The Elementalists

Chapter 3

Kass

'Who are you?' I glower at the man out of the corner of my eye, wrapping my cloak tighter round my shoulders. After I passed out at the top of Sgùrr Amhlaidh, the next thing I remember. . . was someone taking my hand. He pulled me up, clutching me tight under his arm—there was nothing I could do but hang there, wheezing and dying—and god knows how but he managed to haul me away from the crumbling mountainside to the safety of this cave.

I lie, drifting in and out of consciousness. I welcome the blackness—I don't want to be awake, I don't want to be alive—every breath is a burning hell of pain. I don't want to know. I don't want to feel. Instead, I curl myself up into a ball and let the darkness carry me away, over and over again. 

Eventually, the man grows bored. 'This wasn't quite the thanks I was expecting,' he grumbles, flipping a chunk of meat over on the fire flickering in front of us. The roasting smell churns my stomach. 'Doesn't cost much, you know. A "thank you". Cheapest two words in the dictionary if you ask me. Criminally underused. Such a pity.'

I ignore him, pulling my hood over my head.

'No way, kid, not happening. I haven't gone through all this to find you to let you wither away and starve. Eat, for heaven's sake.'

Why won't he stop talking? I wrap my arms around my ears. All his talking. It makes it impossible to block out the images in my head, my mother's voice, the sound of my own screams—

'Oi! Stop that right now.' Something kicks me in the side. I flinch out of my ball to find the man towering over me. I glare up at him but then realise it isn't the memory of screaming I can hear. It's me. Screaming now. I clamp my mouth shut and close my eyes, fighting back the heat that burns beneath.

'Aw, come on, now. I didn't mean to make you cry.' Hands, far gentler than I expected, grip my arms and pull me upright, coaxing my arms away from my face. 'That's it, there's a good lad. Won't you eat something? I have goat, freshly caught you know, some idiots had a farm not far from here. Took a few for myself, didn't I.' The man grins. My stomach heaves, and I'm careful to aim my vomit at the man's legs. Which goat was it? my mind shrieks. Woolly or Duster? Harley or Curly? Which of my friends is roasting on the fire?

'Ugh.' The man drops my arms like hot stones, dabbing at his trouser-legs with a handkerchief. 'That's disgusting.' The parts of his face I can make out are scrunched in distain. 'I sure hope you're worth all this trouble.'

'If a bit of sick's your biggest problem today, then lucky you.'

'Oh ho! He has a voice at last, does he?'

I scowl and turn away. 'Who are you?' 

He's an odd-looking man. Most of his face is hidden behind a thicket of beard, the rest covered by a floppy grandpa-style cap that went out of fashion years ago. He doesn't look old—not that old anyway—but there's a certain world-weariness to his skin that makes him seem older than he probably is. He crouches down beside me, now keeping a healthy distance.

'Well, the answer to that depends on whether you're going to behave yourself.' He grins, showing off gaps in his teeth, and scrubs sweat from his russet cheeks with his sleeve. 'I'm not sure my constitution can take much more of your crap. Rescuing you was no piece of cake, you know.'

I don't even know how to respond to that. 'Well, I'm sorry to have been such a—a nuisance,' I eventually spit, unable to stop myself shaking. 'I guess—I guess I should just behave myself and not be upset at all—'

'Over what happened to your family, yeah, yeah.' The man starts digging a bit of gristle out of his teeth with a scraggy fingernail; I stare in wide-eyed disbelief. 'Oh, get your head out your ass, kid. You're not the only one with problems, you know.'