The Sunlight Pilgrims

by Jenni Fagan

  —Is my existential goth angst bothering you, Dylan?

  —No.

  —Is.

  —Is not.

  —Mum, can you see the iceberg now?

  —You couldn’t miss it!

  Constance calls out from the top of the mountain, where she is looking down on the other side. She has begun to wear lots of thermodynamic layers, so she can still move pretty quickly. She is adjusting to conditions. Fluid. Sinewy. Wolflike. The elbows of her old ski jacket are patched over with gaffer tape. She lifts up his old binoculars and sweeps across the entire landscape.

  —Why don’t you want to scatter Gunn in the islands anymore? Stella asks.

  —I just don’t.

  —Do you think someone ever collected Barnacle’s ashes?

  —There probably weren’t any ashes; he would simply have been chucked in with some other people. I am sorry, Stella, I know it isn’t nice! He would have been, though. I mean, I don’t even know if this really is Gunn in here. It’s probably the ashes from forty different Londoners who died on the same day. I’m probably scattering the ashes of a whole crew of Russian gangsters who got shot at point-blank range, he says.

  —That’s pretty cool, Stella says.

  —I have no interest in your opinion on ashes, child!

  —Child! You’re the one who was watching cartoons when I got up this morning! Anyway. What did they do with Barnacle’s body when they got to the morgue?

  —It takes weeks to defrost a fully grown man, Stella. It’s best not to think about it, Constance says.

  —How do you know that? Dylan asks.

  —She slept with a mortician, Stella mutters.

  —Is nothing sacred or secret in my life anymore?

  Constance stands at the top of the slope ahead of them, with the sky as her backdrop.

  —It is so hard to walk in all these layers, Mum, can I take my coat off, or just the balaclava?

  —No, you can’t. No! You’ll freeze—we’re not stopping here for long, Stella, we need to keep moving!

  —Okay, Mum, don’t get hysterical.

  Dylan tests the ground ahead of Stella with a ski pole to make sure they won’t fall into deeper snow. Words are like crystal when it is like this; they hang on the air, it carries them up to the trees on the mountaintop, all those frozen willows he can’t help but see in the shape of a C, their long arms frozen. And somewhere in the cherry blossoms away down on the farm lane there are the tiny buds just waiting for a thaw that might never come round.

  —Come on, keep going. Wait until you see this! Constance calls.

  —Is the iceberg as big as they said it was? Dylan asks.

  —Absolutely! That’s not all, though, you are going to love this!

  —What?

  —Hurry up and you’ll see.

  She turns away, looking back out over the mountains and down over the coastline. Stella reminds him of Gunn more and more lately. He doesn’t know how he didn’t even notice that she looks like Gunn. He has to stop his tall frame taking bigger steps up the mountain, slowing down so Stella doesn’t have to hurry to catch up, and as they reach the top the whole landscape emits an ungodly silence. The silence hollers! Stella steps onto the ridge and her voice trails away to nothing. He has never seen anything like this in his life. The breath is gone from him for a second. He reaches out for Constance’s hand and the three of them are on the top of the smallest seventh sister, looking out across thousands of penitentes; the tall, peaked snow figures all march down the mountain toward Fort Harbor, where the sea is iced over as far as the eye can see, and almost touching the harbor wall there is a great hulk of iceberg wider and taller than he could ever have imagined seeing in real life—he accepts the binoculars from Constance and stares at it; his eyes can’t take it in yet.

  Dylan’s throat burns from the icy air.

  His eyes water behind his sunglasses.

  Constance turns to him and he can see himself, bearded and bespectacled in polarized lenses, and up behind her the trees have spears of ice jagging down from each bough.

  Blood pulses in his veins.

  All those years in Babylon watching life instead of living it.

  Light trails across his corneas.

  There is the dull thud of his heart, in his ears.

  A want for her that won’t dissipate.

