by Joan Lennon
‘I think it’s a stroke,’ said Rab.
But what help was a name? He admitted he didn’t know what you were supposed to do when somebody had this thing, this stroke, any more than she did.
‘I think you need special neural stimulators and brain pathway re-routers to heal it,’ he said, ‘so even if we knew that was what it was, we couldn’t …’ His words trailed away, and he stared into the fire.
Cait looked at him sidelong. He hadn’t talked strange like that for such a long time. The events of the Ring of Stones had changed him as well as the Old Woman. Everyone was changed except her. She was just the same. Angry and betrayed and twitchy.
Her skin itched.
Her skin itched. Then why was he scratching?
‘They say there’s bad weather coming,’ he said, ratching his nails across the scar on his arm in a way that made her want to hit him. ‘The sky’s gone all weird. Sketh’s been yelling at Mewie ever since we got back – you can hear it all over the village.’
Cait shrugged. ‘He’s scared we’ve all forgotten how important he is. If he could get about, he’d be kicking and cuffing everyone, just to remind them. At the moment, Mewie’s the only one he can reach.’
Rab pulled a face. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘What’s the point of saying things like that? Things aren’t fair. Things just are.’ Cait shifted. That didn’t sound like her. That sounded like everybody else, but not her.
Rab was rubbing hard between his eyes. ‘My head feels like it’s a size too small. And my skin – it feels all crawly. Why is that?’
Cait didn’t answer. It was true, she too felt a pressure in her skull and that sense of invisible bugs creeping over her … She stood up abruptly. ‘Stay with Voy,’ she snapped and headed for the door.
‘No – but – wait—’ began Rab, looking appalled, but it was too late.
She’d gone.
Rab: Skara Brae
‘You. Come here.’
It was her. The Old Woman.
Rab gulped. ‘You’re … but … Cait just left … I’ll go and get her—’
‘No. You.’ Her voice sounded gravelly. Different. The words were a little slurred. But there was no mistaking the old authority. Rab sidled over to the bed box. He had to force himself to look inside.
The Old Woman was lying there with her ghastly twisted face, staring at him.
‘Sit me up.’
He desperately did not want to touch her. He did it anyway. She seemed to weigh nothing at all, as if her bones were hollow, like a bird’s. When he had settled her against the end of the bed she spoke again. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘You’re going to tell me.’
‘Tell you …?’
‘Who you are.’
Rab drew in a breath sharply, but before he could start to protest, the Old Woman made an abrupt chopping action with her hand.
‘Don’t … lie to me. I don’t have … time.’
He looked into her mismatched eyes and knew it was a fact. She was dying. What he’d done at the Ring, bringing breath back into her body and re-starting her heart, had only put death off a matter of days. She had very little time left, and in the time she had, she was suffering.
Maybe it was no kindness, bringing you back. Maybe I shouldn’t have interfered …
‘You’re not a selkie.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘You’re … like the piper.’
‘Er …’ He knew he was looking stupid and shifty. He could see it made her angry. And with her anger came new strength.
‘You heard the story. Of the piper. Who went into the trows’ hill. You went into a hill and time folded. You came out with trow treasure. That’s what the skin is. That’s what you are. The piper.’
The story. Rab remembered old Benth telling the story in the paved place one warm afternoon – about the piper who was lured into a hill and in the morning hundreds of years had passed and everyone he knew was long dead.
‘You’re from the past,’ said Voy.
Rab’s hands were sweating. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Don’t play with me, boy. I think it because there’s nothing left to think.’ She closed her eyes and her face looked like a skull in the dim light. Her voice rasped on. ‘You’re going to tell me how things used to be. In the Greater Days. You’re going to tell me where we went wrong.’
‘I’m not from the past …’ He tried to hedge, slide past the truth, but she made another angry, impatient gesture and suddenly he found himself saying, ‘I’m from the future.’
