The Sunlight Pilgrims

by Jenni Fagan

  All this winter she has been changing.

  Things she used to be afraid of don’t seem scary anymore.

  Most of the other kids look nervous and about half of the row are not standing up, but the rest of them do and the older ones like her are kind of feared by the younger kids, and they are all watched by the ones on the side who won’t even ride the slope sitting down, cos it’s too dangerous. There are only five of them standing up. Stella flexes her knees and waits for the rest to organize themselves. The girl with the tin tray and her friend with the thick plastic sack are getting ready to push off with the backs of their hands. Stella adjusts her hat so it is right down around her ears and tightens her scarf. The farmer’s truck is parked down at the back field and it gives her a bad omen. Last year Tabitha the Fanny’s cousin broke his leg going down standing up, and they couldn’t get an ambulance anywhere near here because the snow was bad last year as well; they ended up carrying him out on a grain sack pulled tight over a pallet. Right up the top of the mountain she gets a glimpse of two familiar-looking shapes making their way down and then someone calls out.

  —READY!

  The ground is hard underneath her sledge.

  —STEADY! STEEEAAADY!!

  Stella bends loosely at the knees, holding her reins just firmly enough to keep her upright.

  —ONE, TWO, THREE, GO!

  Just one dip at the knees and tilting the toboggan over the edge, and the world whizzes around her—two kids are rolling down the slope already, with empty sledges flying in front of them. Stella half kneels down over a jump and the plastic-sack girl is on her side; the tin trays are right out in front and she holds her elbows in and her head down and gains speed.

  Fields sparkle.

  A roar.

  The wind.

  Her heartbeat.

  Kids shouting and screaming.

  Someone on a bigger sledge catches up with her for a second and then she is out in front of everyone—the world a blur on either side of her, she is going so fast—faster—faster—if she falls now, she’ll break her neck for sure, but no time—flying. The doors of the barn at the bottom of the hill are being hauled back and the farmer is letting the cows out so that they charge up the hill toward her and she can’t stop now!

  She holds on tighter.

  Kids fall left and right from their sledges and run, as cows thunder up the slope.

  It is way too late for Stella to slow—she grips the high sides of her toboggan, while the roar of cows’ hooves thunders right toward her and a brown-and-white blur. If this is the day she dies, then they’ll all know she was braver or crazier than any of them—remembering when she was little and the big kids in the caravan park put her in an old-fashioned pram and pushed her off the steps for fun; they bumped her all the way down. And last year she sat on the back of the gala-day lorry with crêpe paper made into a flower skirt and a flower band for her hair, and that was the first year she went out dressed as a girl; and she’d put a bedsheet in their garden, place rocks on it to hold it onto the top of their porch steps, then pull it out as far as it would go and she’d climb into her tent and eat cheese sandwiches and read books, and the sun would warm it up and she’d make daisy chains and go to the park and climb the monkey bars and in the summer they all stoated around on stilts. Caleb made her the stilts and sat on their porch teaching her guitar. He always has wrinkled clothes and crooked teeth and a great smile, and he used to make homemade pizza for her and Constance. She hopes he comes to visit soon. Oddly she thinks he and Dylan would get along. He picked her up once, after she’d been running so fast she fell on the tarmac slope outside on the car park and skinned both her knees skidding along the floor, and that summer the sun was so hot she got water blisters on her shoulders and would jump in and out of her friends’ paddling pools, and they’d often skid where it was hard on the ground underneath and fall and get big black-purple bruises on their legs and she would press them when she was watching television, or pick at her scabs, and at night she’d crawl under the covers and read by the light of her torch and they’d pick rhubarb out of gardens and dip it in sugar to eat. She hasn’t seen that woman in the donkey jacket again who told her about those pilgrims, but whenever there is light in any way in life she’s stashing it away like a magpie—drinking it orange to gray—and this must be how it is when your life flashes in front of you, and she grips onto the front of her sledge totally out of control again, and it is only a few weeks since she started to feel better from the last brush with death and she can see herself when she was little jumping off the cliffs of mulched paper, an imprint of light in the air and the thunder of hooves pounding all around her, and closing her eyes and only opening them when the blur of cow legs is gone and her sledge is skidding in circles across the frozen burn.

