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The Orange Pig The orange pig was very much aware of its own destiny. It had sought the advice of astrologers and genealogists to plumb the secret depths of its family history, both astral and physical. Its small, tight eyes stared into the future expectantly. Glorious was the destiny steadily treading its way across time towards the snout of the orange pig. The green pigs living in the neighbourhood of the orange pig felt a certain distrust for the orange pig when they had dealings with it. They couldn’t quite pinpoint the problem, but the problem was real. "He doesn’t look you in the eye," they said to each other. "It’s as though he’s thinking about something else," they said. The orange pig remained unaware of their scrutiny. His destiny pre-occupied him. That I am here is proof enough to me that there is a reason that I am here, thought the orange pig. He rolled in the mud as the other pigs rolled. He ate the scraps as heartily as any. But something in the orange pig was removed and remote. On market day, many green pigs were always taken away, but the orange pig remained and merely glanced at the vehicle as it passed and the green pigs cried. In his sty, the orange pig waited. One night the moon was full and he left the farm to walk alone on the hillside. He walked past high conifer trees and the fallen pine cones snapped between his trotters, returning to a fine dust. He walked until the hill became so steep that his heart rampaged in his thick chest like a bat released in a small cave, rebounding off the walls. Something in the orange pig’s blood quickened as he neared the top of the hill. Suddenly, from behind a bush, a long wolf emerged, its eyes twin silver jewels in the moonlight. "Good evening," said the wolf. The orange pig was too shocked to answer. The wolf had obstructed the orange pig’s path and the pig and wolf stood opposite each other now on the hillside. "Do you live near here?" said the wolf. "What right have you to stop and question me?" said the pig loudly, with an element of angry squeal in his tone. The wolf shook his head. "I only wanted to make sure that you are alright. Are you alright? I thought perhaps you might be lost." "I have the right to walk here if I want to without being questioned," said the pig, but his trotters were shaking. The wolf’s eyes narrowed and he smiled solicitously, showing scimitar fangs. "Of course you have!" said the wolf. "Of course you have." The wolf sniffed. "Has anyone suggested otherwise?" said the wolf. Just then, from the highest branches of one of the nearby trees, a rustling and scratching sound began. It grew louder and louder. The orange pig and the long wolf turned to look at the tree, their eyes raised. Something started to fall violently through the branches of the tree, striking bark and cones. Eventually, the falling object landed heavily in the grass with a final, hopeless-sounding thump and squelch. The wolf gave the pig a hard stare, then walked over to the area of grass where the object had landed. The wolf sniffed and pawed in circles. It occurred to the pig that this might be his only opportunity to run. But his trotters seemed paralysed. He saw that the wolf had found some object in the grass. The wolf was batting the object along the thick grass. A dead bird’s plump, feathered body rolled to a stop just by the orange pig’s right front trotter. The pig looked up at the wolf’s eyes. "Now, isn’t that strange?" said the wolf. "That this should happen just when you are here. I can’t remember the last time we had an incident like this up here." The orange pig blinked. He looked down at the dead bird’s closed eyes. The bird’s beak and downed cheeks seemed completely untroubled. "I only want to walk to the top of the hill," said the orange pig. "No-one is stopping you," said the wolf. "But surely you can see we can’t let incidents like this go unexamined or unreported. I assume you are from the farm." "Where I am from is my own business." "I understand," said the wolf, "but…" The wolf waved a paw in the direction of the dead bird. "In circumstances like this," said the wolf, "we all must account for ourselves, our actions, our motives. It may be in the next world we will all be free to move where we wish like phantoms in the mist, but you are from a farm. You know the meaning of a fence, or a gate, a sty or a barn, a wall or a door. Do not pretend to be naïve. I find you here, and then I find this. What am I to think?" The orange pig turned his neck and looked away from the wolf. He looked up the hillside, towards where the invisible summit must be. "There is a way that I can help you," said the wolf. "The way that it would be is that you turn around now and go back down the hill to the farm. I will make this trouble you are in disappear. You will never hear of it again. It would not be in your interests anyway to go further up the hill. There are things up there that you would not want to meet tonight." The wolf walked closer to the orange pig. He walked so close to the orange pig that the pig could smell the wolf’s thick breath on the still air. "Go home," said the wolf. "Go home now and never come back here. This place is not for you. Go home." The orange pig swallowed. He looked down from the wolf’s gaze. He began to walk back down the hillside. When he had gone several steps he heard wet noises coming from behind himself. The orange pig stopped walking and turned to look back up the hillside. He saw the wolf lying on its side in the grass, its front paws grasping the body of the dead bird. He saw the wolf’s tongue emerge into the silver light and lick at the closed eyes of the bird. The wolf’s jaws spread wide and needle teeth snapped the head off the bird. The pig saw the wolf’s neck and throat tense and flex convulsively as it chewed and swallowed. The wolf’s hindquarters and tail vibrated on the grass of the hillside. The pig turned away and walked faster down the hillside. He had not reached the first gate of the farm when a piercing, shrill howl came from the hillside behind him. It was as though the orange pig’s soul and spirit were oppressed and squeezed out of place by the wolf’s howl. Soon the orange pig was back on the farm, back in his sty, lying awake in the moonlight, staring at the view of the hill through the window cut in the stone wall of his home. It had not been wrong to go to the hill, even if it had not changed his life like the orange pig had hoped it might do. The orange pig thought about this, and tried to understand, until sleep came and took him away to a place even more strange and wild than the hill.
