from there to here

The Heavy. We met and talked. We liked him. Ali.

“Look, if you had walked all the way from Ness we would have had to call the coastguard out by now” I railed. “It’s only another hour or so from here – assuming we go the right way and I don’t kill you first”.

We’d seen two eagles soaring up above some gully that had some unpronounceable Gaelic name on the map. Might have been sea eagles but we weren’t sure. They looked like eagles – big and ugly with fingerly bits on the end of their wings – and they were by the sea. So they might have been sea eagles. Someone, I can’t remember who, told me there were sea eagles up here. Here in the middle of, of…. of Ness and Tolsta. More towards Tolsta really. Obviously.

By this time I’d already tripped over an empty can of cider, fallen on my face in a gully and slipped on my ass on the slippery grass. I was uncomfortable. My boots were soaked and the boy was limping. He didn’t want me to know he was limping but since he was walking like a three legged dog, it wasn’t hard to tell.

Six hours it took. Six hours of grass, rock and cliffs. Big cliffs too. If the boy had gone on much more he might have seen the bottom of one of those cliffs. But he didn’t and I didn’t. Just as well since his calves needed feeding at home.