White Pines

by Gemma Amor

  A split second later, and the piper was there once again, switching instruments, hands returning to work the chanter of his pipes furiously, the sound of wailing reeds making a mockery of my thoughts.

  Fuck, I thought, reeling.

  The piper caught my eye, and gave me a funny look.

  Maybe I’m brain-damaged, I continued, arguing with myself internally as people danced and jigged around me. I shook my head as if to clear water from my ears.

  Maybe I have a tumour, or I hit my head and didn’t realise, and that’s why things keep disappearing on me. It would explain the headaches, the nightmare. Maybe it has nothing to do with the Island, after all. Maybe I’m just sick.

  Perhaps that’s why Tim replaced me, I wondered then.

  Maybe he could smell it on you, the sickness.

  They say men leave when their wives grow ill.

  It was an absurd and incredibly unkind thought, even for a wife scorned, which I wasn’t, really. We had grown apart, that was all. He had fallen for someone else. And so had I, although I hadn’t been willing to admit it to myself. Playing the victim in all this was far easier.

  And even if I was sick, it still wouldn’t explain the tunnel under my house, the one that led right here. It wouldn’t explain the dead dog either, or the giant deer stuck underground, or the capstone in my cellar, and the symbol that glowed when I pressed my hand into it.

  It wouldn’t explain the sign that I had seen in my dream, the one that stood real and proud outside this circle of trees, a faded warning, unheeded.

  It wouldn’t explain the anomalies of space that this town presented.

  The boy looked up at me quizzically, and I felt Matthew come to a rest behind me. Both of them were wondering what was wrong with me. I continued to gaze at the piper, who eventually averted his eyes.

  My mother used to say that in difficult times, when confusing situations arose and it was hard to see a clear path to the truth, the simplest explanation was often the most likely. I had already bitten myself once to see if I was still dreaming. I didn’t fancy repeating the experiment, and so, the only thing left to do was to accept the fact that I was awake.

  Which meant accepting that the man playing the bagpipes had disappeared, momentarily, into thin air.

  Accepting this also meant accepting other things. Like a crystal in my pocket. A god beneath a tree.

  A giant man.

  A beach where death littered the shoreline.

  Could any of it be real? It went against everything I had come to believe was possible over the course of my life. And yet here I stood, in the middle of a town that shouldn’t be here at all.

  ‘Megs?’ Matthew sounded worried. I shook myself. I needed to move on, before I attracted too much attention to us.

  I nodded, and the boy led us on.

  I realised how long it had been since I had eaten anything when I smelt roasting meat, and spotted a lamb on a spit. Wooden barrels stood on trestles next to the spit, crude taps hammered into the end. People clutched more of those chunky, robust beakers, and decanted brown, rich-smelling liquid out of the barrels. Thick blue smoke hung in the air, blending with the cooked meat smoke. I saw several of the older men of the community puffing on long, curled clay pipes. This reminded me of the smoke that had risen from Murdo’s cigarette, back when I had first met him on the road to Laide. Back when his murderous dog had still been alive.

  Don’t think about that now, I warned myself, but a little bloom of crimson popped into my mind nonetheless.

  We made our way along the outside of the square, occasionally bumping into people and apologising whilst trying to be as unremarkable as possible. At one point, a drunk woman crashed into us, righted herself, threw her arms around Matthew, kissed him soundly on the cheek, then danced away. He flinched as if he’d been shot.

  I started to sweat, and swallowed, feeling a little unsteady on my feet. Seasick, almost. The music was starting to get to me. There was so much colour, and movement, so much revelry. And beneath it all, there was an undercurrent of something. Something indefinable, unsettling. The closer to the centre of the Island we got, and the closer to the steep sandstone summit in the middle of the circle of trees, the more I felt it.

  We finally made it to the far edge of the square, and the crowds thinned out immediately. The boy pulled us into one of the narrow streets along which thirty or so stone houses were lined up like dominoes, and began skipping cheerfully along it, a particular destination obviously in his mind.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked him, breathlessly trying to keep up, and he pointed to the furthest house on the street.