The space under the turf roof filled with sudden, appalled silence. Rab couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t believe he’d just said what he’d just said. How had it happened – how had she made him say those words?
There was a look of triumph on her twisted face. ‘There is a future … there is a future … tell me!’
And so Rab found himself having with Voy the conversation he had denied himself again and again, the conversation he’d longed to have with Cait. He was telling her the truth – about everything – about who he was and where he’d come from – when he’d come from – the Silver Skin, his Com, the accident … He filled the little time she had left with talk of time, great swathes of time, stretching out into the far, distant future. It was the one thing he had sworn not to do and he was doing it anyway.
He couldn’t tell how much of it she was understanding – and his explanations weren’t always all that clear – but she asked no questions. She just let him talk.
And even as he spoke, he feared he’d been right to keep silent before. He’d thought it would be such a relief but instead it felt somehow bitter … dangerous. As if by telling the future he was killing it, or making it something else, something strange. Something wrong. Every mistake he made, through ignorance or poor memory, would be made real, just by the action of his voice in this hut on this island in the cold northern sea.
You’re so stupid, he told himself scornfully. You think you just open your yap and the rest of history’s going to roll over and play dead? When did somebody die and make YOU God?!
It didn’t help.
It didn’t help that there was so much he didn’t know. All those years of study and he’d barely begun to learn. It didn’t help that of the things he did know there was so much he just couldn’t explain properly. He had an Alexander Decision Age mouth, and the Old Woman had Stone Age ears.
He muddled on, trying not to backtrack too much, trying to make things that were intensely complex sound simple and straightforward until he became so tangled his words just died away …
‘How do you know all this?’ she said into the silence. ‘We can barely remember from one cycle to the next.’
So he explained written language. Badly. Until he suddenly remembered the cryptic scratchings in the passageway and along the stone edge of her bed box. He pointed to them. She listened with such hunger.
‘You know everything, from all the world’s time. Nothing is ever lost …’
Rab stared at her. What in all the garbled muddle of his words had given her that idea? ‘No – no – so much is lost! But there are people who want to know and they ask questions. Even when they might never know the answers, they keep on asking questions. That’s why I came here. Except … it went wrong.’
‘Except you’re stuck here now and can’t tell anybody the answers.’
‘No. NO! I’m going to get back. I’m going to get home.’ But his voice cracked as he said it.
‘And then you’ll tell them all about us.’
Rab hung his head. ‘I don’t know all about you.’
‘That’s right. You don’t,’ the Old Woman murmured.
But Rab didn’t hear her. He was overwhelmed by a picture in his mind of him trying to describe and explain and make real Skara Brae and Voy and Sketh and Mewie and the Ring – and Cait – to the people of his own time, and the harder he tried to imagine it the less possible it became. Out of his words they would only see primitive housing and pagan rituals and people
who smelled and bashed stones together and believed in fairy stories. They would say, ‘That’s interesting. Fascinating to know. Great to have the questions answered. You must be desperate to get sanitized, right?’
No matter how hard he tried to explain, he would fail. And in spite of all he had learned, he still wouldn’t know the most important answer of all. He still wouldn’t know what had happened at Skara Brae. Sometime, some thousands of years in its future, some thousands of years in his past, Skara Brae had been found. Uncovered by a ferocious storm. But when had it disappeared under the sand? Were there people trapped in their houses when the time came? Did they all die, suffocating on grit – or were they long gone, the village already deserted like the others Mot had told him about, when the dunes came and buried the houses? Why didn’t he know that? Everything he’d been telling Voy seemed pointless. It meant less than the salt smell of the seaweed burning in the hearth. Less than the sound of the wind in the sky or the ache in his legs.
He buried his head in his hands.
