Entry Island by Peter May Page B

where I shouldn’t. But he brought his big whiskery face down next to mine and said, ‘I want you to go for the doctor, son. If we can’t stop the bleeding your mother’s going to die.’
    Fear shot through me like a bolt from a crossbow. ‘I don’t know where the doctor lives.’
    ‘Go to the castle at Ard Mor,’ my father said, and I heard the anxiety that choked back the words in his throat. ‘They’ll get him quicker than any of us. Tell them your mother’ll die if he doesn’t come fast.’ And he turned me around and pushed me out, blinking, into the daylight, charged with the saving of my mother’s life.
    Propelled by a mixture of fear and self-importance, I ran pell-mell up the slope between the blackhouses and on to the path cut into the hillside. I knew that if I followed it far enough, it would take me to the road that led to the castle, and although I’d never been there I had seen it from a distance and knew how to find it. But it was a long way. Two miles, maybe more.
    The wind hit me as I crested the hilltop and nearly knocked me off my feet. I felt the rain spitting in my face, as if God was contemptuous of the efforts of one small boy to save his mother. That, after all, was His business.
    There was no way I could keep up that pace, but I knew that time was of the essence, so I slowed to a trot that would eke out my reserves of energy and at least get me there. I tried hard not to think as I ran, switching my focus betweenthe path ahead and the bleakness of the rocky, treeless hills that rose around me. Low clouds bumped and bruised the land, and the wind whipped through my clothes, tugging at the nails I used as buttons to keep my jacket shut.
    Vistas appeared and disappeared. I spotted the curve of a sandy cove between a spur of hills. In the distance dark purple mountains were ringed by clouds, and through an opening to my left I saw the standing stones on the rise beyond the big beach that we called simply Traigh Mhor. And still I ran. Settling to a pace that numbed my thoughts and calmed my fears.
    At last I saw the road winding across the hills ahead of me. It was rutted and muddy, rainwater gathering in cart tracks and potholes. I turned north on to it, splashing through the puddles, feeling my pace slow as my strength was sapped. The land seemed to fold itself around me, closing off the sky. I could remember seeing men labouring to build this road, but the stones they laid were lost in the mud, and the ditches they dug were full of water.
    I pumped my arms as I ran to try to get more air into my lungs, and then I came to a sudden standstill as I rounded a blind bend in the road. Ahead of me a horse-drawn trap was overturned in the ditch. The horse lay on its side, still attached to the trap, whinnying and struggling to get to its feet. But I could see that one of its hind legs was hopelessly broken. They would shoot the poor beast for sure. But there was no sign of a driver or passengers.
    The rain began to fall in earnest as I approached the upturned vehicle. I jumped down into the ditch, which was half-hidden by the trap, and there sprawled among the roots of dormant heather lay a little girl, blue skirts and black coat fanned out around her, black hair pinned up under a royal blue beret. Her face was deathly pale, and the contrast with the bright red blood oozing from the gash at her temple was stark. Lying beside her, on his back in the ditch, was a middle-aged man, his top hat resting some feet away. His face was completely submerged, and somehow magnified by the water. Bizarrely his eyes, like saucers, were wide open and staring up at me. I felt myself trembling with the shock of it, realising that he was quite dead and that there was nothing I could do.
    I heard a tiny voice moan, then cough, and I turned my attentions back to the little girl in time to see her lids flicker open and reveal the bluest eyes.
    ‘Can you move?’ I asked her.
    But she looked back at me with vacancy in