Summit

Summit

I was born ready.

Simone and Teresa climbing Simon’s Seat on an anniversary of their father’s death. They want to know where they came from, The truth or otherwise of the stories. It’s a cold day. No sunshine. A freezing fog. They can’t see much. Ice has formed on the heather, looks like beads of ice. Their breath steams out in front of them, like horses stamping to keep warm. They stop and eat. Flapjack, apricots. They begin to remember their Dad. Visits to Shutlingsloe. Simone remembers him leading the way up, Teresa on his back. The foods they used to take. Coffee. Whiskey in a hip flask. After walking for miles in the cold, the way your lower back feels, clammy. A sweat forming underneath your back-pack, rucksack, haversack. They used to taste the strong black coffee laced with liquor. It was as if part of them was dissolving. The hot liquid with the other heat, taking a lining off their throats, built up by breathing hard over miles of trekking. The smell of a cigarette when you pass a walker who’s smoking. Some irony in seeing that up here. Simone looks at Teresa. She’s wearing a bright blue waterproof. Below it, a warm pink fleece, her boot-socks come up over her light canvas trousers. Suddenly they are not so dangerous. Are they the same people who killed all those men in the riot? Who are they? How did they gat that way? Her little sister. Dad always used to insist on what he called trail food. Dried apricots, chocolate.
Look down at the path. The earth worn into a groove by the feet of walkers. The ragged edge where the grass is still clinging on, resisting the abrasion of feet, poles, the edges of waterproof trousers, rubbing and wearing away the ground into which its roots are thrust. Simone tapss into the rhythm of her stride. She feels a slight ache in her hip. Adjusts the length and swing of her step, feels the roll of her hips, notices the pain slip away. Now she feels more herself. An ancient thing prowling the winter mists. Dark creature at home in cold dampness. Living for the rush of the kill.
“We could take someone up here.”
“Yeah.”
“I feel like an owl, I want to sink my claws in something.”
“I know what you mean.”
Simone throws her arms up and takes an enormous breath in. She lets it out with a shriek, the cry of a hunting bird swooping, pouncing, rending. Teresa responds with the same primal yell. Their ululations die quickly in the heavy frozen wet air. The silence closes in again.
“Are we going to stop for lunch soon?”

Dead sheep in a field. Or they kill something. Knife. “What’s that noise?”
“Dunno.”
“There look.”
Out of the mist they see the shape of a petrified sheep. Its eyes are glazed.
“It’s stuck.”
“Stupid creatures.” The sheep is trapped in the wire of the fence. There’s barbs on the wire. Already the sheep has opened up a gash in its neck. Now it’s stopped moving. It is helpless and wounded. Terrified and unable to think of a way out of the situation. Like sharks aroused by the scent of blood, the girls come closer.
“Poor thing.” Teresa rummages in her pocket, finds a mars bar. She chops off a section with her teeth, spitting a cubic piece into her hand and placing it beneath the sheep’s nose. The sheep sniffs. Why is something this nice here, when everything else is bad? Sniff. Chocolate. Even sheep know what’s good for them. The sheep takes the section and chews it. The lower jaw moving side to side in the peace-loving motion of all ruminants. Sim and Tess, on the other hand, bite down on their chocolate bars with the vertical snap of a carnivore.
Simone takes out a knife. It’s a large Opinel. A simple French knife. Ostensibly, she’d brought it to cut fruit, not to gut anything.
“Are you going to kill it?”
“I’m doing it a favour. It would die anyway. Up here, injured, bleeding in all this cold.”
She opens the Opinel. The wooden handle has a steel cuff which revolves, locking the blade out. Perfect for stabbing. Simone doesn’t stab, though. She grabs the sheep by a woolly ear. Chocolate juice is running out from the corner of the ewe’s mouth. Her eyes are still prettified, confused. Her jaw is still working the caramel. Now she swallows, in a reflex of panic. Simone draws the blade through the animals throat, enjoying the drag and snag of the cutting edge as it moves through fleecy covering, tough skin, all-too-delicate artery and wind-pipe. The blood pours out in a fountain. The carmine spring of a witch mountain. Teresa laughs. Blood flows and pools around a fence post, wells and pours down into the curve of the path. From the sheep’s mouth, a drop of chocolate-laced saliva hangs suspended for seconds then wobbles and drops into the bloody lake. It goes oily, slips on the surface like a legless water beetle. It’s absorbed. The creature’s final breath rips out through the torn throat, then is swallowed in bubbles. The red foam at the gash fizzes for a second and then is still.