  ‘I want to show you where I live!’ He said, and Matthew and I exchanged glances.

  ‘Okay,’ I replied. Matthew kept silent.

  Up close, the Island dwellings were impressive examples of building design and craftsmanship. Simple and solid, they were constructed from thick stone blocks topped with slate shingle roofs, each shingle tightly laid to keep out the weather. They had thick walls, to help trap heat, and small windows. Each house had a sturdy, brightly painted front door made from solid, smoothly planed wood. These were topped by thick stone lintels like the one over my own front door at Taigh-Faire, but there were no triangular symbols, not here.

  Impressed, I finally caught up with the boy, who had paused to retie a loose shoelace. ‘These houses are beautiful,’ I said, and I meant it. The stonework was accomplished and attractive, and each house slotted tidily alongside its neighbour in the way that houses in military barracks are slotted together: to conserve space, and to foster a sense of unity, of belonging to something.

  ‘Mac and my Daddy designed them together,’ the boy said, puffed-up-proud in that way that children are of their parents’ achievements. ‘We all helped to build them. The whole community, although Mac says there weren’t as many of us back then, and I was just a baby so I don’t remember it.’

  I nodded, and then thought of something. ‘Were the trees here when you built this place?’ Why I was asking a child this, I didn’t know, but I had this nagging, unshakeable urge to know more about the trees.

  ‘Oh, we planted those too. Mac had them sent over from America!’

  This answer only gave rise to many, many more questions. I opened my mouth to ask the next one, when the boy interrupted me.

  ‘We’re here!’ He said, and suddenly he was pushing open a bottle-green door.

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ Matthew said, and I sighed.

  ‘Whatever makes you happy,’ I replied, as neutrally as I could, and followed the boy into his home.

  The door gave way immediately to a small, smoky kitchen, with a large wooden table taking up most of the space inside. At that table a woman stood, hastily plucking a chicken carcass and throwing the feathers into a basket on the floor next to her feet. Engrossed in her work, she didn’t see me at first.

  ‘Where have you been?’ She asked, crossly, yanking another fistful of straggled feathers out. ‘I need help running more ale down to the square, you know I can’t manage that wheel-barrow on my…’

  She looked up and tailed off as I came in, stooping so as not to hit my head on the low door lintel. Her shock at seeing me was as profound as mine was on discovering the house wasn’t empty. I came up short, and the woman’s face went pale- with fear, or anger, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Hello, Ma!’ The boy said, pleased with himself and oblivious to the mood. ‘I found some people outside the trees!’

  Ma, an attractive woman in her forties with a mass of dark brown hair pinned to the back of her head, dropped the chicken to the tabletop, and frantically wiped her hands on the rough apron she wore.

  I cleared my throat, apologetically. ‘Hello,’ I said, and the woman’s eyes blazed at me.

  ‘What are you doing here?!’ She hissed. ‘You can’t be here, especially not tonight!’

  Matthew chose that moment to change his mind. He came into the house behind me, sensing trouble.

/>   ‘Miss, I’m so sorry,’ he said, from over my shoulder. ‘I’ve been trying to tell them-’

  ‘There’s two of you?’ She rounded furiously on her son. ‘What are you thinking, Luke? Bringing strangers here? On Anniversary Night?!’

  I realised that I had never even asked the boy I knew-yet-somehow-didn’t his name. Luke.

  Luke whined, face reddening.

  ‘They were outside the trees, Ma, I told you! They looked lost, and I found them. She seems nice.’ He gestured at me, and I fought back a small smile. The boy turned up the charm and gazed up at his mother with wide eyes.

  ‘I was just trying to be nice. I thought they’d like to come to the party!’

  Luke’s Mother cuffed him upside the head, not too hard, but hard enough to let him know he’d behaved badly.

  ‘You are an idiot boy!’ She scolded. ‘Mac will skin you alive if he sees them here! He will skin me alive, too!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma.’ Luke hung his head, and his lip wobbled. My heart turned over for him. I never liked to see children cry.

