Carack

Carack Ch1 revised

Hi, please read and comment, this is my first novel and you are my first readers, I'd be grateful for your comments or votes. For those who have read this first page and not carried on - please let me know why - I'd be grateful. 

Chapter One The Hill

Was it six meters or six feet that he was thrown, Gerent wondered? He couldn’t grasp what they were saying. Anyway he knew that the front grill of a car hurt like hell when met at speed and so did the road. He wanted to ask the guy in the paramedic jacket to turn off the wailing noise, but was too tired. Black or a grey car, he couldn’t remember. It had happened so fast, his mind was unable to focus. Gerent hoped it was a Mercedes though, there would be no cudos in telling his mates he’d been hit by a Fiat. Images came and went. Faces appeared, People leaning over him. People speaking at him. But he was too tired to reply. So very tired. The world slipped away from him. His eyes closed. He slept.  

Warm in the dappled summer shade of a large oak tree Gerent was awake. He did not want to open his eyes yet. Lying on his back he could feel the grass under his hands. He made lazy pulls at the pliant waving blades with his fingers. The leaves overhead were rustling in the gentle breeze and there was the sound of a bird singing from its branches. It was peaceful there after everything that had happened. The street noise was quiet. No cars, no tapping heels, no mothers chatting or babies wailing. There were none of those perpetual police or ambulance sirens wailing. It was so bereft of the noises that he was so accustomed to that Gerent began to wonder why. With reluctance he felt he should open his eyes and find out.

He felt a relaxing breeze brush across his face; it was so refreshing in the heat. He wished that he could lie there, in the small back garden of his London home, with his eyes closed, forever. The thought that his mother would appear soon to have a go at him for something or other intruded upon him. Since becoming a teenager he had managed to always be in trouble. This was not a problem experienced by his twin brother Hugh, the real hero of the two of them. Gerent listened to the bird singing and he realised that a bird with such a voice had never perched in their tree, never mind sing there. The only birds he could recall in the garden were starlings.

Gerent flicked his eyes open to catch a glimpse of the unusual creature. He looked up through the leaves of the oak at a powder blue sky with thin white clouds pulled across it. He felt it as if the amount of material they were made from was too little and was being stretched out to fit. He watched the leaves lift in the gentle wind, turning up their undersides to the sky. He tried to make out the location of the bird. A slight turn of his head sent a jarring pain through his body, it all felt stiff and sore.

 ‘That would be because of the accident,’ he told himself.  Gerent sat bolt upright. ‘The accident?’

A wave of dizzy sickness came over him with a flood of pain caused by his movements. He sat still for a few minutes to allow the sensations to subside. When they had his eyes focused on the scene before him. Gerent was not, as he had assumed, in his back garden. Instead he was on top of a hill overlooking a large flat valley. It was criss-crossed by rivers and ditches, with blue hills and the sea in the far distance. Gerent could not believe it. He glanced around, away to his left was more of the flat valley with another distant range of hills. Behind him there was a similar view and to the right a coastline and the sea. Rather than being in his familiar enclosed garden Gerent found he was on the very top of a solitary hill. The hill was a solitary steep mound that arose from an otherwise flat plain. The oak he leant against was the one feature on the summit and he was alone.

‘Perhaps I’ve forgot and we’re on a picnic or something,’ he thought. ‘Hugh and mum will come up the hillside at any moment. But where am I?’

With care and using the oak as support Gerent stood up to look down the steep slopes of the hill, which were just covered in grass. A few sheep wandered along the hillside grazing, but apart from them and birds flying in the distance Gerent could not see any other sign of life. He turned around, clutching hold of the tree trunk, to try and locate anyone below him at the foot of the hill, someone hiding perhaps. He thought that his twin brother Hugh might be playing a trick or something, but he could not see anyone.

Gerent felt weak and faint so he sat down again and crossed legged leant back against the rough bark. He wanted to think, to try and reconcile his location with his recent memory. He felt that something wasn’t right, it wasn’t right at all. He tried to concentrate on recent events but all he could remember was going to the amusement arcade with Hugh. He was still wearing the same trainers, jeans and T shirt, his ‘Meat Loaf World Tour’ T shirt, that he had had on then. He thought hard. He had the impression that there had been some sort of accident but he couldn’t recall any details. Gerent now had a headache with struggling to think. He went through his pockets but found nothing, but then he’d only had a one pound coin in there anyway when they had set out from home to walk to the arcade.

‘Hugh,’ he shouted, ‘HUGHhh.’ There was no response; just the rustle of the leaves and the sound of the bird flying away, his voice seemed to be swept away to nothing. Anxious Gerent scanned around again. This time he saw a man leading two horses. The man was crossing a field at the foot of the hill and was heading in his direction.