The Fourth Island
Page 8
Many men in Cill Rónáin were more considerate of their wives and daughters, who had knit them out of deadly danger. The old adage was trotted out much more than usual, how a good woman is a shield to her family. Mairín was much praised, and made an excellent marriage. People also, in retrospect, praised old Aoife for having the sense to preserve the sweater from the first lost fisherman so that Mairín could see it. Even some of the crusty old men praised her. People began to talk of re-thatching her cottage so that it might be lived in again. It must be said that Father Anselma lost a bit of ground, but most people eventually forgave him.
In light of the uncanny events that had overtaken them, people wondered all the more what had happened to Nellie, who had disappeared with the original sweater that Aoife had kept. Surely, she could not have turned to black earth herself—not with the sweater on? Had it carried her off somewhere? Where had she gone? Many agreed that it was likely she had gone to the island that the sweater had come from, the home of the mysterious pattern. Some hoped that she might return, armed with knowledge, and explain to them how it was that it had saved them—or even, how it was they had been under threat in the first place.
But Nellie did not come. She was lost to them.
The ball, the rope, the grass, the cow’s hoof—in the initial desperation of the case, everyone had more or less agreed that these were the objects depicted in the sweater pattern. There hadn’t been time to argue about it. Now there was. Many theories grew up as to what they meant and where they had come from. Some were even close to the truth.
People speculated about a lost, invisible island, close by. People there must live as they did—enough that they went fishing at least, and wore heavy woollen sweaters against the cold at sea. And they farmed sheep. Whatever plague it had been that afflicted Inis Mór, they, the wily islanders, had managed to avert it by masquerading as those other islanders, the lost ones, who were somehow immune. This at least explained the facts. Or perhaps, the more cautious ones pointed out, crossing themselves, those unknown others had extended their protection over them. After all, they had permitted strangers to wear a pattern that was theirs, perhaps one that was intimately theirs—one that claimed the dwellers on Inis Mór as fellow islanders, parishioners, even family?
Speculation ran endlessly on the meaning of the sweater motifs. Many old women found themselves consulted and, unusually, listened to. Cables as fishermen’s rope. That seemed fairly certain. Grass in patches, fields. That was common. No final consensus was ever reached on the others. What did those shapes say about the lost islanders?
The ball. Is it a ball? The round form. The sun. The sun on the fields which makes grass for cows—the cow’s hoof is the other form. It’s got to be. The rope, then? Have you ever heard of a dairyman who used no rope? They are farmers, like us.
The ball. It’s a buoy, a spinner, a lead weight. The rope belongs to a fisherman. The form with the two triangles, it’s a knot. Not a hoof. That other form was never grass. It’s waves. Waves on the sea. They are fishermen, like us.
Or. The ball is the world. The rope pulls the world. The cow attached to the rope pulls it. We are the cow. We pull the world. The cow eats the grass. We are the grass. The cow eats us. In the cow, we pull the world. We eat the cow. In us, the cow pulls the world.
The ball, the rope, the grass, the cow’s hoof: the cow’s hoof, the grass, the rope, the ball.
About the Author
Scott Straker
SARAH TOLMIE is a poet, speculative fiction writer, and professor of English at the University of Waterloo. Her books of poetry, Trio in 2015 and The Art of Dying in 2018, both with McGill-Queen’s University Press, were shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and the Griffin Prize, respectively. Her fiction, published with Aqueduct Press, includes the novels The Little Animals (2019) and The Stone Boatmen (2014), which was a finalist for the Crawford Award, the dual novella collection Two Travelers (2016), and the short fiction collection NoFood (2014). Her poem “Ursula Le Guin in the Underworld” won the 2019 Aurora Award and the 2019 Rhysling Award.
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Also by Sarah Tolmie
The Stone Boatmen
NoFood
Trio
Two Travelers
The Art of Dying
The Little Animals
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Begin Reading
About the Author
Also by Sarah Tolmie
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE FOURTH ISLAND
Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Tolmie
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Rovina Cai
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
A Tordotcom Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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ISBN 978-1-250-76983-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-250-76984-8 (trade paperback)
First Edition: October 2020
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