As they coast upriver with the flooding tide the smell of salt recedes. The river meanders over oyster beds, between bullrushes and water lilies. They pass rafts of swans, geese, ducks, dabchicks. This is familiar winter hunting ground.
They paddle against the current, reach white water, carry their boat round rapids, find paths imprinted by deer, cone-shaped stumps sculpted by beaver teeth and, beneath spreading alders, spoor of lynx. That night they net salmon by flamelight. Ema is the fire carrier. She unwraps the smouldering log, builds a tent of twigs over it, blows the fire alive. They wrap the fish in leaves and roast them in hot ash, burn their fingers as they eat the rich pink flesh, crunch the charred skins.
“The glacier’s under the North Star,” Alu says. “They saw the ice cloud after they killed the bear, the day they turned back.”
Late next day they see cloud shining in the north, mirroring the glacier that must lie beneath. The river freezes their legs as they shove the boat through rockstrewn rapids. Fishbones on slippery rocks speak of bear. The forest is impenetrable: brambles, birch, thorn, rowan, hazel, aspen.
So late in summer the nights are cold; the water’s low enough to pick a way over the river bed. That night they huddle in furs on a gravel bank under their half-upturned boat. The wind down the glen brings the whiff of ice. Wolves howl under the waxing moon.
The river broadens. They paddle easily, hugging the west shore. Deer raise their heads from drinking, poised for flight. An otter crosses their path, leaves a widening triangle across still water. Now a southwesterly breeze pushes them onward and outward. Alu steers constantly shoreward to keep on course. No one wants to be caught in open water.
The gulls follow the river north. But now there’s another river, flowing in from the west. They stall at its mouth, holding its current against their paddles. The gap made by the river opens up new horizons: bare rounded hills. Two eagles spiral into clear blue sky.
“Good hunting there.’
“We’re heading north. Better still.”
The lake narrows into a river mouth lost among marshy islands. Trees give way to stunted willow, juniper, bog myrtle. Reeds brush the boat. A new current resists them, milky meltwater. They wade over gravel, pushing the boat against icy water, a handsbreadth from grounding.
The glen widens: a dry flood plain, seedheads of globeflower and gentian, waving grass. Beyond, to the north, the glacier gleams.
They beach the boat and cross the plain. Nuak, striding ahead, finds churned mud sloping down to a reed-fringed loch, “Aurochs!”
They gather round, examine fresh spoor, trampled grass.
“Eight, ten maybe. Yesterday. Heading south.”
“I told you: better still.”
“Yes, yes, you told us.”
They climb an outcrop. North lie the ice-bound hills. The glen before them is open grassland, fading into bare rock where the ice has melted.
That night Ema builds her cone of birch twigs and makes her fire. A spiral of smoke scented with roasting apples, hazelnuts and fresh-caught trout, rises, hovers over the glen, dissolves in the starlit air.
Margaret Elphinstone
Margaret Elphinstone’s latest novel Lost People was shortlisted for the 2024 Saltire fiction award. She is the author of nine earlier novels, including The Gathering Night, Voyageurs and the award-winning Sea Road. Her poetry collection, Time Seeds, was published by Wild Goose in March 2026. She lives in the Glenkens.