by Kirsty Logan
Later, Mara found one of the empty eggs left on the kitchen worktop. She knew that you had to crush eggshells before throwing them away, or witches would make boats from them. She raised the egg to her eye and looked into the hole pierced at one end. It was so light that she could barely feel it in her hands. She peered inside carefully, carefully; peered into the darkness, the shell’s empty interior, which was all shadowed to black. Even after she crushed the eggshell in her small fist and pushed it down to the bottom of the bin, she could still feel that blackness, that emptiness, looking back at her.
Willnae
THE CLIFF CALLED to Mara. She went through the shark jaw and down the path. At the top of the hill, she slipped among the statues and thought of stone. The statues felt cool under her hand. A comfort. She should go and find Pearl. She should talk to her about – something. She’d felt that something was wrong between them, but it was hard to remember what, and why she had wanted to bother discussing it. And anyway, wasn’t it nice up here? The salt-cool breeze, the held breath of the statues. No need to leave yet. She slipped off her shoes to feel the grass on her soles.
She approached the edge of the cliff, keeping her gaze down on her bare toes so she wouldn’t have to see Peter with his palms raised to the sky. She settled close to the edge. The breeze stroked her skin. A bee hummed past her ear. The sun shone blinding in her eyes. Above her, clouds shifted from dragons to wolves to Swiss rolls to Italy to a sea monster – and she closed her eyes.
The grass was as soft as the seabed. Her limbs turned liquid. Sleep closed over her like water.
Those stories in the book held truth, she knew it. They described a dream she thought she’d forgotten. False love and pretending and the endless cold dark of the sea. Except it wasn’t a dream at all. There was a reason that it sounded right, what those stories said. The vicious things from the sea and their untrustworthy beauty. She’d always known it was right.
‘Mara.’
Mara snapped open her eyes to see Pearl standing over her, silhouetted against the clouds, her head blocking the sun.
‘What? Why are you?’ Which was all Mara, surprised, could manage.
‘I was looking for you.’ Behind Pearl, the clouds became rabbits. ‘Were you asleep?’
‘I was thinking,’ said Mara. She was still waking up, her head punch-drunk, her mouth dry and heavy. ‘I was thinking about a story. It was in a book and it had pictures and it’s meant to be about love. But I think that’s a trick to make it seem made up. I think it’s really true.’
‘Oh,’ said Pearl, ‘please, not that one about the selkie!’
Pearl laughed. Mara didn’t.
‘Seriously? I told you, that story is bullshit.’ Pearl took a step back, and the sun blinked bright in Mara’s eyes. ‘It’s not about love. Lying to trap someone – that’s not love. Love isn’t being forced. Love is choosing to stay.’
Mara closed her eyes. What could Pearl know about love? Selkies always leave.
‘Can you come away from the edge?’ said Pearl. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mara, ‘I’m not that close,’ and she put out her hand to prove it, but it met only air. She rolled the other way, a sudden choke of shock as the world fell away, and there was Pearl’s hand on her elbow, helping her up. Under her feet, the ground felt steady again. She waited until her legs stopped shaking and pulled her shoes back on. She kept her head down as Pearl spoke.
‘Do you remember I gave you a story once? The two concubines who escape the tower, remember? One of them worked in a diamond mine. The cover was black with silver letters. They each travel through the tower to get back to one another. Mara, do you remember it? Do you remember the end?’
‘We should go,’ said Mara, straightening. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’
‘Wait, Mara.’
She waited, but whatever Pearl meant to say, whatever she wanted Mara to hear, she swallowed it back down. ‘I found something,’ she said, ‘when I was walking. I don’t know if you’ve seen inside, and I want to show you. Can I show you?’
Pearl led her down the cliff and between the fields and past the ancient brown horse gumming at the bracken and between crumbling stone walls and around patches of coconutty gorse, and as they walked Pearl said: ‘I was thinking about Céline and Katinka, from the show in Vegas. Going by the dates they must be married by now.’
Mara shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘Well,’ said Pearl, ‘I didn’t know if you knew.’
