WoolfRenaissance

The large full moon hung low in the partly clouded sky above Kent, huge and dirty white. Its mottled face drifted in and out behind the clouds, sending pale shafts of light through the windscreen and into my eyes. It looked determined to follow me all the way to Scotland as I coaxed my old, faithful Astra J along the A2 between Whitfield and Canterbury on my way home to Inverkeithing.

I had noticed it whilst crossing the Eastern Alps in Austria two nights earlier, and even more so while driving through Germany and France the following night. It seemed to have grown larger and drifted nearer, as though it had been slowly descending towards geostationary orbit.

I love to gaze at the full moon hanging low in the sky, as much as the next man, though I admit it frightens me at times. And don’t get me wrong, my name is Wyran Wulff; for some reason my parents call me Wyr, but I call them names too.
Because every single time a huge full moon has hung overhead, some utterly foolish, strange, or dramatic upheaval has found its way into my otherwise rather ordinary life.

Like the average middle-aged bloke, I have grown fond of predictability, and I take comfort in the orderly, stable life I have built.

Even though I do not shy away from confronting challenges, and still launch myself headfirst into unnecessary and risky ventures, I do prefer the cosy warmth of uneventfully moving through space and time; spime, as I like to call it, for it annoys my physics-teacher neighbour Paul Utterly (His actual name is Otterley, but no one knows that.), and his colleagues, who form the Fife Society of Amateur Astrophysicists. The reader is advised not to be fooled by the word amateur.

I had been keeping an eye out for the customary assortment of road-related absurdities since entering the Kingdom; and don't get me wrong again, I love my country; yet, observed from behind the steering wheel, it can take on a rather different texture, to put it mildly.

The worst thing about driving from one end of Germany to the other, or even through France, would be to fall asleep behind the wheel, owing to the sheer smoothness of the motorway surface, or the second worst might be to watch out for the typical eccentric Bavarian retiree on his eightieth birthday hurtling past your Vauxhall as it hardly scrapes the speed limit, in his mid-engine experimental BMW M1, leaving you wondering whether the man is trying to outrun ageing or attempt a factory reset. But that’s how I see it; some people choose to die in pain. I choose to live in pleasure.

On the British motorway on the other hand, the number of possible surprises should never be underestimated. Anything from rim-bending potholes carved into otherwise respectable road surfaces by ten months of relentless rain, to poorly marked roadworks appearing out of nowhere with little warning, or large fleets of seagulls conducting high-speed biological bombardment, which invariably favours the driver's side of the windscreen, can all reasonably be expected.

And then there's your own vehicle, whose electrical system is quietly failing after years of exposure to moisture. There is, to say the least, very little that falls outside the realm of possibility in the Kingdom struggling to remain United.

And so it happened that the J had this strange idea that we had reached Scotland, and suddenly decided to throw a dashboard warning light at me, the one in the shape of an oil canister.
I’d had my J’s dashboard misbehave before, often enough, but, mind you, the errors had been trifling, and they would come and go according to their manners.

That had taught me to accept that, when the British voiture starts misbehaving, the sensible course of action is to keep calm and continue driving, safely if circumstances permit.

However, and hear me out because this might be serious, if at any point the steering wheel and the Vauxhall badge can no longer agree on the direction of travel, great clouds of steam are pouring from under the bonnet and through the grille bearing the Vauxhall badge, or the oil warning light—located right next to the Vauxhall badge—on the dashboard is expressing opinions of its own, it may be worth pulling over.

And there was I, with the oil idiot-light on, without any specific information displayed on the small screen in the instrument cluster, five hundred miles away from home, which should, in any responsible driver—and all the more so in this fine gentleman, who performs all the maintenance on his own car—trigger one unmistakable response: Pull over. Now.

So I did. I switched off the ignition without locking the steering wheel, and coasted, carried by the car's own momentum and nudged by the wind, until it slowed enough for me to pull onto the hard shoulder, hoping it wouldn't be a long stop. Only then did I sigh, close my eyes, and rest my head against the headrest.

Absent-mindedly, I engaged the parking brake. I had given up cursing in my early forties when I realised cursing was nothing but praying, or another way of praying; it only left me feeling weak, and dependent.

The perfect silence of the empty space behind me and the gusts of wind whipping through the roadside bushes outside made me feel cold.
I just sat there, unable to convince myself to unlock the doors, or the bonnet. By my early forties I'd also begun to keep the car's doors locked at all times, whether I was driving, stopped in traffic, sitting inside it, or walking away from it. Especially at night.

