. It was as if I could perceive their feelings. It was as if they were nothing but feelings and I could plainly feel them passing by - sad, confused, lonely, and yet wondering vaguely if perhaps things might be better somewhere else.
‘Where are they going?’ I whispered to her.
‘Home’ she whispered back to me and cuddled my arm, like she was suddenly very cold.
‘Where’s that?’ I said.
‘No one knows’ she replied.
Gradually they passed by, in little groups or lone individuals. The yearning in them so strong by the time they came parallel with us I swear I could almost see them – just the merest trace of a person, a feint grey sketch, all substance erased and just this one thought left – to find a place to rest.

The next day we packed up and moved purposefully on, as if we had somewhere to be, but I could see Miranda was even more preoccupied than usual and I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking ‘That’ll be me, one day.’ And she didn’t know if it was better to keep going like this for as long as possible, with me, or to just give in to it.

Anyway, before long it looked like the decision was going to be made for us. Some of the lost were less content to pass peacefully into oblivion.

Something woke me up. I still don’t exactly know what. It was like a sudden drop in temperature or pressure. The woods were utterly silent. I glanced around looking for Miranda and there was just enough light to make out her tiny crouched form staring fixedly at the entrance, waiting, petrified.
I said ‘What’s happening?’ and she just said ‘They’ve found us.’
I got up and slithered toward the door on my belly but she leapt on me and begged me to be still. I wanted to ask what had happened but she fiercely shushed me and made me lie flat.
‘They might not have seen us’ she said in a desperate shrill voice but then there was a sound, a deep groan that I felt through the ground rather than heard exactly. I thought maybe it was a machine, something huge. It reminded me of the sound of the engines, thrumming constantly in the background when we were at sea. But we were in a forest, on a mountainside. And in any case it wasn’t a mechanical sound. It was a voice, or many voices. We felt it become quieter, moving away down the slope and I thought it had gone but then there was another sound, harsher somehow, rushing across the place where we were lying flat on the ground, sweeping down through the tree tops and then whining back in from another direction, flattening us again. I whimpered a little from the pressure in my skull.
It happened three more times that night and each time was like it might never end. I waited in dread for the next one and we were both sat rigidly upright when the dawn came, staring at the doorway (as if something like that would bother with a door.) By morning I was utterly incoherent and we sat in the sun, twitching at every sound.
As soon as there was enough light we packed everything up and moved on.

After a lot of seemingly random scurrying about I had to ask her if she knew where we were going. For the first time since I’d left the boat the path seemed to be petering out and Kevin had told me the most important thing was to stick to the path, whatever happens. Now, here, there seemed to be a whole maze of weak, twisting, overgrown paths, and places that looked as if they might once have been paths but were now just random clearings among the trees. Time and time again we came to places where the way was blocked and I knew we were in trouble. Miranda said nothing to me but her movements had an increasingly frantic pace and she began to mutter to herself. When I asked her what was happening she told me to let her sort it out and there was nothing I could do. She looked at me with contempt and exasperation, then tried to apologise when she saw the hurt expression on my face but there was no time to talk. All too soon the sun was motoring off into the distance again. It was too late. The path disappeared altogether and we came to a slope of boulders, come down among the trees off the side of the mountain above. We hopped and slipped and staggered our way some way up. I knew she no longer knew what she was doing. We were just trying to get out into whatever remaining light there might be, as if that might stop them, whatever they were. She still hadn’t told me.

Miranda and I made it to a relatively large clearing just as the light failed. We sat on a rock too small and craggy to pitch a tent on, surrounded by thorn scrub and watched the night move in among the trees. The forest here was like a spruce plantation. Ranks of tall, perfectly vertical black trunks surrounded the clearing on all sides and receded endlessly into the wet fog, apparently into infinity. I looked up at the canopy of sea green needles above, merging into the haze as night and drizzle descended on us. There wasn’t a breath of wind. I felt her reach for my hand and huddle against me. ‘I’m so sorry’ she said and began to cry, slow heavy tears. ‘I have been so selfish’ she said. All I could do was hold her close and stroke her hair. I said ‘It’s ok. We’ll be ok’ and she just looked at me with an expression that simply asked how I could be so dim. But she was grateful for it. I sensed that.

When nothing happened immediately I asked her what it was we were running from and, because she knew there was no point wasting time hiding any more she sat up, dried her eyes and told me I wouldn’t see them probably. They would come for us, cautiously at first because they were afraid of us too, and they couldn’t see very well or move very easily, but when they knew where we were, and how alone we were, and how powerless... Then they’d come. I asked who ‘they’ were and she told me they were the lost – her kind, the hopeless and the despairing. The way I looked at her I suppose showed my scepticism. They sounded tragic, certainly, but not dangerous. She shook her head. ‘You don’t get it’ she said and at that moment I saw the first movement among the trees at the foot of the slope. She saw it too and at the same time I heard that same low mournful note echoing up and down the valley below, hunting for us it seemed, blindly, casting about.
‘What’s doing that?’ I yelled over the row. We heard it coming up towards us again and crouched down against the rock as it came down. I looked up and all the trees were bending and twisting as if something was trying to wrench them down. But of the thing itself, all I saw a darkening wave in the air as it went past – nothing more.
‘Despair’ she said. ‘Endless despair’ and I was immediately aware of figures watching us from the edge of the clearing, barely distinguishable from the silhouettes of the ferns and brushwood they stood amongst, but undoubtedly there. They were just pale forms standing about in the undergrowth with just the trace of a face – just a smudge for eyes and mouth. I never saw one move but every time I looked back they were a little closer. I swung around and found they were standing all around us, just a few feet away, and with that impossible clamour in the air, swirling like a tornado above us, thrashing the branches about, I stood up and yelled at them. I stood up and I screamed ‘Fuck off! Fuck off and leave us alone!’

