White Pines

by Gemma Amor

  Get away first. Mourn later.

  My mother’s voice sounded very wise, and very far away.

  ​Opening the door, I was confronted with the ugly little concrete forecourt attached to the Post Office. Beyond this, lay the familiar green hills, the sickly-sweet blue of Gruinard bay, and the road, which forked, the lower fork heading back to Taigh-Faire. I looked to my right, where the higher fork wove its way out of Laide and inland. A little church I’d not noticed before sat on the side of the road, set back aways. It was like everything else in Laide. Tiny, functional, a thing from another time. A sandwich board sat out front, the words ‘ARE YOU READY TO MEET YOUR GOD’ written across it in capital letters.

  And I thought, remembering the stone face beneath the tree: I already have.

  ​I began to walk. It took a lot of effort. I’d been in bed for days, and hit my head hard when I’d crashed the van. Keeping in a straight line was impossible, and I was winded after only a few steps. But every step I took brought me further downhill, further towards the bay, and further towards the Island. And this made me feel lighter, stronger. It eased the ache in my head. Things seemed brighter, more in focus. Flowers had a richer hue. There was more detail in the trees, more depth to the sky.

  The Island was happy I was returning, it felt like.

  I wondered if I would ever be able to dig it out of my brain.

  Am I stuck here forever?

  ​I got half a mile down the road before Fiona caught up with me.

  ​‘Where are you going, Megan?’ She asked, eyeing up the jacket I’d stolen, but saying nothing.

  ​‘To find Rhoda,’ I replied, simply. I did not look at her. I was worried I would claw her eyes out with my bare hands if I did.

  ​Fiona sighed. ‘There is something I have to show you, first.’ She tried to put her hand on my elbow, steer me to a stop. The gesture reminded me of Matthew.

  I violently pulled back.

  ​‘Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again,’ I hissed.

  ​‘You can’t help them,’ she replied, calm as always. ‘I know it sounds cruel, but the Island has them, now.’

  ​I balled up my fists in anger, but kept my arms pinned to my sides.

  ‘You can’t wipe that many people from history without someone noticing. They must have relatives, friends, people who will want to know what happened to them. People will come here. They will ask questions. You can’t hang every single one of them. Or burn them all alive.’

  ​Fiona began to walk again, slowly. ‘White Pines was a self-confessed colony of isolationists, Megan. A community of people who threw off modern technology. They removed themselves from the world, voluntarily. They didn’t have telephones, or write letters. Many of those people had already said goodbye to their friends and relatives and told them not to expect any more contact. They wrote themselves out of history years ago, when they moved to the Island. Mac is to blame for that, not me. Or you. Their secret will be much easier to keep than you think. Very few people knew that community existed in the first place.’

  ​‘But you knew. You knew, and you let him build there, knowing what that place was. Knowing about that...that...thing!’

  ​‘Nimrod,’ Fiona replied, simply. ‘We call it Nimrod. We have, for centuries.’

  ​I laughed bitterly. ‘Biblical. It’s a biblical name.’

  ​Fiona sighed. ‘In the Old Testament, Nimrod was a great hunter. Some say he helped build the tower of Babylon, in defiance of God. Maybe that’s why we call it that. Because when I look at it, I think “how can there possibly be a God if such a thing as this exists?” But the name is of no consequence, really. What is of consequence is that it hunts us. Feeds off of us. It has for many, many years.’

  ​‘So why stay?!’ I stopped dead, overcome with confusion and anger. I could not wrap my head around it. Any normal person would want to live as far away from that thing as humanly possible. How could these people live here with the threat of that creature forever looming over them?

  ​‘Because this is our home, Megan, and we do things differently around here. These are our roots.’

  It was a typically cryptic Fiona thing to say.

  ​‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve been away from us for too long. Your Granny never forgave herself for letting you slip through our fingers.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about my family.’

  I moved off, still intent on trying to find Rhoda. Even if that meant searching every house in Laide.

  Fiona kept pace with me.