I checked the wing mirrors and the surroundings. Apart from the wind, it was a quiet night. Once in a while, a lonely, angry car or lorry—the only sign of life along that wide yet oddly secluded stretch of the A2—would rip by before disappearing into the distance, leaving behind the wind.
Reminding myself that in another life I'd had extensive combat training, I pressed the unlock button.

Another lorry thundered past, its red taillights slowly fading into the darkness before disappearing around the bend ahead.

My eyes swept the surroundings as I stepped out of the car. I breathed in the chill wind carrying the scent of the sea, the reassuring smell of the British coast that I had come to call home, and I smiled. I felt a little safer again. Yes, Germany has excellent infrastructure. Now give me the smell of the British coast and put everybody back on the left.

I was tired, frustrated, and unable to think of any reason why the dashboard warned me of low oil pressure when I had pulled the dipstick out at the ferry terminal back in France and everything had looked right. I began to suspect an undesirable oil pump failure. What a miserable way to find yourself stranded in the middle of the civilised First World, yet feeling every bit as isolated as a desert traveller broken down in the middle of a dune field. There was no trace of oil on the road behind, and the dipstick still showed a perfectly normal oil level.

Once again, it seemed, the dashboard was up to its old tricks.
I lowered the bonnet and pressed it shut. The snap of the latch distracted me just long enough for a figure to emerge from the vegetation beside the road.

I froze, standing there, staring at the enormous creature tearing through the branches as it forced its way out of the bushes towards me.
My first thought was a bear, or a rabid horse. A jolt seemed to shoot from my toes to the top of my head and short-circuit every neuron along the way, leaving me incapable of moving for what felt like forever.

My brain had already worked out that there was no time to turn my back on it, run to the door, climb inside the car, and lock it. I stood there, useless, certain that I was about to be seriously hurt.
The tall beast stopped a short distance away and stared at the car, bewildered by it, before turning to me. It looked almost human beneath an enormous mass of wild, tangled hair, though I could make out very little in the moonlight.

The sound it made sent another electric jolt through me, reaching the tip of my tongue and leaving a sudden bitter taste in my mouth. Then my brain caught up. The beast was a human, and that harsh noise was its voice. It was speaking to me.

The words, however, were like nothing I had ever heard. There was something vaguely French about them, perhaps something German, but the speech was thick with consonants and guttural sounds I couldn't place in any dialect I knew from across the British Isles.

The smell coming from it was hard to bear. I took a step or two backwards, still trying to make sense of what I was experiencing. My next thought was that it might be one of a gang of armed thieves, with the rest waiting somewhere nearby. I had read enough stories of illegal migrants attacking locals and travellers along roads near the Channel ports.

“I have no cash on me,” I said to the apparition. “No money,” I repeated, patting my empty pockets.
It answered immediately, but I couldn't understand a word.
The longer I listened to its voice, the more certain I became that it was female. Human, and female. She was about six feet tall.

Without warning, her whole height began to sink towards the ground until she lay motionless before me.

I stared at her, feeling trapped. My eyes darted around the roadside, expecting figures armed with knives and bludgeons to emerge from the darkness.
Nothing did. Only the wind stirred.

Another car swept past and disappeared into the night.

My first impulse was to go over and see whether she was hurt. Another, considerably more persuasive one whispered that I should get back into the car, lock the doors and drive away from that place as soon as possible.
I listened to the latter.

The engine came to life, and the headlights flooded the roadside, illuminating the woman for the first time. Whatever else she was, she was unmistakably human, though perhaps the most dishevelled human being I had ever seen.

The sudden glare disturbed her. She pushed herself partly upright on her arms and turned her face away from the headlights. Her skin appeared dark beneath the mass of filthy, tangled hair, and there was something so wild and bewildered in her expression that I began to wonder whether she had escaped from a psychiatric hospital—or perhaps even prison.

She squinted towards the headlights several times, despite the obvious discomfort they caused her, then lowered herself onto her side again.

There was something strangely pitiful about the way she had kept trying to look into the blinding light. The sight brought a sudden tightness to my throat.

Despite my lingering suspicion, being able to see her properly reassured me. I got out of the car and went over to her.

“Are you all right?” I asked. She turned her face slightly towards me, but whatever strength she had shown earlier seemed to have left her, so she raised an arm across her eyes to shield them from the headlights. Only now, standing in their full glare myself, did I realise just how painfully bright they were.

She whispered something in that same rasping voice, then let her head sink back towards the ground.

I hurried to the car, grabbed a bottle of water and went back to her. “Have some water,” I said. She gave no sign that she understood me.

“Here. Have some water.” I held the bottle out but kept my distance, unwilling to touch her. Up close, the stench rising from her clothes was almost unbearable.