Everything stopped. The noise tailed off and settled to a hum. They were all very close. Miranda was crouched at my feet transfixed and shaking somewhat, waiting for the worst and I stood there watching them all, staring them out, not taking my eyes off them. Eventually I couldn’t stand up any more and I crouched down but I watched them all night, with Miranda sat there beside me, waiting for a move that never came. When the sun came along she was asleep and I carried her out of the clearing and along the ridge and onto a well-worn path, exactly where I knew it would be.
After a while I pitched the tent and lit a fire, all the while letting her sleep. Then, by mid morning I had to lie down too, just as she was blearily beginning to move about. She let me sleep.
Later, when we had both recovered a little she said ‘It’ll be a bright night tonight. No clouds. They won’t be back tonight.’ We knew they’d watch us but they weren’t going to try anything. I wasn’t even sure now that they were going to do anything to us. They just seemed to want to look at us. I was sure they weren’t like the first group we’d seen, out on the savannah. The feeling was quite different. 
Looking at them standing around in that clearing the night before, the only thing I’d felt was emptiness and loneliness and cold but they were attracted by our warmth and liveliness. They wanted it and hated it at the same time and if they got close enough I knew they’d extinguish it. I wasn’t sure whether they understood that, or anything, for that matter. They just had to come and find us, to be near us, to look at us. I wondered where Miranda fitted into all this.

After several uneventful nights she began to tell me a few things. We’d been travelling along broad ancient roads cut into the hillsides and with traces of cobbling still visible in some places. We were making good time, beginning to talk more normally, as we had before, but I knew she was keeping things from me.
We were sitting looking into the embers and she said ‘That was very brave of you, back there, swearing at them.’ I knew she was being sarcastic but I pretended to take it as a compliment.
I said ‘I was just sick of waiting for them to do something.’
I suppose I was being a bit cocky.
‘Well you were lucky’ she replied after a while. ‘We both were.’
‘Well it was a lot of noise and so on but really, what could they do?’
‘We were lucky’ she said again, looking intently into my face.
I couldn’t accept that. I’d been the hero after all. ‘I don’t know’ I said ‘I just thought they needed a bit of standing up to. I think they responded...’
‘You confused them. That’s all. They didn’t know what to do about you. And yes, you may be right. Maybe they’ll just leave us alone now. I don’t know.’

Something about her tone brings me back down to earth, or wherever. I want to know what she knows about them, what her connection with them is and she begins to prevaricate again but I push her for an answer.
‘You know them don’t you.’
She looks away, then finally, she nods.
‘Ok. Are you one of them?’
‘In a way, yes. But it’s not that simple. Gabriel please...’
‘Why aren’t you with them. Why didn’t you stay with them? I mean, I don’t want you to go, but...’
She sits and says nothing again but I think she will talk eventually so I wait. We sit and look into the embers a bit more and I decide to get up and throw some more wood on, to keep it going a bit longer. I stand up. They’re still out there. I know it. She knows it. It occurs to me that maybe she fell in love with me, like in those old stories about squaws and cowboys and now she’s trying to protect me from her people. Maybe that’s it. I can’t ask her though. It would sound ridiculous.
‘The thing you have to remember Gabriel’ she says at last, almost inaudibly ‘is that nothing’s cut and dried here. It’s not them and us, or you and us rather. It’s all rather confusing...’ I watch her trying to formulate her sentences, explain to me without getting herself into even more trouble, because she is in trouble. I can see that.
‘But you are one of the lost spirits, right?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. Please Gabriel. I’m trying to...’
‘You’re nearly lost, or something. You said something like that. Is that why you’re so small?’ And I see her begin to cry. I reach out to her but she turns her back on me and curls up. She looks especially small now and I suddenly realise it’s because she’s far away. It’s a trick of perspective. She doesn’t shrink and grow at all. She gets further away or closer. How strange. I sit down and want to cry a little too. It all seems too terrible but she turns on me and says, very fiercely ‘Don’t you start’ and I’m not sure if she’s joking. I look about to see if they’re closing in again. I can’t see anything.
‘I...’ she begins, leaning back ‘I just sort of hitched a lift, you know? With you. I liked the look of you, so I... We do that some times. Like a final fling, you know?’
‘Did you want to trap me, get me lost too?’
‘I don’t... No. Not really. You don’t... we don’t, think, exactly. It’s not planned. We don’t think “Ooh I’ll have him. I’ll make him one of us.” It’s not like that.’
‘But you could have.’
‘Could have what?’
‘Made me like you. Couldn’t you?’
‘Maybe...’
‘Maybe?’
‘You looked like... I thought you might be. I don’t know...’
‘You thought I looked hopeless. But I’m not, am I?’
She says nothing for a while, then looks up at me and says ‘Make us a coffee will you?’ and I can see exactly how she was when she died, that sadness on her face. I know it. I’ve seen it before.
I get the coffee pot out and find some water. She just sits and looks into the newly roaring fire.
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Journey VI – Hive

