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Ready for publication

Precious Blue, novel (excerpt)

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Chapter one. The Lane

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I was standing in the middle of a lane bordered by walls of colossal pines. Their paws hid the sun, and their roots bulged at the edges of the track. The sky blue boot of my poor, old Viva was sticking out of the underbrush. My left hand was clutching my right, slippery beneath the fingertips. I knew why it felt like this. Blood. Pulsating and hot, and I was too terrified to look.

I checked if I still remembered my name—Osten, and today’s date—eighth of October, Wednesday. Then, I shuffled up the lane into the light, back to the T junction. Diverted Trafic. The sign had been written in crooked letters and nailed to a wooden barrier. A rusted-out digger slumbered in the ditch. Tree stumps dotted the side of the B road as it snaked into the first slopes of the Highlands.

I started to shiver. Not a single car in sight. Nothing but dust, the ringing of insects, and my hand. It was swelling up. I dashed up and down the road, away from thoughts of dying of blood loss or infection. Gangrene, the wet kind, with a rainbow of colours. And sepsis.

I kicked the sign over.

First aid kit. Did I remember to pack it?

On the way back to the car, I stopped under a resin-smelling pine.

One look. Maybe it was not so bad. My hand throbbed, my neck and shoulders ached too. I wanted to sit down first, in case I fainted.

Sitting against the tree, I decided to count to ten. No, fifty. ‘Twenty, twenty-one.’ The breeze cooled my sweaty forehead. ‘Forty, forty-one, forty-two.’

 

 

‘Anyone home?’ Asked a woman’s voice, calm and dry.

I snapped awake. She was standing over me in a grey, hooded trench, dark hair loose about her thin shoulders. Frown lines notched her high forehead. She moved her eyes, green and tired behind thick-rimmed glasses, from my hand to my face.

I almost burst into tears. ‘Does it look like minced beef? Do you see maggots?’

The woman’s eyebrows narrowed. ‘Negative. You’ve got a gash, but ninety-nine per cent chance, it’s nothing to fret about.’

I pressed the back of my head into the tree and darted a glance at my hand. Puffy, with a jagged smile near the knuckles, and covered in blood.

‘God! Nothing to fret about?’

‘Affirmative. Never had bumps and bruises when you were a kid?’

‘Heaps,’ I lied.

I rolled my shoulders and willed my body to relax. The woman disappeared in the undergrowth and returned with a leaf. The day crept towards twilight, and against the pinks and purples of the sky, her face sharpened with all the symmetry and cheekbones of a Roman bust. Under her coat, she wore a grey shirt and grey trousers, and a belt hung with leather pouches and vials of carved bone. Mountains of trinkets had moved through my workshop over the years, but none as glorious as these.

‘Little beauties,’ I whispered.

‘What was that?’

‘No, no. Sore and tired, that’s all.’

 She pushed a canteen strapped across her chest out of the way and squatted by my side. Her old leather boots groaned. She placed my bad hand on my stomach and crumpled the leaf. It smelled green. The wad, pinched in her skinny fingers, hovered an inch above my wound.

‘You know, there might be a first aid kit in the car.’ I pointed to my Viva. Trying to get up, I propped myself on one elbow.

‘There’s positively no need for it.’ She gestured for me to lie back down.

‘Really? A leaf from a ditch?!’

Her mouth became a button, her nostrils arched.

‘Then again, a leaf is all you need sometimes. Right?’ I pulled a smile across my face. ‘Thank you for stopping. I reckon you saved my life.’ I wiggled back into my spot by the tree.

The colour rose in her cheeks. ‘That’s an exaggeration.’ She nodded at the wound. ‘This will need closing, but as I said, the odds are in your favour.’ Holding my arm by the wrist, she poured water from her flask on the bloody mess. Then, squeezed a few drops of the green juice onto the cut and wiped my hand with the leaf. ‘It will dull the pain.’

‘I see.’ It dulled nothing. It stung. I turned the other way.

The pines creaked and swayed, brushing the gathering clouds. Everything here had bark and moss, and weight. And I was a foreign body with no roots or leaves, wrapped in flimsy skin.

‘What happened?’ asked the woman.

‘One of the many worst days of my life.’

‘Many? I don’t envy you.’

‘No one should. Sorry, not making any sense, am I? I’ve never been in a car accident before. Should’ve stayed on the road. The tarmac looked fine. But I followed the diversion sign, didn’t I? Always doing as I’m told. And then something big and hairy jumped out of the woods. Across the bonnet and back into the woods. And… I’m still trying to piece it together, sorry.’

‘That’s quite alright.’

‘I think I pressed the accelerator instead of the brakes. Smashed right into that tree. Glass everywhere. A branch snapped, I think. Caught my hand. It could’ve got me in the throat, easily. Awful. Just awful.’

‘That would certainly spoil a holiday.’   

‘No holiday, this. It’s meant to be a very important trip, you know. To see my parents. They had the excellent idea to move to some forsaken hole near Lairg. No offence.’

‘None taken. Technically, the place is full of forsaken holes.’ The woman was now sitting next to me on the carpet of pine needles, fumbling at her belt. She freed one of the engraved vials and smelled its contents, screwing up her face.

‘I’m Osten, by the way.’

 ‘Hester.’ Our eyes met for a moment before she went back to digging in her pouches.

‘You don’t sound Scottish. Please, tell me if I’m prying. I feel like I’m rambling. Do you think it’s the shock?’