  ‘In the beginning, our ancestors tried to kill the beast, you know. Tried, and failed. All they ended up doing was making it angrier. There was much suffering, as a result. Those were dark days. We still talk about them.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘And then, we came to terms with it. Some of us even began to worship it. And we learned how to manage it. We gave it what all gods want. We gave it sacrifice. And now, it no longer hunts us.’

  ​‘You feed it,’ I spat, thinking of the gallows, of Johnny’s body, an offering strung up in the wind. Was it still there, creaking as it swayed to and fro? Had they taken him down? Had Nimrod come for him? Was there a new pale marker with a hanged man standing proud in the cemetery?

  ​Fiona stopped, grabbed my arm again, and this time, I let her. I met her eyes. They burned with something bright and complicated.

  ‘It doesn’t hunt here because it is fed. Our grandmothers learned that through bitter experience. The place it comes from? Who knows? But it is a Hunter, of men, and women, and children, and livestock. It is a plague, but we can contain it, if we follow the old ways. That is our burden. That is our duty. We keep it fed, and we keep it here. And in doing so, we stop it from roaming further, wandering inland. Do you understand?’

  I looked at her, and she was ablaze now, back ram-rod straight, body held tight with all the zealousness of a pastor delivering a sermon.

  ​And it occurred to me then that Fiona had knowledge. Ancient knowledge, passed down from generation to generation. Knowledge I needed desperately, if I was to survive any of this.

  ​‘Walk with me,’ she said.

  I followed.

  ​‘How often does it come?’ I asked, sullenly.

  ​Fiona shrugged. ‘Whenever the gateway on the Island opens. Nobody ever knows when it’s about to happen. Sometimes, a long time passes. Ten years, twenty years, more. Whole generations have come and gone without seeing it. Other times, there are only days between visits. The Island is tricksy like that. It likes to keep us on our toes. So we keep a watch on it.’

  ​I remembered Murdo, with his old dog. They had been standing on the side of the road, watching the Island, when I’d come across them.

  ​Sentry-duty, I realised.

  ​‘And it can’t be killed?’ This piece of information was beginning to sink in.

  ​‘Not with fire, not with guns, not with anything we’ve ever found.’

  ‘So you feed it,’ I said.

  ‘Usually, we have volunteers. A lottery. It is an honour to be chosen. But sometimes, on occasion...well. On occasion, lessons have to be learned.’

  She was talking about Johnny.

  ‘He was a young boy,’ I said, bitterly. ‘He had his whole life ahead of him, you crazy bitch.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Fiona said. ‘But what’s done is done.’

  I fought the urge to hit her, hard, as I had done beneath the shadow of the gallows frame. I needed to find Rhoda, and I needed to know what Fiona knew, so I fought against myself, and won, but my hands twitched by my side.

  ‘The dog,’ I asked, then, trying to steer myself away from violence. ‘Why did you shoot the dog?’ It had been tormenting me since the moment she’d pulled the trigger.

  Fiona looked surprised, as if she’d forgotten the event.

  ‘Oh, that. Well.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Murdo thought you were a tourist, when he first saw you. We don't like to
urists around here, for obvious reasons. He set that dog on you, set it to piss on your boots. But he should have seen you for who you were. Should have known better. He made a mistake. Mistakes cannot go unpunished, that is how things are around here. I had to teach him a lesson. He will be more careful in the future.’

  ​‘And who am I, exactly?’ I asked, white-hot rage burning slow and deep inside me.

  ​‘All in good time,’ she replied.

  We walked on.

  33. History

  After a while, I realised we were headed to Laide burial ground.

  ​‘Why are you taking me to the cemetery?’ I asked, still intent on finding Rhoda and getting her away from these crazy people.

  ​‘To introduce you to your family,’ Fiona said, pushing open the burial ground gate and motioning for me to follow.

  ​It felt like an age since I had last been here, hunting for my Granny’s headstone. The sea lay blue and calm beyond the headstones. The ruined, roofless chapel sat lopsided and meek just as before upon the green grass.

