Fraser's Voices (10 page)

None of this would have happened if One-eye had come back. Legends tell of an old fox with one eye who had survived the most terrible thing that can happen to a wild animal, hunting among the black peat hags of Rannoch Moor. But he was not seen again around Dunadd.

No hunting territory is without a fox for long, however, and when the winter frosts hardened the ground and game grew scarce a new claimant appeared on the scene. Feargal was not much more than a cub; a young hunter in his first year, he had still to mate. He came one evening in January, snuffling up the hillside from somewhere to the north, and found the old trail that had been used by One-eye and his ancestors. There was no smell or track of fox so he pushed on hungrily in search of a territory he could mark out as his own. Deep in the wood he came on the main entrance to Barook's network of tunnels which the badger had shared with One-eye for years.

Barook had recently completed the winter clean-out of his set. He had dragged out all his old bedding and collected fresh bracken and dry leaves and brought them underground to line his sleeping quarters. Now that he had no fox to share with, his set was cleaner and fresher than it had ever been before and Barook grunted with pleasure as he surveyed it.

Up at the entrance Feargal also grunted with pleasure. This looked like an ideal home for a young fox with nowhere to go and his nose told him that there was no rival living there. He could see the signs of a badger's occupation, but he had met badgers before and knew that they were usually prepared to share their quarters with foxes. So he crawled confidently down Barook's main tunnel.

The badger had just wakened up and was enjoying a good scratch before clambering out for his night's hunting. He stopped at once when he heard the movement above and then caught the sharp stink of fox.

“What moves?” he growled.

“Feargal the wanderer,” was the reply. By this Feargal meant that he had no permanent lair or territory of his own and slept each day in a different place in whatever cover he could find.

“There's no room here,” snapped Barook.

“I'm sure such a mighty digger as yourself would not grudge a homeless fox a corner in your set.”

Badgers are easy-going by nature and at one time Barook would have made no objection, just as his father had not objected many years ago when One-eye had arrived as a young fox at the mouth of the set. But in the months since One-eye had disappeared Barook had got used to living in quarters that did not smell of fox and now with his winter clean-out just completed he was in no mood to entertain another strongly-smelling guest.

“Get out,” he snarled, shuffling forward on powerfully armed paws.

Feargal backed up the tunnel growling, for he knew that no animal is a match for a badger underground.

When he was clear he barked, “May your hide rot in your miserable rabbit warren, flat foot, slug eater… “ and Feargal added all the insults he could think of on the spur of the moment. Then he went off to hunt down wind, well away from the angry badger. He skirted the blackened area where the previous year's great fire had raged and his night's work took him round by the edge of the wood and over the crumbling boundary wall which separated it from the moor.

By this time the sky in the east was turning from black to greenish grey in the first glimmerings of the dawn, so that the dark cliffs of Sgurr Mor stood out against it. So the fox was glad to find, in the middle of a thicket of bracken, the entrance to a long abandoned rabbit warren which, with a little digging and scraping, he was able to enlarge enough to give him shelter for the day.

Here Feargal decided to stay; there was no other fox in the territory and the hunting was as good as any he could expect to find at this time of year; besides ,the old warren could be enlarged with a bit of scraping to give him all the shelter he would need.

One evening, about a month after he moved in, Feargal had a visitor.

He was standing at the mouth of the earth sniffing the night air and was just about to trot off to begin his night's hunting when there was a rustle in the bracken.

“What moves?” he barked.

“Sionnaidh* the wanderer,” was the reply and a small vixen stepped out onto the trail. “Who are you?”

“Feargal on his own,” said Feargal to show that he did not have a mate and that it was safe for her to come closer.

She stepped forward shyly. “Is the hunting good here?”

“The hunting is never good in the Dead Time,” grumbled Feargal. “But it's better here than in most places,” he added quickly because he didn't want her to go away.

She crept closer and they sniffed each other's scents with approval. That night they hunted together and in the dawn Sionnaidh curled up beside Feargal in a corner of the old warren.

In the twilight of the next evening, before going out to hunt, they danced the heather dance together, on hind legs, paws on each other's shoulders, in front of the entrance to the warren.

After that night's hunting Sionnaidh said, “I will hunt with you if you will let me and I will bear your cubs, but first we must make this wretched hole into an earth fit for cubs to be born in.”

Feargal was as lazy as any dog fox and he was quite happy with his lair as it was, although he had to admit it was not up to the standard of Barook's set, or even of the earth he had been born in. But he didn't want to quarrel with Sionnaidh; so he simply said, “Yes darling,” and agreed to help her excavate a palace for their litter when it arrived.

