The Gloaming

by Kirsty Logan

  They surfaced, and Pearl taught Mara how to swim: not to kick the feet, but to flex the legs from the hips. Think seal, think otter. Think mermaid. Back down they went, and Pearl breathed for both of them, and Mara flexed her legs from the hips. She grinned into the darkness, teeth cold against the sea. She was blind and freezing, but she could do it. She could stay underwater.

  She emerged triumphant: body numb, eyes burning, lungs aching. Together they swam to the sandbank and staggered ashore, water sheeting from their bodies. The clouds were back and the rain had started again, but they didn’t notice. With the water still licking at her ankles, Mara took hold of Pearl’s waist and lifted her into the air. Pearl laughing, kicking, their wet skin slipping, and Mara lowered her back down into a kiss.

  Balançoire

  FROM THE TREES, in the shadows, Signe watched. She didn’t mean to spy on her child. Sleepless, restless, skin itching from paint flakes, Signe just wanted to be outside. To put her feet in the sea. To breathe air that moved. A day spent in a room with painted-over windows was barely a day at all. What bird could live without seeing the sky? She slipped from her bed, leaving Peter snoring like a giant. She pulled rain boots and a woollen coat on over her nightdress. Through the crumbling house and the grasping trees.

  But there, at the edge of the trees, she stopped. Voices. For one wonderful, terrible moment a voice struck familiar and she was sure it was her child, her little Bee, come magically back to her. She peered out from behind a tree, heart in her throat. And it was her child, but it was not Bee.

  The moonlight caught Mara’s back, casting the rest of the world into shadow. Who goes for a swim in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter? Signe, motherly, frowned at her child, standing at the edge of the sea. What was she thinking, the silly girl? She must be freezing! She’d catch her death! And how out of character. Mara had never been one for such things, adventures and dangers and joy. She was the sensible one, the calm one, the – Signe let herself think the treacherous thought, but only for a moment – dull one. What on earth could she be doing, alone on the beach in the middle of the night?

  Perhaps she was – Signe’s heart rushed up her throat again. Perhaps she was going to do harm to herself. Perhaps it was all too much for her. Her missing brother, her absent sister, her distant father, her …

  Signe faltered. What was she to her younger daughter? She was a good mother, she was sure. But how good could any mother be? Do any of us really get it right? She’d lost almost all of her children, to the grave or to the sea. Was that what a mother was supposed to do? She would run to her child and scoop her up and take her home and save her, like all little girls want to be saved.

  Mara stepped towards the water, and the beam of moonlight shifted, lighting up something else. Signe stopped. Mara was not alone. Someone else was there. Someone with hair like a shadow and skin like burnished gold.

  A selkie. A creature from the sea. Webbed fingers and secret hidden gills. A scuttering, shifting, inconstant thing you could never truly catch. Signe knew how that story ended.

  Before she could cry out, her daughter took the selkie’s hand and stepped into the sea. One, two, three – and they both disappeared under the water. Signe’s feet rushed forward and her hands flew up, a cry pulled from her throat. The selkie was taking her daughter, was drowning her, her bones would disappear under the silt and Signe would never see her child again. The wind slapped at the waves, layering lace.

  Then two heads broke the silvered sea. Mara coughed and gasped, and that meant she was breathing, and so Signe could breathe again. She was having no more of this. She readied herself to march into the sea and push the selkie back beneath the waves and save her baby.

  Signe blinked from the darkness, trying to discern shapes. Mara and the selkie, slick and tangled in the water. Mara and the selkie, leaning closer. Mara and the selkie – kissing.

  In Signe’s mind, Mara stretched and grew, upwards and outwards, from pixie to giant, from baby to adult. She put her hands to her temples, trying to sort her thoughts, trying to calm the beating wings. She was getting confused. Mara was not a little girl now. If she wanted to leap into the night sea and freeze herself half to death and kiss strange girls, then Signe couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t save her.