The night-time glow penetrated the material of the tent, casting my belongings in a dim, slate grey relief. Something had awoken me. I knew it was not morning or anywhere near. I could just make out the length of my sleeping bag and the bulge of my feet at the bottom of it, and the discarded clothes and other objects filling the space between me and the sides of the tent itself – my socks, my waterproofs, my papers and pencils, my sunglasses and my boots, my hat and my shorts. To my left there were the openings into the rucksack, unzipped, spilling open, revealing containers of coffee, matches, chocolate, toiletries and cutlery, first aid kit and yet more underwear.
I sensed a presence outside rather than heard it. I wondered if I should wake Miranda. Presumably she was in there, buried somewhere among my damp and musty belongings but I had no sense of her. As time had gone by I’d learned to recognise her scent and hear her tiny movements – even her breathing, but the moment was horribly still. I knew sometimes she went out alone at night – to get some fresh air she said, or to clear her head but I knew there was something she was not telling me. I wondered if she was looking for something, or hiding from something, or meeting someone. For some reason this last possibility made me angry and depressed. I lay there on my back, looking at the stitching along the ridge, waiting for something to happen, not daring to move.
She always said she could take care of herself, and she’d told me not to ‘be such an old woman’ but I couldn’t help it. Every time I tried to relax and clear my mind, like she’d shown me, my head just got crowded up again with images of her mangled body and her crying alone and lost and cold out there somewhere. It was like she had no idea how small she was now. A couple of times I’d hurt her just by being a bit clumsy and she’d yelled at me and made a terrible fuss, but then she’d go on at me for suggesting that she was in any danger out alone at night with who-knew-what prowling about out there. I don’t know. It was like she just had to do it, to prove something.

After what seemed like hours there was the unmistakable sound of something enormous shifting, turning and getting up, moving off and pushing its way between the trees. Immediately there was more light and more air, as if the thing had been casting a huge shadow. Then other sounds became audible – the normal night time hubbub of insects and small mammals scurrying around in the leaves. Had they been waiting for it to leave so they could go about their business? Soon after that I heard a tiny person pull open a zip, push her way into the interior of the rucksack and close the zip behind her. I waited for her to settle but after a while I could tell she wasn’t able to sleep either. I asked quietly if she was alright but there was no reply. I resolved to ask her about it in the morning but when I did she claimed not to know what I was on about and changed the subject. Sometimes it seemed like she had only two moods – angry or happy, that was all. Luckily for me she seemed happy most of the time.

Summer was taking on the unmistakable tones of autumn as we moved along. The path she led me along had taken an awkward turn up into the mountains again, through a narrow ravine and along the side of another gorge, which felt wrong to me, but I didn’t like to argue. There wouldn’t have been any point anyway. Miranda travelled up on top of my pack or straddling the nape of my neck, still dressed in nothing but my red silk neckerchief, giving instructions, pointing the way.
At other times she went on ahead, leaving the piece of cloth behind and making me promise not to look as she skipped on ahead, leaping from boulder to boulder, or up into the branches of a tree to get a better look at the way ahead. Later on she’d reappear, demurely, peering at me from behind a log and holding her hand out for her ‘sarong’. Usually she was wearing her evil grin when this happened, but a few times, after a particularly long time away (sometimes she didn’t reappear until after dark) I could see she was cut and bruised and in need of some comfort although she would never admit it. Times like that she curled up into my lap or under my fleece and fell asleep there. I had to be careful not to roll over and squash her.

I didn’t really find out how bad things were until one night I was waiting up for her – a totally soot-black night full of movement and smells. I was really worried about her and lit an extra big campfire because I thought it would help guide her home. It was the first heavy snowfall of the season too and the first real winter night. The leaves were almost all gone from the branches and everything looked stark and spare. I sat there with a piece of meat on a stick, worrying and trying to get it to cook evenly, as she’d shown me (She was a proficient hunter of small animals too). Just below, in a heavily wooded dip full of brambles and fallen branches I could tell there was something waiting. I couldn’t tell what but I knew. I tried not to think about it but as time went on I became increasingly aware of a sweet, fungal stink, like something long dead and yet hot and alive, close by. I waited for the shadows to move.
When Miranda suddenly reappeared I shrieked with surprise and she laughed at me but it was not funny. One of her legs was badly mauled, cut down to the tiny violet bones in a couple of places and I made her lie still, shivering and stuttering, wrapped in my scarf as I tried to make her more comfortable. I kept saying ‘I thought they couldn’t hurt you here’ but she just shook her head. Maybe that was just on the boat. She kept saying she was sorry, over and over again, and how she’d make everything alright. I sat up with her all night as she passed in and out of sleep and the creatures, not one but many, waited outside.

