by Joan Lennon
They were snorting so loudly they didn’t hear the scratching at the door post at first.
‘Ailth?’ some one called.
Rab turned and saw the one-eyed woman – Sidne – crouching outside.
Ailth went out and squatted in front of her. Framed by the entrance, Rab could see their faces close together, and suddenly the similarity between them was striking. Sidne handed Ailth a pot of something, patted his shoulder and went back into the village.
‘Hey – that’s your mother!’ Rab said, hardly slurring at all.
Ailth shrugged. ‘Hungry?’ Without waiting for an answer he scooped a bowlful out and handed it over. ‘She’s the best cook in the village.’
This was probably true, but the food on top of the beer was a mistake. Rab’s stomach rebelled. Spectacularly. Cait came across the paved place in search of him, just in time to see him staggering out of the Chert’s house and round to the side, where he vomited.
Cait gave Ailth a look.
‘What? How could I know selkies can’t hold their drink?’ he protested, all wounded innocence.
‘Oh yes. Because of course there’s all that beer under the sea.’
‘Cait?’ quavered Rab. ‘I feel awful …’
‘Oh, come on.’ And she went to support the green-faced seal boy.
‘Need a hand?’ asked Ailth.
‘No.’
‘Will I see you later?’
Cait shrugged. ‘I’m always here.’
The weather stayed fair. The wind blew. Rab’s body grew stronger. And time passed.
Voy: North of Skara Brae
Day after day, Voy climbed the path up the north headland, sat by the cairn and thought. If she turned her head, she could see the village from her vantage point. She could see figures moving about the paved place and the smoke rising through the thatch of the houses. And she could see the part of the village where no one lived any more, where no smoke rose. The part of the village where Voy had been born and grew up.
Her family’s house, and the others along that passageway, had been empty and sealed for a long time, since the year the fever came. It swept through the village like a fire through dry heather, and by the time it burned itself out, half of the villagers were dead, including her parents and brothers and sisters.
Young Voy had cried for her family, but she knew the reason for all the death.
‘With so many spirits being sent to Her,’ she said to Hesta, ‘the Sun will grow strong again. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s why they all died. To make the Sun strong, and bring the Greater Days back. They’d be happy to do that. Even the babies, if they could understand, they’d be happy.’
Hesta, drained and thin after all her fruitless efforts to save her people, didn’t answer.
But young Voy was sure. Things made sense. Dying made sense. It was what you made life out of.
Things are going to get better, she thought. I’m going to make them better.
And old Voy looked back on her young, sure self and let the tears drip down her face and onto her ravaged hands.
Hesta had been the Old Woman before her. She’d taken Voy in after the fever and she’d taught her everything she knew. Voy had soaked it all up like a wad of wool and asked for more. More about medicine and what was inside things and about rituals and the First People and power. More about how things used to be and how they were going to be. More about the Greater Days.
‘That’s long gone,’ Hesta said. ‘Nothing but ruins now. And memories, but not so many of those either.’
Young Voy had asked, ‘Why are they over? I want to live in Great Days!’
Hesta smiled and shook her head. ‘You don’t get to choose! The bad times need peopled too, don’t they, silly? Besides, I’m not sure I’d be happy in all that bustle and busyness. I can’t quite see me screeching orders at a building site all day, can you?’
It was true. If Hesta had been in charge of the building of the Ring of Stones or the strange structures on the Ness that no one now understood, they’d have taken aeons to rise as she listened and chatted and listened some more to every workman’s worries and aches and pains. But Voy had no doubts at all. She was sure she’d have been happy. She could see it easily – ‘That stone there! Higher! Straighter!’ Striding about, full of the knowledge everyone else lacked. Full of power.
She’d been sure, too, that there would be new Great Days and she would be part of the return to glory. Hesta would teach her everything she needed to know and then …
Voy had never doubted she was Old Woman material, though it took Hesta a little longer to realise it.
‘It’s a fact I’d been thinking of choosing another girl entirely,’ Hesta admitted, ‘but it would have been a mistake. Her enthusiasms were elsewhere.’
Voy knew about Luatha. By the time she went to a new village she’d lain with near enough every man in Skara Brae.
‘They’ll be sad to see her go,’ Hesta said. ‘But it’ll be more peaceful in the long run.’
Voy knew about the way babies were made. She knew about how to stop one growing in a woman’s belly, too. What took her some time to understand was why anyone would want to do either. When she suddenly did understand, it hit her hard. She thought she would begin to howl at the moon like a love-sick dog. She watched the men go by with hot eyes and a hectic colour in her face.
‘You never do anything by halves, do you,’ murmured Hesta and sent Gairstay in to her, closing the door from the outside.
Now Gairstay lay in the cairn, and she was dying little deaths. Skara Brae was diminishing as well. After the fever, as the years passed, their numbers had only risen a very little. The number of babies born and growing to adulthood was small. The houses that had been sealed after the fever stayed that way. Women from other villages were reluctant to make bonds with their men.
Even Hesta hadn’t been able to charm many of them to come.