  Bee was the one – Bee needed her. He needed a home to come home to. If she wasn’t going to sleep, she should work. There was still so much to do. The rain began, a shiver on Signe’s cheeks. She got ready to slip back to the house before Mara saw her.

  ‘I think it’s better that Bee is gone.’ Mara’s voice was thin and shaky, but the wind brought it right to Signe’s ears. She paused, listening. ‘It’s better that he’s gone from this world. Let the sea take it!’

  At the sound of Bee’s name, Signe felt her body turn as heavy as stone. Mara’s words leadened through her. Such weight inside her. She watched mutely as the two girls disappeared beneath the water. She told her legs to move. They didn’t.

  The girls stayed under for so long that the sea’s surface stilled. The waves lapped steady over them, as if there was nothing there at all. The black sea reflected the constellations, the world folded in two. Distantly, she noted that the rain had stopped and the waves had calmed. The air felt warmer. She wondered when that had happened. She wondered when any of this had happened.

  When Signe had first come to the island, she brought many things with her: furniture, children, hopes. And belief. Signe had a good Swedish upbringing, but even the most modern family has its share of ritual. For Signe’s mother, it was confession. We all sin, Signe’s mother told her, but we don’t have to let the aftertaste of that sin sit in our mouths forever. Why let it ruin the good food that the Lord provided? God doesn’t want that. He will forgive us, but only if we tell Him true. And so confession, every Saturday.

  The cedarwood scent of the confession box. The priest’s soft voice. The patterns of light through the mesh. Every week, Signe had given her confession.

  She had grown, and she had married, and she had birthed girls, and she had made a new home for them all. There was no church service on the island. There was a church – or rather, the remains of a church. By the time Signe got to it, it was mostly walls. A caved-in ceiling, pews layered in old leaves. Puddles fuzzing green in each corner. Signe had tried to give her confession there – had even climbed into the confession box and hovered over the broken seat, water-warped and thick with grime. She tried a few times, but felt silly confessing with no one to hear it. Even the birds had no interest in her sins; they were happy enough to convene chattering on the pews when Signe was outside, but as soon as she creaked open the door they exploded towards the sky in a thrashing, shrieking cloud. She couldn’t shout her confession fast enough.

  For weeks she held her sins inside. They were small sins: resentment at the tantrums and whims of her growing daughters; fear that even though she was giving every part of herself to her tiny son, it was still not enough to help him; worry that she’d made the wrong decision in coming to the island; the flash of anger when Peter interrupted her mid-sentence, or answered a question different to the one she’d asked; being less than ecstatic about the constant motherly treadmill of cleaning-washing-cooking-cleaning-soothing-mending-cleaning-cleaning-cleaning.

  Small sins. But even the tiniest splinter can poison our blood if we don’t pull it out.

  On the first full moon on the first summer on the island, she walked through the sleeping house and through the garden and past the trees. She stood on the shore and gave her confession to the sea. Her resentment, her anger, the razing ache of the small lives she’d lost inside her: she gave it all away. She felt instantly lighter, ready to take flight. Her darkest thoughts were the heaviest: tiny blackened stones that she did not need to carry with her.

  Every month when the moon was full, she escaped from the house and unburdened herself to the sea. She did not expect anything in return. That was not the point of confession. It was not a fair deal; her sin
s were not meant to provide nourishment or joy. It was a selfish act, meant only to lighten her soul, to cleanse her palate.

  What Signe didn’t know was that the sea was not the only one to hear her confession. Once her words were out in the world, the wind could snatch them and take them anywhere it wanted.

  Islay always slept with their window open. Even in winter, even in snow, she needed the taste of clean air. And that is how she heard her mother’s words, snatched and carried by the wind, seeping into her sleep.

  The first time she crept along to the night sea and decided to let it take her sins, she thought she was enacting something she’d first done in a dream. And perhaps she had. The midnight sneaking, the water-wading, the shouting out of all the nasty petty cruel daily things that little girls delight in doing and then later, secretly, regret.

