Friday in Summer

At the Source, Jasper was lying quietly beside the spring. He stood as we stepped away from the gateway. Without any words spoken Janice lifted the string attached to the stone over her head. ‘How do I return it, Jasper?’

You’ll need to go to the mouth of the cave and place it back in the stream bed where it was originally. We looked horrified. Not exactly where it was, but in that bed. Then we’ll have to come back to this gateway. It used to open onto an island, but I think it may be underwater now.

This was a worrying piece of news. ‘How far underwater?’ But of course he didn’t know. I tried to remember what I had read on the net as Hamish was organising tickets and accommodation, but I could recall pictures of a green lake and that was about it. I had been preoccupied.

Janice turned and walked into the water. I followed. Jasper stayed where he was. I will await your return.

I still didn’t like the sensation of being in a bottomless pool of water underground, but I swam towards the space under the rock that we had come through on our way here. I panicked as the force of the water seized me. Just relax, you will be safe. Very reassuring, but I had to put my hand up to ward off a nasty bump against a jagged edge of the rock. Then I was through, and gave myself up to the current.

I gave out a loud ‘Yahooooo.’ And waved at Janice as I went rushing past in the near dark. I was out of the cave and scrambling onto the rocky bank when I heard a higher pitched ‘Yahoo.’ and Janice came hurtling out of the cave mouth. I got back into the water and grabbed her as she came towards me. We were forced further downstream, tumbling over each other, pushing and pulling, hurting ourselves on the smooth stones, but eventually fetching up in a shallow. Her face was close to mine. She burst into fits of hysterical laughter.

When she finished and we were sitting in the shallows enjoying the movement of the cold water over our feet, she turned to me: ‘That’s done then.’

‘What?’

‘I had the stone in my hand as I came out of the cave. Somewhere in the middle of that wrestling match you instigated, I let it go. I thought there might have been spooky voices or a ripple in the fabric of time. But there was nothing.’ She didn’t look worried. She really looked more content than I had seen her in the Valley. ‘So I suppose we have to go then.’ she said.

I stood and silently held out my hand to her. She took it and we walked hand-in-hand back towards the mouth of the cave. She stopped just before the entrance. ‘It was about here, you know. I saw Mossman bend here and pick up the two stones. McKenzie and Ina were over there.’ She pointed up to the track beside the cave. ‘The dog, Friday, she …’ Janice cast around trying to see the border collie in her mind’s eye. Her eyes widened as she entertained an unwelcome thought. ‘She was looking at Mossman. She saw him take the stones.’

The implications were unwelcome. ‘Perhaps she didn’t realise he would take them back with him. Or maybe she didn’t realise the implications.’

‘He put them in his mouth. If he was doing that, he had to have been aware that Ina would not allow him to take anything. So Friday would too.’

We walked silently into the cave, thinking of the implications. It didn’t change what I had to do.

At the rock, Janice went through the water first with hardly a shudder. I went into the water, expecting a short, aggressive swim. However, the water was stronger than I had allowed for. It pulled me down until the light could be seen above only as bright as a star in a distant galaxy. I called to the Valley, but she was silent. Then another rock blocked my view of the light, and I could no longer tell which way I should go. I panicked, thrashing in the gloom. Then my head hit a rock, and I was in the sky, looking down on a stormy windswept country.

There was a man beating his way through the storm. A solid looking bullock with a cart attached, faded into the distance. The man’s full red beard was wet and dishevelled in the wind. At his side a black and white dog raised her nose to receive a gust full of rain. You could tell it was cold. The man wore a great flapping crofter’s coat, which he pulled close around him to keep out the wind. He yelled something which was drowned out by the wind. The dog and the man found themselves on the banks of a swift-flowing dirty brown river. They turned upstream, straining their eyes to look at the debris that was being washed down the river. The dog darted ahead at one point.

The man continued trudging through the storm, using his shepherd’s crook to anchor himself when the gusts proved too strong. The dog came back at one stage and wrapped herself around his legs then went back the way she had come. The man followed. The straggly bush parted and he came out into a valley where a blue lake nestled between foothills of tussock dotted with shrub. The outlet into the torrential river came from either side of a narrow spit of land which disappeared into the lake. Even with the storm battering him, the man took the opportunity to admire the lake.

In the open the wind was even fiercer, but the man and dog continued, the dog using her nose to search out the scent they were seeking. The man looked towards the shores of the island where trees and rocks were submerged by the rising water. The dog gave a bark and then disappeared into the water. He yelled at her, but then shed his coat and, swimming strongly, followed the dog’s bobbing black and white head. He was not an elegant swimmer, but managed to arrive at the tree eventually. The body of a man was caught in the branches of the tree. The exhausted dog used her last burst of energy to swim around the tree and onto a stony strip of land. The man untangled his companion from the tree and swam with him to the same part of the shore. He checked that the other man breathed as soon as he was able to stand. Being assured that he did breath, the tall red haired man pulled himself and his friend to a spot above the water. Then he collapsed onto his back.

An old woman appeared and leaned over him, the rain forming a curtain around her face. Her tears fell on to the small area of his face that was not covered by his bushy red beard. Time passed. The rain eased.

She helped him stand and then he lifted his friend, and followed the woman carrying the dog. They climbed a hill, slowly but with gathering strength, following a track until they reached a rock face. She touched her face, then his wounded side and smeared the blood and tears on the rock. As the vision started to fade, they disappeared, leaving their clothes in a pile at the rock face.

As I rose to consciousness, I heard the voice of the Valley: Death, blood and tears opened the gate. The same is needed to close it. Wake now.

I opened my eyes and a young woman was bending over me. ‘Poor Dodger.’ she said. ‘The cut on your head healed, but you wouldn’t wake up.’

I took a moment to come back to the cave, away from the remembered cold and pain of the vision. ‘I saw McKenzie. I saw him going into the Valley. With Ina? It was Ina eventually but she was an old dead woman. I think.’ I shook my head. Janice sat back from me. I was on the floor of the cave with the spring bubbling at the back.

Jasper stood beside Janice, attentive and patient. You saw your sire’s beginning. Before he came to the Valley with Mossman, the ancients came here over water. The dead were set on boats and given to the river to find their way to the Valley. This was the old way. It doesn’t happen anymore. There is another way in, but it doesn’t connect with this Land. I thought about what I had seen.

‘There was a rock. The woman placed her hand and McKenzie’s on the rock and they disappeared.’

The rock you saw is on the other side of this cave, in one sense. The gateway takes us around the rock. We will have to seal it from inside. We have to go. When we leave we will be in the gateway for a time.

I shivered, remembering my father in the gateway. ‘Who else will be in there?’ I asked. Janice looked at me, then remembered what I had told her of my father.

There will be no one else. Those who wait will stay back as we perform our last duty in the gateway. He stopped. There was a pregnant pause. The dog continued. I will not go with you through the gateway.

Janice looked at him. ‘You have to come. That’s the point. We go in and heal and close and …’

And guard. I heal my family by staying to guard.

Janice was shocked. ‘No. No you’re not going to stay here and die. You are my dog and I forbid it.’ Jasper looked her full in the face. He said nothing, and Janice’s face crumpled.

So it was that we arrived inside the gateway with Janice crying, my head aching and Jasper bent on self-sacrifice.