  When it stops she lifts her head up.

  Kids are scattered up on the slope; some have run back up to the top and others jumped the fence to get away from the cows, which are now clustered in the middle of the field. Lewis Brown is halfway down, picking himself up. He rolls over, sees her all the way down here, raises his arm straight up in the air.

  —Fair play, Stella, he shouts.

  Other kids look around and see she was the only one who made it down to the bottom. Stella Fairbairn is the only kid in the whole of Clachan Fells who has just sledged at 40 mph through a pack of huge Jersey cows. The farmer is out, getting the cows back into the barn again already; he let them out on purpose, though, to stop them sledging in his field—she knows it. He’s heading up to the top to shoo the cows back down the field.

  —Well done, Stella, someone else shouts.

  —Fair play!

  —You’re fucking nuts!

  —Her heart pit-a-pat in her ears and she has to hope that her mother up there on the slope did not see her do that.

  Dear Mrs. Constance Fairbairn,

  It is with deep regret that the Sisters of Beathnoch have to inform all parents that snowfall is now measuring thirty-four inches from the school windows. They are still unable to fix the boiler system, all the pipes are frozen solid. As such, we must continue to put the health and safety of our students first. We are aware the school has been closed since November, but we are unable to reopen now most likely until spring, when we hope these winter conditions should begin to thaw. We would like to ask that you maintain your child’s educational process throughout these long winter months. Focus on Scripture may be especially appropriate at times such as these. We also suggest that each household places a candle in their window at night to guide and honor those who are displaced due to these harsh conditions. We are sending prayers and good thoughts to you all. If anyone is not safe in their home due to falling temperatures, then please do send them to the village hall at Clachan Fells. We will keep this resource open with basic camp beds and we will provide cooked meals to anyone who needs them. Nobody will be turned away from our doors.

  Wishing you all a safe and blessed winter.

  Yours sincerely,

  Sister Mary Shaun

  Constance passes the letter to her.

  Stella’s nails are each a different color with little stars painted on them and she is wearing a red polo neck with an owl on the front and a bright-green cardigan that her mum found in the charity shop before it closed. She has her hair back in clasps with cherries on them.

  —We should take the Christmas tree down, Constance says.

  —Not until the snow thaws!

  The tree looks dilapidated, so Stella sprayed it white and stuck wires in the branches to perk them up. It has a Japanese feel to it now and the fairy lights glow outside when they are walking home. It looks nice.

  —What time will they be here?

  —Any minute now.

  —Do you think we’ll see it?

  —I don’t know. How is Vito?

  —He is fine.

  Outside each snowflake is wide and slow. They fall steadily without hesitation. The sky is relentlessly heavy every d
ay and it is beginning to have an actual weight to it. Days stretch out, each longer than yesterday.

  —The snowfall feels different.

  —Yup.

  —I love you.

  —I love you too.

  The two of them glance out of the window, up at a sky that is already turning into a river of colors. There is a lemon-drizzle cake that her mum made on the counter. She spent two hours making soups and putting them in the freezer. There is a tap on the door. Stella runs to open it. Dylan swoops in. He tips snow off his parka onto the porch and gives her a grin and a hug; he seems more awkward and tired-looking than usual.

  —The aurora is coming, the sky is already turning! He peers out the window.

  —Dylan, you’re like a kid at Christmas, she says.

  —I know.

  —Was your cinema totally tiny?

  —Totally tiny. It had red velvet curtains, one screen, old balconies, statues, stars gliding across the ceiling. If I couldn’t sleep, I’d lie in the middle of the stage just daydreaming.

