White Pines

by Gemma Amor

  ‘Who is Mac?’ I looked around, expecting someone else to emerge from the tree line any moment. Matthew tugged on my shirt, also scanning the woods.

  ‘Enough, Megs,’ he muttered grimly. ‘We should go. Now.’

  But I wasn’t done yet. The Island still had its hooks in me. I resisted.

  ‘Who is Mac?’ I repeated, more gently this time. The boy was very young.

  The boy shook his head. ‘Never mind,’ he said, and then he came forward a little further, until he was standing right in front of us. Up close, I could see a thatch of straight, dark hair. His lantern cast deep shadows under his eyebrows and across his top lip, but for all that, he had a thin, happy face, clear skin, and a pleasant demeanour.

  And he looked familiar, somehow, although I knew that to be impossible.

  The boy grinned up at me, and something silent passed between us. Something unspoken and powerful. I don’t believe either of us were conscious of it, but it felt very much as it had felt when I had first climbed out of the van and set eyes upon Taigh-Faire.

  It felt very much as if, by looking at him, I were returning to something.

  The boy saw my free hand, and reached out for it. He slid his fingers through mine as if we had been the greatest of friends for many years, and I had a crystalline moment of blinding recollection. His touch was recognised. He was familiar, a stranger I somehow knew, although not from my dream. I had held this boy’s hand before, in the past, I was sure of it.

  Or had I held it in the future?

  That jolted me back to reality.

  Where do these thoughts come from?! Again, it felt as if my brain were reading from a script I was not privy to. A part of me, the old, fearful Megs, wanted to pull free, the feeling of his palm and fingers against mine too much, too disruptive. The boy had other ideas. He held fast, his face earnest in the lantern-shine.

  ‘Do you want to come to a party?’ He said, the invitation falling from his lips sweetly, casually.

  And I knew who was really speaking to me through the boy.

  It was the Island, coaxing me in.

  As if on cue, the music rose around us like a sudden tide. I felt it wrap around my body, trickle down my ears and throat, fill me up with cold, sweet longing.

  And I found that I did. I did want to go to a party.

  Because the Island would have it that way.

  14. A place called White Pines

  The Island, however, cared little for Matthew, and he for it.

  ‘Oh, no. No, no, no thank you!’ He shook his head vehemently, and made once more as if to leave. ‘It’s a nice thought, kid, but no. We’re leaving now. Megs, let’s go. Please.’

  The boy gazed at him. ‘But it’s a special occasion,’ he said, his face falling in disappointment.

  Meanwhile the music, so sweet, so sweet, had found its way inside my skull. Matthew couldn’t see this, he couldn’t hear it like I could. He could see my hesitation, and tried to break the spell by waving a hand in front of my face.

  ‘Megs, come on,’ he said, exasperated. ‘We’re done here. Let’s go back, please. I’m begging you. I don’t like this.’ He sneezed, twice, and groaned.

  I heard him distantly, as if through a far-away speaker. Objectively, I knew he was right. This place was strange, and this boy was strange, and we should have turned back hours ago, but what would he have me do? There were too many threads, too many hooks, and I was helplessly bound.

  No turning back, a voice whispered inside of me as the music continued to play. You are exactly where you are supposed to be, and you know it.

  I looked down at my hand, intertwined with the hand of a young boy I somehow recognised and yet didn’t. Whatever my business was here, this boy was a part of it, that much was clear to me.

  I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

  ‘Take me through the trees,’ I whispered.

  And, upon accepting the invitation, I felt the Island shudder.

  The faintest of tremors, but yes. It was there. A ripple, a shifting of the earth, strong enough that I felt it through the soles of my boots, strong enough to shake the pine trees that waited up ahead. The pale trunks convulsed in a sudden, anticipatory ripple of motion. I saw a light shower of needles fall to the ground like rain, and Matthew covered his head reflexively.

  Then the boy and I stepped out together towards the trembling pines, and I left Matthew no choice, really. He could come with us, or return to Taigh-Faire on his own, defeated. I knew I was behaving irrationally, I knew I was being unfair.