  All those peaked figures of ice, like all of their ancestors have been caught by the elements on the long walk home, their souls captured by ice and snow, and below them the North Sea cracks and groans as ice floes creak and collide.

  —They call them penitentes, don’t they, Dylan? There must be thousands of them! Constance says.

  For that second she looks just like she must have done as a girl.

  Stella puts her arm around her mother’s waist.

  A bird of prey soars down from the sky in slow circles and alights on a tree beside them. It is shocking to see one, when they haven’t seen any birds for months, but this one is massive, its wings could easily be a yard wide each. The feathers are brown, but it looks bigger than a hawk. Its claws are like human hands, four long digits with a sharp, pointed talon on each one. They curve around the bough, gripping it steadily. It must be a sign. They can’t feel it, but perhaps the thaw is finally on the way somewhere in the world, a tiny shoot of green way down in the soil somewhere, ready to reach its way up toward the light. Behind them they are sheltered by forest and tall pines, and the smell of clean sap rises from pine needles and underneath that the clean pure smell of snow, always at the edges of every smell now, and under that there is the faintest hint of eucalyptus.

  The bird faces away from the forest, looking out at the panorama.

  Yellow eye rings circle black eyes, which dart around at all those mountains. The bird flies straight down through the trees and snow falls through branches onto the forest floor. Dylan is buzzy in the head. Hyperaware. There are more marching snow figures than he can count, they must be at least five feet tall. Stella stands next to one and puts her arm around the thing to hug it and Constance takes a photo on her phone and laughs, easier than she has seemed for weeks. His eyes ache from the brightness. Constance offers him a hand and he takes it and steps onto the highest ledge of the mountain.

  —They must be sixteen or even eighteen feet high, he says.

  —What are they, Mum?

  —Penitentes are something to do with the sun and dew and carbon and ice. They must have been forming up here for weeks—maybe all month—and that iceberg, look at it!

  —Mum, look, there’s news crews down there! They must be here to film the penitentes and the iceberg. Do you think Clachan Fells will be on the news tonight?

  —I think it probably will, yeah.

  Constance wraps her arms around her daughter and kisses her head and holds her tight. Stella nestles into her mother. Constance’s gray eyes scan the horizon and she looks down behind them to the caravan park, and behind her the peaks of snow penitentes march like snow people, all soaking up sunlight until they sparkle and appear to be moving just as clearly as they are standing still.

  —We would never have seen these properly if we hadn’t come up here, Stella says.

  —The weather is turning. We should get back, Constance says.

  —It looks okay, Dylan says.

  —It isn’t. I can feel it.

  Away down in the caravan park he can see Ash Lane. The farm road is quiet, with no snowplow out—it has already been this morning. Stella digs the toe of her boot into the snow.

  —We should have a quick nip for the road, then, Dylan says.

  He takes out his little pewter flask.

  Constance takes a hit of gin.

  —What are you drinking to? Stella asks.

  —To a man who took the sky as his wife, Dylan says.

  He raises the pewter bottle up and takes a swig and Constance has another and Stella clicks her water bottle against the flask.

  —Come on, then, get out the Carte D’Or,
she says.

  A little smile drawn on the sticker on the side of the ice cream tub. He drew that in Babylon, surrounded by a cold building that had made up their family home forever—it feels like a million years ago already. He checks the wind, makes sure it won’t just coat them or lie thick on the snow, reaches right out as tall as he can until a gust of wind carries the ashes down out over the penitentes. He taps the empty ice cream container off the solid ice, taking another nip—at this altitude everything begins to blur seamlessly into lines of ice and ease, and a gladness in him that she is out there sparkling across the snow on a day like this, rather than stuck in a dark cupboard in a caravan.

  He feels lighter.

  —So, if winter has come to us now from millions of years ago, then time travel is really possible. If the world has fifteen million years of frozen geology there and it can enter the present and melt and bring forth another Ice Age, then it’s like the planet has kept them as an insurance system.

  —Insurance against what?

