by K. T. Tomb
“Not yet. I'll be going home for Up Helly Aa though. Taidgh can take care of the hotel on his own when that's on.”
“Up Helly Aa?” Makeda asked curiously.
“Winter solstice festival. We drag a ship through the town and burn it at the end of the festival.”
“Iron doesn't burn that well, does it? Or is it fiberglass?”
Inga blinked and rolled her eyes at the remark. “It's a longboat. We dress up as our ancestors and do the whole thing by torch light. It's a great festival.”
“And you miss it?” Cash asked.
Inga nodded. “Don't miss the cold, windy, rainy, deserted Shetlands most of the time, but that's the one time of the year I miss it.”
Makeda nodded. “Like Irish people missing Ireland most on Saint Patrick's Day?”
“Something like that,” Inga confirmed.
Cash thought for a moment. She had a weird feeling and she couldn’t place it. But there was a familiarity in that feeling. She’d had it before. And Paddy stirred. He gave a single shout, raised himself up, looked around bleary eyed and then sank back down to sleep. “Maybe we should come and have a look?”
Inga nodded. “My family has a cottage just outside Lerwick. I can probably arrange for you guys to stay there.” She thought for a moment. “I'll be in Lerwick for the first day, then I'm going up to Unst. Our festival starts the day after.”
“If you could arrange it, I'd be very glad of it.”
“Maybe I should come too?” Makeda asked. “Sounds interesting.”
Cash grinned. “Isn't your baby supposed to be here about two months before that? If you're recovered and the baby is fit to travel or stay here without you, you should come along.”
The cat sat in the tree, looking out. The foal slept below and the cat knew it would be there when it climbed down. And it looked out. It kept looking at the skies, not knowing what it was looking for. But when it saw it, it knew.
In the distance there was a spot of white. At first it thought it was a fleck of cloud, but it was not. There, far in the distance was the falcon. It could only be the falcon and the cat knew it. It knew it would come back, as long as the cat kept on the course it had chosen. And it would keep going to find the falcon again.
And it heard a chuckle. It looked around and there rode someone through the sky on an eight legged horse. The rider wore a dark cloak and had a hood pulled over one side of his face. He raised his staff in acknowledgement and made the stallion rear on his four rear legs and then spurred him on. He raced off at a gallop. He raced toward the falcon and as the cat blinked the horse and rider were gone. Instead, there was an eagle, and the eagle circled in the distance. And there the falcon joined the eagle and they flew off again.
And the cat knew then. The way to find the falcon again was to follow the rider. The only way to become the falcon was to find how the Hooded Rider could become the eagle. And it was determined to find out how it did it.
By Halloween, Cash and Paddy made another journey to Dublin. Something told Cash she had to make it to Dublin for Halloween, so she packed some bags and picked up Paddy who had already walked to the front door and was reaching for the doorknob before she had told him they would be going on a trip.
On the night the spirit world joins the world of the living, Cash carried a sleepy Paddy into the Mater. Just a few hours after they had made it to Dublin, Makeda had gone into labor and Jack had driven her to the Mater Hospital. Cash had taken the bus and arrived only a few minutes after them. The bus driver was a lunatic, but somehow it was fitting of the night and of how Cash was feeling. And Paddy seemed to feel the same sense of joy at the chaos of Samhain.
Cash sat holding Jack's hand outside the room, with Paddy on her lap. Makeda was screaming, and she had refused to let Jack be in the room. Not that he really wanted to be there. He wanted to support Makeda, but he didn’t know whether he could face the pain she was going through. As she didn’t want him in there, he sat outside the room and waited anxiously.
Cash didn’t know what was going on, but she felt despair. There was a joy in her at the chaos of the night, but somehow there was a dread growing in her now. Paddy was restive too. He had become tired not long after they had gotten to the hospital and fallen asleep an hour and a half after they had gotten there. He had been quiet then, but now he was stirring in his sleep. He was restless and Cash knew the boy felt the same sort of dread as she had begun to feel. Yet that joy the night had brought was still there. She looked over at Jack and she saw him feeling the same thing.