The long wolf awoke in the moonlight, on the hillside, with the hair of his snout, chin and chest covered in blood and feathers. He rolled onto his back and stretched all four paws up towards the moon. Vertebrae clicked in his back. His genitals flopped to one side. He howled. He rolled slowly onto his side. He shoved his paw against what was left of the dead bird, only some thin bones, disorganised and sucked clean. The wolf leered down the hill in the direction of the farm. He remembered his encounter with the pig and bared his fangs. He got up and stood on the grass. He raised his front paws off the earth with a practised movement and reared his body upwards until he stood almost like a human being. He couldn’t quite bring his front legs down against his sides. They stayed slightly raised as though the wolf was prepared for a pugilistic exploit in the moonlight. He walked down the hillside several steps, then he allowed his chest and neck to fall forward. He continued down the hillside on all fours. Near the gate at the beginning of the farm’s first field, the wolf stopped and sniffed the air. He jumped over the electric fence like a shadow against the wind. Slowly, he levered himself off the earth until he lay awkwardly in the freezing water of the farmer’s long, narrow drinking trough. The wolf breathed shallowly, then twisted and leapt from the deep tank of water, landing with a splash and a shake. He ran low to the ground, over to the earth embankment at the field’s edge. The wolf rolled in the earth until the water and earth mixed to make a muddy paste that covered the creature’s matted fur. The wolf’s eyes gleamed silver and clear in the moonlight.
The orange pig awoke from a deep dream and hardly understood that he was not alone in the sty. It seemed that something warm and heavy sat on the orange pig’s chest and he nearly screamed, but then something filthy blocked the pig’s wide mouth. "Hush now!" said the long wolf. "Hush now. It is only me." The orange pig’s small eyes quivered in the semi-darkness of the sty. He saw a shadow above him and the shadow had bright eyes, even here. The orange pig believed that this was Death itself come to him, as a spirit. Regrets and sorrows ran through the orange pig’s mind like sweet birds. "No," said the wolf. "Think. Quiet yourself. Remember me. I stopped you on the hill tonight." The pig blinked and stared. "Yes," said the wolf, "it is me. I have come to return your visit and see how you live." The wolf raised his snout and looked around the sty. He shook his head. "Walls," said the wolf. The pig twisted and released his mouth. "Dogs," said the pig. "The farmer’s dogs? They are asleep. I covered myself in mud so they cannot smell me." "What do you want?" said the orange pig. "Nothing. I have come to show you the top of the hill, if you still want to see." "Why?" said the pig. The wolf smiled. "I don’t really know," said the wolf. "Perhaps the Spirit came to me while I slept and let me know it was wrong of me to interfere with you tonight. Anyway, I am here. Will you come?" "When?" "The only time is now," said the wolf. "It is very late." "Not so very," said the wolf.