  Islay never told her mother that she was doing this. It wasn’t a secret, exactly. She didn’t think she was doing anything wrong: it wasn’t shameful or dangerous. It was just playing. But what girl does not want to keep something from her parents? A small thing, sweet and spiked, a stealth held close.

  It did not take long for Mara, always trying to tag along, always watching her sister from the shore, to want to play too. The girls, unlike Signe, did expect something in return. Why give something for nothing? They never had. Lost teeth could be exchanged for coins, chores for freedom, playing quietly for new toys. They gave something to the sea, and because they expected it, they got something back. Sometimes the waves calmed or the rain paused. Sometimes the seals sang. Sometimes the sea kicked up something for them: a spiralled shell in shades of dusky pink, a cluster of crabs still twitching, shards of blue-patterned pottery. Sometimes, jellyfish.

  And so each of the Ross women confessed their small sins, each thinking that the sea gave them what they wanted.

  Signe wrenched herself out of the trap of memories. She was heavy, every part of her body so heavy. Hiding in the shadows, she watched as Mara and the selkie emerged, shook and shivered on the shore, then leaned their bodies close and made their giddy way back into the trees. Signe had never said that she didn’t blame Mara for losing Bee. Saying it out loud would name the fear, make it real. It would suggest that she actually did blame her.

  Signe crept from the shadows and walked to the water’s edge. The tide was going out; as the sea retreated it cut channels for itself, but sometimes it lingered too long and became trapped, a tiny pool among the stones. Signe faced the sea, letting the waves tug at her feet, and whispered her confession.

  ‘I would have given one away,’ she said. The words scraped up her throat, but came out as a whisper. She tried again, louder this time, her throat already raw.

  ‘I would have traded one of them – any one – for Bee.’

  It was true, and it hurt, and she gave it away gladly.

  ‘I would have traded one,’ she said. ‘I still would.’

  Détourné

  SIGNE WAS ALONE in the studio, rehearsing a role she already knew by heart: Odile, the wicked black-costumed witch of Swan Lake, the contrast to the good white-costumed Odette. She’d been playing the dual role for three months in this particular production; there was another month to go. It was hard not to measure time in months now. Ever since she’d met Peter – his knuckles big and knotted like they were carved from wood, his shoulders curving round her like the walls of a house – she knew she wanted to make new life with him.

  Signe brought her foot up to the barre and bent to touch her raised toe, feeling the pull in her inner thigh, in her obliques, through each finger as she stretched – and there, suddenly, another pull where there shouldn’t be one. A flutter, an insect-wing flicker deep inside her. She straightened and stretched her arms above her head until it went away.

  Love had already begun to fill her out. A ballet dancer’s clothing is tiny and tight, but the practical thinness of her figure makes the skimpiness elegant, classic, rather than sultry. In the streets, in her coat and ankle boots, Signe was still a slim woman. But at the barre she was fleshly, an embarrassment of curves. Her shiny black leotard seemed more to oil her body than cover it.

  After her performance the night before, she’d run straight from the stage to a theatre two streets over to see Peter fight. They’d spent every night that week with his bent and swollen hands resting in a salad bowl of ice, his body hunched over the kitchen table. His knuckles were salted white with scars.

  ‘There are two ways out of a life like this,’ Peter had said. His voice was thickened and drowsy, treacle-slow. Signe turned from the sink where she was tipping more ice into a cloth. ‘One way is to fail. The other is to die.’

  Signe brought him a new bowl of ice and lightly kissed his forehead and slid her heavying body onto his lap. She distracted him with her love and herself – but she knew that he was right.

  Most dancers, if they’re lucky, will perform as prima ballerina throughout their twenties. Then, when their thirties roll around, they can no longer play the princess or the young lover. There are still plenty of good roles to play – some may argue that these roles are better. The wicked godmother in Sleeping Beauty, the grotesque fortune-telling witch in La Sylphide. By the time the dancer is in her late thirties, even mothers and witches are too young, and the only choice left is to train others. That’s assuming you’ve hung in there that long: it’s possible you’d have snapped your Achilles tendon, dislocated your knees during a spin, or had a hip replacement after too many leg extensions. But whenever you go, it’s rare that anyone will notice you’ve gone. As soon as you stop dancing, there’s another dancer already prepped to step into your place. She’d snatch the shoes off your feet, too, if you hadn’t already danced them to rags.