  —Humans. I took my first hormone blocker this morning, Dylan, she grins.

  —HIGH THE FIVE! he says.

  Dylan puts his hand up to high-five her and instead of high-fiving him, she makes her hand like a paintbrush going up and down his, in one fluid movement. It has become their own private in-joke lately.

  —That iceberg could be up to ten thousand years old, Constance says.

  —Let me see, Mum!

  Stella holds her hand out, excited. He follows her gaze down toward the coast and the sea is mapped over with ice floes; right by the harbor the chunk of ice juts out and up, like it is mocking the mountain by holding such a similar shape out there on the ocean.

  —It must be three hundred feet long, Constance says.

  —It looks like a pyramid.

  Dylan takes the binoculars and looks down toward Fort Hope. There are boats moored by the harbor wall and tall stacks of frozen lobster crates. He can see the shack that sells chips and homemade banana bread and cups of tea to fishermen and tourists who would normally be getting on ferries, but now they are all simply enthralled to be here when something so astounding is going on. Clusters of people hold up camera phones. The iceberg is peaked at one side with a smaller spike at the back and streaks of blue and cavities. The sea is still enough to reflect the mountains as the sun begins to go down, and the sky turning from blue to white and Constance looking nervous and the temperature dropping, and just like that out over the sea they see the snowstorm coming in, a whorl of white and gray moving toward Clachan Fells.

  —What the fuck is that? he asks.

  —Mum, that looks really, really bad!

  —Right, get your skis on—hurry up, Constance says.

  She is reaching in her backpack, undoing the strap holding the skis on. Dylan watches the snow turn in the air, heading low over the sea; people are scattering from the harbor below.

  —Mum! I’m scared, Mum!

  —It’s okay, stop freaking out. Come on, get your snow grips into here, quick—keep your head down, come on, hurry up! We’re heading for Alistair’s, we won’t make it back to the park. You’re going to have to go fast, Stella, are you listening to me?

  Constance is shouting; she straps on her own grips and Dylan has already snapped his into place, a feeling of dread all the way down his gut. They can’t see the frozen sea behind them now, it is just a thick white blizzard, and cars and news crews skidding out of the harbor.

  They fly past the farm where wild dogs used to bark outside. It is eerily silent. Further on they reach Alistair’s croft, feeling the snowstorm catch up behind them. The windows are lit yellow. A first blur of snow passes overhead as Constance hammers on the cottage door. Stella has her head tucked down and she is holding on to her ski poles. Alistair opens the door and ushers them in, and he has to shove the door shut on the storm until the wind and snow are locked out. Dylan ducks his head in the cottage hallway. They take off the skis and stamp their boots in the hall to get snow off. He can already feel the heat of a fire. Alistair places his hand on the small of Constance’s back, a quick smile from her to him. Dylan wonders if he would be better off out there in the snowstorm.

  —Come through, Dylan, nice to meet you under different circumstances. Perhaps it will go a bit better than last time, what do you think? Constance, it’s really fucking scary out there, what the fuck were you doing up on the mountain in this?

  —The weather reports were fine earlier. We were going crazy down in the caravan—we’ve been in there for weeks without going out!

  —How’s your nuclear food bunker holding up? he grins.

  —Not well, Constance says.

  His smile falters.

  —Hello, Alistair, Stella says.

  Alistair glances over at Stella.

  —Hello, he says.

  Stella’s face falls.

  —What are you looking at me like that for, Dylan? Are you going to try and flick my fucking nose again? he says angrily.

  —You flicked Alistair’s nose? Stella says.

  —Not hard.

  —It was hard! I don’t actually have to let you stay in here, Alistair says.

  —Are you going to throw me out?

  Dylan is so tall his head almost skims the roof of the little cottage. Outside the world darkens and the mountain feels like it is rumbling under their feet.

  —Mum, is that an avalanche?

  —What’s your fucking problem? Alistair says.

  —No, that’s not the question, arsehole. The question is: what’s your fucking problem?