‘So,’ she said in a harsh whisper. ‘So. There are children of time after all – and grand-children too.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’ She waved his puzzlement aside. She leaned back, propped against the hard stone, never blinking. Her lop-sided smile was terrible to look at. He had to remind himself that she couldn’t help the way only half of her face moved, but it was as if two separate personalities were peering out at him, one that stared with such icy, blank evil, the other grinning with some kind of manic delight. Both of them making his skin crawl …
He couldn’t look at her any more. He let his head drop into his hands again.
‘Are you going to tell Cait?’ he said, his voice muffled and weary.
Voy didn’t answer. Her breathing sounded troubled again, as if she were struggling with something, but he didn’t look up. And then …
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Don’t you want it?’
‘Want what?’ What could he possibly want, except maybe to sleep for a year?
It wasn’t sleep she was offering him.
It was his Silver Skin.
Cait: Skara Brae
She straightened just outside the entranceway to the paved place and paused. Sketh’s muffled voice came along the passageway behind her, berating his patient wife, reasserting his authority like a midden cock pecking at the hens. Mostly everyone was staying in their own houses, quietly doing the chores that a few days’ absence had built up. Keeping out of sight. Keeping their heads down. The strangeness of the times wasn’t their problem. It was for people like the Old Woman to sort through, not them.
Only Ailth had come, like her, to look at the sky.
‘No birds,’ he grunted. ‘No wind and no birds.’ His breath puffed white from his mouth.
He was right. The sky hung low over the village, muddy with clouds. There was no wind stirring the grass and no bird crying from the shore. The cold bit at the skin of her face, making her flinch.
Cait had never known weather like this. She was about to ask Ailth what could it mean, when she stopped. She saw the way he was watching her. It was a strange look, a waiting look.
He’s expecting something – from me. Answers. What does he think I know?
‘Ailth. Help.’
He lifted one shoulder. ‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’
And then he opened his arms.
*
When she left him, Ailth lay still in the darkness of the Stone Maker’s house. He’d never known her like that before. It was as if her body had been trying to speak directly to his, no, more than speaking – shouting. He’d have bruises to show for it, he knew that for certain.
Maybe it was the coming storm?
Cait crept up the long passageway and turned towards home. She felt light, as if she had bird bones. As if I could fly. Fly away. She came through the doorway and straightened – and there was Rab with the silver skin dangling woefully in his hands.
‘Look – she … she gave it to me! And then she just fell asleep. And her breathing sounds awful—’
Rab: Skara Brae
For so long, all his thoughts had been bent towards the moment he got the Silver Skin back. And now he had it, or what was left of it, and all he felt was confusion and doubt. He ran his fingers over the damaged material and the ripped helmet. There was no knowledge in this time that could repair them, and even if there were, the necessary materials didn’t exist. He had a sudden mental picture of Cait sewing up the tatters of the silver skin with gut thread and patches of hide and decorating the jagged neckline with pierced shells and red-ochre clay beads.
He was aware of her watching him from behind her veil of hair. He was aware of Voy, suddenly awake again, watching from the bed box, each breath painful to listen to. One of these women knew so much about him and, in spite of all he’d just told her, it wasn’t the old one.
‘Cait … I …’
‘There’s a storm coming,’ said Cait in a flat voice. ‘It will be bad.’
‘I’ll just … I’m just going to …’
She turned away. He loved the way her neck showed where her pale hair had fallen forward. It was grubby and so familiar it made his heart clench.
Voy was still watching. He bent down and crawled out along the passageway. In the low cramped space he stopped and took a deep breath. In spite of the cold, he found his hands were sweating as he pulled the undamaged sleeve of the Silver Skin onto his arm. The singed remains of the suit dangled awkwardly. Was his Com still in there? Could it have survived? He felt again the tingling feeling on his skin as the suit struggled for some power, but was it fainter this time?
He realised he was, pointlessly, holding his breath, and let it out in a whoosh that was close to a sob.
Come on, come on, come ON … Are you there?
And then he got an answer.
‘—ab? Rab? Oh, I feel t-terrible—’
‘Com? Com!’
‘Rab, is that you?’
