Silver Skin

by Joan Lennon

  He was sweating as he reached into the bed box and started to search.

  Cait: Skara Brae

  Old Benth had caught Cait at the entrance to the paved place. They were always after her for the small things, especially since Gairstay, the Old Chert, had died, and Voy had become even more angry and unapproachable. But at last Cait managed to extract herself from the ancient woman’s toothless complaints. She settled the gathering bag on her shoulder and started out for the shore with a determined stride when …

  ‘Cait? Your pardon, but if I could speak with you for one small moment only …?’

  Pretend you didn’t hear – just keep walking – you’ve got long legs – just casually speed up –

  ‘Cait? Cait? Your pardon?’

  Cait sighed. It was Mewie, using her most gentle, most humble voice, which pretty much meant exactly the opposite. Whatever it was she was after – probably more of the rash balm for Mot – she would go on about it, in that soft, mild voice, on and on and on until she got what she wanted.

  Cait fought the urge to turn and snarl at her – What are you going to do when I’m gone? Eh? When there’s only Voy to face with all your little issues and aches? What are you going to do then?

  She’d been close to doing that a hundred times, but this time she had to bite her tongue in earnest. There was no getting around it – the selkie had unsettled her. Somehow he was stirring up all the longings she’d managed to keep in check, waiting till the moment when Voy would finally relent – would finally give her the words she needed – and she’d be able to leave. Not just an escape to the shore for a few hours, but properly. Completely.

  However, until she gave Mewie what she wanted, there would be no going anywhere.

  With a sigh, she turned.

  Rab: Skara Brae

  It has to be here – it has to be –

  He’d started so carefully, delicately feeling among the coverings, laying them aside one by one – but now there was none of that. Now he was ripping out the heather and bracken bedding in desperate handfuls, peering at each in the pool of light from the roof hole, before casting them aside wildly. In his panic he couldn’t even remember what the Skin looked like – he found himself wasting time scrabbling through clumps of vegetation that could barely conceal an arm or leg, let alone the whole suit.

  Still no sign.

  He leaned right over the edge of the front slab, feeling into every corner with his one good hand, bruising his fingers on the cold stone.

  ‘Nothing! Nothing!’ he panted, scrabbling in the empty space, refusing to believe what his eyes were telling him – one last sweep – and then … something. He felt something.

  A notch in the floor stone.

  He could slide his fingers in. His thoughts had gone all sharp and still. There must be a hollow underneath the floor. It was awkward, but he tensed his good arm and heaved – and there was a definite shift. The flagstone lifted, just a little.

  He sat back on his heels. Light. I need better light. He went to the shelves and brought one of the fish oil lamps to light from the embers of the fire, the way he’d seen Cait do. I can’t hold the lamp and lift the slab at the same time, not with just one good arm. He balanced the lamp precariously on the front corner of the bed box. It didn’t help much – mostly it cast shadows and made him squint, but he flexed his fingers and leaned into the bed box once more.

  The stone moved. But it was heavy and hard to raise from such an awkward angle. He gritted his teeth and ignored the way his fingers cracked, and slowly, slowly, the edge of the slab began to lift. Higher and higher, until he had to pause to shift his grip a little, and realised he could see through the gap into a black space beneath.

  It wasn’t empty. There was something – if only he had a decent light. He tried to see, his arm muscles shaking with the strain. It was hard to get a sense of size since he couldn’t tell how deep the hiding place was, but there was something pale – white, or silvery – something like the fingers of a glove – he craned over, peered closer – but it wasn’t a glove – there were fingers all right but they were not cloth or metal or the material of the suit.

  They were bones.

  With a shriek, he let go of the stone slab – it crashed down with a hollow boom – the lamp overbalanced and smashed into the bed box –

  ‘What are you doing?!’

  He was no longer alone. Cait was there, paused in the doorway, half in, half out. Before he could speak, she rushed forward, tackled him, crashed on top of him on the floor – she hit him in the face and then, gripping her two hands agonizingly around his throat, she began to squeeze.

  PART TWO

  Voy: North of Skara Brae

  It would be windy and wild up on the headland above the bay. That suited Voy.

  The wind kept the attacks of blankness off. If she sat still too long in the warm dimness of her house, they could creep up on her unawares. Then she would come to suddenly, not sure how much time had passed, a bit of dribble on her chin. Tired. So tired. If she caught Cait looking at her oddly then it took all her will to act as if everything was normal.

  So she sought the wind. At daybreak, she left the village and climbed to the chambered cairn on the north headland to be with Gairstay. She still preferred the company of his white bones to that of any living person. His were laid in the cairn, with those of the other villagers who had gone back to the Sun, but his spirit hadn’t made the journey yet. Each cycle, she and the Old Women of the other villages led the processions inland to the Ring of Hills and the Ring of Stones within it. Each village presented their offerings on the great square hearth. The spirits of the dead, held safe in the carved stones, were brought out, ready to be set free on the Road back to the Source. But at too many of the last cycles, the Sun had stayed sulky behind clouds, and there’d been nothing to do but bring the spirit stones home again.

  The world was changing. The dark days seemed to never leave.

