The Sunlight Pilgrims

by Jenni Fagan

  Stella takes out her mobile and snaps a picture of the suns. She touches a tiny bit of soft down at the corner of her mouth. It’s how a duckling’s belly might feel. Smooth and silky but it won’t stay like that. It wasn’t there a month ago. Her voice is sending her odd notes. Her body is becoming a strange instrument. Her normal tone rises and dips and falls a little and nobody else has noticed yet, but any day now a tiny man is going to set up a loudspeaker in her throat and his voice will make declarations in a baritone and everyone will think it is her speaking, but it won’t be. She will have to become a mute. She will carry pictures around of what she needs and point to things, or get a download where she can type words and a sexy girl-robot voice reads it all out for her. She can get the sexy girl-robot voice to say things like arse and armpit and she will call her robot the sunlight pilgrim too. She didn’t think getting hair on her face or her voice changing would freak her out so deeply, but she feels like sprinting away from herself. She’s just a girl who might grow a boy’s face and voice, then every time she looks in the mirror who she is and who she sees won’t even vaguely match—like if a big man took over her mum’s body and started marching her around.

  It’s claustrophobic even thinking about it, and all around them winter is looking for victims and everyone is getting crazy. The darkness comes hunting an hour after lunchtime and by three p.m. they are plunged into twelve hours of night.

  —Have you set up your gin still? Constance asks.

  —Doing it today, I’ll bring you a bottle for Christmas.

  —What are you going to call your gin?

  —Dylan’s Gin? he suggests.

  —That’s shit, she says.

  —Call it Procrastinator’s Idle, Stella mutters.

  —What’s in the new recipe? Constance asks.

  —That would be telling!

  The two of them are irritating the shit out of her. They’re avoiding the issue. Even she knows it’s clearly going to end with sex. Stella is not going to do that until she is at least eighteen and probably older, and she doesn’t even know how it will work. She keeps trying to work it out. She’s watched the porn but that’s not real life and she can’t get her head around anything other than kissing and holding hands, and if she thinks of anything more she begins to panic. Really, really panic so bad that her skin gets clammy; she really doesn’t have the first clue what to do. She knows she only likes boys. That’s all she knows. Stella isn’t going to drink or smoke weed or do anything to stop her brain being as sharp and switched on as it can possibly be. She feels like there will be a day when she needs her wits even more than now.

  The three suns rise higher in the sky.

  Caravan doors open.

  Neighbors come out onto their porches.

  Birds on the mountains are calling. Hundreds of them lifting up as one. They swoop over the valley, the whites of their tummies flashing in the sun, and nobody speaks as the suns reach their highest point. The seven sisters’ white snow-covered peaks turn yellow and color fills the entire valley—it runs across forests, growing deeper in shade; it highlights a train track that curves out from the trees and the old Fort Hope Railway steam train motoring down the hill; smoke billows up, white houses turn yellow, dotted along the farmland, waterfalls glitter and even the scarecrows are momentarily cast in gold.

  —There are no cows out, Stella says.

  —They’ve been in the shed for weeks, Stella. They found two calves frozen on the top field.

  —To death?

  —Yes! The farmer has taken four deer out of the forest like that already too. I have no idea where the sheep are—they might have been taken over to Fort Hope to go into pens for the winter.

  —It’s deadly out there just now, Dylan says.

  —Beautiful, though. Constance nods.

  Stella has four layers on, thermal long johns from head to toe, then leggings and a thin polo neck, then a jumper and fleecy-lined waterproofs, then a jacket and her hat.

  Everything settles.

  Her heart.

  Cells.

  Breathing it in, feeling the sun on her face despite it being the coldest it has ever been in Clachan Fells. For the tiniest second the parhelia send light all the way down inside her—where even the wild things won’t go.

  Right down there in the darkest cells. Tiny dots of light!

  Like little lanterns inside her veins.