  Behind it, in the bay, the Island lay low.

  Waiting.

  I looked to my left, found the rows of little white markers marching down the hill.

  At the end of the farthest row, a brand new marker had been set into the ground. I could tell it was new, for it was whiter than all the rest.

  Johnny.

  ​Fiona led me to the chapel remains. I saw the sign again: CHAPEL OF SAND OF UDRIGIL. We moved around the sign, and stepped inside the ruin. I nervously eyed the decaying walls, which looked as if they could crumble and land upon me at any point.

  ​‘What are we doing here?’

  Fiona retrieved a long metal pole from where it was leaning against one corner of the structure. It had a hook at the end. I stepped back, thinking for a second that she was going to run me through with it, but she smiled, this time in genuine amusement, the smile actually touching the corners of her eyes, a thing I had never seen from her before.

  That smile only served to make me loathe her more.

  ​Turning her attention to the ground, she felt around for something with one foot, tapping the earth at intervals until the soft thump-thump turned into a dull clang. There was something down there, concealed beneath a thin layer of soil and scree and undergrowth. Fiona crouched, pushed it all to one side with her hands.

  There was a door, set into the ground.

  The door was rusted metal, solid, with an iron loop-handle. Fiona slotted the hook on the pole into the handle, and twisted it, levering the door up as she did so. The door swung open, revealing blackness beyond.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked, thinking: so much of this new world I inhabit is under our feet, hidden from view.

  Like the tunnel beneath Taigh-Faire.

  Like the bodies beneath the sand.

  Like the god, beneath the tree.

  ‘Your history,’ she said, and we descended into the hole.

  34. In the family

  Stairs led down a short distance and ended at a pair of solid, wrought iron gates, chained with a padlock. Fiona fished a key out of her pocket, and wrestled with the lock. I couldn’t make out much of what was beyond the gates, but I thought it looked like a crypt. I had a sense of space, and damp, and cold stone walls.

  The chain slid free of the padlock like a slippery live thing. Fiona caught it, wrapped it around her wrist, pocketed the lock for later, and led me inside.

  ​‘Wait here a moment,’ she said, moving off into the gloom. I heard a match being struck, saw a flare of bright, which quickly became the flickering flame of a lit candle. Then another, and then another, until the entire space was lit by candles, candles mounted on wall sconces. The candles looked fresh, not much burned, and I realised this was a well-tended place, cared for, like the cemetery above our heads: grass manicured, weeds controlled, headstones in good repair. The people of Laide minded their dead, minded their history, and that might have made me feel something had I not remembered, with a quick flash of hatred, that they kept their gallows frame in good condition too. Custom and indoctrination are one and the same thing, I thought bitterly as I took in the large, vaulted space before me. They weren’t caring for their dead so much as keeping their traditions alive, and those traditions amounted to one thing and one thing alone: murder. Sacrifice. Whatever their motivations, whatever they wanted to call it, the end result was the same.

  Life forsaken.

  I thought of Johnny’s face, purple and distorted by the noose that had killed him. I thought of him running across the Island, dragging Luke along with him, and I ached then, I ached for Matthew, and Luke, and Johnny, and Mac.

  I miss you, Matthew, I thought, fighting back tears.

  There were glass cases on pedestals standing to attention along the walls of the crypt. Clear, polished cubes trimmed with silver, catching the light from the candles and throwing it around the chamber so that strange little slivers of fire danced and flickered across the ceiling. The cases were lined up in rows, and I was reminded of the rows of white pine trees on the Island. They had the same air of regiment, and purpose.

  ‘What are these?’ I asked, because this is clearly what I had been brought here to see. Fiona just pointed at the closest case.

  ‘Take a look for yourself,’ she said, her face a strange, alive thing in the flickering candlelight.

  ​I stepped forward, not liking it when Fiona was out of sight, or standing behind me. I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck. It felt horrible.