  She was panting and everything ached by the time she reached the top of the headland and started along the path to where the cairn clung to the seaward edge. She dragged her hair out of her eyes and looked out over the bay. Another new section had fallen away from the cliff face of the southern headland opposite, leaving a raw gash of lighter coloured rock, and a pile of ragged rubble at its foot.

  The sea ate cliffs. Someday it would eat so much of this headland that the domed cairn and the bones of the people would fall away into the waves. The ones who built the cairn there so many generations ago must have had that in mind. It must have been part of the plan, if only anyone remembered. Someone once knew the reason – and the response – but that someone died at some point along the way before they passed their knowledge on. It happened. Painfully often. And then no one knew.

  Was it meant to be a sign? When the cairn fell into the sea would that mean they should immediately do … something? Leave? Stay? Change their ways?

  What would the world look like then?

  She was doing it again. She frowned as she reached the cairn and laid her stick aside to slide down clumsily by the entrance. (She didn’t go inside. She’d seen to it the place was sealed by stone and fire and water and air. No ghoul was going to be sniffing round her man!) She had plenty that needed thinking about in the here and now and yet her thoughts drifted away to the future or the past and refused to stay settled in the present. Old people wander, but I am not old. Not yet. I CHOOSE to think these thoughts.

  The sea was mighty, down in the bay. Great grey waves came all the way from where the sky met the water, to thunder onto the sands and batter at the cliffs.

  It was wild that day too – do you remember, Gairstay? All day the sea kept throwing itself at the beach and the cliffs, so high into the air you’d have thought it would splash the sky. You could taste the salt on your lips as far inland as the village, probably further. It was fierce, that sea, grey and hungry, but I don’t remember feeling anything special about the day, anything out of the ordinary. A
n angry sea. She snorted. I’d be more likely to notice a peaceful one! She rubbed her face with a twisted hand and shook her head. I still don’t know why I went out that night. Oh, afterwards I took credit. Of course I did. But at the time, all I know is, somewhere in the middle of the night, I got up and went down to the beach. I remember the moon was near full, with the clouds still racing by, ripped and ragged and the light pouring through them and dimming and pouring through again, and there she was. Just a shape, rolling in the surf. I remember thinking, ‘Seal? Beached dolphin? What is that?’ Even after I’d dragged her out of the reach of the water I couldn’t quite believe my eyes.

  It was a woman. With a nine-month belly that was knotting and taut when Voy put her hand to it. She must have fallen from an Offlander boat. Or maybe the boat had foundered and she was the only one who survived. There was no way of knowing.

  I was strong in those days – do you remember? – but carrying her was a hard night’s work, I’m telling you. By the time I got her up to the village I was nearly spent, and she – she was screaming and everyone else thought she was something uncanny and hid under their sleeping furs. Everyone except you. You came rushing out with a knife in your hand.

  They’d had need of that knife before the night was through. By the time the sun came up the woman was dead, with her belly cut open from hip to chest, and nothing left of her but a mewling bundle, and a promise.

  At least Voy was pretty sure there’d been a promise.

  In between bouts of screaming, the woman had talked. If you could call it that. She used words that were strange, but there were gestures it wasn’t hard to understand – gestures for Help me! Save my baby! And towards the end – Forget me – only save my baby! Please, please … promise me …

  And she did. She promised, by gesture and word, that she would do as the dying woman asked. Of course she promised. Things were bad enough with the village without adding an unhappy spirit to blight the crops, make the hearth fires spit and smoke, block up the drainage passages from the latrines with stink and disease – there was no end to the trouble lost souls could inflict, left to their own devices.

  Of course she promised, ignoring the Be careful! messages Gairstay was sending her across the woman’s body. Ignoring her own doubts, until it was too late.

  ‘What will you do now?’ he’d asked as she wiped the blood off the protesting baby.

  ‘Raise it.’ She’d checked between the baby’s legs. ‘Raise her. Misha has milk enough for her as well as her own, and I’ll do the rest …’

  He’d lifted his eyebrows at her, in that way that used to make her so mad.

  ‘You think I can’t?!’

  She’d seen the other women – how hard could it be? She’d pushed away the feeling of terrified inadequacy with anger. That always worked.

  But that wasn’t what he’d been asking.

  ‘What will you do with HER?’ It was the mother he’d meant. ‘You can’t put her in the cairn. She doesn’t belong. I’m not even sure you can hold her spirit in a stone – who knows how strong she is? Her people – assuming she is an Offlander – may use some completely different way of protecting themselves, and even if we knew what it was …’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What if sending her spirit on the Road meant the Sun would shine more strongly on whatever lands she came from? What if it meant She looked away from us even more?’

  Voy hadn’t thought of that. It was a danger, truly.

  He looked across at her. He was worried. He was out of his depth. She was too, but she couldn’t let anyone see that. She couldn’t even let him see it. For all their closeness, he needed her to know what to do, just as much as any of the others did.

  Know what to do, or else act as if you did. That was how it was.

  She looked down at the dead woman’s face. Her skin was strange and her eyes, closed now, had been milky blue, like a blind person’s, though Voy could swear she saw out of them well enough. Her long pale hair had dried now so that the unnatural colour showed clearly, even through the encrusting salt. Voy touched it gently.

