Free Winter Damage by Natasha Carthew Page A

on. What if the boy was found with a hit to his head in the shape of a double barrel? What if the old woman got on board with her clever tongue and the police got involved? What then?
    The whole county out hunting and the news headlines wondering how things had got so bad, children murdering children, whatever next? She was a fugitive now, a murdering fugitive.
    Throughout the morning Ennor occupied herself by spying bits of wood that peeped through the frozen snow and she tied them into a bundle with the rope Rabbit had used. Her head still swam from the gorse wine and she promised herself a pan of tea heated on a fire of her own soon enough.
    The collected wood was nothing but a few damp sticks and she eyed each patch of shadow that stretched across the high looped plains ahead for anything resembling trees. The search paid off when, in a sprawling cut of valley, she saw the green-white canopy of a pine forest.
    Ennor knew forests were dangerous places; the hostile forestry commission protected them from theft and she made sure to step just once past the boundary to scan for fallen limbs.
    Her ankle throbbed and occasionally buckled when she bent a certain way and she kept herself going with thoughts of warm fire and hot tea.
    She hauled what wood she could manage far enough away from the forest to not be seen and dug a snow circle with her boot, lighting some of the dry gorse she carried in her shirt pocket and feeding the fire in an orderly manner until it was big and smiling and she smiled back.
    Snow was boiled to water and then to tea and she sat on the tarp and savoured it and thought about the boy with his rude hands and his teeth snipping at her flesh like a wild thing and the strength in her bones weakened to a brittle snap and she thought she might sink down into the snow and peat earth and never be found.
    Tears bubbled in her eyes and ran into the corners of her mouth. She licked them away and washed the salt down with the tea and lay close and tangled to the fire and closed her eyes to the rising dawn.
    Sleep came in an instant and the young girl clung to this other world that was safe and familiar and she pulled the stillness into a place of covered thoughtlessness.
    In the passing hours while she slept the sun came and went and with its passing it pulled a drag of heavy cloud from the east which held a new kind of darkness.
    Ennor woke with a start and she called out into the abyss that was isolation. The fire was long gone and tiny flakes of ice caught on the wind and landed on her face. The snow had returned.
    Fast as a bullet she packed up her few belongings and chased the path she’d made crossways to the valley and towards the forest for shelter.
    Beneath the canopy of guarding trees Ennor felt as if she were among friends and she caught her fingertips on the tall trunks as she idled. The smell of rotting pine needles fixed in her throat and smelt like funny foreign tea and she pulled fresh needles from a lower bough and put them in her coat pocket for when teabags became history.
    At first the snow did not come into the forest and it was as if another set of laws ruled the place, something set in the granite shift of stone beneath the light-bounced surface.
    She took out her notebook and followed the winding route of words she’d written and forests were written here and there and everywhere with confusion and she snapped the book shut. All she could see was an imprint of the yellow door that would lead to Mum.
    As Ennor walked the forest came to life with whistles from its duelling boughs and she thought she heard music and smiled and marvelled at the trees and the wind and perhaps the brilliance of her imagination.
    The comforting music became louder as she walked and, further still, voices joined the music and the raucous singing threatened to lift the canopy of trees clean off the ground.
    Ennor stopped stony dead and she turned an ear to the sound and stared hard and fearless into the fading