![]() ![]() This story illustrates misgivings that Torver farmer Arnold Lancaster has had over recent years as he tends his sheep lambing in fields below Coniston Old Man and despairs of the edicts to reduce sheep on the fells, so producing lank, unkempt grasses. He remembers scrambling desperately to reach the top, nylon ropes melting and his spectacles obscured by smuts. Retired wool merchant Alan Austin, who was to write the Fell and Rock climbing guide for the valley, was one of five climbers on the crag. This happened nearly 50 years ago on Pavey Ark when snuff-dry ledges on this Langdale crag erupted in a sheet of flame. Morgan started forward, his face swimming and rippling as if made of limp plastic, and Jack had time to see there was something clutched in his hand, something hung around his neck, something small and silvery.E njoying the mosaic of blossom and 40 shades of green foliage that Lakeland has been so gloriously presenting, it is hard to imagine flames sweeping across the fellsides overhead and a black pall of smoke above. A moment later another of the terrified cow-sheep struck him and bore him under again. Wolf bent over and retched up a great muddy sheet of water. He's found me, oh dear God, he's found me. 'Wolf' Jack screamed, but thunder exploded across the blue sky again, drowning him out. He got up again quick, coughing and choking, one hand feeling inside his jerkin for the bottle, afraid it might have washed away. One of them bunted his hip hard and Jack went over, inhaling water. Jack fought his way toward those hands, still dodging the cattle as best he could. He saw Wolf's head going down again, both hands waving. Jack whirled clumsily around in the stream, barely avoiding another cow-sheep, this one floating on its side, dead in the water. It had been tied at the nape of his neck, Jack saw, but most of it had come loose.īut the Queen's son died an infant, died, he. The hair of Sloat's Twinner was long, black, flapping, somehow dead-looking. His hair renewed itself, growing forward, first tinting the rondure of his skull, as if some invisible being were coloring Uncle Morgan's head, then covering it. As he came he did his own werewolf number, changing from Morgan Sloat, investor, land speculator, and sometime Hollywood agent, into Morgan of Orris, pretender to the throne of a dying Queen. Jack stood, paralyzed, as Sloat bulled his way through the hole between the two universes. ![]() I-Īnd the small silver thing in his hand had turned to a small rod tipped with crawling blue fire.īut he struggled on toward Wolf, pushing a dying, weakly convulsing cow-sheep out of his way to get there. Sorry, but I've got to see if I can avoid getting drowned by Wolf's herd before I see if I can avoid getting fried by your doomstick there. ![]() The parka wavered, disappeared for a moment, then came back as a cloak and hood. That's it, he's gone, must be, let him go, get out of here. It was like listening to a man shout inside a telephone booth. His voice carried, but it had a muffled, dead quality as it came from the reality of that world into the reality of this one. 'There you are, you little shithead' Morgan bellowed at him.
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