Friday in Summer

I had to let Jasper go, I knew that, like I had known that the stone had to be returned. But it seemed harsh, even more so once we were in the gateway and I saw the agony he was in. We were in a grey place where it was difficult to keep the physical elements focussed. I could sense a floor under my feet, and see a dog. Further away in the greyness, the Dodger was inspecting the walls behind Jasper, who swayed his head from side to side then fell in an untidy heap onto the floor.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, bending down to him.

When the gate is kept open, we are in neither place, but also in both. I go from knowing to knowing. The translation was imprecise, but as I watched the struggle he was having, I could see two facets of Jasper at the same time. I saw the dog I fed and walked and ignored, but also the person who was honoured in the Valley. Each facet required a different energy. He was trying to keep hold of two incompatible states: sentience and intelligence.

Please hurry. he whimpered and lost consciousness. I thrust both my hands under his warm belly to lift him. The Dodger continued examining the walls.

‘There’s nothing to indicate where the gateway is. Does it matter?’ He glanced at me, Taking no notice of my attempt to lift the unresponsive dog, he said. ‘Do we have to get the same spot as Ina did, or is it just all the same wherever we put it.’

‘Put what?’ I asked.

He turned right around and walked towards me. ‘Blood, tears …’ He looked at Jasper and an unspoken element of what he said fell between us.

‘There’s more. What is it?’

‘The third element is death. That’s why Jasper is staying.’

I struggled to my feet with the dog in my arms. ‘I’m not leaving him.’ The Dodger gave the floor at my feet a quick look. I looked down. The dog was still there. The Jasper I had lifted grew lighter and lighter in my arms, then disappeared.

‘You can’t take him.’

I heard the Dodger’s words, but I couldn’t let Jasper go. I would take him with me. My tears fell onto Jasper’s coat. The Dodger watched them fall.

He caught my hand as I raised it to wipe the tears off my cheek. His fingertips tested the length of my nails. ‘Scratch me.’
I could have punched him, or kicked him or scratched his eyes out, but this invitation was ludicrous. He continued: ‘My fingernails are too short. My blood, your tears. We have to go.’

I turned away, bending towards the still body of my dog.

‘You can’t take him. He will stay whether you want him to or not. He’s not yours. You don’t own him. You don’t own anything.’ I stood to face him, Jasper on the floor between us. ‘All we can do is shorten his pain. To do that we have to go. It’s true, Janice. We both have to leave him.’

‘He was never yours!’ I yelled at him through my tears.

‘He was always ours.’ he countered. ‘Friday’s brood belonged to my family in the only way that dogs can be said to belong to anyone. That’s why I will allow him to stay. You and I can only do what we have to do.’ He paused. I cried.

Jasper moaned at my feet. Hurry. It was surprisingly easy to bury my fingernails into the Dodger’s arm and draw blood. With the pain still in his eyes, he touched a finger to my tears, then another to the scratch on his arm. Looking me in the eye, he reached for my hand then placed both our palms against the rock. He spoke: ‘Take a deep breath.’

The first sensation I experienced on my return to the world of space and time, was bone-chilling cold. The next was a lack of oxygen. I was underwater, naked and alone, rising towards the surface. I overcame the urge to take a sharp breath.

When my head broke the surface of the water, the sun was just scheduling her arrival over the most glorious mountain range you have ever seen. Pinks shading into bruised mauves coloured the sky over mountains tipped with snow. I would have been more enthralled, but the water was colder than anyhting I had ever experienced before in my sheltered existence.

I started swimming towards what could have been a stone building on the shore. I would need my glasses in this place a small irrelevant part of me thought. Swimming should have warmed me, but nothing could. Even after so short a time, I could no longer feel my hands or feet and I wasn’t sure that my swimming coach would have approved of my stroke.

The incongruous sound of Pachelbel’s canon greeted me as I stumbled onto the first stone. I wrapped my arms around myself as I emerged like a frozen Venus from the icy pink waters of the lake. I could see off to my left, a plinth with Jasper standing looking back the way I had come. How could I be feverish when I felt so cold?

A voice called out. I shivered my response. Some one came and wrapped a warm cocoon around me before I had emerged fully from the water. I was lifted and carried. I didn’t care who it was. They were warm and my feet didn’t have to work anymore. I rested my head against the warmth of a chest puffing with the effort of carrying me. My ears started working and I realised my name was on my rescuer’s lips.

‘Janice. He was right then. You must be frozen.’ Hamish.

He carried me towards the bronze statue of Jasper and sat me, wrapped in a woollen blanket, on a large rock, surrounded, I soon realised, by purple and pink lupins. My skin had never enjoyed the touch of warm wool against it ever before, I decided as he gently dried my hair with a towel he took from a plastic clothes’ basket beside the rock. When I was dry, he handed me some clothes.

‘This is getting to be a habit, Mr McKenzie.’ I managed to say between shivers. He smiled. Thick socks, woollen long-johns, plaid shirt, knitted hat. ‘Whose are these?’ I stuttered.

‘My mum’s. She’s a ski buff. You’ll need them.’ He was right. I was colder than I have ever been in my life. He handed me a thermos cup with a warm chocolate drink in after I was dressed. I wrapped my fingers around it. I could almost feel them again.
‘Where’s the Dodger? And Jasper?’ I asked a little more coherently.

“They were later than you going into the Valley, so will return here later. I need to keep an eye on the lake for …’ We turned to the water in unison. It was changing from pink to turquoise as the sun appeared through a break in the ranges. We had both heard the call.