The Ritual

boys. How are we going to P.R. this when we get home?’
    Dom slapped the back of Hutch’s head, his face expanding into a tight and forced grin. ‘We gotta get there first, you useless Yorkshire bastard. Never mind virgin forests and Ice Age
fungus. I want to put me feet back on concrete.’
    Hutch side-stepped the second swat. ‘Come on. Let’s go see what the fat man wants.’

SEVENTEEN
    ‘What is it, mate?’ Hutch asked Phil, who was leaning forward with one dirty hand spread on the dark bark of a thick tree trunk. Phil hadn’t said much to
anyone since they woke him, and he’d shrugged off any attempt to speak of how he came to be naked in that tiny sordid space that they had all used as a urinal at some point the night before,
except for Luke who had gone outside. Luke, Hutch and Dom were all too tired and shaken to talk of their own experiences in any detail either, each acknowledging in an unspoken way it was the sort
of thing you only discussed once you were at a safe distance from the source. But the night seemed to have affected Phil worse than the others.
    ‘Here. See it? And it’s on all of the other trees on this side.’ Where the bark had been sheared away or smoothed down in a band about the tree at waist-height, Phil’s
red fingers pointed at a series of marks or scratches, cut deep into the wood, which had then darkened with age but not become entirely invisible.
    Hutch bent over and traced a finger around the marks.
    ‘What is it?’ Luke asked.
    Dom sighed with irritation and looked up at the sky.
    ‘Runes,’ Hutch said. ‘Remember those runes on the stones we saw in Gammelstad?’ He glanced over his shoulder at Dom and Phil. ‘Me and Luke saw some in Skansen and
Lund too, a couple of years back.’
    ‘No way,’ Phil said, his face stricken, as if this observation by Hutch was evidence to him of something far worse than their current dilemma.
    ‘Yes way. Good spot, Phillers. I bet these are real old too. Vikings used them about a thousand years ago.’
    ‘They can’t be that old,’ Luke said, leaning down beside Hutch.
    ‘No shit. But someone still knew how to use them after the Vikings.’
    Luke placed an index finger on one. ‘Looks like a B. The trees get how old?’
    ‘This is a Scots pine. A big one too. Dead as a door nail, but they can live for about six hundred years.’
    Dom threw both hands into the air, his waterproof swishing as he moved. ‘OK. OK. So what’s the plan, Time Team? I’d say runes on old bastard trees are at the bastard bottom on
our list of priorities, boys.’
    Hutch and Luke moved away from the tree.
    ‘It’s all wrong,’ Phil said to himself. ‘Wrong.’
    ‘Yessum,’ Hutch said. Then looked at the sky, so pale and white, the sun itself could have been white. Rain began to patter against their coats and rucksacks.
‘Great.’
    From the breast pocket of his coat, Hutch pulled out the plastic wallet with condensation on it. The map was sealed inside. He knelt down and removed the map from its sheath. He unfolded it by
one half and put the compass against it. ‘Chaps. I reckon we’re about here. A fair way inside the tip of this band of woodland. I was trying to get us down to here yesterday, so we can
pick up the Käppoape trail. A morning’s walk on that and we’d be beside the Stora Luleälven River. Following that east to Skaite for a few hours would put us by the overnight
cabins there. And a branch office for the Environment Protection Board. But we can’t make it any further south through the scrub here. This place is so old, if there was ever another path
going south out of this clearing, it’s gone now. And if the undergrowth doesn’t clear up, there is still the best part of a day between us and the end of the forest.’
    ‘So what?’ Dom said.
    Hutch wrinkled his eyes and gritted his teeth in a wince. ‘Well, we can’t risk following that track north.’
    Phil said nothing. He stood apart from them and stared at the house.
    ‘Hang on. Hang on. Gimme the map,’ Dom demanded.
    Hutch pulled it away from Dom’s grasp. ‘What are you going to do with it hobble-horse?’
    ‘Let me see, you Yorkshire ring-piece.’ Dom snatched the map from Hutch’s hands and then held it a few feet from his face.
    Luke hung his head and pulled his fingers down his cheeks. ‘Maybe we should go back the way we came in.’
    Dom shook his head. ‘No. If we go back the way we came in, it’ll take a whole day just to get