The Sunlight Pilgrims

by Jenni Fagan

  He shifts the way he is sitting so she can see his shotgun.

  Stella takes a step back.

  If her mum would just appear right now. The men sit there a minute longer; they look her up and down, then the older one nods his head and starts the engine as the younger one leers. They drive away slowly. It’s good they thought she was the farmer’s girl. She wasn’t going to put them right on that. Her legs are shaky. They could put her in the back of that van. Who would know? She scans the fields for any sign of her mum but can’t see her. Constance will be out looking for her, though, and she’ll be pissed off. Stella is really beginning to freeze and her teeth chatter; she has to get inside and have a hot shower and get dry clothes on. She speeds down the hill. Snow has settled on her handlebars and it gathers in the spokes of her bike. She forces the bike over the lane, but the snow is deeper here and she has to push it harder again. Her muscles burn and her breath is tight and ragged as a knot in her chest. She throws her bike over the frozen burn where the sinking sand is, and she shouldn’t go this way because a boy died here doing exactly this ten years ago, but if she leaps after it and grabs a branch—just to be sure. She jumps and grabs onto the branches of a tree to pull herself over. The rough bark is slippy with snow and frost. She grips it harder, so it marks her skin. She shoves her bike through brambles and comes out behind the garages, where the gorse bushes have long shed their yellow flowers and everything is frozen. And she looks back to where the sinking sand is and stands there, just for a minute, wondering if it would suck her in.

  Stella forgot he had her private e-mail. Vito and Stella. Stella and Vito. He is going to college in a few years’ time to study architecture. There is a light on in the corner to show that he is typing. You should come to Italy, when you are older! He types again and a thumbs-up emoticon appears, then a dancing heart, then hands clapping. She unwinds the towel from around her head and combs her hair out. She had to stand in the shower for twenty minutes before she felt warm. Snow lies six feet up the caravan outside. If it keeps going, they will have to dig to keep the windows clear. On the telly there are abandoned cars covered in snow on motorways across the country. A girl had to be rescued when she fell asleep outside and she is still in a coma now. People are being found frozen up and down the country. There is footage where troops of people are going into community halls to live because their homes have no heat or electricity, or the pipes are frozen. They wave little homemade flags on the telly and raise cups of hot soup.

  That has already happened at Clachan Fells. Stella went past the community hall a few days ago and there were about thirty people using camp beds already. Stella comes out of her private e-mail and logs back onto the website. Thankfully it lets her. It must not delete an account for a month or so. There is half an hour before she has to be at the doctor’s. She goes straight to the chat forum and posts a new topic: How to get hormone blockers from your doctor? The boy from Italy is there. He types in LOL. Then a thumbs-up. He is so cute. He is sixteen. She looks at his picture. He doesn’t look like he ever transitioned at all. He has a beard and a mustache and he’s posing on someone’s boat in front of a beautiful little bay. If they had babies he, as her husband, would have to carry them, if he can even still do that. The cursor flashes at the bottom of the screen. Over at Barnacle’s front door he is making his way slowly up his steps, stooped over further into his C than ever, and he closes his door and then his light goes on inside even though it isn’t dark yet. What’s the weather like there? Are you scared it’s an Ice Age? Stella finishes combing her hair while she thinks about it. She types a reply. More scared about how to go through transition, don’t know how to do it. I don’t want any operations either, not even when I’m older. She gets up to pour herself a cup of hot tea and think about how odd these conversations seem to her at times, but how much easier it is to explain it to a stranger like Vito than anyone else. You don’t have to have any operations. He types this and she tries to imagine him sitting in his house; people, noise, stuff. I guess I don’t know how to do this. LOL, thanks for chatting Vito. He sends a smiley emoticon, then a surprised one, then one dancing around. There is not any one right way. She is glad now that she came on here. I just don’t want hair on my face. Vito and Stella. You are so young. Kissing up a tree. You can get help. The bride was barefoot and happy. The hormone blockers will stop all of that happening. Get them. Don’t take no for an answer, be tough! They would live in Italy. Her mum could send postcards of Clachan Fells all covered in snow and she would send her presents of little colored bowls. Our prime minister said recently it was better to be a fascist than a homosexual or trans. It is very macho here, they accept men dressed as women but only if they are magical, like in the stories. They tell lottery numbers or predict things, but if they do it just to be a man, or boy, as I do, or just to be a woman working in an office and having a boyfriend, they don’t like that, they think it is awful. It is changing, but so slowly. Stella buttons up her warmest cardigan and pulls on thick socks. The news is now showing entire areas of Europe lit up in red. Extreme Alert. Lots of parts of the US, Africa; the snowstorm is spreading and they have given her a name: Cecilia. I like you, Vito. He flashes up a bowing heart. I like you too, little Stella, but you are young and like my little sister. I am happy to chat to you if you like to, any day. She grins. He is a nice boy. Far more handsome than Lewis Brown. Is it snowing where you are right now, Stella? She looks out of the window, where snow is falling heavily again already. Clachan Fells might become a huge blanket of white snow and ice and they will all go to sleep one night like Pompeii, but frozen instead, with teddies curled up in her arms or her mum with a book by her side. She sends him a nodding emoticon. Stay warm, he says and logs off, she turns the television up and pulls a blanket around herself. Stella does not want to add an extra log to the fire, now they are on rations, so she is wearing more and more layers. Her fingers are still pink and her skin blotchy from being outside in the cold for so long. She should not have tried to go up the mountain.