  But my body was no longer under my own control.

  I answered the Island’s call, and Matthew, to his credit, did what I thought he would.

  He followed me.

  We crossed the tree line, and the stand of pine trees swallowed us whole.

  It grew instantly quiet around us. The effect was startling: the music cut out suddenly, completely, and all that was left was a pillowy sort of quiet that pressed down upon my ear drums.

  The path continued straight as an arrow through the wooded boundary. It was lit by more small lanterns that dangled from thin metal poles thrust into the ground. Candles flickered behind the glass of these lanterns, casting just enough light to see the ranks of white tree trunks clustered tightly all about us. And it was difficult to wrap my mind around, even in my current state: that so many trees could exist in such uniform perfection on what was, ostensibly, a small land mass that couldn’t be more than a mile long by a mile wide. Because there had to be thousands of them, stretching out in each direction as far as I could see until the darkness took over, and I knew that the dimensions of this place were all wrong. The scale of the forest didn’t work with the actual limitations of the land. I felt that we had been walking long enough that we should have crossed the Island and been standing on the opposite shore, staring out at the sea, and not much else.

  Instead, there were just more trees. And so strange, so tall, so unnaturally straight, with that flawless, white bark and those spindly arms located way up at the very top. Otherworldly. Ghost trees.

  I called out to Matthew over my shoulder, keeping my voice low, because it felt disrespectful to do otherwise.

  ‘The trees...are they indigenous, do you think?’

  Matthew glared at me, his booted feet kicking up a dense curd of pine needles as he walked. He still half-heartedly struggled to keep a hand over his mouth and nose, although he had to remove it periodically to keep his balance on the path, where tree roots and rocks made things awkward. ‘Plants are not really my thing, Megs,’ he muttered, savagely. ‘Foreign policy is my thing. International trade agreements, at a push. The finer points of punctuation and the correct way to employ the Oxford comma. Unrequited love, pointless candle carrying. Not fucking trees.’

  ‘It’s just the colour of the tree trunks...they are so white,’ I answered, ignoring his bad temper and hubris and reaching out to touch one, and then snatching my hand back at the last moment.

  Because in another place, there grew a cherry tree in a bubble of glass, with a stone face nestled into the roots, and I knew now that the power of one single touch could be catastrophic, especially when you didn’t understand the rules of engagement.

  Hands to yourself, Megs, I thought, and another errant memory of myself with Matthew at the Christmas party flashed across my mind, skin on skin and breath on breath. ‘Hands to yourself,’ I had told him, right before we got down to it, but it had been a joke, a gentle, teasing challenge. I bit back a wild, bubbling laugh. I could not find a footing at all, emotionally. It was like someone else was sitting inside my brain, idly flipping through different feelings and memories without being able to settle on any one moment, or state.

  I tried to make conversation with the boy, to distract myself.

  ‘Other people live here with you? On this Island?’

  The boy nodded. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Behind these trees?

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘You know, I can s
ee this Island from my house on the mainland, but I couldn’t see any signs of you. Not even any smoke.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘Oh, we aren’t allowed to mix with people on the mainland, not usually. Mac says we are...we are…’ He stuttered, trying to find the word.

  ‘A cult?’ Matthew’s voice needled us from the rear.

  The boy remained oblivious to his sarcasm.

  ‘No, silly. Self-sufficient!’

  ‘And no-one gets sick?’ I asked, voice dreamy and preoccupied. I wasn't asking for myself. I didn’t care about the anthrax. I was asking so that Matthew would stop worrying about it.

  ‘Oh, no,’ The boy swung my hand about as we walked. ‘Mac says that the government made everything safe again. It has been safe since 1990. When the town was founded.’ He had the air of a boy reciting something from a school lesson. In his enthusiasm, he sped up, eager to move faster. ‘That’s what the party is for!’

  ‘An anniversary?’

  ‘Aye, of when our town was born!’