  Or glowworms curling up to sleep. In the most secret part of her—a place where she will go and sip tea one day—and to get there she’ll have to go through the darkest parts of herself—between the pulsing aorta with its rivers of blood—to her heart, where there is a tiny little door to forever.

  When grown-ups hear a little dark door creaking in their hearts they turn the telly up. They slug a glass of wine. They tell the cat it was just a door creaking. The cat knows. It jumps down from the sofa and walks out of the room. When that little dark door in a heart starts to go click-clack click-clack click-clack click-clack so loudly and violently their chest shows an actual beat—well, then they say they’ve got bad cholesterol and they try to quit using butter, they begin to go for walks.

  When the tiny dark door in her heart creaks open, she will walk right through it.

  She will lie down and sleep inside her own heart like a bird in the night.

  If the door goes click-clack she’ll take her shoes off and walk barefoot, ready for whatever comes, but all of that is a long way from now and her mother is standing in their garden, frowning and worrying about how many tins they have and how much wood and, if this is going to be an Ice Age, how will they earn any money when they can’t even scavenge in the skip? There will be a lot of dead people, though. They both know that. Winter is working all of their hinges loose. A man lost in the countryside drove around in his car for four days in a snowstorm and he said he couldn’t get a signal anywhere and everything looked the same. He died two streets away from home. An old couple lay down in each other’s arms and left the windows open; they were frozen by morning. A whole bus full of men froze in the Sahara. Three kids fell through an ice pond in Manchester. In Italy there have been electrical blackouts for weeks. It is so cold at the moment that her skin is already like a corpse’s and the thought of it not wholly displeasing. It must be a goth thing. After a year of finding her own look, Stella has become paler in her makeup, darker in her lipstick; she only wears tights if they’re striped, even if they go under her long johns and fleece trousers. She is obsessed with the idea of having jade-green hair.

  Dylan is still standing quietly watching all three suns in the sky.

  —We’ll be okay, Dylan says.

  —I miss clarity.

  —What do you mean by that, Mum?

  —I mean I miss things being clear. The weather, Stella! Not you. No, I miss a good long shit summer, rainy autumn, miserable winter, debatable spring. Now we have this endless fucking Narnia and where is it all going to end?

  Stella’s feet flat on the deck and her fists a little clenched. Not hearing it the way it is said but hearing something else. A tiny creak in the door to her heart. The suns settle with two on either side, fading until the snow is just white, and there has been little snowfall since last night and the farm road will be packed solid. She has to get out of here.

  —I’m going out on my bike.

  —No, you’re not, Stella.

  —You can’t make me stay in and you spent four days making my bike ready for the ice roads, those tires can handle it!

  —She’ll be fine, Dylan says.

  —Okay, but stay on the farm road and first you need to have some breakfast. Dylan, do you want some?

  Constance’s voice has got higher at the end and she sounds vaguely hysterical. It’s unlike her. Dylan shakes his head slowly.

  —Got to go and get ingredients for gin, he says.

  Stella sticks her tongue out at him and grins and he does the same as he walks away.

  They didn’t eat before the suns came. T
he kitchen clock reads nine a.m. They must have been out there for an hour. Everyone simply flung on any old clothes and went outside to look. From the back window the three suns are still there, but the two smaller ones on either side are fading to long bright lines. They might still be there when she goes out if she hurries up, though.

  —Stella, do you still want to go to the doctor’s later?

  —Why would I change my mind?

  —I’m just asking!

  —No, I don’t want to go but I have to, so I’m going and I’ll remember all the things we said and if I get stuck I will let you take over, I promise!

  —Okay.

  —I’m going for a shower.