  —Snowstorm Cecilia is the most deadly winter weather on record for over two hundred years. In a short time we expect to hit the Maunder Minimum, which hasn’t been seen at this particular level for three hundred and sixty years. This is the very first tip of a winter that nobody has really expected! There are meetings today at the United Nations; many of the delegates are having to attend via video conference because they cannot fly in! As you can see, leading environmentalists have been invited to attend these meetings for the first time since this winter began. The delegates are saying this must be the first honest, serious conversation about climate change! Over to you, in the studio!

  The doctor’s surgery is so quiet. He is only opening once a week in this weather. The rest of the time people are seeing him at the community center, but Stella couldn’t do this there where other people might overhear her or even see her there and ask questions. He is looking down at her file like he will make decisions according to that, rather than what she says—his choices will be based upon what other doctors have to say and what he himself has said to them in the past. She will be asked to speak but he won’t listen.

  —If you don’t give her the hormone blockers, then we will need to see someone else.

  —I am the only doctor in Clachan Fells region, Constance.

  —I know that, but we’ll go elsewhere if we have to.

  —Don’t you think Stella is very young to be making decisions about hormone blockers? She only has a very small bit of body hair and her voice has not changed fully yet. What I would really like to do, Stella, is refer you to the clinic in town that specializes in hormone replacement. They will be far better able to help, in an informed manner.

  —How long might that referral take?

  —It could be a year, or more.

  —She will begin to go through puberty long before that.

  —And?

  —And how would you feel if you grew breasts and got your period tomorrow, Doctor?
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  —That’s not very helpful, Constance, let’s be serious here.

  —I am being deadly serious, Doctor, how would you feel about that?

  —I don’t think we should be thinking about emotions. Let’s focus on the medical referral—realistically it might be a year, or more, before Stella can see a specialist, he says, putting her file back down.

  Click-clack click-clack.

  It’s that tiny door in her heart.

  This feeling lately that a boy is following her, ready to take over her body. She will wake up and have to walk around inside someone else’s body. She’ll feel like a skinny girl who is being forced to wear a sumo suit and a guy’s hairy chest, but worse. When this boy who is coming turns up with his face hair and his deep voice, she won’t know where she is or who she is anymore, but she’ll be stuck there like a witch has cursed her to stay inside someone else’s form, no matter how uncomfortable the fit of skin, hair, muscles, the protrusion of an Adam’s apple, a deepening in vocal tone.

