A jay flew squawking overhead, fluttering blue and grey. I like jays. They're attractive birds but, like most of the corvids, don't have the voice to go with the looks. It wasn't the first I'd seen of these today but, in this pinewood habitat, I expected to see more. I watched through binoculars as it flew off over the canopy.
I was becoming aware of a need to find a bush. It was quiet up here, out of the way, even now it was early afternoon, but you never knew when someone was going to come round a corner with a dog and find you carrying out natural human functions. It was time to get off the beaten path.
For lack of a better idea, I followed the jay. It was the wrong habitat for many bushes, at least anything larger than a patch of heather or blaeberry with as-yet under-ripe fruit, so my best bet was to head deeper into the woods, where only people like me were likely to venture. It was warm, only the design of my rucksack stopping me from heavy sweat. I wear a hat, full length trousers and an old shirt and cover every exposed centimetre with the kind of sunscreen they sell for children when doing long days outdoors. Otherwise, with my skin colour, I burn faster than heath in a drought.
There is something about the smell of damp woods on a warm day. It does the same to me that miles of drying peat does to me in the hills. The smell itself is almost erotic, and does things to my hormones otherwise restricted to the natural scents of a small number of women. Maybe that's one reason why I love these places so much. I'm sure those chemicals are addictive. I could feel things changing in my lower abdomen and groin. This was not unusual. The strength of it certainly was.
I crested a ridge, still hearing the jay in the distance and other common birds of the pinewoods, some closer. I'd had good views of crested and long-tailed tits, with their distinctive call, and a number of black and yellow siskins. Here, deeper in the woods, and in more of a dip leading down to a river, it was getting increasingly misty. By now I was climbing over the odd fallen tree. I paused behind the bole of one of the larger standing ones, a rare mature Scots pine, usually reddish bark partly covered in lichen and browning with age, unzipped, and flushed some excess fluids through a shaft close to being too tumescent for the job. I tucked myself back in with difficulty, keeping it upright so I could walk more comfortably and feeling more self-conscious than I usually do when peeing behind a tree. I spend a lot of time a long way from any sort of habitation and I've watered a lot of bushes and rocks over the years.
For several weeks now, when out for walks, I'd had this odd sensation of being watched. It wasn't anything threatening. I wasn't paranoid, and it didn't happen in towns, so I wasn't any more worried about my mental health than usual for a naturalist geek like me. It felt more like friendly curiosity, maybe with a bit of uncertainty. Sometimes I'd catch sight of something out of the corner of one eye, only to find nothing there, even a shy wren in dead brush. Each time it happened, I wrote it off as my imagination. Maybe more solitary types like me have more active imaginations than most people. I don't know. I don't have a lot to compare it to.
Now that feeling was back. This time it was accompanied by my own growing sexual desire. Maybe it had just been too long. I'm a naturalist, not a party animal.
I ducked between two more pine trees growing close together, but angling away from each other, each trying to get as much sunlight as possible. I paused. Something was odd. The mist seemed to have lifted, but much more quickly than I'd expect. The feeling of being watched was stronger too.
I heard a bird call I knew. A crossbill. I have a soft spot for crossbills. They're red, brightly coloured, in a tropical sort of way, with a bill adapted for prying seeds from pine cones. I raised my binoculars for a closer look. My camera was slung over one shoulder. The tripod, which I'd need at that range, up in a pine canopy, was in the rucksack. I was about to grab it when I froze.
A cat. A cat about a metre from nose to tail, with tufts on the ears. Now I knew something was off. Those have been extinct in Scotland for over 400 years. Sure, someone with more money and connections than sense might have done a private reintroduction on the quiet, and escaped panthers have been strongly suspected for a while, but I've never heard so much as a rumour of one of those.
"Hello."
The voice was quiet, but close, and startled me. I turned. A young woman, in her late teens or early twenties, stood there. She was short, delicate with long dark hair loose to the middle of her back, setting off pale skin. She was wearing a draped woven wrap, covering her to below the knee, with no visible means of holding it on. It looked skilfully handmade, without bright modern dyes. The ground was covered in dead twigs and branches, and she must have been very quiet on sandaled feet.
She was also utterly lovely. She had high cheekbones, green, almost a vivid-green, eyes, and full lips. There was no trace of makeup. I suppose the best word would be natural. My cock finished hardening, and I realised there was no way to hide it without her realising what it was I was hiding. My heart skipped again. I closed my mouth, firmly. I had it. Distract her!
I pointed as discretely as possible at the cat, no more than 30 metres off into the forest.
"Do you know what that is?" I whispered.
"It's a lynx."
I was about to tell her I knew it was a lynx, but something in her expression told me she was amused, so I kept my mouth shut.
"She has mother-lynx things to do, so we should leave her be." She paused. "May we talk?"
Girls this pretty rarely want to talk to me. I took another look at the lynx, decided that any photo I produced would be denounced as a forgery, or taken on the continent, and decided I'd live with the memories.
"Um," I said brightly. "OK."
She stepped forward. I caught a whiff of something, a smell of loam and pinewoods, but it seemed to be her, not our surroundings. She reached out one small, delicate, hand, and took mine. Now I knew what was meant when people say that energy flows between you. I'd thought I knew that before. Now I knew different. Something in my abdomen melted. Something in my groin solidified. I tried to blame the heat for feeling slightly dizzy, but the woods were slightly too cool for that idea to convince even myself.
She smiled, dimples breaking out on her cheeks. My heart gave a warning thump. "This way."
She led me off down the slope, at an acute angle to where the cat was foraging. She was, indeed, light on her feet. I pride myself on being quiet in the woods. To see the most interesting wildlife you have to be.
We ended up down next to a stream, maybe four metres wide. The trees here were different in the damper ground. These were deciduous, providing dappled shade from the sun. There was a large, flat, moss-covered rock, above a pool at the bottom. She sat down on it. Sitting next to her seemed like the right thing to do. I dumped the rucksack to one side. She moved close, so our arms and legs touched.
"You're wondering why I brought you here?"
I sensed she didn't mean down by the burn. Certain things started to add up. The wildlife that shouldn't be there. A shiver ran down my spine as I remembered old stories about people walking into mists and winding up in places that weren't real as the rest of us understand them. Sometimes those people only came back long after those who knew them were dead. It's been a staple of fantasy, maybe for hundreds of years. I stuck my neck out.