‘What’s going on?’ I said when I saw she was awake the next morning. The wind was roaring in the tops of the trees and had thrown off every last leaf, but our camp was settled in the curve of a small corrie, a bowl scooped out of the hillside and the air around us was still. The first sprays of the new day’s rain splattered against us unpredictably, bringing down tiny twigs and flecks of bark that floated in my coffee cup. Miranda huddled down next to the embers and hugged her cup of coffee. She didn’t say anything. She acted at first like she didn’t know what I was talking about but then gave up the subterfuge. She was extremely tired and in a lot of pain.
I knelt down to make it easier for her to tell me without having to shout but she looked away so I got up and bad-temperedly stomped off, ostensibly to find more wood. I heard her tiny voice behind me as I went. She sounded like she was might have been saying sorry but I kept going. More likely she was yelling at me not to be so melodramatic.
When I got back I was briefly panicked because she was not where I’d left her but then I heard her calling to me from inside the tent. It was raining more steadily now so I decided to join her in there.
She looked absolutely wretched, and if anything, even smaller than before. I got the fire going and put some coffee on to brew, then went in and sat with her. She sat on my leg, leaning against my belly, pulling my fleece over herself.
She said ‘I might not be around much longer. You know that don’t you.’
I said I didn’t and what did she mean. I had an idea what she was getting at but I didn’t want to say it.
‘I’m not really a guide’ she said. ‘I did used to be... I’m sorry.’
‘But, you said...’
‘I know. I’m really sorry.’
‘What about what you said about Kev? You said...’
‘I know. Gabriel, I’m sorry. I was there when you set out. I overheard...’

I look at her, not sure what to say.
‘Lie down with me will you?’ she says.
‘I need to keep an eye on the coffee’ I say and moving her gently aside I step out into the now heavy rain. I knew there was something. Now I don’t know what she’s up to at all. Obviously I can’t trust her.
When I go in with our drinks I find she hasn’t moved. She’s just sitting there, focussing on nothing, huddled in my clothes. ‘Here’ I say and put the little beaker down beside her. ‘Careful, it’s hot.’ She nods.
‘I just wanted some company’ she says quietly, after she’s taken a few sips, ‘before I go. I just didn’t want to be alone. I’m sorry. I’ve put you in danger. The next settlement we come to, I promise...’
I take that to mean we could have stopped before now. I don’t know what I think of that. Actually I’m not so sure I wanted to stop anyway, not now I have her around. I tell her so and she smiles a little. ‘Thanks’ she says. ‘You’re sweet.’
‘I mean it.’
‘But you shouldn’t have been alone, not all this time.’
‘I’m used to it. It’s ok. Anyway, I’m not alone.’
‘Still...’ she says and drinks a bit more before lying back down. The rain has passed and a little sunlight illuminates our bed.
‘I’ve never had a woman before, of any kind’ I say. ‘I don’t need anyone else. This is all I ever wanted.’
‘I don’t think so’ she says, and can’t help herself laughing at me. I can see why.
‘But you know what I mean don’t you?’ I say and she nods but is not convinced. She’s older and wiser. Thinking about it now it’s just ridiculous, but at the time...
After we’ve sat there a bit longer she says ‘Shall we get moving? It looks like it’s brightening up a bit’ and so we do, packing up all the equipment, collapsing the tent and extinguishing the fire. She climbs into one of my long red hiking socks and I put her in my hood and we’re off.

Within a few days we come upon our first signs of human habitation for what seems like months – some fields of what were once cabbages and corn – now just severed grey stumps, then an orchard, and then, unexpectedly, the settlement itself, which at first sight seems to be a tall, oddly shaped hill, all peaks and lumps with smoke rising from several places in its summit. As we get closer it looks more and more like one of those massive gothic cathedrals but apparently made of soil and wood. Its steep, terraced sides are overgrown with an unruly embroidery of vegetation interspersed with ramshackle sheds and fences and other, less explicable constructions – masts and scaffolds. Our, by now, broad and well-worn path leads across what appears to be a moat and Miranda says ‘I’ll be in here if you need me. I’m not supposed to be here’ and I hear her burrowing around down in the bowels of my baggage emitting tiny cries of pain, trying to get comfortable. I approach what appears to be a cave at the foot of the hill, pausing a while to take in the people working on the near vertical allotments above. A rampant pumpkin vine swings dangerously over the opening, strung with enormous fruit.
At the gate, two what seem to be guards observe me indifferently as I pass inside, into a tunnel that is almost too low to walk upright in. The heat and the smell are overpowering but not unpleasant – roasted meat, meths and some sort of perfume, like stale after-shave, and it’s very dark. The only light comes from a few feeble and flickering kerosene lamps along the walls. A steady stream of fresh air flows in with me. Gradually, after a few twists and forks in the tunnel I come across more and more of the occupants, sitting in huddles or engaged in some activity – cooking or needlework or perhaps writing, settled among their belongings, looking indifferently at me as I pass or minding their own business. Most seem to be in robes or other loose fitting garments and all seem to be more or less grimy and dishevelled. I’m told later that this area tends to be occupied only by the most ‘useless’ members of the community. A stiff wind whistles past. Moving on, there are more lanterns and the atmosphere lightens too. There is a hot, greasy, smoky gloom about the place and a rich fug of spices and incense and bodily odour. A larger chamber, as big as a small church and apparently carved out of the solid rock is crowded with people in more colourful garb, making jewellery and crockery and food or playing music or games, chatting and smoking and eating. Above us the ceiling is invisible in the smoke and shadows but seems very high indeed. The wind carries the smoke up into the roof.
After a few more bewildering turns in the tunnels, a lot of stair cases and ignoring some low and ill-lit side passages (with yet more desultory residents) we finally come out in a huge chamber, a great dome-shaped space with yet more traders and artisans milling around, some very finely dressed indeed. I wander about among them. Several offer me smoke or drink as I pass but I have no money. I begin to feel that I need somewhere to stop and rest and think. I notice there are small shadowy openings arranged around the perimeter of the chamber and I make for one of them. I sit down and open my pack. I ask if she’s ok in there and she gives me an impatient whisper in return ‘I’m fine. Close the top.’ I look around to see if anyone saw. Some people were looking vaguely in my direction. Should I be worried? I can’t tell. I don’t feel relaxed, that’s for sure.
I find myself something to sit on and think about having a brew. I look about. Nobody seems very interested in me anyway. I look up and see that the ceiling is really extremely high and I realise I can see daylight above, far above, through a tiny opening. That must have been the smoke I saw rising from the summit. Behind me, from the darkness the cool air streams in. It’s like a huge stove, or one of those termite nests you see on the wildlife programmes, with its own air conditioning system. As I sit and marvel at the engineering two heavily armoured figures suddenly blot out my view. I can’t see their faces or understand what they say but the message is clear. I collect up my belongings and follow them.
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Journey IV – The nymph