  —That’s really depressing, she whispers.

  —Do you feel sad? he asks gently.

  She looks at him.

  —Are you suicidal?

  —No!

  —I think perhaps we should prescribe you some antidepressants, just while you’re waiting for your hospital referral to come through.

  —That’s not what we came here for, Constance says.

  —Perhaps a light dose of Prozac, something easy to tolerate.

  —She’s only twelve years old and you won’t give her hormone blockers but you’ll whack her on tablets that can be detrimental to brain development!

  —That isn’t proven.

  —It makes depression a whole lot worse before it makes it better, if it makes it better at all! Or it can send a person properly loopy. She wants to feel comfortable in her own skin, and growing a beard is as distressing for her as it would be for any other young teenage girl! Can you imagine if your daughter grew a mustache and developed a baritone one morning? How do you think she would feel about it? Would you be telling her that somebody might get back to her in a year’s time, Doctor?

  He has switched off already.

  Time is running away and she knew this would happen and she ordered them a year ago online and didn’t think she’d have to take them, but now Stella knows she will. She feels the packet in her pocket. Looks at the doctor with his white beard and his utter conviction of his own rightness.

  —Do you know about your raphe line, Doctor?

  —Excuse me?

  —That would have been your vagina! she says.

  He opens his mouth but doesn’t say a thing as she scrapes her chair as loudly as she can along the plastic floor—and walks out.

  Dylan is on the left-hand side of the ambulance. Stella is in the middle. Constance has put her glasses on to drive. She looks like some kind of secretary porn star. He has a hard-on like Donkey Kong. It’s seriously uncomfortable. The path down to Fort Harbor has been cleared by the snowplow and stacks of snow are piled up on either side of the road. It is still snowing so much that the piles of snow haven’t even turned dirty or slushy around the bottom. Fort Harbor is small with stone walls curving around it. There are little wooden boats and a few bigger ones for fishing. The masts click in the wind and make a strange keening noise. Seagulls spiral at the trawlers’ baskets, where there are usually lobsters or crabs. Nobody is going out in this. The sea is completely mapped over with ice.

  —I have never seen anything like this in Fort Harbor in my whole fucking life, Constance says.

  —Mum, this is so exciting!

  —Better than going to school, huh?

  —A hundred-million-gazillion times better.

  —Why are you in such a good mood today, Stella?

  She shrugs and looks ahead of them as the ambulance eases carefully down the icy slope to the car park. There are tourists taking photographs of the sea from the harbor wall. Constance pulls the ambulance in beside some public loos and there is a big brass sculpture of a seal and a map of a nearby island with puffins and another where gannets nest on the rocks. They jump down and each of them buttons up straight away, wrapping scarves around, pulling gloves on.

  —Aren’t you going to lock the ambulance? he calls after her.

  —Nobody would steal it! she says.

  The road has been heavily salted all round the harbor so that they don’t skid off it and land in the iced-over water. Stella skips ahead and Dylan falls into step with Constance, slips his arm round her waist for a second and she takes his hand and they both stop as they reach the shore. Stella smiles to herself, noticing them holding hands.

  —What are they? Dylan asks.

  —Ice feathers, Constance says.

  Sticks have been placed all along the shore to gather crystals of water. Fronds of ice have all blown in one direction, creating feathers—some of them are taller than Stella. She stands right in front of them with her phone out and her mohawk hat on, jumping up and down, leaning in to touch one.

  —This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen in my life, he says.

  —Look at the ice floes all over the bay, Stella!

  —Listen to them cracking, Dylan says.

  —It is so utterly strange and perfect, Mum, I love it!

  Dylan and Constance stand at the edge of the shore as sea ice drifts across a flat gray ocean. Behind them the mountains rise up and a steam train chugs out of the lower forests all the way down past Fort Harbor, billowing smoke and steam—it is black and shiny against the snowy mountains. When it is gone, they can only hear the quiet lap of water and the crack of ice out there. It creaks and groans.

