Page 45 of The Wulver's Bond
The first rain hit the island that evening. Arran and Moss feasted on a warming seaweed stew while sounds of violence echoed down the passage from the outside world. The battering rain made for an incessant intruder, multiplying and amplifying with each bounce off the cave walls.
Moss didn’t seem spooked by it, at least. ‘I can hear the joy of the plants,’ he said mildly. ‘We are always happy when it rains.’
‘What about when there is too much rain?’ Arran asked. ‘Won’t they be drowned? Suffocated?’
Moss stared at him for several seconds too long. Something about Arran’s comment had put him on edge. ‘Sure. I guess.’
Then Moss retreated to his sheepskins, and didn’t talk to Arran again for the rest of the night.
Chapter Sixteen
Moss had been fine with the sound of the rain until Arran had put the thought into his head that it was capable of smothering him. The relentless drumming, accompanied by booms of thunder and the thrashing of willow branches, moved into Moss’s ears and occupied them. Every other sound was expelled, unable to match its ferocity.
Moss threw a fleece over his head, clamping it to his ears. Since the crackling fire had died down and Arran had ceased pottering about the cave, he had nothing left to distract him. He couldn’t even tune into Arran’s snores over the sound of the rain.
The wolfman, meanwhile, had fallen into sleep like a brick. He was probably quite used to nature beating on his doorstep. He’d even remarked that he found the background hammering rather peaceful—a lame attempt, Moss was sure, to make up for his earlier statement of suffocation.
Moss scratched at his tattoos. They itched under his skin. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep with the rackets both inside and outside his brain.
Rather than bother Arran again, Moss decided he would sit in the company of the willows for a while. Perhaps with a snack.
He pulled on his clothes in the dark and fumbled for the rucksack under the workbench. Feeling his way along the walls, he made it into the entrance passage and sat down in the mouth of the cave, staring out at the storm.
The bursting clouds mostly obscured the simmer dim twilight, so only the faintest glow lit the midnight sky. It was just enough for Moss to make out the silhouettes of the trees buffeting about in the gale. But he didn’t need to see them, because he could hear and feel them. Above ground their bodies appeared delicate, at the mercy of the storm. Below ground they were anchored, resilient to its attack, and drinking deep of its labours.
He listened further, following the root systems to eavesdrop on the den of polecats. The mother and her kits were fast asleep, cosily huddled together in their burrow. Safe and sound.
Moss stretched out a cupped hand, gathering rainwater. It pelted his skin so hard that most of it bounced off, but what he gathered he tipped into his mouth.
You nourish me,he thought firmly.I am stronger for you. Not drowned.
Moss dug into the rucksack, looking for the packet of trail mix, when his fingertips brushed against the forgotten radio.
He drew it out into the dim light and regarded its smooth black edges. It was even less likely to pick up a signal in the storm.
Maybe he should tell Arran about it. He might have some use for a radio. Spare parts, perhaps. He’d mentioned the old biddy on the cliffs had given him a wind-up radio before.
Moss idly twisted the knobs and pressed buttons while he popped nuts and seeds into his mouth. It beeped occasionally, and at one point he managed to make the tiny screen light up with numbers. He squinted at them. Possibly a latitude and longitude. One of those fabulous follies humans had made up in order to find themselves. They liked to draw invisible lines over the land and point at it to sayHere I am.Whereas Moss already knewHere he was.
He cracked a grin and held the radio to his mouth, pressing the side button like he’d seen Elsie do. ‘This is Moss calling all humans. You’re all fucking lost all the time. How did you lot manage to survive so long?’ He waved his free hand in a mocking, twirling salute. ‘Masters of the earth, am I right? Get bent.’
‘Weed?’
Moss dropped the radio with a hiss. He’d imagined it, he told himself. It was just the rain.
‘Weed?’ the radio crackled.
His heart choked. He’d know that voice anywhere. Even in the middle of a violent storm and masked by the fizz of static.
Logan.
Moss fell on the radio and scrabbled to turn it off. His breaths came sharp and shallow. He couldn’t breathe. There was a great pain in his chest. It was going to burst.
You are safe. You are safe.
Moss placed his hands on the cool rock and visualised Arran breathing right next to him. Long, calm, breaths. He touched the floor with his forehead. Grounded. Safe.
Logan wasn’t coming for him. Logan didn’t know where he was. And even if he did, there was no way he could take Moss back.