  ‘The town?’ I had imagined a collection of tents, or huts, a cottage or two maybe, like the ruined shepherd's hut near the spit. Not a town. The Island wasn’t big enough for that. The boy must be exaggerating.

  ‘Yes!’ The boy said, exasperated at my inability to grasp his circumstances. ‘The town! My town!’

  And the woodland cleared, then, in the same way it had arrived overhead: so suddenly that I was not prepared. One moment there were trees all around, the next, a bright moon shone down upon us, as if curtains had been thrown open to let the night back in. It illuminated the white tree trunks, and I could see they made a large, bright, surreal circle that stretched out before us, within which we now stood, tiny, insignificant, off to one side.

  And the space inside the trees was enormous.

  Too enormous. The Island was only a mile wide by maybe a mile long, at most. This space was easily double, if not triple that in size, a generous expanse of scrubland and sandstone which sloped up gently towards a central rise, capped by a bare sandstone summit. On that summit, a large, cone-shaped pile of stones stood proud, like a miniature mountain. On top of that, a tiny light flickered.

  And, clinging to the slope beneath the summit, was a town.

  Music returned, hitting me like a bat to the face, frenetic, loud, driven by a fast and relentless drum beat, and a million other sounds and scents made themselves known: people laughing, talking, children screaming, a dog barking, other animal noises, the unmistakable clattering of plates and cutlery, the chink of glass on glass, the smell of wood smoke, and of meat cooking, and other things I couldn’t quite place. It was a vast, swirling whirlpool of noise, and light, and colour, and movement, and all of it sat in the space inside the pine trees, as if the Island were an eye, the trees an iris, and this was the pupil, the very centre of it all.

  A whole town.

  ‘Well, shit,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Well, shit,’ I said, in complete and absolute agreement.

  The boy grinned at us in pleasure.

  ‘How is this possible?’ Matthew scrubbed his hands through his hair once again in disbelief.

  I knew what he meant. There were hundreds of people milling around out there, maybe even a thousand, and a comprehensive infrastructure in place around them. I saw a chapel, tiny, with a small bell tower on the roof, and an iron cross on top of that. Below it, row upon row of simple stone houses stood resolute before us, no bigger than one-up, one-down. They were built close together to form tidy, neat streets. Dark, slate-tiled roofs capped each abode. There were chimneys on top of those roofs, and I asked myself again: why hadn’t I been able to see smoke from the mainland?

  Matthew pointed, and I saw a pig pen, where three large pink beasts rootled around in the shadows. Beyond, lay what looked like several vegetable patches, although it was hard to tell from where we stood, which was some distance away. A cluster of fruit trees were planted off to one side of the vegetable gardens, and I could see wheelbarrows propped under the trees.

  Self-sufficient, the boy had said, and I understood what he meant now. Across from the pigs and vegetable patches stood a building with a red cross painted on the side. A surgery, or hospital, maybe. Tiny but functional. Near that, there was a long, low structure that could have been a town hall, or market hall of sorts. I saw a series of storehouses next to it, open-sided, crammed with smoked meat, dried fish, barrels, poultry, root vegetables, bags of grain and other things hidden by the poor light. Beyond, more animal shelters with pens, for chickens, sheep and small, blunt-horned goats.

  These buildings all radiated out in a spider-like pattern from the epicentre of a small town square. In the centre of the square, an old-fashioned cast iron water pump sprouted, with an ancient stone bench placed next to it, upon which a row of old men sat smoking and drinking from old-fashioned beakers. Set up around each of the square’s edges were rows of tables, stools, barrels and lanterns. Bunting hung above all of this, a gay procession of little coloured flags that ran around the square’s perimeter.

  And there were people everywhere. Dancing, singing, laughing, embracing each other, drinking, eating.

  This was where the party was happening.

  ‘What is this place?’ I said to the boy, and as I said it, I felt the thundering train of fate stop dead at my feet, a hair’s breadth away from my face. There was a moment, where I waited for his reply, teetering on the edge of that great chasm I’d been flirting with for what felt like an age. In that moment, all I could hear was my blood pounding in my ears.

