CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

The mushroom hit the ground and Jane went flying. She bounced off the flesh of the mushroom and speared down a steep slope, her shoulder smashing against a large rock. She slid for twenty feet through rocks and stones and spiky bushes and sticks and leaves and animal droppings before finally coming to rest against a boulder. She lay for a moment, gathering her wits, then sat with her back against the boulder. Lines of blood ran from her hands and knees, and her shoulder felt like something important had come unstuck. She lifted her left arm and moaned with pain. She was alive though - if pain can be used as proof of life.

Had Trinket been killed?

From somewhere up the slope, hidden by rocks and trees and darkness, there came a grunt of someone exerting energy.

Jane opened her mouth to call out, and found there was all sorts of pain around her jaw, which she must have banged along with everything else.

Trinket’s voice drifted, disembodied: ‘I can hear you.’

‘I am alive,’ said Jane. ‘Are you hurt?’

A moment later Trinket emerged from the dark, picking her way down the steep slope, over rocks and around branches, appearing to be as nimble as ever.

‘Are you hurt?’ Jane said again.

Trinket came right up to Jane, and said, ‘I had a piece of luck on the landing, and I seem to be fine.

‘You can’t kill evil,’ Jane muttered.

Trinket smiled and her teeth were light grey in the dark.

Jane said, ‘I have pain everywhere. I hope I haven't broken something.’

‘Try and stand.’

‘What if I have hurt my back?’

‘Just stand,’ said Trinket, with a kind of weariness.

Jane rolled around and struggled to her feet. Her left knee had pumped into a balloon of pain. Her left hip hesitated before consenting to support her. Her left shoulder was something else.

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‘I can keep going,’ said Jane. ‘But I will be slow.’

‘Can you ride a horse?’

Jane wanted to explain that she came from the North of England where there was a lot of horse riding to be done along with a few things that Trinket may not be capable of. But Trinket wouldn’t care, and she wouldn’t be impressed.

‘I can ride a horse, but where can you get a horse up here on the side of a mountain in the middle of a wilderness.’

‘There is a man named Strapper who lives not far from here. He owes me a favour.’

Jane put weight on her left leg and although her knee screamed out, resisting with pain, it seemed to hold, and she took two halting steps that kind of worked.

‘I lost my bow and arrows in the crash,’ said Trinket. ‘I will borrow a set from Strapper.’

A slight wind moaned up through the trees and around the dark cliffs.

They walked for half an hour, and every step that Jane took sent ripping pain through her body. The skin around her knee was stretched so tight you could play it like a drum. Her left ankle kept rolling on the rocky surface. The ground fell steeply, and Jane slipped and slid into rocks or trees. Things would loom up suddenly, like ghosts. One branch, white and crooked, got Jane in the eye so that her eye stung and began to water.

Trinket didn’t fall once, and made impatient noises when Jane fell, and when Jane moaned Trinket spoke sharply, ‘Think tough thoughts.’

Jane thought, 'Cow.'

They had discovered a thin animal path that moved across the steep slope, and were now following the path, which made travelling easier.

‘Strapper drives his goats along these trails,’ said Trinket.

The path emerged onto a level clearing, where there was a bark hut sitting on a foundation of stones. It had a stone chimney that sent up a thin curl of smoke, a remnant of a dead fire. Behind the house was a fenced patch, where dozens of little moon reflections came from the eyes of goats, quietly watching the approaching females.

They went up onto a narrow verandah. Weeds grew up between the sagging deck. The air smelled damp and rotten. The front door was made of jagged planks.

‘This does not look habitable?’ said Jane.

‘Well there is a tiny chance we will be murdered.’

Trinket lifted the latch and pushed the front door open.

She yelled into the black interior, ‘Strapper, wake up you little weed.’

‘What the clinking feck,’ said a high pitched voice from inside.

‘Don’t stab me Strapper … it's Trinket.’

A moment later a skinny little fellow came shuffling into view. He had a hunched back, and silver hair roughed up by sleep. He wore a night shirt that dropped to gnobbly knees.

The man’s eyes twitched land squinted, and he made a mucous sound. He looked at Jane and shook his head with distaste. He put a hand on the door frame and growled:

‘What hog rot are you up to ... princess?’

‘Strapper, my mountain friend … I am here for that favour you owe me.’

‘Well you can leave immediately, because I owe you nothing.’