  ‘If you only saw her hair you’d think she was old. But she’s not. She’s younger than us, Gairstay.’

  ‘Is she – was she … normal? Those eyes …’

  Voy had thought for a while. She’d had experience of some of the ways things could go wrong. There had been that child who came to the Ring of Stones a few cycles in a row, from one of the more northerly villages. It had had even paler skin than this woman’s and colourless hair, and its eyes had been colourless too, except for the red rims. Everyone had thought it was a trow changeling, making the sign against evil whenever they saw it, but the mother clung to it nevertheless. And then one year Voy didn’t see it at the Ring.

  Nothing was said. Children who were abnormal rarely lasted to bear children of their own. Either they withered and died young, or the village stepped in.

  But the woman she’d found on the shore hadn’t seemed like that.

  ‘Maybe she was normal for her people. Maybe we look stunted and dark to her.’

  Gairstay said, ‘We may be stunted, but our women bear their babies without having to have them cut out of them.’

  But Voy shook her head. ‘The baby was the wrong way round – she didn’t have a chance. I’ve seen this before – it can happen to our women too. A baby that comes out butt first is almost always dead. The mothers die too, or if they live they often don’t heal easily or well. Cutting a baby like that out is the only way to save it.’

  Gairstay looked uneasy. These were women’s mysteries, and he’d already seen more of such things this night than was good. He went back to the practicalities.

  ‘What are we going to do with the body?’

  Voy didn’t answer for a long time. Over their heads the tag end of the wind howled and died away, howled and died. In the silences he could hear the surf booming onto the beach. The villagers would be staying close indoors today as much as they could. His mind wandered to the lump of flint he’d been saving up for just such an indoor day. He’d felt its awkwardness – and the fine blade within – and he knew it would take all his concentration to chip away just the right slivers –

  ‘Let the girl decide.’ Voy’s voice broke abruptly through his thoughts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When she’s grown into whatever she’s to grow into, then I’ll let her decide what to do with her mother. Till then,’ she’d said blithely all that time ago, ‘I’ll keep the spirit safe, and us safe from it …’

  They’d done it together. And told the villagers the next day that the baby in the Old Woman’s arms was here to stay.

  ‘She’s human,’ Voy told them. ‘Offlander. I have examined her and she is not of the Fey.’

  She knew that wouldn’t stop the whispering and the wondering. But as long as nothing much changed, they’d get used to the girl. Forget there had ever been anything strange in her arrival. And nothing much had changed. (Except for the girl growing taller than Sketh. Voy enjoyed how cross that made him!) The weather went on being bad. The crops went on being poor. More times than not, when they made the journey to the Ring, no Road opened. The Sun didn’t appear. She skulked behind clouds and rain and refused to show Herself, no matter how hard they asked – begged – for blessing.

  What kind of sickness could have infected Her, that She refused to be cured by the return of good souls – fed by Her own loving people? Did She wish to die?

  The way Gairstay had?

  Voy shut her eyes tight. She couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t not think about that. The picture of him filled her mind, the picture of him as he stopped eating, stopped drinking, grew gaunt and grim and eager to leave her behind. Leave the pain behind. It had only been a matter of time. Choosing the time yourself was sometimes the only choice, when there wasn’t any choice at all. She knew all that, but it didn’t help.

  It was never the plan for you to die first, you coward. What am I to do wi
thout you? Tell me that, why don’t you.

  She pounded at the turf with her useless hands but there was no answer.

  And now there’s another mystery, spat out by the sea, for me to deal with. And a fat lot of help you are to me now!

  It was time to go back. Pick up the burden of them all, with no one to share it.

  Cold to her twisted bones, Voy made herself stand up.

  Time to find out what my two gobbets of sea spew are up to …

  Cait: Skara Brae

  The rage came up from Cait’s belly like sick.

  ‘What have you done – what have you done—’ She gripped his throat tighter and tighter, ignoring the way his brown eyes pleaded and bulged, his skin suffused, his fingers clawed desperately at her.

  ‘CAIT!’

  Out of nowhere, the Old Woman was there, looming over them, seeming to swell until her head must have brushed the roof beams, her shoulders touched the walls. The power coming off her knocked Cait away from Rab so hard she banged the back of her head against the stone side of the bed box. For a moment her vision blurred – when it cleared, Rab was over on the other side of the room making retching, gasping noises, and there was bright red nose blood dripping down his chin. Good. She was shaking, appalled that she’d left him alone here, that she’d brought him into the village in the first place, saved his life. How could she have been so stupid?

  But look at him! Even now, it didn’t show. He was sitting there, pretending to look shocked, and bewildered, and terrified, without even knowing who he was most scared of, for he kept looking back and forth between herself and Voy – back and forth, back and forth, like a baby trying to focus on two things at the same time. It would have been comical if she didn’t hate him so much. She pulled her lips back from her teeth, and snarled. Voy slashed at her across the shoulders with her stick but she didn’t care about the pain.

  Rab shrank against the wall, making snuffling noises. Voy ignored him. She stood there, staring at Cait. Waiting.