She knew what was happening before the doctor even came out. She didn’t need to hear it, and all she did was hold Jack's hand as the doctor talked to him. He was not a man to cry, and even now he refused to do so, but she saw the tears brimming in his eyes.
Cash wanted to cry, but she could not. Despite the sorrow she felt, she felt a joy she couldn’t describe. In the room, she felt the same. She felt sorrow for her friend, but she felt joy at the sight and sound of the new life.
The next evening she and Paddy stood by Jack's side at the Jewish cemetery on the South Side. She still felt the same odd feeling she had felt the day before in the Mater. Jack was holding the newborn boy in his arms, cradling him. The boy's name was Gavin Haile McCourt, named after his grandfathers. He had a darker shade of skin and his hair and his eyes were dark. He looked a lot like Jack, but there was a sadness and seriousness in him. Gavin was quiet and uncomplaining, and Cash reckoned he would remain like that too. He was awake and looking down. Cash knew he didn’t understand what was going on, but he was looking down at the grave and the body in the white shroud as though he did.
There were still not tears in Jack's eyes, but Cash could tell he was struggling. And he would be struggling for a long time. He would struggle to find the time to work and take care of Gavin on his own, and he would struggle to get past the tragedy that came with the joy of his birth.
She saw the resistance in Jack as she noticed him staring at the drink cabinet in the Leinster Road house. She could relate. The moments of emotional struggle were always the times when she wanted to drink. Yet since her pregnancy, she had found her solace in soothing cups of tea rather than glasses of whiskey or vodka. And it was a pot of tea on the table now. She didn’t want to drink and despite his struggle, Jack had said he didn’t think it was responsible to get drunk when he was supposed to take care of a baby boy.
He could have left the boy in the hospital for a few days, but he didn’t want to do that either. Gavin was healthy and he wanted to have him nearby. There was a solace in the fact that he was a living link to Makeda, but Jack felt protective and possessive of him too. He was his son after all.
“Makeda said something about a festival you two wanted to go to?” Jack broke the silence.
Cash nodded. “She wanted to come with me to Lerwick for Up Helly Aa at Christmas.”
“Up Helly Aa?”
“Midwinter feast. Based on old Viking traditions.”
Jack nodded and sank back in his chair. “You're going to go alone now?”
Cash shrugged. “I suppose, though I'll probably take Paddy with me.”
There was another nod. Jack had little to say to that. “I'd ask to come in her stead, but I'm not sure I can manage that. Fucking have to work out how to do everything anyway.”
Cash kept silent for a moment, listening for sounds from the room next to the parlor they sat in. Both boys slept there and she could hear one of them moving. It sounded like it was Paddy, as he was a lot bigger and heavier and slept on the far end of the room.
“You know you can count on me if you need help, right?”
Jack said nothing for a long time. “I'd almost ask you to take Gavin for me, but I can't. I can't ask it of you, and I don't think I'd want to miss him.” Suddenly he growled and sat bolt upright. He reached for the remote control of the television. He turned it to TG4, the Irish channel, where the highlights of the AFL were on. They were just in time for the extended
highlights of the Dockers versus Eagles match.
Eagles. Cash had another flash of memory she couldn’t explain. She knew she had not been there, but she saw an eagle flying in the distance, alongside a falcon. And she knew it meant something. It had meant something the moment she had seen it. It was confusing to her, but she had seen it, even if she couldn’t have been there. There was something with a cat too, she thought, though as she thought about that, she realized the highlights of the Geelong Cats game were now on. The cat was probably because of the football on the TV.
Cash stayed in Dublin for another week, wanting to make sure Jack was coping before she headed home. When she got back to Glamorgan, she knew exactly what she was going to do, and she knew what she was looking for. She was going to the Shetlands for the Midwinter festival and she knew why.