  The boy smiled proudly, and pointed to a painted wooden sign hammered into the ground a little way off.

  It said, simply:

  WELCOME TO WHITE PINES.

  And I knew, at last, why I was here.

  It was the town.

  15. Party

  I let it all sink in for a moment.

  So many. So many people, cavorting around the main square of this idyllic, neatly organised stone-built town without a care in the world. And they all lived here, on this Island. In a town that by all laws of physics and practicality, shouldn’t fit into the small, yet somehow huge, space amongst the pine trees. Like that fairytale world of snow and ice in the back of the wardrobe, or the land filled with Cheshire-cat smiles only found through a looking glass. A hidden, unexpected place, full of wonder.

  White Pines.

  I wondered then. Did Fiona and the other mainlanders know about this place? Could that explain her hostility towards the Island?

  ‘Come on,’ said the boy, impatiently, shaking me out of my stupor. He began to walk eagerly towards the party, desperate to show us where he lived.

  Matthew made a grab for me. ‘Megs!’ He hissed.

  I had grown adept at avoiding his hands. I stared at him, unimpressed. ‘Please stop doing that,’ I said, wearily.

  ‘Just think for a moment, would you?’ He was back in protective mode. ‘We can’t go in there, we’re total strangers! We haven’t been invited. It’s one thing to crash a party, Megs, but none of this feels right. I’m tired. It’s late. I want to go back.’

  ‘But…’ I gestured to White Pines. ‘Look at it, Matthew. It’s...incredible.’

  His mouth pressed into a hard, thin line.

  ‘And what about this Mac character?’ He asked, glaring at the boy, who was trying to hustle us along, bored by our hesitancy. ‘We can’t just walk into that lot uninvited in the middle of the night, we’ll be lynched!’

  I decided to try logic, because at this point, Matthew was beyond reason. I’d pushed him too far.

  ‘Matthew. What’s the worst that could actually happen?’ I asked, as gently as I could.

  ‘This is not what I came for, Megs,’ he said, frustration running through his entire frame. ‘I came...I came for you.’

  ‘I already told you I loved you, Matthew. What more do you want from me, right now? At this moment?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?!’ He cried.

  I shook m
y head, and turned silently on my heel, and followed the boy.

  ‘God on a fucking biscuit!’ I heard him say, and I didn’t have to look to know that he was following us up-slope, towards the party.

  His fears appeared to be unfounded. We came to the square and the boy cut a path for us around the edge of it, skirting alongside the throngs of people gathered. We attracted a few glances, a few stares, but no-one challenged us outright. A few people frowned and made as if to come over, but we kept moving quickly. The citizens of White Pines were too concerned with having a good time to worry much about outsiders in their midst.

  And having a good time they were, with joy riding thick and palpable in the air. People jigged and swayed and tapped their feet together, toasted each other with beakers of dark liquid, and twirled each other around in glee. The music had hit its stride, and was thundering along like an approaching train. I saw four musicians near the water-pump, two sawing at strings, and one hammering at an ancient, tattered drum kit. There was a piper too. The sounds he coaxed from the pipes under his armpit were extraordinary, as if he had a bag of souls in his hands instead of air, and each note was a different voice singing their own, distinct song. It was so arresting that I paused to watch as he played, keeping close to the edge of the square so as not to be conspicuous. He was completely lost in the music, cheeks puffed out, his foot stamping a fierce beat upon the ground. Sweat ran down his face and into his thick beard.

  The boy, who had gone ahead a little, realised I was no longer following, and doubled back to see what was taking me so long. I ignored him, mesmerised by the piper and his call.

  The tempo shifted up a notch. The piper unhooked the pipes from under his arm, set them down, and scooped up a long metal flute. Swaying with rhythm, I watched as his fingers flew up and down the instrument, and then, as I was staring right at him, he disappeared.

  One second he was there, the next...not.

  The sound of the pipes cut out abruptly, and yet no-one else seemed to notice. The strings kept sawing, the drum kept beating. The people of White Pines danced on, and I began to question my own sanity.