They walked past the dogs like ghosted whispers and soon they were beyond the limits of the farm, their legs working hard against the steep hill’s power. The wolf looked back over his shoulder and shuddered. "I don’t like to be on the farm," said the wolf. "You have been there before?" said the pig. The wolf nodded. "I have been there in the night to look for the lambs," said the wolf. "But I have never found them. The farmer does his job well." "We hear the lambs cry," said the pig. "We hear them too." The pig and the wolf were near the place now where the dead bird had fallen from the tree. "It was a good meal," said the wolf, as they passed the feathers and bones on the silver grass. "I did not kill that bird." "Of course not," said the wolf. He looked at the pig with a sidelong glance that the pig felt. "It is only that we protect this area," said the wolf. "If the whole farm came up here then this place would be lost to us." "Look," said the wolf. He raised his front paws off the grass and reared up until he stood almost straight. The orange pig watched as the wolf walked awkwardly up the hillside on his hind legs. It made the orange pig afraid. The wolf came down onto his front paws again and turned to look at the pig. The wolf was panting, winded by his trick. "Like a man!" said the wolf. "No? Like the farmer." The orange pig nodded. The wolf tilted his snout toward the moon and let out a small howl, then a yip. He jumped his hind legs in the air and knocked his heels together. "Like a man," said the wolf again. He turned suddenly toward the pig and reared up on his hind feet. The pig watched the wolf as the wolf tried to imitate a man. The wolf placed his front paws on his haunches, then raised a paw and pointed with it as though indicating something far away. The wolf threw his head back and laughed silently. "Are we nearly at the summit?" said the pig. "Why can’t we see it in the moonlight?" The wolf sniffed and came down on all fours. He turned towards the hill and started to tread the grass again. "We are nearly there," said the wolf. "The ground becomes level before the last steep ascent. It is good that we have to work to get there. That is part of the reason the summit has power." The pig raised his snout as he walked and looked up at the full moon and stars above. His hind legs were working hard to bring his body up the steep hill. The pig’s breathing had become harsh and ragged. He wasn’t used to inclines. The farm had none. The pig’s legs burned but he was determined to hide his weakness from the long wolf. He was glad when he felt the wolf’s paw on his flank and the wolf said, "Stop a moment. Look at this." The pig stopped and turned. "That is the right view to have of things, no?" said the wolf. The pig’s moonlit, narrow eyes swept across the silvered panaroma that took in the farm, the neighbouring farms, and other lights and houses and areas of land and hill and water that the pig had never dreamed could ever have been so close all his life. "Did you know the sea was so close?" said the long wolf. "That is the sea?" said the pig. The wolf nodded. "I’ll take you there another night," said the long wolf. "You can dip your trotters in the waves and lick the salt off them. There are Spirits in the sea that never can be found on land, you will smell them." The wolf breathed deep and turned again to face the hill. "Come on," said the wolf. "We are nearly there." The pig noticed that there were fewer trees now and that the wind slapped harder across his back in occasional gusts. The muscles in his back legs soon began to sear again. The pig had to close his eyes sometimes as he walked, to fight the desire to stop. His breathing came harder and thinner, in-out, in-out, until suddenly the wolf and the pig emerged onto a wide plateau, there was no warning, one second their legs were swelled with work, the next they were walking with such ease it was startling to the pig. But not as startling as what he saw waiting on the broad plateau. There were wolves everywhere, arranged on the moonlit grass like shaggy mats. Many eyes leered at the orange pig and he felt his chin droop and his waters loosen. The orange pig swallowed and licked his chunky upper lip. The wolves were all supine but as they saw the pig and the long wolf arrive each tensed and sat up in automatic unison. "Don’t mind them," said the long wolf. "They aren’t used to visitors. Here. Sit here. It is one of the best places to sit. It is my own place." The wolf indicated an area of well-worn grass, at the bottom of a diagonal stone structure which met the earth like the back of a tall, throne-like chair meeting its seat base. "If you rest your tail on the grass and your back against the stone, you will be able to look down at the farm or up at the stars and the moon as it pleases you. When the moon is full like tonight, this is where we sit. We bathe in its light and our spirits are restored." The pig tried to arrange his weight as the long wolf indicated. His trotters vibrated as he felt the eyes of the many wolves upon him. "Your guest is afraid," the orange pig heard one of the wolves say in a strange, faded voice. "Tell him we do not eat pig unless we are starving. Not even I have ever had to eat pig." "He isn’t afraid of you," said the long wolf. "He is only cold from the wind as we climbed the hill." The orange pig turned his neck to look at the long wolf. "You will not be cold here on the summit though," said the long wolf. "These stones shelter us from the wind." "They shelter us from many things," said another wolf. The orange pig blinked. In a thin, light voice like the wind itself, the pig asked, "Are these the farmer’s stones?" "These stones were here ten thousand years before there ever was a farmer," said a deep, harsh voice. The