For a moment she had thought she was going because she wanted to remember Makeda there, but that was not the truth of it. The truth was that she was still thinking about Inga's song. And somehow she knew she would get to the bottom of the visions she knew she had been having for a long time now. Visions of animals and people she couldn’t explain. But somehow she knew she would find the answer to those visions on the Shetlands.
At Up Helly Aa.
Chapter Twelve
“Mommy?” Paddy asked from his seat in the Land Rover, looking at Cash. He pointed out the window at the sea. They were waiting for the ferry in the North of Scotland and Paddy was awake after he had taken his nap in the car. It had been a long drive and Cash felt more sure of what she was going to do and what she was going to find with every mile they came closer.
Thunder roared above them and lightning flashed close to them. Paddy's eyes opened wide and he looked shocked. “Fuck!” she exclaimed with a South Australian accent.
Cash pursed her lips. She really had to begin minding her tongue around the boy. He didn’t have many words, but all of them apart from one were spoken with a South Australian accent, and some of them were not very nice. The one word that was not spoken with an Aussie twang was a Welsh word. He knew the word “cwtch.” And he used it now. He raised his arms up to his mother and looked up at her with begging eyes. “Cwtch,” he said. Cash took off his seat belt and picked him up. She hugged him and held him tight as the late autumn storm swept over them.
There was a knock on the window and Cash looked out. She saw a familiar face. It was Inga. She’d driven up behind them and was also waiting for the ferry. She had recognized the car before her in the small queue. Cash gave her a wink, signaling her to get in the back of the car.
“The Wild Hunt is out,” she said as she got in the car.
“Wild Hunt?” Cash asked, putting Paddy down again.
Inga nodded. “The Gods, the Valkyries and the Einherjar.”
Cash frowned. She knew about the Valkyries of course, and she had an inkling about the Gods, but she didn’t know what Inga meant.
“Odin takes his pick of the best warriors from amongst the fallen on the battlefield. They join together in the Einherjar, the Army of One Lord. They will fight alongside the Gods at Ragnarok, the final battle that will end all battles.”
Cash nodded slowly. That was one thing she had heard about. “So Odin and the Valkyries pick the best warriors and take them to Valhalla, where they join this army?”
Inga shook her head. “Not quite.”
“How do you mean?”
Inga smiled. “The best and bravest might not be picked by Odin. Someone else has first pick of the slain.”
Cash looked at her, not understanding that remark. She had read up a bit, and of course she knew about as much as most people around, but there was something new to her.
“Odin gave Freya first pick of the slain. She takes her chosen men to her hall of Sesrumnir, or Many Seats.”
Cash blinked. She had a flash of unexplained memory again. There was a conversation going through her head she knew she couldn’t have heard, but which she had somehow heard.
The small ferry brought them to the harbor of the town of Lerwick. Cash had never seen a town like it. The houses were small and mainly built out of local natural stone, with roofs of slate. The small houses were that size because of the wind that battered them and swept over them. Beyond the town, the hills of mainland were peeking out of the storm. They were grassy, but littered with boulders and rocks. Everything was windswept and interesting, though it was interesting because of the desperation this place must have held for the settlers.
There had been trees once, Inga told her as they walked into the cottage Cash had been given the use of. The Norse had cut the trees down very quickly, using them all to build more boats and ships.
Cash wondered why anyone had settled on these remote, cold, windy islands. But Inga smiled at that. “Fishing is good here. And it is an important station on the way between Norway and Ireland and Iceland. For centuries the trade and the fishing was the main industry. Oil is big business now; it comes ashore here. We're the only part of Scotland that already has an oil fund.”
Cash remembered that argument from the Scottish referendum. Living most of her life in South Wales, she could relate to the anger and frustration that had been behind the movement. Last elections she had voted Plaid Cymrú. But she was not there for politics. She was there for the festival.
Inga headed on to her home town in the morning. There was another Up Helly Aa celebration to take place near her town, but she said their own town had its own celebrations.