  The woman glared at him. ‘I’ll deal with you later, laddie,’ she said, darkly, and turned to us again with a pursed mouth, thinking.

  ‘We don’t like mainlanders here,’ she said, eventually. She spoke as if we were naughty children, too. ‘How did you even get here? Did you swim? Bloody tourists!’ She swore under her breath. I didn’t need to know Gaelic to understand that it was an uncomplimentary word aimed at our stupidity.

  ‘Well...’ I took a deep breath, but she cut me off, holding up a hand.

  ‘Never mind, I don’t want to know. However you got here, you have to leave. We don’t allow strangers on the Island.’

  ‘This place...this town…’ I swallowed, at a loss for words. ‘It’s incredible.’

  The woman ignored me. ‘I won’t tell anyone you were here,’ she said, ‘But you have to leave. Now.’

  I nodded. ‘Okay,’ I replied, disappointed. I had been brought here for a purpose, and now I was being sent away before I could figure out what that purpose was. But this woman was adamant, and our presence made her uncomfortable. I sensed she was afraid of Mac, whoever he was, and I didn’t have any desire to bring trouble down upon the head of a complete stranger. We were, as Matthew had pointed out earlier, trespassing. I sighed. Maybe I could come back another time, when there wasn’t a party. Maybe the community would let me stay a little longer then. After all, I wasn’t just any mainlander. There was a tunnel leading to this place from my house. The Island and I were connected. Surely that had to mean something.

  ‘Okay, we’ll leave.’ I put my hands up in a placatory gesture, and looked at Matthew. He rolled his eyes in relief.

  ‘Listen, you don’t understand,’ the woman said, her tone softening as she tried to explain. ‘I’m not being unfriendly. It’s just...well, we have rules in this community. And the last time we had trespassers here, it didn’t end well. We have an agreement with the mainland. Of sorts. They don’t like us, and we don’t like them. So we keep to ourselves. It’s better that way. We’re not hurting anyone here. We’re just living peacefully, self-sustained, do you understand? We don’t want any more trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ Matthew too had begun to sweat. The small house was warm, and it felt very crowded with us all in the same space. Behind him, hung on the wall, a crudely framed mirror stretched floor to ceiling, a clever way of amplifying the narrow window light in an otherwise dark and stuffy room. I could see Matthew’s reflection in the mirror, the side of his face. It was lined with stress.

  His reflection flickered.

  Like the piper.

  Like a candle flame, so that he was half-there, half-not.

  Then, as I watched, his profile disappeared completely, and I stared at the mirror in horror, not knowing what I was seeing, or what was happening. A second or two later, and he flickered back into existence, frowning and pinch-mouthed with strain.

  I put a hand out and touched Matthew experimentally. He felt solid. Real. He looked at me, noticing my face, which must have been pale.

  ‘What?’ He muttered, and I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Luke, unaware of any of this, pulled on his Ma’s apron, pleading.

  ‘Ma, can they at least have a drink to take with them? Try some of Dad’s beer?’

  Luke was a kind boy.

  His mother sighed, and put her bloody hands on her hips, downy chicken feathers still glued to them. ‘It might help you to blend in more, I suppose,’ she said, with reluctance. ‘I’m amazed you made it this far without being caught.’ Then she whipped an arm back out, aiming for Luke’s head once again.

  ‘And I’m still furious with you, child!’

  The boy ducked, avoided a second cuff to the ear, and collected two chunky beakers from a nearby stone sink. There was a small barrel like the larger ones in the square standing under the kitchen table. He filled each beaker with a thick, brown ale, then handed them to us. I accepted mine with a nod of thanks, still staring at Matthew intently, in case he vanished again. Unaware of my scrutiny, he shook his head.

  ‘How do I know it’s really beer?’ He asked, suspiciously.

  Luke’s mother levelled him with a single, flat look.

  ‘We’re a community, not a cult,’ she said, her voice level. Matthew had the grace to look embarrassed. He took a sip of his beer by way of apology, and a begrudging expression of enjoyment came over his face.

  Luke’s mother watched this, and opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind and snapped it shut again. Then, she waved us away.