  Stella goes into the bathroom and unpeels her clothes quickly because it is freezing. The water is hot and the heat in the shower makes ice on the outside of their window crack. She dries herself with a blue towel and looks in the mirror. She has no breasts. That’s okay. That’s fine. A beard is less good. A deep voice is a terrifying thought. Sometimes, in quiet moments like this, she has to fight not to hate her body for threatening her with a baritone. She won’t do that, though, she won’t let herself hate it, because her body is a good one. It is strong. A girl is a girl is a girl. Stella unfolds a pair of ankle socks and dries her hair. She tucks one sock into each cup of her training bra. She dresses quickly and goes back into the living room. Her mother is pulling out her medical file from the kitchen cupboard. Outside the robin hops on top of his holly tree. He flits away toward the park. Stella sits back to front on her sofa at the window and eats the toast her mum made. It has marmalade on it, like Paddington’s. She used to say that all the time when she was a kid and now that is how Stella thinks of toast and marmalade and it has to be brown bread, with only a touch of butter. Icicles elongate all the way from their window ledges to the ground. They are so thick she couldn’t break them off without a hammer and chisel. They hang from all the caravans on Ash Lane, from everything now in fact. They’re bony fingers, or long toothy spiky grins everywhere you look. Stella puts another pair of socks on just to be sure and then her waterproof trousers and then boots with metal grips on the bottom.

  Outside the mountains are crisp and clear against the sky and the white peaks are bright. Stella unlatches the old metal window. The rubber rim is easy to lift up and underneath she can see black dirt. The air smells different, like each scent of the world is being preserved—even from here she can smell wood fires and the wild garlic under their snowy lawn. Winter is an alchemist who draws out (and heightens) the essence of scent: that was a line in a poem written on the Mother Superior’s wall. She closes the window carefully before it siphons off their heat. Her mum has put draft excluders around the door and soon she’ll cling film the windows to double-insulate against the ice outside.

  Down in the village church, bells ring loudly.

  —Mum?

  —Yes.

  —Is alchemy against religion?

  —Not if your religion is witchcraft.

  —The Mother Superior has a quote on her wall about alchemy being kind of poetic and good.

  —Alchemy is a science. Perhaps the Mother Superior is into science.

  —What did alchemy create?

  —Whiskey, among other things. A group of alchemists were trying to create the most precious metal on earth in lots of different ways, like using lead as a base. One day a particular alchemist got liquid gold—the first hint of whiskey—and he probably never looked back from there. He might as well have made pure gold. They were medieval chemists really, practicing chemistry, and there are all the myths around it as an ancient spiritual science. I don’t know much about it. Alistair knows more. He was down here last night.

  —With you?

  Constance looks out of the window and doesn’t say anything.

  —Are you seeing him again?

  —He was asking for you.

  —Why?

  —He wanted to know if you’re okay and if you want anything for Christmas.

  —Yeah, I’d really love a vagina.

  —You’re getting more sarcastic by the day, child.

  —I don’t want anything from Alistair; he can’t even call me by my name and every time you get involved with him again you get thinner, and you drink more, and then you’re ill.

  —Not this time, Constance says.

  —That’s what you fucking said last time!

  She waits for her mum to say Swear jar but she’s even given up on that now. This winter is getting under her skin and she’s just staring out the window at the snow, looking the tiniest bit frightened.

  —He’s making you something.

  —Is it an apology?

  —I think so.

  —I tell you what, Mum: you tell him that I will take the old-fashioned kind of apology when you look someone in the face and you say Sorry and you mean it; and if he doesn’t give me that, I swear I never want to stand in the same room as him again. Not fucking ever! He’s a judgmental, self-rightous, self-satisfied, complete fucking arsehole! I have no time for people like that.

  Stella pulls each of her fingers until they click out of their socket slightly; it’s a comforting sensation, like sitting with her hands down her pajamas at night watching telly in bed, or when she does a big shit and every part of her feels cleaner and lighter, or thinking that sex might be like that one day, a kind of emptying of herself, so she is free and less held down. She will go on the trans-teen website tomorrow. A boy will fall in love with her there. He’ll be like the kind of person who founded Apple or something. Constance will loathe him until she sees how happy he makes Stella. Then they’ll marry in the mountains, witnessed by her mum and Dylan and a couple of goats. They’ll have a reception with rose-petal tea and candles under the wishing tree in the glen. Stella’s breath leaves a circle of condensation on the window. She uses the cuff of her jumper to wipe it away. There will be deer up in the forest standing still as trees right now. She needs to go where they are. The icicles on the caravan opposite are long, but whorled like narwhal tusks—each points toward the earth and then tapers into snow. Hopefully the farm road will be packed solid. It should be, because the tractors are still trying to get the last of autumn’s hay bales out before they’re all frozen and lost to winter as well.