In the little daylight there was, Cash could see the town and the preparations as she walked through it. She had put Paddy in a ski suit and placed him into the seat of the stroller and he was looking about at everything, with eyes as eager as her own.
All over the town she could see the paraphernalia of the Norse. Men walked around in leather and mail, carrying swords, shields, spears and axes. Even women had braided their hair and carried shields and spears. Everywhere musical instruments were being tuned and at the top of the hill outside the town, Cash saw the galley that would be dragged through Lerwick. There were a few men making last minute adjustments to the decoration and to the rigging and ropes.
There was a buzz in Lerwick that she had not experienced anywhere else. She had seen the carnival in Rio and in Maastricht, she had seen the preparations for the Queen's Birthday Parade, the Trooping of the Color. She had seen the goings on around the Military Tattoo in Edinburgh and many more things, but there was nothing compared to this.
It seemed to her there was more going on than a celebration. It was deeper than that to the Shetlanders. It was something in honor of their ancestors, the Viking settlers who had come there to fish and to trade. Cash thought of the earliest ancestor of hers that she now knew of, Torkil Olafsson. She looked down at her boy. It was close to midday now and Pádraig Torcuil Cassidy had closed his eyes and begun dozing.
She sat down in a tea room which was still open, but she was told they would be closing in an hour to set up the place as a hall for the feast. That evening they would be serving ale and mead instead of tea. There would be food and drink everywhere and every larger room in the town would be converted to a hall to be used by the guizers and members of the other squads.
The cat sat at the top of a rock in a clearing. The foal was just on the edge of the clearing and it was asleep. There was nothing going on. Nothing at all. No sound, no movement, nothing. Nothing at all.
Then there was a whooshing, rushing sound above. The cat looked up. It hoped the falcon had returned, but it had not. Instead, a large eagle swooped down. It flapped its wings right above the cat and hung in the air, remaining in place there, looking at the cat. “Follow me,” the eagle said to the cat. “Follow me.”
At dusk the procession began. Singing, the guizers took up the ropes of the galley and their Jarl climbed onto the bow of the ship. He walked the oar benches and sang along. He brandished his axe and thumped his shield, spurring the men on. His chosen name was Grettir the Strong, though Cash didn’t k
now what that meant to anyone. She stood in the street below the hill, waiting for the men to come down. She had left the stroller, and Paddy was in a sling on her back. He could look over her shoulder if he wanted to, which she hoped he would do, but right now he was asleep again.
A man stood beside her and told her about Grettir the Strong from the legend. She had not asked it, but still he told the story without her permission. He told of Grettir's life and his tragic death through magic and trickery. He was an anti-hero really, not a hero. But the Jarl had chosen the name because he could identify with Grettir. He had been a wild boy all his life and even now he was not universally liked. But he was respected and admired throughout the town. So he had taken the name Grettir for the festival.
“What's your name?” Cash asked, looking at the man. His long hair hung over his face and shielded his countenance from her. “Harbard,” he said. She saw the corners of his mouth twitch into a smile and then he walked away.
The ship was pulled down with Grettir the Strong's voice booming over the sounds of drums, string instruments and pipes. The wind battered them, and Cash felt Paddy's head rise from her shoulder. He looked around and laughed. He whooped with joy for some reason, but Cash didn’t feel joy. She was intrigued and glad to see the light of the torches marching down into the streets of Lerwick, but she was despairing. She had been looking for something, and she didn’t find it. And it was driving her nuts now.
Cash followed the torchbearers and the music through the dark as they went to the place where the galley would be burned. There was still singing, and Paddy seemed to be joining in. His little fists were using his mother's shoulders as a drum and it felt like he was participating in her stead. She suddenly saw the man who had told her about Grettir in front of her. He carried a staff now and had a broad brimmed hat pressed on his head. He wore a dark blue cloak, but she recognized the shape of his shoulders and his long hair. He followed the procession as well, and when it stopped, he walked from squad to squad, talking to men and women before moving on.