  ‘Bugger off, before you’re caught,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you for this.’ I held up the beaker. I didn’t feel like drinking, I felt like the world was slipping sideways. But I thanked her anyway. I wanted her to like me.

  I wanted to be able to come back.

  The woman marched around the table to the front door, and held it open for us. She was done being polite. She wanted us gone.

  ‘Keep out of sight. You can leave via a different path, it’ll be safer. It goes up behind the càrn.’ She pointed in the direction of the mound that rose above the town. ‘As long as you stay quiet, and low. You hear me?’

  ‘The what?’

  She pointed again to the summit that rose above the town, which was wreathed in shadow, except for that single solitary light on top. ‘Càrn. Cairn,’ she said. ‘On the summit. It’s called An Eilid.’ Then her voice grew softer.

  ‘Take my blessing, if you’re going up that way. Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked, taken aback by the sudden emotion on display.

  She pointed once again at the cairn. ‘I’ll put a stone on your stone,’ she said, then pushed us out the door, and into the street, with no further explanation.

  I managed to wave quickly at Luke before the door slammed shut, and he waved back, looking forlorn.

  Then, we were alone again.

  ‘Why is everyone around here so bloody enigmatic?’ Matthew complained, sipping at his beer and obviously still enjoying it despite himself. I stared at him and sank deep into thought. I hadn’t imagined it. I knew I hadn’t. I’d seen him disappear, right in front of my eyes. The same as the piper in the square.

  As if reality had thinned out for a second.

  The simplest explanation is often the best, I recalled.

  It didn’t help that people in these parts spoke in riddles. It was starting to get to me. Fiona had been the same way, back at the Post Office in Laide. Like she was holding onto a great secret, one I was not allowed to know. As if you had to be a member of a special society or a club to fully understand what was being said, what was going on.

  ‘Why do you keep looking at me like that?’ Matthew asked suddenly, rousing me from my study.

  I can’t get a clear picture, I thought, eyes sliding away and staring over Matthew’s shoulder, instead. I fixed onto a beautifully painted
shiny red door on a house near Luke's.

  This place, the people in Laide, and the tunnel beneath my house...the dream...so many puzzle pieces, yet none of them fit together.

  ‘Megs? What’s going on? You keep...disappearing off somewhere.’

  I blinked. ‘Can you do me a favour?’ I asked, feeling hazy.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pinch me. Really, really hard.’

  ‘What? Whatever for?’

  ‘Just do it.’ I held out my arm. ‘As hard as you can.’

  He shook his head, then half-heartedly pinched the skin of my upper arm.

  ‘Harder,’ I said. ‘Much harder.’

  ‘You know, in a different situation, this would be almost kinky,’ he grumbled, but he obliged, reluctantly. I could tell he was torn between hurting me and doing what I wanted. He squeezed my arm again, hard enough that it hurt, but not hard enough to bruise.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘I am still awake, aren’t I?’ I asked him then, doubting everything.

  The sounds of the party snaked about us once more.

  ‘We should go,’ Matthew said quietly, and he looked worried.

  We cut through the streets, and headed uphill towards the cairn.

  16. Love not wanted

  The path that Luke’s mother had spoken of ran behind the street where Luke lived. It meandered behind the rows of houses, up alongside the tiny chapel I’d spotted earlier, and around the back of it. Then it climbed up, and passed directly beneath the ancient stone pile capping the rise.

  We sipped our beers as we followed the path, partly through thirst, partly because we needed some mild relief from the strangeness of everything. The ale was a rich, dark brown and tasted of hops and nuts and something else that felt familiar on the tongue. After a while I realised the flavour, which had elements of aniseed and liquorice to it, reminded me of the boiled sweets Granny had always tried to force on me whenever I saw her. If I looked around the house, would I find an old, dusty tin of those sweets stashed away in a cupboard somewhere? Probably.

  Again, I wondered at my memory, which was so happy to recall the little, paper-wrapped candies I had hated, but not the Island that lay across the bay from Granny’s house. Not the white trees, or the community nestling within. The important things.