For the next few days Sionnaidh scrabbled and scraped; her forepaws cut trenches through the clean earth and her hind legs drove the loose soil back out of the tunnel in great scoops.

Feargal looked on approvingly and gave a little advice now and again when he thought it was needed: “Darling, a little bit to the left and you'll miss that big boulder.” But he was really dying to roam after rabbits under the stars.

Sionnaidh dug for herself and her unborn cubs. She knew that if she had to depend on Feargal to make a home for their family she might as well give birth in a field like Ardair the hare. At last the earth was complete. Feargal surveyed his mate's work with pride, as though he had done the whole thing himself.

Only on the south where the ground rose towards a small hillock, were the arrangements unsatisfactory. Here Sionnaidh's tunnels ran into a jumble of boulders. At first she tried to dig round them and excavated a lot of loose pebbles, but eventually she was stopped by the bigger stones, great square boulders past which she couldn't dig, and the new earth had to stop there without that extra passage to the surface which most foxes prefer to have for safety.

*Pronounced Shoanay Outside the entrance, among the stiff stalks of the bracken, the spoil from the digging lay in loose heaps. Anxious not to attract attention to the opening, Sionnaidh scuffed these further away so that the loose stuff was spread out over the Goat Trail; fine soil and loose chips and gravel, and among them a stone different from the rest because when it fell out onto the open track it shone in the sunlight.

Fraser wasn't sure that he wanted to spend his Easter holiday at the cottage. One-eye would not be there – but even if by some miracle he had returned Fraser would not be able to speak to him, and without his gift of voices he felt like a stranger in Dunadd.

On the other hand he was looking forward to seeing Jim Douglas again and Rona, and this almost made him forget about having lost his animal voices.

He was soon reminded.

Outside his bedroom window there was a tall sycamore tree and in its branches, at about eye level with the upstairs windows of the house, a pair of magpies were building their nest. Fraser could see them regularly coming and going with sticks and twiglets in their beaks. Occasionally on these journeys the magpies were chased by larger birds, rooks or gulls.

All Fraser could hear when this happened were caws and chirrups, but he knew from past experience that, although they sometimes could pass on useful information, the conversation of garden birds was not usually very interesting.

Then one day the hen magpie, chased closely by a rook, dropped something hard which clinked when it fell onto the roof tiles and rolled down into the gutter. The rook checked itself in its flight, took a quick look at what the magpie had been carrying and then showed no further interest.

Fraser could see it from his window, lying there glinting just out of reach. He ran downstairs and came back with a long-handled broom. With this he was just able to reach the thing and push it out of the gutter so that it fell onto the lawn in the garden below.

He ran down at once and searched feverishly until he found it. When he picked it up he saw that it was a ring; not an ordinary ring but one with a curious spiral twist running all round it; he cupped it in his hand and found that, for its size, it was surprisingly heavy. Fraser slipped it in his pocket and it was then that he wished he could have his voice back so that he could ask the magpie where she had found it.

He didn't mention the ring to Jim Douglas when he visited him the next day at Kilrasken farm. Jim tended to scoff at things like that as “girls' toys.”

But he did show it to Rona when he met her walking Sandy a few days later. After the usual welcome from the dog he reached into his pocket:

“Rona, have you seen anything like this before?”

Rona took the ring, held it between her finger and thumb and looked at it closely. Then she slipped it on her finger, but it was too big. Finally she weighed it in the palm of her hand.

“It must be gold. Feel the weight of it,” she said, handing it back to him. “Where did you get it?”

Fraser told her.

“Magpies often steal things and hide them in their nests,” she said. “Somebody must have lost it. It's a pity… “ she broke off.

“It's a pity,” Fraser continued for her, “that I can't ask the magpie where she got it.”

“Yes, but it's much more important that you stay well. Remember what you promised about the pills. You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“No, it's OK. I'm not going to stop taking them just because somebody's lost a stupid ring.”

“You'll have to hand it in at the police station. After all, it's gold and it might be valuable. It's very unusual,” she added. “I've never seen one like it.”

They went together to the police station and the officer on duty took down all the details and gave Fraser a receipt.

“If anybody claims it they'll probably get in touch with you. There could be a reward if it's really gold. If you don't hear anything come back in six months; if it hasn't been claimed you get it to keep.”

That night a storm struck Dunadd. As the thunder rolled and rumbled around the house Fraser could feel the crashes shaking his mind; shaking, shaking! And as the lightning darted in the dark outside he felt as though spears of fire were darting inside his head.

Eventually he fell asleep, still shaking.

When he wakened the thunder had stopped; outside there was a strange stillness as the ground soaked up the heavy rain that had fallen during the storm.