  Signe had soaked Peter’s hands, and the next day he’d got up again and gone to the gym and prepared for that night’s fight. He was hurting, but that wasn’t enough reason to stop. Signe watched from the crowd as he threw a punch, blinking as it landed. According to the rules of boxing, a boxer cannot hit a man when he’s down. But when he is still on his feet, half senseless, reeling, both eyes blood-blind – then you can and should hit him as hard as you can to bring him down. Hit hard and you’re a champion; show mercy and you’re nothing but a fool. And so down he goes, and out comes another boxer. Another strong, ignorant, innocent boy. But why blame the gloved opponent or the cheering crowd? We don’t blame a ballet’s audience for the dancers’ bleeding feet.

  There was a time that Signe had loved to watch Peter work. He had nothing except his own body, and still the crowd wanted it, and he happily gave it away. The bell rang, and Signe clambered into the ring, her small nervous hands slippery on the ropes. She was still wearing her swan costume, the white leotard patched with nervous sweat. A scatter of crumpled white feathers from her tutu floated across the heads of the crowd, and surely they must be thinking that her appearance was a planned – though melodramatic – part of the show.

  Peter looked up at her, and it took a full three seconds for recognition to spark in his eyes.

  ‘You’re not here,’ he said, but he reached for her anyway.

  ‘Peter,’ said Signe. ‘Peter.’

  There was a time that Peter had nothing except his own body. But didn’t he have something else, now? Wasn’t she something? His slick, hot forehead pressed to her smooth, cool one. He was as strong as stone. He would never break. The roar of the crowd fell away. They both watched as a dark glob of blood spattered onto the diamond of floor between their feet. Peter looked up at her in surprise, one nostril ringed red.

  ‘But he didn’t get a head hit,’ said Peter. ‘He didn’t …’

  The problem is not the impact of the fist and the face. The problem is that a punch makes the head snap back and then forward, causing the brain to thud repeatedly against the hard inside of the skull. It’s a concussive blow. A car crash, over and over. It’s common for two boxers to bump heads while sparring. But just because something is common, that doesn’t mean it’s no
t devastating. The worst collision is when the soft circle near one man’s temple collides with the tough band on the top of the other man’s head. It’s not just about how sturdy a man is, not if the softest part of you hits the hardest part of someone else. Detached retinas, blood clots, cauliflower ears, broken thumbs, obstructed nostrils. And that’s just the damage you can see. Signe had watched as Peter’s other nostril darkened, a trickle of blood on his top lip.

  Now, standing at the barre in the silent white studio, she remembered that blood. She thought of her suddenly too-tight clothes, the fluttering low in her belly, and the world shifted. That falling drop of blood – it was a sign. It was a warning.

  That night, Signe was ready for the pinnacle of her performance: to whip herself around thirty-two times on the same standing leg, using the force of her other leg to propel her around, the whole thing done on the tip of one toe.

  But she didn’t get that far. First came a leap. She dropped her body, ready. Her feet tensed. Her calves, her thighs. Her body poised to spring – and she let it go.

  An audible bang, like a stone thrown to the ground.

  Pain exploded in her right ankle.

  She fell to her knees, too shocked to cry out. She felt like she’d been kicked with a dozen booted feet all at once, like she’d been shot – not that she knew what either of those things felt like, but it couldn’t be much worse than this. The music carried on, but Signe did not.

  Later that night in her hospital bed, to explain why she’d refused sedatives, to explain why she kept saying that the days of dancing and boxing were over, to explain why she was crying with happiness when she should be crying with pain, she told the doctor and Peter and anyone else who would listen that she was pregnant, she was pregnant, a baby was coming, and now that she had this life she did not need any other.