At last the forest begins to give out. The trees are not so close, they don’t crowd out the smaller plants on the ground so much, and a lively retinue of insects and birds take the opportunity to make a living.
The weather has changed too. The first time it happens I’m looking ahead through the lower branches and I spot something big and bright and golden ahead, covering the ground, almost too bright to look at directly. I wonder what it could possibly be until I almost step in it and realise it’s just the forest floor lit by sunlight. Hallelujah!
I step into it and look upwards into the rays. I can feel my body warming through, front to back, top to bottom. I drop my bag. I open my shirt. What the heck, I strip naked and just stand there, basking in it for a while.
After a while I look around me. The ground is covered in a thick and slightly prickly mat of pine needles. Blades of grass poke through them here and there.
I’ve got some shorts somewhere in my rucksack and I spend a bit of time emptying it out, looking at all my poor damp, crumpled belongings, things I’d forgotten I had here – books, drawing materials, and chocolate! Now there’s a find. I could have sworn I’d eaten it all. I search around and find some cleaner underwear. It’s still early in the day – I can see the path going on some way ahead. It’s like a miracle.
I follow the path through the morning. The trail heads down some, then flattens out, and I’m coming out into a wide valley by dusk. There’s a broad, boulder-strewn river below, the last of the sun laying a trail on it. The mountains I’ve been walking in for what seems like a year form a solid black wall behind. Mist is beginning to come down. I can see less and less and I begin to unpack the tent. I could really do with a coffee right now. I sit in the doorway and watch the dusk come in. The weird calls I’ve ignored all day get amplified at this time and the noises that go with the darkness begin to edge in. Small bodies move in the grass. I can hear the river below. This is the first evening in a long time I’ve not fallen asleep to the steady sound of rain. It’s actually hard to get to sleep.
By morning it’s business as usual – heavy rain makes the view grey and grainy. A packet of coffee and a carton of long life milk turn up unexpectedly in a side pocket of my rucksack. Something funny is going on here but I’m not complaining. Maybe I’m losing it. I get the coffee maker going anyway. ‘Thanks’ I say, loudly, looking about ‘whoever you are.’ Then, as an after-thought ‘How about some bacon? and ooh – some toast and butter, and marmalade?’ Worth a try I reckon.
The rain actually eases off as the day progresses and I pack up and move on. The sun even makes an appearance. At one point I even sing.

There’s a tiny woman in my backpack. Don’t laugh. It’s not funny. At first I thought it was just the product of my fevered, sex-starved, post-adolescent imagination, and I’m still not sure, but we’ve been talking a bit and I feel better so I’m going with it.
It was earlier on today she appeared. It’s been my third day walking along the side of the valley, and I came to a place where the river simply fell over the edge into another gorge way below and I could have just sat and wept. Well, I did weep, and kicked stones over the edge. The only path I could see headed steeply up a slope at an angle from the lip of the fall and disappeared into the haze as the cloud base came down once more to meet me, bringing drizzle and greyness with it. It was about mid morning. I sat on a tussock and looked at the view. I wanted to throw myself off but I knew I wouldn’t die, just hurt myself so what was the point? What had I thought was coming? Did I think now that I was in some pleasant, relatively flat valley I’d find civilisation, a place to stay, people to talk to?
Yes of course. That’s exactly what I’d thought. I didn’t realise until it obviously wasn’t going to happen. Shit.
Some large woolly animals with huge curved horns were looking at me from the khaki coloured slopes above. They didn’t look predatory – they looked like yaks. I asked them what the fuck they thought they were looking at. In return they ambled off, dislodged some stones and I had to run to avoid getting hit. I screamed abuse at them, at the hillside, at the cataract, at the people who weren’t there, at everything. I tore my clothes off and threw them in a tree. I threw my back-pack in the river and it floated away. It sounds very comical now but it wasn’t at the time. I’d had enough. I was getting rid of everything, getting ready to get rid of myself, again.
That was when I heard her voice – it was coming from the river and it was swearing at me. I could only just make her voice out above the muffled roar of the water below, but I could tell what it meant. I went over and looked. I couldn’t see the bag but one of my red socks was on a rock in the middle and there seemed to be a tiny, pale pink woman with long red hair wearing it, shouting at me. I could see her mouth opening and closing. She seemed really pissed off at me, or really scared.

