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Aled stood upon the grassy hill watching his family’s little hut. His clothing, made of fur from the surrounding animals, was wrapped loosely around his skinny body. His black hair was long and twisted, knotted in several spots, and his hands and knees were muddy. The dots in the distance, which were his sisters and mother, ran around doing their chores to the sound of barking dogs. He didn’t want to leave them; he had never left his mother before. His stomach felt heavy and his throat tight but he was thirteen years old now, old enough to go hunting with his father.
“Come along, Aled,” his father shouted, already moving off into the distance, several of their dogs running alongside.
This wasn’t going to be any ordinary hunt though. His father had heard stories that Doggerland had disappeared, a great sea swallowing it in a single watery bite. When he had heard the news, his father had insisted he wanted to see and that Aled should come as well.
It was going to be a long journey though. Doggerland was far in the east, a very long way from Aled’s little home in the Mendip Hills. Already his feet were aching just thinking of the walk.
Even with his stomach rumbling and his feet aching, it didn’t take long before Aled noticed things that shouldn’t have been. He had been told of the ever stretching fields, like a green sea that reached far into the distance, filled with reindeers and horses. But after several days he had not seen a single reindeer. He did catch a glimpse of a horse, but only for a second, before it had bolted into the trees.
There were so many trees, far more than even his father thought possible. He had been told of that green sea as well but now the land was filled with forests. Instead of reindeer, their dogs helped hunt deer and wild boar, the creatures big enough food for human and dog alike. They cooked with fire when they could and Aled often gathered small colourful berries from the trees; remembering the lessons his mother had taught him.
“Father,” Aled asked while eating their dinner of boar and berries. “What happened to the fields and the horses and the reindeers? It’s different to how I thought it would be.”
“The earth is warming,” his father replied. “You wear fewer furs than I did as a child and I wore less fur than my father did before me. Maybe the warmth has made the fields turn into a forest.”
“And the land into the sea?” Aled said excitedly, his father nodding with a grin.
Several more days of walking passed, blisters appearing upon Aled’s bare feet, before they finally arrived at Doggerland; or where it should have been. Instead of the dry green land, there was a vast mass of grey sea.
From atop vast white cliffs, Aled and his father stared out at the sea, swirling and smashing angrily at the rocks below. The wind was cold here, sneaking between Aled’s clothes to attack him and he pulled his furs tighter to his body. The sea both frightened and amazed him.
“There,” Aled’s father said, pointing out to a pinprick of green in the distance. “There is the nearest land.
It is so far away, so much water between us and them. We are alone now. We are an island.”
Here is Richard reading the story to you.