Hesta had been tiny and pretty and loved. Everyone was drawn to her. Voy’d never managed to inspire more than the village’s fear, but she’d long ago decided that was enough. There had been no peace for Hesta – day or night, they’d come scratching at her door post, bringing gifts and grumbles in equal measure. Hesta always had time for them, always listened, nodding and making it all better, like a mother kissing a baby who’s tumbled over. Voy wondered if it was all that love that drove Hesta into the arms of her visions.
They couldn’t reach her there. And then, she was gone altogether. And, wrapping her rage round her like a cloak, Voy had moved to the other bed box, sat on the stone seat at the head of the hearth.
It’s you they want, but they can’t have you. It’s me, or nothing.
It wasn’t the same.
But it was what was.
Hesta had tried to teach her to be content with what was – she’d tried and tried. Voy had always fought against that acceptance. She’d always believed that she could make things change.
But now she was running out of time.
Cait: Skara Brae
‘Come on!’
It was another fine day – Voy was off at the cairn – the morning’s work was done – and Cait had a plan.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Rab, but she wouldn’t say.
She led him along the passageway towards the paved place. Be empty … be empty … she thought. She didn’t want any of the children trailing after them today. They liked to follow the selkie about, in case he did something odd.
Be empty!
She was out of luck. As she stuck out her head, she saw practically the entire village there. And, at the centre of the crowd, was Sketh.
Sketh. She spat, in her mind. He was looming over his diminutive wife, Mewie, with his legs straddled and arms folded. He enjoyed bullying her in public.
He wrinkled his big nose. She’d obviously just come from the shore with her gathering bag. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Limpets,’ murmured Mewie, eyes meekly downcast.
‘I
hate limpets!’
Sketh always talked as if what he was saying was news. Astonishing. A revelation.
Rab poked at her from behind. ‘What’s the hold-up?’ he grumbled. ‘I’m getting cramp here.’
‘Shhh. Wait!’
In the paved place, ‘I hate them!’ Sketh announced again.
Of course you hate limpets, you backside of a trow. EVERYBODY hates limpets. Even other limpets hate limpets. If you don’t want to eat them, go kill us a deer. Go on – give us all some peace!
‘I am going hunting!’ said Sketh. ‘I will slay a mighty stag …’
Talk, talk! Go if you’re going!
‘And I will take my son.’
Cait saw Mot’s face light up. His first hunt! She also saw how Mewie flinched. Mot was still young, and he was her only living child. He was a gentle boy. It was hard to believe he was truly Sketh’s son, but strange things sometimes happened in families. And he adored his father.
Stranger still, thought Cait.
She felt Rab shifting restlessly behind her. ‘All right.’ And she dragged him out into the paved place, making way for Sketh and Mot as they headed in to collect spears.
‘I’m going on a hunt!’ shrilled Mot, bright-eyed, but Mewie, trailing behind, said nothing.
Everyone else was dispersing as well. The excitement was over for now. She could hear Ailth, humming tunelessly in the Stone Maker’s house. She recognised the sound – it meant he was deep into something.
‘Come on!’
She led Rab away from the village, south along the edge of the dunes. As they walked, she watched him sidelong. She liked that he was tall, like her. She was pleased to see how easily he was moving now. He was getting his strength back. He walks almost as if he’s been doing it his whole life! She had a sudden, vivid picture of Rab galumphing along on his belly like a proper seal …
‘What’s so funny?’ Rab asked.
‘Nothing.’ But she couldn’t stop grinning.
He shrugged and smiled back, and lifted his face up to the sun. It was warm and bright and brought out the strange colours of his hair and skin.
Why shouldn’t things get better? Why shouldn’t he be the answer?
She took his hand and was surprised, again, at how soft his skin was.
‘Come on.’
Rab: South of Skara Brae
They moved inland at an angle, towards the Little Loch. She kept looking over her shoulder, he wasn’t sure why. He found he really didn’t care. It was good just to be with her.
When Skara Brae was behind the swell of the moorland, Cait turned towards the south headland. They climbed the slope to the crest of the hill and then down the other side, so that the bay was out of sight. Rab looked along this new stretch of coast. Cliffs dipped down to rocky shores – streams made slate-coloured shapes through the heather as the fresh water headed for the sea. The wide open space of the ocean didn’t bother him. It was meant to be empty.
Cait picked up the pace, leading him down at an abrupt tangent to a jumble of rocks at the base of the headland. His legs were beginning to complain, when suddenly she stopped and scanned all about.
‘Now. Quickly.’ She ducked between the rocks so fast he lost her for a moment.
‘Hey—!’
‘Hurry up!’ Her voice echoed oddly.
He followed the sound – and found out why.
Hidden among the rocks was the entrance to a cave. Low at first, so that he had to duck down to enter, it opened out inside.
Just like a proper house, he thought, without noticing that what he meant was Just like a Skara Brae house.
The space was filled with light. When he looked up, he saw an opening in the rock face that let in the sun. Through it, there was a panoramic view across the waves and along the coast.