  —Is that what I think it is?

  Dylan points to the right.

  A great hulk of ice is way out there on the water.

  Locals begin to point and raise cameras. They gravitate toward the shore as the iceberg turns, so they can see it more clearly even though it is still miles away.

  —Fuck a shitting duck! Stella says.

  She cups her hands to call up the shore to them. She is walking further away and two girls stand on the pebble beach with cameras, and a cluster of seagulls sit on a crooked arc of gray-cerulean ice.

  —Look at those seagulls, surveying the humans, they look like they’re about to bestow a riddle on us!

  —The riddle of how to stay warm in an Ice Age, he says.

  —The riddle of Constance and Dylan.

  Stella snaps a photograph of her mother standing in front of all these ice feathers. Constance is wearing welly boots and tight jeans and a headscarf and a hat on top of that, and she sips coffee from the metal travel mug she uses whenever she is out working. She shelters her eyes so she can take in the view.

  —Sometimes you get a minute where it all seems worth it: all the stress, the struggling, life, death, all the shit in between. You see something like this and it all becomes sharper—oh yeah, you remember, this is it, this is it!

  —It’s what? he says.

  —It! she laughs.

  —It is minus twenty, that’s what it is, he says.

  —Don’t try and tell me this isn’t better than shining a light in the dark, Mr. MacRae.

  Stella has almost every inch of herself swaddled in layers and she casts a critical eye across the landscape.

  —Are you missing London a little bit, then?

  —Nope, weirdly. I thought I would be, but I’m not.

  Stella skids up toward them, she gives her mum a hug and steps back to look out at the sea again.

  —You know what it feels like, Mum? It feels like snow is going to cover the whole world, even the pyramids, even the beaches and like all those deserted airports and even those big skeletons of roller coasters in those empty amusement parks that nobody has been in for ages? They will all get covered in snow too, and so will the cities and the skyscrapers and even big cargo containers out on the ocean, and San Francisco Bay and all the streets in Rome and the taverns of Athens. White wo
lves will roam everywhere. Goths will be kings, Stella says darkly.

  —I love wolves, Constance says.

  —I figured that out at the bonfire party, he says.

  Sea ice bumps together and separates and the noise of cracking under the ice gets louder. Their breath is a clear mist and there is the tiniest hint of frost on Constance’s eyelashes. They need to get back soon. They can’t stay out too long in this weather. Dylan looks from one to the other and all three of them are staring out across the ocean now.

  —Do you think the ambulance will make it back? he asks.

  —I’ve skis in the back, just in case it doesn’t, Constance says.

  —You are kidding?

  —Nope.

  —Mum has something to survive every situation. You’ll get used to it!

  Stella walks along the beach to where a spiral of ice has curled out in the thinnest layers from a flower stem to create a petiole. She lifts her camera and photographs it.

  —Look, it’s an ice flower!

  She has to shout from down the beach while floes collide and snap at each other. Somewhere underneath the water they grind up against each other and growl. Something innately pleasing about hearing the sound of ice breaking and colliding, while your own feet are placed firmly on the ground. Dylan’s wearing green welly boots—the man in the shop said he was lucky that even though he is the biggest man he’s ever met, a pair were ordered for a farmer at Saint Bernadette’s but he got stuck in a plow and he’s dead; so lucky for Dylan. He could have them. They are good boots. Fur-lined. Just there on the ground. Not like he’s hovering. Not like he’s a trespasser. Like something in him comes from this rock, these mountains, this landscape, something older than time and generational—all those links to people who survived this place and thrived and lived, all those suicidal monks and one lone sunlight pilgrim, butt-naked and tough as hell. Each day they are chased by darkness here; it comes down at night and everyone is already going cabin crazy. Out on the seashore ice mimics the high sounds of a whale, then is followed by the smack of a hard block against rock.