It took quite a while to sort it all out. The water must have been close to freezing, mist was settling, the rocks were very slippery to walk on, and yet jagged to stumble against. I splashed about, trying to get out to where she was, all the while pathetically conscious of how tiny my willy had become. No woman had ever seen it before (except family obviously). I found it hard to concentrate.
I managed to get out to the rock she was perched on and she pointed further on. I tried not to look at her too much. She didn’t have anything on either. I tried to concentrate on where she was pointing. I couldn’t make out what she was yelling. I went to pick her up but she wouldn’t let me. She got very fierce about that. I got down, lowering my self into the frigid water and put my ear close to her. ‘Bend down further’ she shouted. I crouched down and felt her surprisingly warm little body jump onto my shoulder and settle on my neck.
Rising carefully to avoid slipping, and wading in the direction she had been pointing I couldn’t help being aware of her legs spread either side of my neck. I thought how typical it was of me to be in this much trouble (to have got myself in this much trouble – I had no one else to blame) and still just be thinking about sex – with a woman only ten inches tall at that. Between her legs seemed very hot on my skin indeed. I was glad my willy was shrunken. The alternative would have been intolerable.
She’d been pointing at the rucksack of course. It was lodged between two rocks with water rushing between them at the very edge of the drop. I felt my way forward gingerly, reaching forward as I went to steady myself. The water was remarkably calm near the edge, and there was a deep pool I had to swim across a couple of strokes. I could feel her hanging onto my hair at the back and making encouraging noises.
The bag floated remarkably well – it was designed that way she told me later, and everything in it was dry. I waded back to the bank with it in tow, her standing on it looking very proprietorial, like a mini whale hunter with her catch.
I didn’t say anything as I towelled myself off and found something dry to wear, then I went and retrieved my other clothes from where they were, hanging soggily in the leafless, stunted tree or scattered on the ground beneath. When I came back she had covered herself with one of my shirts, which was a relief because it meant I could talk to her properly, without worrying about getting a hard-on. I sat on a hump and looked at her long, oval, rather serious face and pale grey eyes. She was covered in freckles. Then she looked at me a little sideways, cool and naughty at the same time, and I thought she was rather attractive, in an odd sort of way.
‘I’m so sorry’ I said ‘I didn’t know you were...’
‘I know’ she said quickly ‘I should have...said something...before.’
I was glad she seemed as awkward as I did. ‘Haven’t you got any er...clothes?’ I said, trying to be chatty, trying not to offend her.
‘They don’t really work at this size’ she shrugged. ‘Physics...’
‘I didn’t think physics really applied here’
‘I don’t know. I suppose it must do... a bit’ and she looked around as if there might be an answer in the grass.
I was glad she didn’t know everything and seemed as uncomfortable with the situation as I did. I felt stupid enough as it was. She smiled at me in a tentative friendly sort of way and I got out some biscuits and the coffee making paraphernalia for us. ‘Can you eat?’ I said and she smiled and nodded enthusiastically.
It turned out she’d been in my backpack almost all the time since we’d left Jeannie and Duncan’s place. She told me Kev had arranged it so that I’d have a guide without being aware of it and reminded me how dangerous it was to travel here without one. Guides apparently get some special tricks as part of their training to keep the wildlife here at bay and keep the travellers safe, but it’s a risky business all the same. As she talked I watched her trying to move to get comfortable without exposing herself. She did it very elegantly considering. She would have been quite tall if she’d been normal size, taller than me I thought, and quite slender, and probably quite a bit older than me – maybe thirty or more. Her voice was small but very clear.
‘So, what are you, exactly?’
She looked very amused. ‘You mean am I a fairy?’
‘Are you?’
‘I don’t think so. I can’t fly. I can move surprisingly fast when I have to. Can I have some more of your coffee?’ I set the cup down on the ground and watched her drink, her little red head over the edge of my cup, her little freckly hands on the brim. She covered herself up again and sat back. ‘There’s a lot of odd ways people are here' she continued, ‘I think a lot of the legends and myths and fairy stories in the world are based on things people have come across here.’
‘I’ve heard that’ I said, and we sat and looked at the river for a while.
‘Maybe you’re a nymph’ I said. She laughed a little and fidgeted in my shirt. ‘Maybe’ she said. I didn’t realise what I’d said until later. It was so embarrassing.
We sat in silence for a while, sharing my coffee. I lit a candle.
She told me she’d spent the whole journey in my pack. It was designed so there were ways through from one compartment to another and she could burrow about very quickly in there without me knowing. I asked about the clean laundry and the food. She said yes, that was her, but wouldn’t explain how she did it.
We sat and looked out for a while. Evening was coming down fast. I wasn’t sure what to say next. It did seem a very odd situation, even by the standards of the afterlife so far. I tried hard to think of something intelligent to say but I couldn’t think of anything.
‘Did you used to hike a lot, you know, before?’ she said eventually. I wasn’t sure what to say. I thought about my drunken stroll into oblivion on the South Downs. I didn’t really want to tell her about that.
‘No, not really’ I said ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I don’t know – you seem very at ease with it. You know – most people would have gone bonkers by now, given up.’ I look down at her beside me and she’s huddled in the shirt looking up at me. ‘Actually, do you mind if I...’ and she shifts toward me on her bottom, struggling to keep the shirt in place. ‘If I could just...’ and I feel her snuggle up against my leg.
‘Oh I’m so sorry – you must be freezing. Why don’t you let me...’
I looked about for something warmer for her to wear. ‘Maybe in my pocket?’ I suggested. I had a hooded sweatshirt on with big pockets at the hips. I held one open. She looked in doubtfully and I knew what she meant – a bit too close for comfort. Then I had a brainwave  - ‘What about my hood? Can you get up?’ After a moment’s hesitation she literally jumped at the chance and was up on my shoulders remarkable quickly, like a squirrel. ‘You really can move, can’t you’ I said.
‘Physics’ I heard her say as she got herself settled up there. ‘Excellent’ she said at last ‘Now I don’t have to shout.’
I looked across the river, at the screes beyond. It was nearly dark. It was the time each day when I was most likely to see dark things moving about, shadows shifting, never sure if they were real, or just my eyes making things up. Sometimes I thought I saw lights, or eyes. There were a couple of nights early on when I just sat rigid half the night, watching, waiting for the moment when they – whatever they were – would rush forward and mutilate me, but nothing came and I quickly got used to just getting into the tent as soon as it got dark and shutting them out. Now I could feel the tiny weight of her up there on my back and I felt safer.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, after a while ‘I used to sit up on the top of the pack like this when you were walking along. You never noticed me did you?’ I said I hadn’t. Or had I noticed there were small transparent panels in the rucksack she could look out from inside? What had I thought they were for? I had to confess I had noticed them but not given it much thought. So much here seemed inexplicable. I said she certainly had a very cosy way of getting about, apart from the grubby underwear of course. ‘And the getting chucked in the river is not much fun either’ she said. I apologised again but I could tell she was just having me on.
‘And I don’t mind your underwear’ she added. ‘You don’t smell too bad anyway – for a bloke.’