  —Were your girlfriends strippers? Stella asks.

  —Because I lived in Soho?

  —Aye.

  —A few.

  —Did you date any boys?

  —Only good-looking ones.

  —Really?

  —Once or twice, he says.

  —Dylan, why are you looking at me like that? Stella asks.

  —I’m…glad to see you—you look great, he says.

  —I don’t look any different than I did last time you saw me! she says.

  Dylan places a clear bottle on the table. His first batch of gin. He has made a label for it and it has three suns on the front and underneath he has neatly stenciled THE SUNLIGHT PILGRIMS.

  —Is that for me? I’d say you shouldn’t have, but clearly you should! How many bottles did you make? Constance picks it up and turns it round, her face lit up.

  —I made exactly the right amount to get us through an Ice Age.

  Barnacle appears in the doorway.

  —Is this some kind of party? Do you need an invitation?

  —Come in, Barnacle, we’re just getting ready for our little aurora party. How are you?

  —Crippled as ever, darling, but good. I couldn’t half use a drink, though!

  —Of course Stella decorated outside for us and we’ve got the chimenea up on the roof, so it isn’t totally freezing—gin? It’s Dylan’s, he made it all by himself!

  —Bloody well done, Dylan. A gin would be to die for! I brought my telescope, not that we’ll need it!

  He has pleated his beard to keep it out of the way and he has silver rings on; a mouth organ pokes out of his pocket and he looks more like a sailor with his blue eyes and his lined face, glancing up at her, a little smile. Stella can’t remember anymore why he used to creep her out.

  —So, you’re still here, then, young Dylan.

  —No choice, mate, can’t get anywhere else.

  —Charming, Constance says.

  —It’s just as bad down south. The Thames has been frozen for months now.

  —You must miss something from home, no?

  —Sushi.

  —That’s it?

  —You could always catch some fish at Fort Harbor and chop them up raw. Stella giggles.

  —Hilarious!

  —What are those big holes in your ears? Barnacle asks him.

  —Flesh tunnels, Constance says.

  —It sounds so sexy when you say it like that, Dylan says.

  —Dylan and Mum are a bit of an item now, Stella says.

  —Not really, Constance says.

  —Oh, stop resisting. You’ll be a normal woman one day, with just one old man and nothing exciting going on at all, Constance, Barnacle says.

  —Really? Shoot me if that happens.

  —What: the one-old-man bit? Dylan demands.

  —The nothing-exciting bit, she says.

  Outside the sky has turned green. Stella stands at the window and takes a photo for Vito with her phone.

  A vast road of stars trails across the sky. It looks like he could just walk along it to some other place. It feels like it won’t be much longer in these temperatures before they all might do that, but he has to shake away thoughts like that. He gets a brief image of that cloud on the mountain when he first got here, beyond the veil where there were barmen with long, narrow teeth ready to siphon the souls of humans and send the energy up into the universe to that…that river of green light.

  He has chills down his back.

  It is all rivers of green light in the sky, which turn purple, then red.

  Constance has strung glass lanterns all round the back garden. They sway from branches, candle flames flickering. Stella is laughing at something Barnacle says, as he opens Constance’s door wearing a cap on his head and a glance to the right to make eye contact. Constance comes out behind him with her cheeks unusually radiant. She slips on her wolf. Barnacle hands Dylan a large glass of gin with ice and cucumber and Constance is smoking a tiny spliff.

  —To winter and all who sail in her! Barnacle says.

  They raise their glasses (apple juice for Stella). Dylan is sure he can hear something creaking, like the sea as if it was frozen and going to crack, as if the snow around them is shifting.

  —Have you seen Dylan’s tattoos, Barnacle?

  —Not really, Stella, no.

  —A smile around the edges of Constance’s eyes.

  —The wind has just dropped, we are not going to be out here for long, Stella, okay?

  —Do you have a lot of friends down south, then? Barnacle asks.

  —Nope.

  —Lone wolf?