Pearl led her past tiny red-roofed houses and over the remains of a summer-dry stream and on on on, right to the centre of the island.
There, in a cup of collapsed land that had once been a hill, lurked a church. It was long abandoned, its walls and windows still mostly intact. Its roof was entirely gone, a doll’s house with its lid lifted. Islay used to sneak off there, Mara remembered, presumably to do things she wasn’t supposed to, though now that she thought about it there wasn’t much to be done on an island mostly devoid of boys or drugs or mischief of any appealing kind.
Pearl took Mara’s hand and led her through the hole where the door used to be. The floor was carpeted with old leaves, ice-brittle, the colour of blood. The light was stained glass, colouring the air in thick brushstrokes.
‘Listen,’ said Pearl.
Mara listened. Shrill voices raging, hammers on steel, sobbing, whistling shrieks, soft whispers. An army of people, a city, a world. ‘Who is that?’ asked Mara. ‘Who’s down there?’
‘No one. It’s the sea.’
‘But we’re in the middle of the island.’
‘There’s an underground river running right through the middle of the island. Salt water, fast-flowing. It goes from one side to the other, and both sides are sea. It’s underneath us. It’s constantly eating away at the land, scooping it hollow.’
‘Okay,’ said Mara. ‘Is that why you brought me here?’
‘No,’ said Pearl. ‘That’s not why. I didn’t think you’d ever been inside here, and I wanted to bring you because – look, Mara. Look where we are.’
Mara looked. Without a roof, without a crucifix, without a confessional, without pews, there was only one place left to look: up. This was a church to the sky. A worship of birds, an adoration of the island. ‘I’m looking,’ said Mara, ‘but I don’t –’
There, among the ruined pews and the caved-in ceiling, the floating light coloured bright by the remnants of stained glass, before a congregation of ghosts. There, Pearl took Mara’s hand. Mara saw Pearl’s jaw clench as she swallowed.
‘Yes,’ she said. She smiled and held Mara’s hand tight. ‘Yes.’
And Mara knew what she needed to say. The closeness of Pearl’s skin. The rustle of birds in the eaves. The slow painted light. She only had to say it, that reassurance, that promise, that one word.
She dropped Pearl’s hand. ‘It’s not safe in here,’ she said. ‘The floor might cave in and there are probably rats. Let’s leave. I want to go home.’
Brae
IN THE NIGHT, Mara rolled over in bed. She fell off the edge and into the claw-foot bath. It was full of seawater, salt in her eyes, seaweed tangling around her ankles. She choked instantly awake. She grasped out for the sides, tried to kneel, to raise her head above the water. The base of the bath fell away below her. She lost her grip on the slippery side. Her feet kicked down into nothing. It was as deep as the sea and she was sinking, she was drowning, she was dying.
She woke gasping in her bed, a caught fish. She breathed in-out-in-out until her hands stopped shaking. She reached out for familiar skin. Nothing. She stared into the dim light. The other half of the bed stretched, crumpled and cold. Her heart beat so hard she felt sick. She ran into Pearl’s room and shook her awake.
‘Did you do this?’
‘What? Mara, are you okay?’
‘Did. You. Do. This?’
Pearl, finally coming awake, dragged herself to a sitting position. The bedsprings squea
led. ‘Whatever you’re talking about, the answer is no. I’ve been sleeping. Which is what you should be doing too.’ She lifted the edge of the duvet. ‘Come on. Come in.’
Mara breathed in the scent of Pearl’s skin. Her half-dreaming smile. The soft hidden curves of her. The warmth. Mara’s head swam.
‘I know you did it,’ she said. ‘Don’t do it again.’
Mara turned away and went back to her own cold bed. She kept her eyes open for the rest of the night, fingers pressed to the pulse in her throat, pressing harder and harder so that she would not drown.
