2

THE FOREST OF LINNTEAN

Doran West charged through the overgrown grass and hurdled over fence after fence. These were his fields, his home. He had the advantage.

Time was running out and he ignored the prickly sweat forming in his hair and on his face. The main road was in sight; he was almost there.

He vaulted over a crumbling drystone wall and stopped, taking in the cloudless sky. Catching his breath, he closed his eyes, the June sun warming his face.

And that’s when he heard the school bus drive past him.

Great.

Following a swift kick at the gravel, he noticed Mrs Angus, the semi-professional gossip who spent her retirement glued to her living room window. He provided the customary smile and wave his mum had taught him to the old busybody and trudged in the direction of his school. After all, what choice did he have? One more missed day and his mum was sure to be called in. Then he would be subjected to a meeting with a bunch of sour-faced adults taking it in turns to outline their disappointment in him. Or better yet, utter the six words every teacher seemed programmed to say: ‘We expect much more from you.’ There was nothing for it. A hike it must be.

The walk to school, while long, was described by many a tourist as ‘unbelievably picturesque’. And Doran supposed that was true. Objectively speaking. He imagined outsiders would be enchanted by such a view. The arrogant trio of mountains with their perfectly pointed snow-topped peaks. Who did they think they were? And then there was the winding ‘devastatingly blue’ loch, to quote another enthralled passer-by. A stretch of hydrogen and oxygen molecules that got lucky. That’s all it was.

Doran reached a white sign which stated in big bold letters, ‘YOU ARE NOW LEAVING LINNTEAN THANK YOU FOR VISITING’. He paused for a moment, as he always did, and glared at the black letters. Were they taunting him?

The village of Linntean was located in the Scottish Highlands, with nothing but remote islands to the west. The sort of places where puffins outnumber humans by about five to one. The village itself consisted of one main road winding around the houses, and various local businesses, clinging to the one place commercialism hadn’t yet found.

The village didn’t have enough people to warrant its own high school, which meant that those of age from the surrounding villages had to get the bus to a central academy. Five miles and two throbbing feet later, Doran reached this school’s large, rusted gates and hobbled to the main entrance.

Glenmoral Academy was split into two large box-shaped buildings, connected by a cylindrical red structure. The building had been painted that colour to mask its overwhelming dullness and to try to hide its need for renovation.

Doran arrived at the front door and pressed the buzzer for reception. He met the familiar gaze of Mrs Hunter, the head of the school office, whose beady eyes had seen multiple generations of the community pass through the school. According to Doran’s mum, her ‘winning’ personality was nothing new. The pair performed what had become their habitual greeting for one another: Mrs Hunter raising a thin, wispy eyebrow at him, Doran replying with a small shrug and the slightest of smiles before being allowed to enter.

Mrs