  ​It was hard to see the contents of the cases at first glance, because of the play of candlelight on the glass. I had to stoop, push my face closer for a better look. Inside the first, which also looked like the oldest, I saw what looked like an ornate silver reliquary, a type similar to those I had seen in churches and cathedrals in Rome and Paris. Repositories used to showcase bones and scraps of skin supposedly taken from the bodies of dead Saints. Holy relics.

  Sitting on a small velvet cushion inside the reliquary was a thin, small, yet instantly recognisable yellowed finger-bone.

  It was the right size to be a child’s finger-bone.

  ​I looked down at my right hand, to where my little finger once grew. I had been eight years old when the mainlanders had taken it. Or so Fiona had said. I had blurry memories of it happening, the pain, the aniseed sweet, the blood. I remembered the capstone in my cellar at Taigh-Faire, how well my four fingers fitted into the holes at the triangle points carved into the stone.

  I’d been mutilated for a purpose, I realised. My hand was a key, but not by way of design. By way of intentional deformity.

  But that didn’t make sense, because the tunnel under the capstone at Taigh-Faire wasn’t the only way onto the Island. It was one way, sure, but the people of White Pines hadn’t known about it. They’d used boats, maybe even swum.

  My hand was a key, but what did it unlock?

  Unless the tunnel went somewhere else. Somewhere other than the Island.

  My mind swam with a million questions.

  A small plaque was fixed to the pedestal beneath the reliquary. Upon it was a single name: Agatha, and then a date: 1642.

  The next case held another finger. Mary, 1667.

  Then Helena, 1673, and so on around the room: Isabella, Marion, Tina, Annie, Peggy, Elizabeth...all the way up through time until the present, to the last two cases, which were closest to the gates on the opposite side of the crypt to where I’d started. Patricia, the second to last plaque read. Granny.

  And then my name. Megan.

  I looked at my own finger bone, sitting neatly on a small velvet pad in glass and silver reliquary. No skin, thank god. Just the bone. It looked so small, so delicate.

  That is a part of me, I thought.

  And I am part of something.

  Part of a chain of consequence and duty and deep-rooted obligation that I didn’t fully understand.

  ‘So these names...these women...they are all my ancestors
?’

  Fiona stood silently. She had a queer expression upon her face. As if she were jealous of my ancestry.

  ‘Aye.’

  I thought for a moment, running the dates through my mind. ‘It moves from grandmother to grandchild, this duty?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But the dates don’t support that. Some of them are too close together.’

  Fiona shrugged. ‘Death comes to us all, Megan. Even the chosen ones.’

  Her eyes flashed. She was jealous to her very core.

  There were frames hung on the far wall of the crypt, beyond the reliquaries. I went to get a closer look. Inside the frames were pictures like the ones I’d seen in the Post Office on my first visit to Laide. More mundane village life scenes. A harvest festival at the church, fruit and vegetables and bundles of wheat and barley stacked high upon the altar. Fishermen dragging a catch inland. A caravan on the beach. A small child grinning around an ice-lolly.

  And, in the middle of all these candid shots of everyday life, a large framed lithograph. I mistook it at first for a mandala painting: it was bright, and intricate, painted around golden ratios that both pleased and confounded the eye. Tim had bought one not dissimilar to this back from a trip to Nepal. It hung in the house I no longer lived in. Tim’s new lover probably looked at it as she made him post-coitus coffee in the small hours of the morning.

  Not that any of that mattered, any more.

  The first thing you saw was a large circle, with a layer of intricate, geometric shapes nestled with symmetric precision inside. And then, when you really looked at it, once you sorted out the mass of lines and angles and curves, you saw a large triangle drawn dead in the centre of the circle, punctuated by four round dots. One at each point. One in the middle of the triangle.

  I was looking at a crude map of the Island.

  The dot in the centre of the triangle represented the large stone cairn in the centre of the Island. The cairn we had sheltered under when White Pines had first disappeared, where we had watched as reality warped itself around us. The three corner dots were the three, smaller cairns dotted around the Island’s interior. The edges of the triangle were unambiguously precise, straight borders between the cairns.