pig looked over and saw the voice coming out of a huge, dark-furred head. Even in the moonlight this wolf’s fur refused to reflect the silver light. Dark eyes looked into the pig’s eyes. "This is not the farmer’s land. This is not the farm," said the black-headed wolf. "He knows he is not on the farm now," said the long wolf. "That is why he wanted to come here." "No fences, no gates, no dykes, no walls," said one wolf. "No market day," said another wolf. "Is that why he came here? Was it market day for him tomorrow?" The wolves laughed in the moonlight and gave out little howls. The orange pig looked down at the farm. He tried to find his own sty but he became confused each time he tried. Even after a lifetime down there, he did not know the place when he looked at it from up here. "The farmer never sent me to market because of my colour," said the pig. "You can’t see it in this light but I am orange. All the other pigs down there are green. They don’t like me. The farmer kept me to show to his friends and visitors. He took them to the gate of my sty and they would all stand and stare at me." Near the summit’s edge, further away than the orange pig had known there was a wolf lying, a thin body sat up and became a silhouette against the moon. "I am orange," said the silhouette. "I am the only orange wolf here, the only one for years." The pig saw the orange wolf’s silhouette mouth twist into a smile. "Isn’t that strange?" said the orange wolf, then his shape lay down again in the moonlight. "His mother’s mother was orange too," said the wolf with the black head. "One of the farmer’s dogs perhaps, some labrador kept as a pet, got up here on the hill one night…" A low growl came from the orange wolf’s distant body. "He knows I’m joking," said the wolf with the black head. "Under the moon we are all the same colour," said the long wolf. "Amen," said the black wolf. "Under the moon there is no market day," said a deep, bass voice from further to the orange pig’s left than his thick neck could twist to let him see. "No lorry to take us away, no slaughterhouse, no scheduled death." "For scheduled death is dishonour," said the black wolf. "Amen," said all the wolves in a clear chorus. A series of howls and yips were offered upwards to the moon by the group. "Up here we can starve or freeze," said the long wolf, leaning his snout closer to the orange pig’s ear. "We can be shot by the farmer or his friends. But the day of our deaths is never known in advance by anyone except the Great Spirit, so our own spirits are not murdered in advance of our bodies. We do not suffer the walking death of the creatures down there." The long wolf sniffed and jerked his snout in the direction of the farm below. "Our only great sufferance has come this year to us," said the black wolf. "Your farmer and his allies have killed all our females, May They Be Blessed." "May They Be Blessed," echo-ed the wolves’ chorus softly. "Luck or evil led his guns and his bullets to steal the lives of all our females, all our mates," said the black wolf. "Have you a sow on the farm?" The black wolf’s head tilted towards the orange pig in enquiry. "Only the green pigs had their green sows. I was alone there," said the orange pig. "Maybe it is as well," said the black wolf. "You will never know the loss we know. The farmer has left us alive to know and suffer this great loss. He hopes the great loss will empty us and make our spirits bleed away onto the grass of this summit. But it has not made us bleed away. We have lived with it. The farmer has not succeeded in his hope to make us walking dead like his creatures on the farm. And he has not succeeded with you either, pig. Here you are in the moonlight, bathing in its rays, and looking down upon the farm like a god." "We have faith that females will come to this hill again," said the long wolf. "Amen," said all the wolves. "Once a month the moon comes full to the hill. It never forgets," said the black wolf. "Observe the stars, each in their position, perfect. The wind blows upon our fur and the stone supports our backs. All is provided." "When I met this pig on the hill tonight," said the long wolf, "we stood near a tree and, as we talked, a bird fell dead from the highest branches of the tree." "Fell dead?" said the black wolf. "Just like that?" "Yes," said the long wolf. "It fell to the grass with no mark upon it. Look, its blood and feathers are on my snout and chest still." The orange pig saw the wolves lean closer to the long wolf. The orange pig turned his neck and saw what he could already smell, the silvered fur on the long wolf’s throat and neck, sticky and coated with broken feathers. "Fell dead just like that," said the black wolf. "All is provided. Amen." "Amen," said the wolves. "What need is there for fear then?" said the black wolf. "Those who run with death like a friend in the night have no cause for fear. Fear is only what enters where faith itself has died. We leave no room for it to enter, nor does the moon, nor can the stars. Females will come again." The orange pig had never been with a sow. He had not been allowed to mix with the other green pigs. The farmer had wanted the orange pig to remain unique. The vet had taken the orange pig’s semen and frozen it, with a view to selling it when the orange pig was famous. Somehow, though, the orange pig’s personality had not attracted fame, only a non-profitable cache of oddity. Good enough to bring a few of the farmer’s friends around the orange pig’s sty to stare at him awhile, but nothing solid enough to build a business on. The newspapers had come once, and taken photographs, but interest had not been ignited in the public. "To hell with farms and farmers," said a bitter voice the pig had not heard before. "Amen," said the wolves. "It is