Then he heard the cry, “A kill; a mouse,” as Nephesh called to his mate.

Over the next few days Fraser had two important conversations.

The first, which he did not fully understand, was with the consultant, who called to see him at the cottage. What really mattered was what the consultant said, not to Fraser himself, but to his mum and dad outside his bedroom door when they thought he wasn't listening.

“It's alarming that there should have been a recurrence so soon. Last attack was October, wasn't it?” He paused. “There is a new drug I'm going to put him on, but I have to be quite frank with you; there is no guarantee that it will work.”

“What if it doesn't?” asked Fraser's dad.

They must have heard him turning in bed because the consultant lowered his voice so that Fraser couldn't hear what he said; but he thought he could hear his mum let out a gasp, “Oh no.”

Vaguely Fraser felt he should be worried, but everything seemed so much like a dream that he decided he would simply follow wherever the dream led him.

That meant he had to talk to the magpie. As soon as his parents had seen the consultant out he got up and tiptoed shakily to his bedroom window, opened it and whistled across to the bird who was sitting on six bluish green eggs she had just laid in the nest.

“What moves?”

“My eggs are warm. The chicks will be hatching soon.”

“You dropped something on my roof the other day.”

“What was that?”

Fraser found this difficult to answer for there are no words for “ring” or “gold” in bird talk. “Something like a coiled up centipede. It was hard and shiny.”

“A snail?” suggested the magpie.

“No. You couldn't eat it.”

“Don't remember.”

“Please try. You were being chased by one of the rooks.”

“Now I do remember something nice and shiny. I'd forgotten about it.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Don't remember.”

“You must remember. It's important.”

“I've completely forgotten.” She fluttered her wings to emphasise how complete her forgetfulness was and then went off into a song about how beautiful her chicks were going to be.

As so often before, Fraser was infuriated by the silliness of garden birds, but the hen was only interested in hatching her brood and there was no chance of getting any more out of her. In desperation he turned to his old friend Klamath who was flying on one of his patrols to the lochans on the moor.

“A bright shiny thing like a coiled centipede. No good to eat,” repeated the heron to make sure he had understood the question, for he didn't see the point of looking for anything of that sort. “I can't see things like that myself when I'm in flight, but I'll ask Eye of the Wind when I'm up on the moor and if it was on lower ground Kievarr the kestrel would be the most likely bird to see it.”

Two days later Klamath was back from his fishing expedition on the moor.

“Beyond the wood,” he honked, landing on the roof of the garage from which he could see Fraser at his window. “On the Goat Trail where it passes a heap of big boulders. Kievarr says he saw it. He dropped down to hover for a closer look but it was no good to eat. Good fishing!” and the big bird launched himself into the air and flapped off to try his luck on the wetlands by the shore of the loch.

Fraser knew the spot.

About a quarter of a mile from the ledge where Dyer's caravan had stood, the Goat Trail skirts the boundary wall of the wood for a short distance before starting to climb the steep, bracken-covered slopes that led on to the moor. At one point a jumble of boulders, partly overgrown by ferns and moor grass blocks the way and the trail twists sharply to the left to avoid it. This must have been where the magpie had seen the glittering object and, although it was no use to her either for eating or nest building, she had taken it simply because its shiny gleam caught her eye.

Neither Fraser, Klamath nor Kievarr could understand this, but Rona did at once when Fraser talked to her about it again.

“It's a beautiful thing; that's why she took it,” she explained. “I'd love to have it myself. You boys are so thick. You're not interested in anything you can't eat. You're just like Sandy.”

“You're just like a magpie,” he laughed. “You've got no more brains.”

“Well, it would be nice if you helped to find its owner. Somebody's probably desperate to get it back.”

“Well now I know where the magpie found it.”

“How do you know that?” Rona was immediately suspicious.

“Klamath told me.”

“Have you stopped taking your medicine?”

“No!”

“Then how do you know what Klamath said?”

“The thunderstorm last week. My voices came back then.”

“Oh!” Rona realised how serious this might be for Fraser.

“What I don't understand is who could have dropped it on the Goat Trail? Nobody lives there,” he went on.

“Hill walkers sometimes go up that way to climb the Sgurr.”

“But why would they take off a ring in the middle of a hill walk?”

“I don't know.”

“If I wasn't sick I'd go and have a look for myself; there might be clues; bloodstains; maybe a weapon. There's probably been a murder.”

“Have you been reading too many detective stories?”

“There might be footprints at least. I wish I could go.”

“You mean you want me to go and have a look for you?”

“Do you think you should go on your own?” said Fraser, concerned.

“I'll take Sandy with me; he might just sniff out something interesting.”