  —Little bit.

  —So’s our Constance, he says.

  —What would you do if you didn’t have any friends, Mum?

  —You only need one or two good ones.

  —But if you didn’t have any.

  —If I needed to, I’d go out and make some. Plenty of people out there, she says.

  —I had friends from the theaters around Soho. I’ve not seen most of them for years—they all ended up scattered across the globe. I was the last one left at home, Dylan says.

  —I love the theater. I always fall asleep, though, in the box, and sometimes at the Lyceum in Edinburgh there’s this same homeless guy who turns up, and he has a big rucksack with all his stuff in it and he queues up because they give out four free tickets for each preview. He gets in the circle and sleeps, all warm, for the whole thing. I love that: a theater where a homeless man can sleep while listening to Faust. A good fisting from the devil, ay—

  —Barnacle! Constance warns him.

  —Most of the homeless are dying in doorways, Stella says.

  —True. If the site rates go up next year, I’ll be joining them. I can’t see me fitting a rucksack on this back, though.

  —Dylan is trying not to watch Constance as she smokes. A thin stream of smoke curls out of her mouth and it gives him a hard-on. He looks away from her, back to the sky. Stella wears her brightly colored mohawk hat and gloves and she is holding her mum’s hand.

  —I have mulled wine up on the roof, heating up on the little chimenea stove. We’d best get up there before the alcohol burns off, Constance says.

  —I’m a bit scared about getting up there, Barnacle says.

  —Don’t worry, Mum will bring the Bentley round.

  —Constance runs down the path, then rumbles back along the salted gap in the snow, in a little forklift with a big wooden board over the front two prongs.

  —I’ve never seen a wolf drive a forklift before! Dylan says.

  —You do see strange things around these parts, Barnacle says.

  —Where did she get that?

  —Borrowed it from the storeroom. She used it to get up on top of the roof and tarmac it a few months ago as well—the woman’s a tomboy.

  She reverses the forklift down the side of her caravan and the satanist kid up at the end is standing at his door drink
ing a beer. She raises her wolf paw and the kid raises his back. Stella helps Barnacle climb onto the platform at the bottom of the lift and he grips on, chortling loudly as the machine buzz whirrs up. There’s an almighty clunking noise, then Constance is neatly turning the forklift at the top to slide Barnacle right onto her roof.

  —Come on then, Incomer, he calls down.

  Dylan climbs up the ladder at the back of the caravan with Stella in front of him. The roof is a perfect viewing platform. The chimenea burns. There are four deck chairs around it and a blanket in each and cushions and a telescope set up on its own.

  Barnacle places another log on and a spray of sparks come out as he puts the lid back down. There is a small pot next to the chimenea and it looks like a black cauldron with a single gas flame underneath it and the smell of cloves and cinnamon and red wine and orange spices. Two wolf ears appear at the edge of the roof and then two paws and Constance climbs up, and he pours some wine out with a ladle and everyone gets a glass to warm them, even Estelle. The moon is a perfect half and each crater is dark and gray. An owl twit-twoos. Dylan tilts his head back to see cream-and-brown feathers in a flurry going past in the dark, and the light of the chimenea catches the owl’s eyes. It sits in the holly tree, which has inches of white on each sprig. Stella is wearing brand-new moccasin boots, which she admires.

  —Where did you get those?

  —She glances at her mum.

  —Alistair.

  —You finally opened his Christmas box?

  —I was bored.

  —No tartan shirts. Shame, you can never have too many of those! Barnacle says.

  Stella looks at her mum and giggles.

  The light is changing each of their faces from one moment to the next, and the colors, energy flowing over them, stars sending light from years and years ago and only reaching them now and a feeling that it is all just how it was meant to be. Dylan takes another glass of wine, wanting to drink, to drink for the sake of warmth, and the owl turns its neck all the way round and blinks. There are tufts of feathers on top of pointed ears and then it spies something in the field and swoops.