Cait was already hunkered beside a miniature square hearth in the centre of the space, fuel at the ready. She took out her flint and sent sparks flying into a little bundle of dry lichen. When a trickle of smoke appeared, she took the lichen up in her hands and blew into it gently, watching closely to see when it was strong enough. Her face was intent. Contented. It made him feel warm inside his chest.
He looked about. There was a fur rug thrown over a pile of heather for a bed, a sitting stone at the head of the hearth, stone tanks in the white sand floor filled with sea water – Cait had even built herself a sized-down set of shelves with a few wonky pots and flint implements. There was a salt tang in the air and the walls were damp to the touch but it had her written all over it.
The fire was going now and already the space was warming.
He realised she was watching him from behind her pale hair.
‘This is my place,’ she said, half shy, half belligerent. ‘I found it when I was little. I used to come here and stare out to sea, hoping that my people would come back for me. That I’d see them coming. Then, after a while, I just came here to get away.’
‘It’s great. Amazing. What does Ailth think of it?’ The words were out of his mouth before he even realised he’d thought them.
She looked straight at him then.
‘He’s never been here,’ she said and held out her hand.
His heart was beating hard. ‘I haven’t done this before.’
‘Don’t worry. I have.’
He looked into her eyes and saw that there were tiny golden specks in the blue. He was going to tell her about them, but then she put her mouth on his and he forgot everything else.
Voy: North of Skara Brae
It was almost time to leave for the Ring of Stones. Another cycle, another chance to draw the Road down from the Sun, send the loved dead back to the Source. Make the Sun strong again.
We keep doing the same things, Gairstay, as hard as we possibly can, but we keep getting less and less in return. The world grows darker and colder, and we don’t know why or how to make it better.
Did she have an answer in the pouch at her waist? There was nothing she was afraid to do – except nothing! Except doing nothing in an unending fading away. I’m afraid of that.
She heaved a sigh. She was weary just climbing up to the cairn. She tried to make her brain work, tried to see the way forward. See what she should do, before her people’s decline became irrevocable and they were all forgotten.
And her mind drifted ahead, to the Ring of Hills. To the Maes Howe, built at what huge effort by the people of the Greater Days, now deserted. The great ruin on the Ness, between the salt marsh and the freshwater loch. The flattened village by the Lesser Circle.
At least they left something to wonder about. Who will wonder about us? About me?
Gairstay had never had to worry about that. His work would last forever. Stone lasts forever. Down the generations, long after he was gone, people would hold his work in their hands and marvel.
It had taken Gairstay months of patient work to reveal the shape inside each of the spirit stones. Sanding, chiselling, grinding – no two stones alike. Some were rounded, some angular and spiked, some axe-shaped, some shaped like sea urchins, some shaped like nothing in the world …
She’d held them in her hands and felt them warming up from her flesh. It was clear that each was the shape that it must be, and could be no other. But … ‘How did you know? How did you know this was inside?’
He’d just smiled. But where Gairstay’s skills found the shape inside the stone and freed it, the new material – the one they called the Tears of the Sun – started from an empty shape – a mould, they called it – that the liquid bronze was poured into. Or so he told her. She wondered in passing how he knew so much about it, but then decided it would be the sort of thing the Cherts talked about together when they met at the Ring.
She asked, ‘So it’s the one who makes the mould who decides what the final shape is going to be?’ It was the opposite to what the Stone Makers did in finding what was already there.
It didn’t seem right.
She couldn’t remember now what he’d said to that.
She was starting to lose things in the blank places. Things she knew before she went into one and couldn’t find again afterwards. Where did her mind go, in those strange absences?
What if that is the way the world ends? A blankness, then another, then another, until the one from which there was no return.
Or would there be children? What if time had children – ages had children –
Who were the children of her time? The ones with the new metal? The Offlanders like the ones that spawned Cait? The selkies?
Gairstay had had a theory.
‘I think it’s possible the Sun has shifted,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps some other people have found a new Road that is more acceptable to Her than our old ways. You can’t help seeing how much taller and stronger and healthier the Offlanders are. Maybe the Sun’s chosen them. Maybe She has gone to shine somewhere else, further to the east perhaps. To where the amber comes from. Or maybe wherever the girl comes from. Or south – the new metal comes from the south. Perhaps where bronze is plentiful the people are using it to draw the life to themselves, so there is less left for us.’
Voy had struggled to picture this. The Sun was the Sun – She moved along the horizon, rising and setting in the same places each year. How could one Sun be in their sky and another Sun be in some other people’s sky?
‘There is only one Sun.’
‘The world is wide,’ said Gairstay, ‘and the Sun is high.’ He drew her pictures in the sand, with lines drawn to show angles and slants and places that the Road might be cut into and weakened … Her mind wandered. She didn’t think his lines in the sand were the answer, though they seemed to give him satisfaction. Not knowing – that was the thing that rankled. Not knowing, but still being sure that if only she did know, she could fix everything. She could do it, if only she knew what it was.
She missed him so much, it hurt like a cracked rib, with every breath.
When she saw the girl at the other side of the bay, leading the selkie over the brow of the hill, her smile twisted, but she let them be.