What caught my eye was the strange brown cast of her skin. It didn't quite look natural. There was something uneven about it, as though the colour belonged more to whatever coated her skin than to the skin itself.

I straightened up and searched around.

My car stood on the hard shoulder with the engine running and the driver’s door wide open. My phone, wallet and everything else I had with me were inside.

Anyone emerging from those bushes could have driven away with the lot and left me standing there in the middle of nowhere. And all because, despite my suspicions, I still couldn't quite believe this was an engineered setup I was falling for like a soft-hearted idiot.

Then the sensible part of my brain finally lost its patience: Just leave, you fool. You know this is a trap, and you're still standing here.

A movement from her interrupted the argument going on inside my head. She tried to speak again and shifted her head, but seemed barely able to control her own body. Whatever was wrong with her had rendered her terribly weak.

I began to lower myself onto one knee beside her, but a sudden chill ran down my spine. I immediately straightened up and looked around.

Nothing, again.

Still reluctant to kneel, I bent towards her instead and held out the bottle.

For a while she did nothing. She stared at my outstretched arm, and even more at the bottle in my hand, then slowly began to reach towards me. As her hand drew closer to mine, a less charitable thought occurred to me. I had no idea what disease she might be carrying, and I wasn't particularly keen on finding out through physical contact.

Her hand stopped short of the bottle. She hesitated and raised her head a little, then studied the bottle with a peculiar intensity.

“It is water,” I assured her. “A bit warm, for it's been sitting in the car for days, but it's drinkable. I've only had a few sips from this one. I've got more in the car, unopened.”

She cautiously touched the bottle and closed her hand around it. I let go. The bottle yielded under her grip, and water poured out all over her hand. She released it at once and it dropped to the ground.

I instinctively stood up and scrutinised the darkness behind the car. I then looked down at her. I knelt and picked the bottle up, almost empty, and hesitated to offer it again. She stared at it as though she were both frightened of it and desperately in need of what was inside.

“It is water,” I said. “Do you speak any English?”

I gave the bottle a gentle shake, sending the little water left inside sloshing from side to side. She watched it with an almost enchanted fascination.

“Water,” I repeated, which probably sounded closer to oo-ta in my failed Scottish accent. “C'est de l'eau. Do you speak French? Italian, perhaps? È acqua... I don't know how to say ‘water’ in any other lang—”

“Aqua,” she murmured. And something lit up inside me. At last, she had said something I understood.

“Are you Italian? Sei italiana?” My question caught me somewhat by surprise, because if she said she was, I could hardly understand the language, let alone speak it. “Do you want anything to eat?” I asked, sticking to the only ‘foreign’ language I tortured the least.

“Eten...” she whispered to herself. It didn't sound like an answer. She seemed to be trying the word out, as though she had just discovered it and liked the sound of it. I laughed, absurdly pleased. For the first time, something I had said appeared to mean something to her, even if we were still some distance from anything that could reasonably be called communication.

The language she had spoken when she first appeared had sounded strangely familiar, as though she were trying to speak something I ought to understand, but pronouncing the words in a way I couldn't recognise.

I'd encountered that before with immigrants whose limited English could be difficult to follow through an unfamiliar accent, but there was something peculiar about the way she spoke that I rather liked.

Her eyes left me and settled on the bottle. She still hesitated to take it, although the way she kept staring at it told me she wanted what was inside. I took a sip myself, then wiped the mouth of the bottle with my sleeve. “It's water. It's safe to drink. Acqua...” I held it an inch closer to her.

She suddenly grabbed the bottle and again closed her hand firmly around it. There was barely enough water left inside to spill this time. She froze, staring at the bottle as though its behaviour had violated something fundamental in her understanding of the world.

Only then did it occur to me that she might genuinely have no idea what a plastic bottle was. Perhaps she had come from some desperately poor part of the world where such things were still uncommon.

There was a mouthful or two of water left in the bottle, so I devoted my attention to showing her how to hold and drink from such a flimsy container, thereby ignoring the possibility that her behaviour might be an elaborate performance intended to lure me into a roadside robbery.

The trouble with that theory was that I wasn't driving an armoured cash-in-transit vehicle — and certainly not one operating on some predictable route or schedule that robbers could plan around, nor did I have anything particularly valuable in my car beyond a few changes of clothes and a couple of low-value debit cards I used abroad.

Besides, roadside thieves were hardly likely to possess the acting skills required to stage such a convincing scene. A cruder setup involving homeless migrants did indeed seem more plausible, particularly given the smell coming from her, but if that had been the case, surely I should have been robbed ten times over by that point.

What gradually concerned me more was simple opportunism: another car stopping and someone taking advantage of how exposed and unprepared I had made myself.

(To Be Continued)