Numpty
AFTER SIGNE FOUND a hole chewed in the corner of a box of cornflakes and a scatter of little black pellets on the floor, Mara spent a day taking all the food out of the kitchen cupboards and throwing most of it away. The small amount left over went into baskets, which she then attached to the laundry pulley and hoisted up to the ceiling. The rats, surely, couldn’t climb walls. To get at any food, Mara had to unwind the rope from the hook in the wall, lower the pulley, retrieve the food, hoist the pulley back up, and rewind the rope. She already had a dozen tiny nicks on her fingers from the rope. She pulled down the basket, retrieved a packet of dry pasta, and pulled on the rope again. She’d found some mushrooms that weren’t nibbled or shrivelled or covered in squishy patches, so it was mushroom pasta for dinner. The fluorescent lights flickered as the generator struggled.
She took down the salt to add some to the pasta water, then hesitated. Pearl always added too much salt. When they were away, Mara had done the same, putting extra salt in almost everything she ate, great white flakes of it, snowstorms on every meal. She’d been used to the island’s salty air, to the taste of it in everything. When they first came back to the island, she stuck to this habit, but now it was too much. All her meals tasted so strong, as if everything she’d eaten in the past two years was just a memory of food, a bland approximation, and this was the real thing.
She switched off the heat under the pasta water. She couldn’t remember when she’d seen Pearl today. But what was time on the island anyway? What were days? Sunrise and stars and the taste of honey melting down your throat. The rasp of tongues. The soft butting of bumblebees against your hands. All the flower beds mattressed with clover. Dandelion seeds snowing onto your shoulders, sticking to your lips. The daisies open all day and all night, their watching eyes.
She opened the back door and stepped out to call Pearl’s name. A light blinked from the warped door of the shed. Mara turned towards it. What the hell was Pearl doing in the shed? In the shadow of the trees, she pushed at the shed door. It wouldn’t open.
‘Pearl?’ She felt silly calling through the keyhole, but any other option felt sillier still. ‘Are you there?’
She straightened, then pushed her shoulder against the warped wood. It gave with a squeal and she stumbled into the shed. The air smelled stale and Mara tasted dust on her tongue. The window was dirty, the light inside the shed dim and yellowed.
‘Pearl?’ She forced the door shut and looked behind it, just in case Pearl was hiding, like the illogical weirdo that she was. But no. Nothing but a tangle of dead spiders.
Mara surveyed the shed in the feeble light. Chipped flowerpots stacked on a lumpy structure cast in shadow, cardboard files rotted to odd sculptures, pickling jars turned black with grime. The torn armchair, its floral pattern muddied grey from damp – there she’d slumped years ago, wishing that Islay would share her disgusting precious cigarettes, wishing that she could understand her disgusting precious thoughts.
She turned to leave. The door handle spun, catching on nothing. She pulled the useless handle – but the door was stuck.
‘Shit,’ she said to no one. She pulled again at the handle, jiggling it, trying to shake the locking mechanism loose.
‘Hello?’ She bent and shouted through the keyhole. ‘Hello? Can you hear me? I’m stuck!’
She tried to jam her fingertips around the edge of the door to prise it open, but the gap was too small. She roamed the shed, feet shuffling in grit, trying to find something small enough to wedge into the space and force the door open. A chisel, a trowel. Anything.
Just as she was thinking about smashing one of the brown-rot jars and using a glass shard on the door, there was a voice at the keyhole.
‘Mara?’
‘Pearl! The door handle’s broken on this side.’
Silence. Mara waited. In the dim light, the air tumbled silver. An itch threatened at the back of her throat.
‘Are you still there? Just push the door.’
‘No,’ said Pearl.
‘You have to push hard because the wood is warped. Are you pushing? Use your shoulder.’
‘No,’ said Pearl.
‘What do you mean, no? Just push the fucking door!’
‘So you can go back to avoiding me?’
‘Fucksake, Pearl! Just let me out.’
‘I’m not letting you out until we talk.’
‘We’ve already talked. There’s nothing left.’
‘How,’ said Pearl, her voice a rough whisper. ‘How can you say that? Do you really think there’s nothing left?’
‘You know that’s not what I mean.’
‘I never know what you mean.’
