I’ve missed it, anticipation and life. I look out of the window on the plane and feel fear falling beneath me. All the lines and connections I’ve drawn are clear from this height. Kallu sleeps next to me, a blanket pulled up to his chin. He looks like an old man. I stroke his hair. He gently growls.
Shona was sad to see me leave but she trusts me. Doesn’t quite believe me, but hopefully she won’t ever have to. I’m leading the devil away from her, and between Kallu and the snow and the ice and burning moon we’ll win. There won’t be visible sun for months where we’re heading. It’s February, near the end of the long night of the year.
Here there is a little light. It seems as if the icy snow is glowing. The harbours are full of dogs, alive and dead, their fur and shit coating the heaps of plastic bags. There are torn nets and broken bottles licked by drunks, seal innards and screaming women. There are no trees to break up the landscape, just the houses tiny against the mountains which lead nowhere and everywhere.
Among all there is the unspoken. We haven’t seen him following us. Kallu has his seal fur jacket drawn back from his already sunburned face. He watches the boats arriving with their disappointed noise and departing in hopeful silence. He knows when our sled is ready. The dogs bark for meat.
I am scared.
I’m leaving Shona, the daughter who never loved me until the end, and Sean, the son who loved me and who I let down. Both of them have children who don’t know me, and that’s what I deserve. But I can make it right and they’ll live on and maybe think of me.
I’ve spent my life in the darkest of corners in the light of the sun and but only now can I see it. I can be the moon and goddess of the seven stars that spin out from the sun. I am everything, the bad become good and the weak become strong. Kallu beckons me.
I am ready.
I take Kallu’s hand and feel my death in the tips of his fingers. I become a little brighter.
The silence of the sky and the cracking of icebergs, the severity of sea and darkness against light makes my eyes water. I will fade and burn in the heat of the snow along with the devil which follows me. We can’t see his hoof prints yet, but Kallu says he’s coming. He will come. I have to believe that he will. But I know that, underneath, Kallu has found out something else and there is doubt. I don’t know whether it’s doubt of himself or me, of this world or another. His face is shadowed, even when he sits right in front of the fire.
I just watch for the prints and try to be ready for something I know has to happen but will never understand.
My dreams are so hot I have to wipe their remnants from my face. Kallu remains curled up, sickly bright. He has been there for days.
I dreamed of Cerys smiling at a man who doesn’t drink and can move his fingers one at a time on a tabletop. In my dream I could make him move and took each foot, one at a time, and walked him off a cliff.
The gentle drumming fills my ears unless I can focus on the dogs which howl outside. We have no more seal for them to eat. We have nothing.
Finally, Kallu unbends himself and goes outside with a knife. I hear the dogs snap at him and cry. I hope he’s cut them free, but I can’t hear them run. The drumming is too loud.
There’s something about the way he walks when he comes back in, just a little loose, a little swaggering. I realise why he won’t let me look in his eyes now. We are locked together in a tent in the snow and maybe one of us will leave. And maybe neither of us.
All I face now is the brightness where life meets death and I just need the space to take him through with me. He may end up taking me. Kallu has bound us and I will burn whichever way it goes.
I am ready.
I am gone.
The Devil in the Snow Page 25