At the time I thought Kev was some sort of genius – to give me a female companion, but in such a way that nothing could possibly happen between us – it was a very good idea. I thought what it would have been like with a full size woman accompanying me. I knew it wouldn’t have worked. Of course in reality I was just desperate for company and she knew that. I didn’t ask too many questions because I was afraid she’d disappear and leave me alone again.

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Journey III – The ridge

My walking at last has brought me out on a high outcrop. It’s bright spring weather and in the short turf, exquisite flowers are scattered about. I’ve never really looked at flowers before, but here among the mountains, under a blindingly blue sky, everything is fresh and new. There’s still snow in the shady hollows (sprouting tiny fringed purple bells), and gullies where the melt water runs clear and frigid (and edged with tiny silk white buttercups, stained with red at the edges). The crevices in the otherwise bare rock are stuffed with tiny green cushions, studded with crystalline wine red stars. I feel sure nothing so wonderful could possibly exist back in the world, although I admit to being dizzy with the clear air and the sun (although it’s still very cold) after all that damp and shade. Mountains, still half clad in snow stretch on forever in all directions. I drink the water and find a sheltered place to lie down naked, and spread all my belongings out on the grass so I can finally dry everything out properly. Tiny birds hop among the outcrops, and a huge furry iridescent black bee savagely molests a nodding jade green, bowl shaped flower, wrestling it to the ground just beside my head (What’s the point in a green flower? What a strange place).
Still, it’s freezing out of the sun and the wind picks up at dusk so I set my tent up just below the tree line for shelter.
I wonder where she is. I can’t bring myself to go back and look. I call for her sometimes but there’s no answer. Partly I doubt she even exists, but part of me knows I’m being selfish. Going backwards is just more than I can stand. ‘I’m sorry’ I call. I hope she’s alright.

