she said she was ‘unco fou’.
Another good thing about a bender is that we could keep it warm with just a pyramid fire instead of a long fire and that would use less wood and that was another good reason so I cut the tarp down and shook it off and then went to look for saplings and thinner branches and Peppa went and got wood to keep the fire going.
I lashed some of the saplings together thin end to thin end and made them about four metres long and sharpened the ends and then forced them into the leafy ground and that was not all that easy because there are a lot of rocks and stones in the ground, so I put little piles of stones around each one when it was in to hold it. I spaced the poles about two metres apart each and then looped them over and made a dome shape. It was not as easy as it looks in the handbook either.
The sun was out now and some of the snow was getting soft and dripping from the trees, and I was kicking snow and leaves and muck out from round the bed under the new dome frame when I heard the helicopter.
It was low and chugging and I knew what it was as soon as I heard it. I think I had been expecting it. And I shouted in a big whisper ‘Peppa get down.’ She was dragging some wood back towards me and she just dropped and rolled under a holly bush and I crouched. I was looking up through the dome frame and above me I saw it as the noise came louder going chop chop chop chop chop. It was white underneath with E90 RESCUE in black letters. It was so low I could’ve hit it with the airgun probably less than thirty metres. It went right over us under the trees crouching.Then it flew still low out towards the loch.
I stayed still and shout-whispered to Peppa ‘Stay there.’ Then I sprinted down towards the burn and jumped over the rocks and up the first slope into the trees.The noise was fading and when I came out in the bracken it was halfway down the loch, still low. Then Peppa was there beside me in the ferns and she got hold of my hand and said ‘Is it after us?’
I said ‘I don’t know. I think it’s mountain rescue.’ It had disappeared behind the trees on the other side. Then we started to hear it again and it came out far over on the other side of the loch zooming along against the snow on the trees. It was coming back round and I grabbed Peppa and we rolled into the bracken and I pulled it closed on us and we lay there.The chop chop chop chop chop getting louder. And louder. And it must’ve come right back over us skirting our wood and heading north towards Magna Bra and the moor. The chopping faded. It was cold and damp in the ferns there on the snow and leaves, but I made us stay there and counted to 180 saying elephant in between each number to make it three minutes.
I said ‘Let’s go back.’
Peppa said ‘Have we gotta move now?’
I said ‘No. Not now. If it’s mountain rescue it means they’re looking for someone up there. In the snow.’
That meant there were people up at Magna Bra or on the moors above our wood.
I said ‘Come on.’ And we sprinted back through to the shelter and I got the map and we sat under the dome frame and looked at it. Magna Bra was at the top of the moor above us and our woods stopped about a mile from the start of the moor.
‘Ah’m going to look’ I said and pulled the compass out of the rucksack.
‘Ah’m coming’ Peppa said.
‘NO Peppa stay here and wait for me, they’re looking for two of us.’
She said ‘Nah’ and got up and started sprinting north through the wood. I shouted but she was gone faster than I could get after her so I started off.
The burn ran north and you followed it all the way to the top of our woods. I was cracking through the sticks and bracken and trees but I couldn’t see Peppa not even her back. It was all rising ground and the snow was thicker the further you went up. As long as we stayed in the woods we couldn’t be seen from the helicopter or anyone out up on the moor, the trees broke up the outline and against the snow looking in you wouldn’t stand out plus my fleece was grey and Peppa’s was black and they are good camouflage colours. But not against snow in the open once we got to the top.
Following the burn up you could feel the trees start to thin out and see the moor rising up and I slowed down and started to creep and I was puffing from running and getting panicky about Peppa because I still couldn’t see her. The sharp wind had started again and was blowing straight into me and stratus clouds were moving in from the north and I kept checking the compass. The wind was whooshing in my ears and I was stooping and running trying to stay low.
Finally the trees stopped and the burn went on into a gorge with steep sides and there was a ridge above me and I could see Peppa lying flat at the top and looking over it. I wished it would get dark so we’d be covered unless they used a light. I could hear the chop chop chop far off again now as I ran up towards Peppa and she was peeking over the ridge top by a rock.
I got to her and jumped down next to her and peeked over. The moor was huge and white with ridges of snow and it rose up and there was a hill at the end and above that another hill. About 150 metres away the helicopter had landed but the rotors were still going and there were little flashes of orange and yellow from men’s coats moving by it and snow was starting to come down again.
We watched through the snow and they were putting a stretcher in and there was three guys, two in bright-coloured coats and a guy in a blue thing and it looked like they had another guy on the stretcher.
Peppa said ‘Wanky walkers.’
I said ‘We need to get back in the woods before they take off.’
And we backed down the slope and ran back into the woods and got in far enough to be covered. We could hear the helicopter blades getting fast and watched it rise up above the ridge. They couldn’t see us and the snow was starting to really blow in.
Peppa said ‘You know what I fancy?’
I said ‘What?’ and she said ‘Sausages.’
We didn’t have any but we had a rabbit and we had to finish the bender so we walked back down the burn into the woods.
We had to work fast to finish the bender and stretch the tarp over it, and I made a doorway with an arch-shaped pole and bound it on with paracord, then we thatched it with spruce really thick and we put new spruce on the bed because it had got wet.
It started to get dark and the snow kept on but not as bad here as up on the moor and we got a pyramid fire going just outside the door of the bender and cooked the rabbit. We had tea and Peppa ate the last bit of Dundee cake. The bender was getting covered in snow and inside it felt warm because snow insulates.
They were the first people we’d seen since the bus driver on the day we came here. And although I tried not to I started to worry about it and them being there and there being walkers and wankers in cagoules up towards Magna Bra but they hadn’t seen us and they hadn’t been looking for us.
Chapter Five
Birds
The next day I made another hoop and scraped the new rabbit skin and then I used wood ash and oak leaves and wee to make the paste and I spread it over both of the skins and left them caked on the skin side to cure for the day. Then I washed my hands in the burn.
For food we had two boxes of belVitas, a cherry cake, a bag of brioches, two bags of walnuts and two bags of almonds and a big bag of raisins left. We needed to hunt again today for our main food and I decided to try to shoot birds with the air rifle.
There are a number of species of birds in the forest and on the moors. For birds of prey there are Red Kite, Kestrel, Sparrowhawk and Osprey but Osprey are migratory and would be gone by now. There are also Golden Eagles and White-Tailed Eagles and I want to see one of those. There are also Owls, probably Tawny Owls. Other migratory birds you get here are Great Grey Shrike and Woodlarks.
The birds you can eat are Black Grouse and there are also Capercaillie. Rich people come up here in August and shoot the Grouse on the moor tops and I wondered if I could get one even though we only had an airgun and not a shotgun. I thought