The Ritual

and
wincing. ‘Some little shit just bit me. Gnats.’
    ‘If it wasn’t so wet I’d set fire to the bitch,’ Dom said, his hands on his knees, his face a picture of hopelessness. ‘Burn our way out. The whole bloody place
should be scorched earth.’
    Hutch sighed through a cloud of fragrant smoke. He looked at his hands; the tips of his fingers were still trembling. He swallowed. ‘It’s never been managed. There’s never been
any clear-cutting. That’s the point.’
    Under the dirt, in the rivulets his tears cut below his eyes the night before, Dom’s face whitened with anger. None of them had washed their hands and faces for two days. ‘Then why
the hell did you bring us in here, if we can’t bloody walk through it?’
    ‘I never planned for us to get stuck in it. I just wanted to see a bit of it. This far north. Something original on the short cut.’
    ‘It’s bloody original all right. So original, no fucker in their right mind would come up here for a holiday.’
    ‘And few do. Not in this part. Only scientists and conservationists would usually go this deep, I reckon. We’re only here by accident. Because of the short cut. We were only supposed
to quickly cut through it.’
    ‘Cut through my ass! We’re stuck, H! Trapped like rats!’
    Hutch sighed; looked to Luke for support, which he had done rarely on the trip so as not to create the clique he sensed that Luke wanted. Hutch’s voice sounded weak, insubstantial, when it
came out of his mouth again. ‘These national reserves are here to protect the last bit of real biodiversity, Dom. For the future. It’s just about gone everywhere else.’
    Luke looked about himself, as if seeing it for the first time. Hutch took another drag on his cigarette. He talked himself down from the urgent instinctive need to just start crashing out,
southwards. A dark silhouette from his dream reared up in his mind; an unpleasant reminder of something he was committing every ounce of mental discipline to suppress. He took a deep breath.
‘This is one of the last parts of the Boreal coniferous belt. Goes all the way from Norway to Russia. It’s what grew after the Ice Age. This. It’s been around for that long. A
Norwegian spruce can even live for five hundred years. A Scots pine for six. Can you imagine it? It shrunk by ninety per cent in the last century. All cut down and cleared. But they left parts like
this, in the national parks, so fungi and lichen can grow in all this shit we can’t get through. To preserve the habitats. For birds and insects. Wildlife. This whole place is chock-full of
rare species. All of that forest we saw from the train on the way up is managed. Probably no more than a hundred years old. They don’t let forests get this old any more.’
    Momentarily, Luke looked grateful; at least he always appreciated how much thought went into where Hutch took them. Because he always invested himself wholly into anything he organized. Always
wanted his companions to see something wonderful. It was his fault they were lost. But even though they were lost, he reminded himself, at least they were stranded inside something so few people,
even most Swedes, would ever see. Something this old and undisturbed. He thought of reminding Dom of this, then decided against it. Because it no longer served as a source of compensation for him
either, if he were honest with himself.
    ‘It’s on all of the trees.’ They heard Phil’s voice, coming to them across the small clearing about the black hovel they were still trying to escape from. It had been
twenty minutes since they had dressed in their grubby, smoky clothes and packed up. ‘Goes in a circle. Round the house.’
    Luke, Hutch and Dom all turned to look at Phil on the far northern side of the clearing. He was standing near the thin track that wound outwards into the darkness. They all exchanged glances
with tight-lipped faces.
    ‘What’s that, mate?’ Hutch called out.
    ‘On the old ones. The ones with the dead branches.’
    ‘What’s he going on about?’ Dom asked.
    Hutch shrugged. ‘Guy’s really shaken up.’
    ‘You think he’s lost it?’
    ‘I think we all did last night. If Luke hadn’t woken me up, I’d still be up in that attic. Kneeling before the goat.’
    Laughter burst from Luke. It sounded too high in the still air and in the enclosure of the trees around the hovel. It sounded inappropriate, like laughing out loud in church.
    Hutch smiled. ‘Jesus,