foothills

He’d been in the mountains for two years. His territory was somewhere in the foothills of the Pyrenees and he moved his camp a few miles once or twice a month. When he first arrived he had intended to keep moving south west into Spain but avoiding the coasts meant he’d kept inland and higher in the mountains, even when the winters were harshest. The cold never bothered him in the same way as the heat and the dry.

The autumn had been short. The summers were getting drier and hotter and he noticed the winters coming sooner. When the snow had begun to fall he pushed himself further up the hills and found a small inlet, not quite a cave. He counted the stars every night. The numbers diminishing each time like a countdown from the heavens.

The last person he’d seen had been an old man from a small village in what was Poland. He’d pointed to where he was from on the man’s beaten map. He’d also made for Spain with his family but he was the last one. They spent three nights together and had enjoyed each other’s company without words. They had laughed and hunted rabbits together.

The old man had heard the same stories about Spain but he’d also pointed to parts of south Morocco that he believed were safe. He was looking to cross the Alboran sea around Motril. The man knew it was pointless and tried to tell him but the old man had made up his mind. Before he left he’d asked him to keep hold of a locket for him. It was in the shape of a heart.

The man kept the locket in a pocket on his coat. He never opened it but he felt for it instinctively every few hours or whenever he remembered it. He rubbed it between his fingers until it glowed warm in his palms. It was the first piece of metal he’d held in his hands for years. He had been hunting with wooden traps and rocks sharpened on other rocks and with ropes made from the long grass. The smell of it reminded him of his son’s bicycle, metallic and oily. He had built his son a bicycle from used parts only three weeks before they had arrived from the seas. His son rode the bike a handful of times and it was one of the last smells he could remember from that time.

On a cold night three days later when he knew the old man would be dead, he climbed up for two miles to reach a viewing spot. The glow from the coast was just visible. His breath hung in the air and scattered the red light like a Chinese lantern. He’d heard a wolf from across the valley the previous night. The man knew they must have migrated from the coasts in the north or maybe even from Portugal.

They’ll be all over this place soon, he said to himself. There’s not enough food for both of us and they won’t share.

He felt the locket in his fingers. He let out a long groaning howl into the air. He waited. The silence in the air was harsh and incongruent to the unreal and pulsing glow from the coast. He howled again.

A response came from the darkness. Chorused by three more. They can’t be more than half a mile away, he thought. He wasn’t afraid of the wolves. He’d seen things that had rid all fear of nature from his mind. But he felt nature pushing him on. The wolves needed territory. They had a right to survive.

He knew in this moment his entire existence was just a matter of holding his place in the world. He had to occupy space and time and create new thoughts and memories. He knew his was one of few bodies left on Earth and he regarded his consciousness as a last vessel of his people, and his body their connection to the planet. His flesh would become dust and carbon and every new thought would echo unchanging forever into the expanse.

The next morning he packed up everything and started down towards Spain.