‘I’m doing my best here. I know that Signe and Islay would rather I wasn’t here, and that whatever I do they’ll never really like me. But that would be okay if things were okay with us.’
The shed wasn’t well made in the first place, and the years had not been kind. Beneath the trees as it was, every rainfall meant days of slow drips. Now that Mara’s eyes had adjusted to the dimness, she could see that each board had warped and shrunk, letting light seep in.
Words still buzzing through the keyhole: ‘Mara, are you even listening? I asked you a question. Is that it then?’
‘No,’ said Mara. ‘I don’t …’
She thought then of all the stories about people who fell in love with strangers. The selkie, so enchanting that you would lie and steal just to keep her. But how could you ever really trust her? She was just a thing from the sea.
Mara dropped to her knees by the shed wall, pressing her fingertips experimentally into the biggest gaps. Could she prise out a board? Should she smash a glass jar after all?
‘So that’s it? You want me to leave? To go back to the show and swim without you?’
‘You managed it before.’
‘That was before! Things have changed. Two years we’ve been together, Mara. Two years isn’t nothing.’
‘It was just a dream. It was an adventure. But we have to wake up sometime. Things off the island – they’re not real. It’s all just …’ Mara threw up her hands, though she knew that Pearl couldn’t see.
‘Do you know how insane you sound? Of course it’s real. It wasn’t just some madcap romp, something to do so you can tell a story about it. Don’t pretend as if two years of your life didn’t happen.’
Mara paused there in the shadows. All those hours under the water with Pearl. Their bright wigs and their shimmering tails making them so visible, the most eye-catching thing in a year of rooms – and also invisible, able to slough off their costumes and reveal their scars, anonymous in any crowd. But Mara knew now that they’d stayed under the water for too long.
Some days they stayed under for so long that Mara forgot what it was like to breathe from the air instead of from Pearl’s lungs.
Some days they stayed under for so long that Pearl forgot to blink, and her eyes clouded silver like old mirrors.
Some days they stayed under for so long that Mara’s hands grew as numb and white as fish-meat, and her fingertips were so wrinkled she couldn’t pick anything up, and her ears were edged mauve, and when they got out of the water her body wouldn’t stop shivering, and Pearl would get into bed with her and they’d lie together, Pearl giving Mara heat and Mara giving Pearl cold, until they equalised.
That time with Pearl was like being caught between sleeping and waking, be
tween night and day.
It was enough. She was awake now.
‘I don’t even know why you’re here,’ said Mara. ‘Why did you come back if you hate it so much? If you hate this house, and you hate my family, and it’s all so horrible and difficult for you – why did you come?’
‘Because. You asked me to.’
‘You, Pearl, you –’ Mara sat back on her heels in the shed, breathing deep in the dirty light. ‘It’s just too hard. It’s too much. I don’t want to drown.’
Without realising, Mara had crept across the floor and pressed her hand to the door. On the other side, though she couldn’t see, Pearl was doing the same. Mara felt herself weaken. The familiar twin throbs, even now. In her throat, between her legs, the two heartbeats of her: speech and lust, everything she said and everything she wanted, everything for Pearl.
She shook her head. Why was this woman keeping her in here? Why was she trying to cast her spells, to play her tricks?
‘Go away,’ said Mara. ‘I don’t want you any more.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
But Pearl’s voice was already fading, drowned out by Mara’s thoughts. She remembered the window she’d broken, years ago. Creeping down to find Islay smoking in the shed, being so annoyed at being left out that she’d broken the window with an underripe pear, then pretended the pear had just fallen. She remembered the board Islay had put over the damaged part; the way they’d both pretended to believe that the pear had fallen through the window by accident, somehow, even though that was impossible.
She had to scrape moss away with her fingernails to dislodge the board. The wood had rotted over the years. She yanked and the board split. She pulled it with her nails, wooden skelfs scraping her hands, the muck of years caking her knuckles.
She wrenched the board away from the window and climbed over the ledge. Spiderwebs laced her hair and splinters scraped her legs but it didn’t matter, she was through, she was free. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the gleam of Pearl in the evening light.