‘Do you have the same feeling?’ Jamie asked as they stepped into the first sparse signs of the pine wood that skirted the foot of the mountain.
Ally started in surprise. The feeling? That she was walking beside a person she could happily walk alongside forever? She wasn’t going to admit to that feeling, that’s for sure. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, trying to stop her voice turning pitchy.
‘That everything here has been around way longer than we have, and it’ll remain after we’re long gone?’
‘Ah, that feeling!’ She let herself laugh. ‘Your brush with the reaper has made you dowie.’
‘Dowie?’ asked the lowlander.
‘You know? Wiser, but maudlin?’
‘I can assure you I’m just as daft and just as cheery as I’ve always been. Well, maybe I’m a wee bit cheerier recently.’ This was accompanied by the hint of a meaningful glance at her.
She hadn’t noticed at first but Jamie was offering a hand for her to take. When it dawned on her that’s what was happening, she found her own hand, entirely of its own volition, jumping into his. The sensation of touching struck them silent again.
It was good. It was absolutely right.
Through the thickening patches of bowed old spruce they passed. Most of the trees had branches only on their leeward side and were bent from having weathered squalls since they were saplings, their windward trunks entirely bare.
Hoping not to betray their shared awareness of the electric crackle between their clasped palms, they pointed out the bracket fungi on the trees and the mushrooms around the roots. They swiped midges away, spitting and blowing their way through the irritating, nipping clouds of hungry beasties. They froze at the sight of a red squirrel twitching and scratching only feet away and didn’t move a muscle until it had gone.
When they left the trees they found themselves in the shadow of the mountain, still a distance away, but they were already in the pull of its gravity, that strange mountain magic that makes frail human beings want to strap water bags to their backs and spikes to their boots and tackle heights only the eagles should know.
Jamie consulted his app and pointed their way up a long flight of granite steps – neither of them could tell whether they were mountain-made or put there by man.
Ally fought the urge to ask if they were nearly there. She thought of the cheddar sandwiches in her bag and hot milky tea and the prospect of a cosy picnic, but Jamie announced there’d be at least another three kilometres’ clambering before they hit the area earmarked for their rest stop.
‘It’s steeper than I thought it’d be,’ she told him as he helped haul her over big black jutting rock steps.
A green figure emerged up above them on the stones, and he waved them down from a distance.
Ally narrowed her eyes to focus his face. ‘It’s one of the mountain rangers. Don’t know who, though.’
As he drew closer she made out light brown hair and a scruffy beard spoiling what was probably a handsome, and young, face beneath it all. He’d be handsome if he wasn’t scowling, that was. A quick, amused glance from Jamie told her he was reading this man’s grumpiness too.
A patch embroidered into his moss-green fleece bodywarmer told them his name: Finlay Morlich. Not a name Ally was familiar with.
‘What brings you onto the pass th’ day, folks?’ he asked, his accent as thick as his beard.
‘We’re doing a bit of sightseeing,’ Jamie told him.
‘Hmm.’ Finlay cast a glance down to their feet, not liking what he saw, evidently. A pair of amateurs.
‘Are you out patrolling?’ Ally asked.
‘Always,’ Finlay answered primly. ‘Making sure folks ken what they’re taking on.’
Ally had to turn and look behind them to stop herself chuckling. That’s when it struck her how high they’d climbed. She nudged Jamie. ‘Look how far we’ve come!’
The clustered grey roofs of Cairn Dhu down in the valley were matchbox small.
‘See? You’ve covered mair ground than you thought,’ Finlay said. ‘It’s easily done if you’re no’ used to the range. Are yous turning around now, headin’ hame?’
‘Not yet,’ Jamie told him. ‘We’ve a picnic to have first. Up at this open spot with the bothy?’ He showed Finlay on the app. Their destination was greeted with a look of surprise.
‘I’ve heard it’s a beautiful view,’ Ally threw in, wanting to placate this wild man of the mountains who clearly thought them a pair of dunderheads.
‘Beautiful, aye, it is,’ Finlay conceded. ‘But this park can be deadly for the underprepared. Have ye provisions?’