  Her mother’s wolf head sits on the shelf above the wood stove.

  Constance is in the bathroom.

  Carefully tiptoeing over the floor, avoiding the creaky floorboard, Stella lifts the wolf head up. It is surprisingly light and the fur is so soft. How can Alistair be so good at something like this and so utterly shit at being a decent human being? Stella slips the wolf over her head, and her nose and lips are framed below the long wolf nose. The fur cloak hides her and makes her feel safe and warm straight away. It is strange looking at herself as a wolf in their silver sun-ray mirror on the wall. The wolf cape looks even better on her than it did on her mother. Her black eyes peer out. Her lashes are long. Stella tugs the wolf head until the ears sit perfectly; two long furry arms snake down on either side of her braids and the fur is white, like the wolf walked right out of the snow—like winter herself created it from particles of ice and dust and sent it out to find a mortal girl who isn’t afraid of the big bad wolf, who knows how to use an ax and stir her own porridge, who knows that worth isn’t something you let another person set for you, it is something you set yourself.

  If the doctor asks her what she is most—she will tell him she is a wolf child.

  Her mother is winter.

  Their neighbor is the child of Nephilim.

  Her biological male donor is a future bone teapot.

  Stella tips her head to the right and the wolf appears to be listening.

  When the doctor asks her what she hears when she speaks (the strange tones her body stores right now), she will tell them she wants her voice to be clear as the single chime of a triangle on the top of a snowy mountain. She’s not worried about breasts and she doesn’t want rid of her penis, smal
l as it is, not if it means getting an operation anyway. She just wants smooth skin and her girl voice and to leave wolf prints in the snow each morning.

  The doctor will tell her that he is the one who owns the rights to her body and soul, that he will be the one to tell her what she can or cannot do with her own chromosomes. He will tell her about countless cancer patients who couldn’t get treatment because of their postcode and he will expect her to feel bad about that, as if by being who she is, it takes medical care away from someone else with a real illness. But she is not ill. He will tell her to think herself lucky that this is something she wants—it’s not like something she needs, like a heart transplant, or a new kidney. That’s what he’ll say. This isn’t a want. Who would want this? She is a girl. In the wrong body. She didn’t choose it and the idea of being forced to walk around in a man’s body makes her want to peel her own skin off. She’ll have to convince him she’s always wanted to be just a girl. She will have to use the word just. It’s important. They need girls to know their place, after all. She won’t tell him not to be so dickish just because he gets to mainline testosterone for free, like a greedy, hairy bastard. On the table will be a file with her boy name scored through and Estelle Fairbairn written in with a red pen. Alert—the red Stella. Alert, alert! Once he has reassured himself that she understands there is no decision about her body that she will ever make all on her own, that it will be teams of others, or singles, or surveys, or down to questions of budget or protocol, once he sees that register in her eyes he’ll be satisfied. He’ll sit back and watch her absorb the power he has over whether she can be a true thing or not. Outside there are three suns in the sky, and in the mirror there is a wolf child with long black braids. Her mother steps out of the bathroom and Stella yanks it off her head!

  The wolf is back on the shelf. Its nose points toward the door. Stella has smoothed down her braids and resumed her post back to front on the sofa, staring out of the window. Constance stands at the door; she does that thing where she flexes her toes—her bare feet are bony—and cricks her neck. She takes half a step to the kettle, then one turn to the bright-red cereal bowls that she bought in Italy years ago.