  —Hello, Stella!

  Alistair snaps the words out and his face has grown red, the blush beginning in his neck and going all the way up.

  —Didn’t fucking kill you to get that out, then, did it, mate!

  Awkward. Moments. Passing. Stella scuffs her socks on the wooden floor and Constance flicks on a few lamps. She knows where they are, of course she does. Alistair goes into the kitchen and clicks on a kettle. Constance follows him and Stella sidles up to Dylan. He puts his arm round her and gives her a hug.

  —Sorry if that got awkward, he says.

  —Thanks for sticking up for me, she says.

  —Do you want me to beat him up for you? Dylan asks.

  —I don’t get the feeling you’d be doing that for me, Stella whispers.

  Constance is laughing in the kitchen. She comes back through with hot tea.

  —At least that rumbling noise is stopping outside, she says.

  —I think it was just the snowstorm going over the forest, he says.

  —Has there ever been an iceberg before in Scotland? Stella changes the subject.

  —There was one in Treshnish in 1902, Constance says.

  —I love the way your brain stores random trivia, Stella says.

  —There was another in Sumburgh Head in 1927.

  —You need to start reading some nonfactual books one day, Mum. Are people older than icebergs?

  —Modern humans are nearly two hundred thousand years old. They think the family tree could go back six or seven million years, though—earliest fossils of the genus Homo were about two-point-four million years ago, Constance says.

  —Why are there black patches on the ice in winter?

  —Wind can get trapped in there, Alistair says.

  —Or bad spirits? Stella asks.

  —There are no such things, Alistair says.

  —I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Dylan says.

  He is looking around for photographs of Olaf and imagining Gunn, just her, and thinking of Stella saying she saw an old lady in a donkey jacket —it is too odd to be a coincidence.

  —How old’s the earth, then, Mum?

  —The earth is about four-point-five billion years old, and they think it coalesced from material in orbit around the sun and split away, then another part of what made the earth broke away to make the moon. Some of the old myths say that the earth was so enamored with her own beauty she needed a han
d mirror to hold, so she could gaze upon herself in admiration.

  —So we were orbiting the sun and then we broke away, but we stayed close?

  —Well, we weren’t, Stella! But the planet was, pretty much.

  Dylan tries to stop jiggling his legs, let the adrenaline go down; he shouldn’t be so annoyed at the guy—okay, so he’s clearly a trans-phobic womanizing fuck-tard but Constance still seems to like him.

  —That’s why we need light, anywhere we can find it. Do you think the matter that was orbiting the sun came from the sun? Stella says.

  —I don’t know, Constance says.

  —If the moon broke away from the earth, then surely the matter that made earth could have broken away from the sun? I bet it did, or we were close enough to be made of the same stuff that the sun is made of. If the universe is mostly black matter and we can’t survive without light, or the moon, then it makes sense that part of the matter that made the sun and the moon is inside us. So, if we don’t get light, we will die. We’re essentially made of carbon and light.

  —Plants need sunlight for photosynthesis or we can’t grow food. You could probably raise a human without it, but their bones wouldn’t form properly, they’d be all sort of sinewy and floppy and they’d have long, thin, ratty teeth, Constance says.

  Dylan looks at her.

  —So we’re surrounded by dark matter, but we came out of it into the light, which is a planet, or stars, we know that dark matter is all around us in the universe, if we can even feel it out there—and as we all know, goths have a direct line to any source of authentic darkness—but dark matter has no atoms, is that right?

  Constance nods, grins at Dylan, who is shaking his head at the two of them. Alistair sits on his sofa looking awkward and confused.

  —Where’s your wife, Alistair? Dylan asks.

  —She’s with her sister in the city, she didn’t want to risk being snowed in here with me.

  —No shit! he says.

  —Stop it, Constance says.

  —You two are an item as well then? And you have an issue with me—is that what is going on? Alistair asks.

  Dylan ignores him completely as if he hasn’t heard a word.