here in the moonlight things are shown truly," said a quiet voice from among the sea of silver heads. "With the sun in the morning comes all the illusions and divisions. Here in the silver shining we are our truest selves, is it not so my brothers?" "Amen," said a strong chorus. "No farm could ever be thought of or established in the moonlight. It is an idea of the day, born of heat and dazzle." "I told this pig I would take him another night to wash in the salt of the sea," said the long wolf. "The waters of the sea are great, its waves caress us and cool us," said the quiet voice. "That pig’s legs are too short to run with you to the sea," said a voice. "We will all go," said the black wolf. "We will go to the sea another night and we will go at his pace. There are thoughts that come when we stand in the sea and feel the waves lap at our legs that can come in no other way. It is time we did go to the sea again." The orange pig listened to their voices and looked down at the lights of the farm. It seemed so far away now, like a dream the pig had lately had that was now ended. In the morning the sun would come and the farmer would find the orange pig gone. Here on the summit the sun would come too and the wolves would see the pig’s bright orange belly. The pig would see the wolves too, perhaps only as a kaleidoscopic horror of furs and teeth. There was that risk that came when you tried to change your life. As soon as you left your sty and started walking towards the hill the risks began. Only in the morning would the wisdom of the night before, or lack of it, be known. The orange pig began to feel drowsy. He tucked his chin to his chest, twisted his back a little, and leaned his head back against the stone behind. When he closed his eyes he heard the long wolf whisper, "Once this place and its stones were a Fort, long ago, a King made his home here. Our forefathers surrounded the Fort then and ate the Royal scraps. Now we are all the Inheritors and our legacy is this summit and its stones to sleep against and shelter by. Now it is your Royal head resting on that throne. Dream well. Dream well. Until the sun breaks the dream again." "In sleep we will all meet again," the pig heard the black wolf’s voice say. "In that sea we will all dance until the centre is regained and our shackles melt…"
In the morning, the pig woke and opened his eyes to see harsh sunlight flood his bright orange, upturned belly. His neck ached where it had rested against the stone. The pig flinched and sat up, looking around himself. The wolves were all gone. The summit was empty. The vertical stones of the ancient Pictish Fort jutted toward the shining heavens like apocalyptic teeth in a ruined mouth. The pig got up and walked back and forth, staring hard at the earth for any evidence of the wolves. Finding nothing, he walked to the edge of the Fort and looked down at the farm. In the sunlight, the orange pig’s sty, with its corrugated iron roof, looked like a prison. The pig could see the farmer crossing a field in his tractor. The tractor’s engine was a thin insect-like buzz in the dawn air. The pig turned his back on the farm to look at the stones. It could all have been a dream. Perhaps the orange pig had gone mad and imagined the stones themselves to be wolves lying in the moonlight and talking to him. The orange pig walked slowly around the perimeter of the summit of the old hill. He saw far across the land to the four points of the compass. He saw the sea in the distance. He narrowed his eyes and tried to think of the sensation of lapping waves against his legs. A bird flew overhead and cried out. The orange pig looked up at it. The wind started to blow cold and the orange pig’s thoughts turned to his private trough. Perhaps the farmer would bring a turnip today. The orange pig believed that if he went down the hill now he might get back to his sty without the farmer knowing he had been gone. But the orange pig lingered on the summit of the hill. He had been touched deeply by a dream, or by ghosts, and his heart could not find the power again to deliver the blood that his legs would need to balance him on the walk back down the hill to the fences, and the gates, the walls and the rooves. The farm had become the other world now and the orange pig leaned his haunch against the tallest vertical stone, its rough moss-covered side, as he tried to think of a way back. Every time he tried to think he saw a wolf. He saw the black wolf standing in the high pulpit of a packed church, a book in his hand, delivering a dark sermon to his congregation. He saw the long wolf, slinking and sliding along the walls of the farm, eyes leering, searching for the lambs. He saw the orange wolf, rolling in the waves of the sea, howling, fangs lathered in throaty foams. He saw the dead females, only shadows and veiled apparitions against the remembered moon that still burned in the orange pig’s brain. He saw the dead females, beloved of their lonely mates, blood seeping from deep wounds in their sides from the gun of the farmer, and the guns of the farmer’s many friends. The orange pig knew that no wolves had lived on this hill for hundreds of years, nor in this country. He knew that it was a dream then, or ghosts, that he had met with the night before. He remembered the green pigs at the farm with their blank eyes, asleep even as they were awake, but with no dream there. The orange pig shivered and leaned harder against the tallest vertical stone of the Fort. Market day was all that he had ever seen in the eyes of the green pigs and who could blame them? The orange pig shut his eyes tight to defy the sun and braced his side against the rough stone as he tried to wait for the moon to bring its ghosts back.
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