Morning comes. I look at the view. My good mood of the previous night has turned sour. Each ridge, exposed above the tree line gives fresh hope, and just as quickly dashes it. Part of me wants to avoid them – to avoid the disappointment of having to re-enter the forest after. But the respite is too good to miss. I love the air, and the light, and the chance to dry off, and the fellowship with other living things. You’d never think a moth could be a kindred spirit until you’ve had the company of nothing but millipedes and spiders for weeks on end. Oh colour and movement my soul! I sit and steam in the sun, or rinse in the rain - either way it’s too good to pass up. And then there’s the snow – so white after so much gloom. Looking at it I can feel my retina burning away and it feels wonderful.
I cast my mind back, and I can’t say how many tree lines I’ve crossed. It all begins to merge and repeat. I have had nothing to eat in a long time and I don’t miss it that much. I would like to arrive somewhere some time soon, but it is remarkable that I’m not going mad for it. I just keep going. That’s what there is to do, so I do it.
It gives me time to think though, which I suppose is the point. Kevin said something about there always being a purpose – a meaning – to what happens here, unlike in life, which I know had come to seem completely meaningless to him after he lost his family. I always used to believe in fate – in destiny (I’ve never been sure what the difference is) because I never really felt like I had much of a say in what happened. Here though, it’s different. This is what it’s really like to feel a subtle presence acting on events, making things happen. I know I’m being tested.
I endlessly go over what happened with Ray and the others, and with Lucy of course and I just feel like punching myself. Why couldn’t I just act like an adult like everybody else for fuck’s sake? What was wrong with me? I should have either had the balls to tell them to fuck off or... Or what? Or been like them? Tried to fit in? Hah! No way.

So what was I supposed to do? If I couldn’t be myself convincingly, and I couldn’t stand to be like them, what was I supposed to do? To be honest I’m not even sure I wanted to do anything much. When I was alive I was happy to stay home, drawing and writing stories in my room, reading, listening to music. Well, not happy, but I could stand it. I knew how it worked. Sometimes I couldn’t even get it together to sign on and I’d have to go in all shame faced and apologise for being crap and fill out a whole load of new forms. Then I got the shop job and I was crap at that too – I didn’t know a hawk from a hacksaw but it got mum off my back. I don’t know. Up until my exam results actually arrived I still thought there might be some sort of miracle. I’d always got through somehow before without doing much work at all. It was a shock, and yet I wasn’t surprised when I found I’d just utterly failed. The staff giving out the result slips just shook their heads and looked away and I went home. Nobody said anything about it.

If you want to know the real reason why I wanted to go to university it was because I wanted a girlfriend. Pathetic isn’t it.
I met Naomi at a family do and started going out with her the autumn after I left school. At the time I don’t think I took her very seriously. She was only sixteen and kind of mad I thought. She made me feel quite mature by comparison.
I didn’t even think she was particularly attractive, not initially, but I did what I thought boyfriends did – went round to her house a lot, even took flowers once. We didn’t do anything much, hardly said anything to each other – just snogged, or I sat and watched telly while she studied for her A levels which she was due to take a year early. Seems strange now. Of course I desperately wanted to go further but she wouldn’t let me – she just giggled and made sarcastic comments. It was only then that I realised she was, of course, absolutely gorgeous. Suddenly her ‘madness’ was really sexy. I spent my days waiting to be with her and my nights fantasising about her. That was when I bought her the flowers – I was that desperate. I told her I loved her.
As with the A level results I saw it and I didn’t see it coming when she finally broke up with me. The fact that she was applying to Oxford and was clearly very bright didn’t make me feel any better. She’d been increasingly unpredictable, playing stupid jokes on me – inviting her friends around on the evenings I was there and excluding me from the conversation, giggling and flirting with the boys, pretending to play fight with me but actually hurting me quite a lot, pinching and scratching, and I had to pretend it was cool in front of everyone because I was more mature or something.
No doubt she was hoping that if she treated me badly enough I’d ‘get the idea’ but of course I didn’t. I now know that this is a cheap and cowardly strategy and probably never works on the besotted (After all – you always hurt the one you love, or so my dad used to sing, and he should know) but at the time I didn’t understand at all. In the end she was the mature one and told me very calmly and articulately one day that she didn’t want to be with me any more because I was still living with my parents and didn’t seem to have a future, and she was very sorry and there was even a little tear. I spent the next I-don’t-know-how-long working on my script to get her back, writing letters I never sent (Thankfully. My common sense hadn’t completely given up on me) and wandering about town aimlessly, half hoping to bump into her, half dreading it. The whole thing lasted about two months.

I know now I wasn’t in love, and we didn’t even have anything to talk about but it doesn’t help. No one else wanted me even as much as she did. How fucking pathetic. I did the right thing that night, up on the Downs, just brought the whole stupid thing to an end – done with it.
And now here I am, trudging through wet undergrowth alone for all eternity for all I know. Terrific.

Actually, the forest can be more interesting than I’ve admitted. The trees are not all one kind for instance and I’ve been collecting bits to compare. Although, like everything here, large numbers are difficult to keep track of, I think there are at least twenty different types, plus miscellaneous climbers, ferns and other weeds, not to mention fungi – especially in the clearings and lesser ridges. The best places (except the high tree-less ridges of course) are where the path runs along the side of a precipice. There you see enormous birds, and streams dropping hundreds of metres into the void. I look from above at the top of a huge tree that has its roots somewhere far below, and watch herons nesting in the uppermost branches. Even on some of the smallest twigs there are tiny ferns and mosses clinging, beaded with moisture and supporting bustling colonies of ants. In some places the trees exude a foam of tiny flowers strongly scented of honey. I tasted some and nearly fell into the abyss in the process.
I don’t want to spend an eternity doing this, but actually, it’ll do for now.

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