‘Com.’ The tears rolled down Rab’s face, sudden and hot and surprising.
‘It – it’s you! You’re alive! Oh, R-Rab, something awful has happened. I think we c-crashed, and then I think I was activated and then the power was gone again and could we POSSIBLY have been hit by LIGHTNING? and it’s not 1850, and, and …’
‘It’s all right,’ said Rab, grinning and wiping the tears from his face. ‘I know.’
Speaking Standard again after so long felt strange. Rab did his best to tell his Com the basic facts of what had happened, but it was clear that it was only able to take in a little of what he was saying. The amount of power it could draw from the sleeve of the suit was only enough for some of its most basic functions.
‘You have to understand – these people – they’re … I mean to me they’re …’
‘Understand …’ said his Com. ‘Understand?’ It really didn’t know what he was talking about – how could it?
You weren’t here, he thought desperately. You don’t understand – you don’t know –
He felt sick.
No one would understand.
He pushed the thought away.
‘Should I put the suit on properly now? See how much power I can give you?’
His Com squawked in alarm. ‘No-no-no-no, not here! We have to wait … wait for the l-last minute, Rab. I can’t guarantee there’ll be no more … fire.’ It whispered the last word as if it were afraid, and Rab shuddered. ‘Get d-down to the shore, Rab – you need to, to, be as close to your original entry point … as possssssible.’
‘Leave?’ Rab stared stupidly down at his arm. ‘You want me to leave?’
‘What is it saying, your skin?’
Cait had come along the passageway to him. She put a lit clay lamp on the ground between them. The bones of her face, lit from below, were strangely sharp and angular. Rab was ashamed of himself for having jumped at the sound of her voice.
I feel so guilty! Why do I feel s
o guilty?
‘It’s not the skin talking – it’s the … No, never mind, my, er, skin – it’s saying I have to leave. Now. Right away.’ It was impossible to read her face in the eerie light. Help! I don’t know what to do! he thought at her. What do you want me to do?
Nothing. She was giving him nothing.
‘Are you sure about this – leaving right away, I mean?’ he havered to his Com. ‘There’s a storm coming – nobody’s going to be able to find us in bad weather – it’s going to be a bad one.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Don’t you remember – it was a storm that got us into this mess in the first place!’ Unconsciously, he rubbed the puckered scar, his dread growing with the touch. Red pain, heat, his body pulsing … ‘I don’t think this is a good time to leave.’
‘Need, need, the storm,’ his Com insisted. ‘Need an anchor point – something big … noticeable … too much of time is too hom-hom-ogenous. Too much all the same. They could miss you by weeks – years – need something significant …’
Rab thought of all the time here, all the upheaval, all the emotion. Not significant. He gave a small grimace.
‘You’re happy because you’re leaving, aren’t you.’ Cait’s voice was dangerously calm.
‘I wasn’t smiling. I mean I was, but not like that. I’m not leaving. Not yet, I mean. The suit, I mean my skin, is too damaged. But if I can use it to send a message to my people, then …’
Guilt came crawling up his throat again.
‘I’m just going to send a message and then I’m coming back – I’ll be here to help with the storm …’ He didn’t know what else to say and shrugged helplessly.
‘I don’t need your help. Just leave.’ She spat the words so fiercely he shuffled backwards involuntarily. She went on talking, low and harsh and angry. ‘You go back to your people, your world, put on your tatty silver skin that’s done nothing but cause trouble for us – nothing! – just like the stories, and you’ll forget any of it ever happened. You’ll leave and you’ll forget us, and me, and you’ll forget …’
Rab shook his head. ‘Never. I … never …’ He was overwhelmed with a warmth, a tenderness that made tears burn in his eyes. He didn’t know where he was going to die, but he knew without a shadow of doubt that when the time came, he would still remember the feel of her skin against his, the sound of waves on sand and the smell of burning seaweed, the tiny specks of gold in the depths of her eyes.