‘Negative.’ Hester smiled with a corner of her mouth. ‘Inquisitiveness is not a crime. I live here now, but I’m from the south originally.’ She motioned in the direction of the B road.

The sky had grown fuller and rumbled with thunder. I wanted my slippers, a blanket, and a hot drink. The idea of sleeping in the car made me shiver as much as the mushroom-scented damp that had seeped into my jumper and trousers.

‘Whereabouts is the nearest village? Town? A place with a surgery and a telephone?’ I squirmed. The mountains and woods were endless in the greying light.

‘The nearest place is Tigh Na Eun, ten miles away. They have no surgery.’

‘Ten miles and no surgery. No time to waste then.’ I looked at my wristwatch. ‘Let’s pray the car’s got ten miles in it. Need to put a bandage on this horror. Get to the village. Phone for help.’ I pulled myself to my feet. Drops of blood landed on Hester’s boots. She stood up too, and I found myself rising on tiptoe. She slouched, and we were almost eye-to-eye.

‘You can’t leave yet. You require assistance.’

‘Assistance is what I’m going to get.’ Slowly, I walked off. Hester followed me.

I looked under the car. It was leaking fluids and had a punctured tyre. When I turned the ignition key, the engine barked a few times and choked.

‘No, no, no.’ Flinging open the door, I pressed my shoulder into the frame, dug in with my feet, and pushed against gravity. A stab of pain in my hand brought me to my senses. I searched everywhere for the first aid kit. Venturing outside of Foxhills for the first time in twelve years, and I forgot to bring the most important thing. ‘I’m fucked.’ I dropped my forehead against the door.

‘You most certainly are not.’ A bite in Hester’s voice. She rubbed the bridge of her owlish nose. ‘The car is scrap, but there’s another solution. I can put you up for the night. Then we can think of salvaging the rest of your very important trip.’

‘I would hate to impose.’

‘The offer is there, take it or leave it. Or take it.’ She folded her arms.

‘Yes, sorry, yes, thank you.’ I tried square breathing. In – hold – out – hold, nose only. It kind of worked. ‘I think I startled a deer.’ The car’s bonnet had a dent the size of a workman’s boot with five parallel scratches. ‘Maybe.’

Hester examined the crater. ‘Those deer can be quite daft.’

The tree tops rustled louder as the wind picked up. One-handed, I struggled with the zipper of my suitcase. When it opened, I pulled out an undershirt and wound it around my hand.

Hester scratched her head. ‘We need to stop the bleeding.’ She reached for my hand and placed it on the bonnet.

‘Didn’t you say it was nothing to fret about?’

‘I said a ninety-nine per cent chance.’

‘I knew it was bad. Why didn’t you just say so? I feel kind of queasy or feverish—'

‘—Stop. Listen. I can help.’ Her eyes locked on mine. ‘This will look most unorthodox.’ She glanced over her shoulder and brought her lips to my ear. ‘But it works.’ Out came the two vials she had been holding in her fist. From one, she applied a dark, phenolic-smelling paste in a circle around my wound and put a dot on each swollen knuckle. She sprinkled beige powder from the other vial on top of the gash and stared into the distance, eyelids fluttering. Her fingers massaged my hand, her mouth shaped silent words. Veins and a sheen of sweat appeared on her forehead.

‘Folk remedy?’ I forced a smile.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ She breathed out, keeping her eyes down. ‘Give it ninety seconds.’

The wound kept beading with blood. ‘Is this good or bad?’ I asked, shifting from foot to foot. ‘Are we still waiting? I think it itched for a second or two. Or burned. Or, maybe, not. Was it meant to itch?’

Hester tapped her fingers on the bonnet. ‘It’s not working. Shit.’ She lifted her face to the great trees. ‘The skin aspect takes the tar of man. The primary state…,’ she mumbled, then peered inside her vials. ‘Maybe they’re too old.’ She snatched a notepad and a pencil from an inside pocket and started scribbling. ‘Maybe the cut is too deep.’

The rain interrupted her. Driving through the canopy, it hammered on my Viva’s metal body. Hester raised her hood and wiped her glasses on her sleeve.

‘Apologies. Got distracted.’ Arms crossed, she eyed the scene, with me as the centrepiece—rumpled, bloody, covered in pine needles. ‘Let’s apply a tight bandage and take you back to mine… to finish the repairs, as it were. The abbey is only an hour’s walk from here.’

‘Not far at all.’ Trying to sound cheerful. In the evening cold, my damp clothes stuck to me like a bodysuit of ice. I unpacked my waterproof jacket. Hester buttoned it up for me and dressed my cut with the undershirt. I was still juggling the choices: go with her, walk off, or curl up inside the car. The pines sagged, and the rain poured through my Viva’s broken window. My hand throbbed. Daylight was seeping away. ‘Ready when you are.’ I pulled my red suitcase from the backseat.

‘Do you need all this? You can return for it later. It’s safe here.’

‘The suitcase comes with me.’

Hester shrugged. ‘Do you, at least, want help with it? It must be what—eight kilos? Based on the dimensions and packing density.’

Blinking like mad I hid my eye roll, strangled the wet handle with my left hand, and did my best to stand straight. ‘No help needed, thanks. It’s light as a feather.’

After a few turns on the spot, Hester dived into the woods. Her long legs danced over the deadfall, and I dragged myself after her, feet sinking with a crunch into the cushion of moss and rotten twigs. Soon, she stopped at a thin dirt road vaulted by boughs and waited for me.

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