by Gemma Amor
Around the shape, the prolific white pine trees were represented by the circle on the lithograph, a circle within which everything else was contained.
My finger drew in the light film of dust that coated the glass over the lithograph. I drew a series of houses inside the triangle boundary. I drew a town square. I drew a chapel, and a pig pen.
I drew White Pines.
The lithograph was old, the paper it was drawn upon yellowed, and aged. There was writing around the outside of the geometry, but I couldn’t make it out. Whatever the Island was, it had been that way for a long, long time, I knew that now. Mac had unknowingly built the town of White Pines within these ancient ley lines. I could see why. The Island had lured Mac in, placed a natural building site between the cairns: a flat, dry expanse of land with good bedrock upon which to build.
Fiona said she had tried to warn him, but how hard, I wondered. How would she have explained the danger he was in, explain it to him in a way he could understand?
Now all that was left of his community was a blackened, singed trilateral stamp upon the ground, where the air flickered and moved with a static charge.
I realised once again how beyond me this all was. There was a cosmic significance to the geometry on the wall that was awe-inspiring and terrifying in its breadth and depth of potential.
And maybe that’s why Fiona had brought me here. To show me that we were all at the mercy of things beyond our ken. A foul beast that lurked, where, I knew not. An Island where reality didn’t hold up to the same rules the rest of us had to follow. People, animals, infrastructure, all sucked out of existence in the blink of an eye. A beach where impossible images assaulted every sense.
Hesitantly, I raised my right hand, the index finger of which was now coated with grey dust, so that it sat level with my eye-line. I closed my eyes, and drew a symbol in the air.
And I felt it. A connection, like the feeling you have when you’re falling in love for the very first time. It rolled over me and through me and filled up every tiny corner of me with longing, and a deep, primal need.
To go back.
To tread upon the ancient, tainted soil of the Island.
To kneel down, touch the ash that had once been a thriving town called White Pines.
Where are you, Matthew? I thought.
A single tear escaped, rolled down my cheek. There was movement, and Fiona came to stand next to me.
I did not have to open my eyes again to know she was smiling.
35. One god at a time
In a golden, guttering glow, two women stood, side by side. One was me. The other was a person I disliked with every fibre of my being. Because it felt as if she owned me, somehow. She owned me because she knew about me, about my history, about my role in a scheme I had not been aware of until now.
‘What do I do?’ I asked. ‘What am I, to you? To the Island?’
‘A Key. Just like your Grandmother was. And hers before that, and so on, as you’ve seen. And it goes beyond the bones in this vault. There were more, before Agatha.’ She gestured at the first case I’d seen. ‘According to records, many, many more. Perhaps for as long as humans have walked the earth. For as long as there’s been an Island, there’s been a Key.’
‘A Key to what?’
‘That is for the ancestors to tell you, not me,’ Fiona said, and this made about as much sense as everything else she had told me.
‘My ancestors.’ I snorted.
‘There is something in your lineage, in your blood that the Island responds to.’ That odd flash of jealousy lit up her eyes again.
‘I don’t expect you to understand any of this,’ she continued. ‘You were never shown the old ways like those who came before you were. Your mother took you away from us instead. She should have told you about the Other Place. You cannot escape your calling, Megan. All of us come back to the Island in the end.’
‘The Other Place?’
‘You know, Megan. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen the beach, and seen the face beneath the tree.’
I shuddered. ‘I touched it.’
Fiona flinched, genuinely horrified.
‘What?’
‘I touched it. I was...I thought I was dreaming, so I touched it.’
Fiona had to visibly compose herself.
‘You should not have.’
‘I didn’t know.’
She passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Now you do.’
‘Is it a god?’
Fiona snorted. ‘Who knows? We don’t much care. We have a god, already. We don’t need another.’
I thought about that. Indoctrination. Tradition. Heritage. Propaganda. Belief. What did I believe in, now?
Nothing. Nothing that could be trusted. The only thing, person, I had truly trusted had disappeared, right before my eyes.
I was becoming more and more consumed by it. What had happened to him? It ate away at me, that question. It ached, a fresh, festering wound. Was he still with Luke? Was he alive, lost in another reality, or had he died horribly, as so many others had before him?
I jerked away from that thought process, not wanting to allow the possibility in. And as hard as it was to try and be practical about, thinking along these lines did me no favours, not in my present state. Whatever had happened to him, there was no Matthew in this reality, not now. There was only Fiona.
And it seemed that, like the Island, she had plans for me too.
‘So what do I do?’ I said, keen to cut through her spiel and get to the point.
Fiona straightened a stray button on her jacket. ‘You need to go back,’ she said, casually.
I stared at her, and tried to pretend I had not been thinking that exact same thing only minutes before.
‘Go back? To the Island? Why? Why would I go back there ever again?’
‘There are things you need to do, Megan. Things you are behind with. Duties. There is...a ritual.’
‘What kind of ritual?’
‘It’s something that all Keys have to do. It’s part of your inheritance, I suppose. There are things the ancestors must tell you.’
I glared at her. ‘I wish you’d stop talking to me in fucking riddles,’ I spat.
Her eyes flicked past me, and I frowned. We were no longer alone.
I turned, and saw that a congregation of mainlanders had gathered, Murdo amongst them. The young collie dog whined anxiously as his feet. The locals filled the small space outside the wrought iron gates, standing two-deep on the stairs leading down to the crypt, and spilling out into the chapel above.
They waited, silently.
They wouldn’t let me wear clothes.
I blinked when Fiona told me I must go, but I must go naked.
‘Why?’ I asked, knowing it would make little difference to question her.
It’s necessary,’ she said, just like my Granny had told me when I was a child, as I watched three people choke to death on the end of three ropes.
‘Why?’ I repeated, stubbornly.
‘Because that is how you greet your ancestors. You come as you are.’
I stared at her, trying to decide if she was fucking with me, or being serious. Fiona just smiled and waited. Was it necessary? Or was this another way of humiliating me? Asserting dominance? Making me pay for my ‘special’ heritage?
Was this necessity, or jealousy?
And what did ‘greeting my ancestors’ mean?
Either way, I knew enough about her now to understand the look on her face. She would not be moved, and so, naked I must go.
Slowly, I bent down, untied my shoes, and slipped them off, one by one. The mainlanders gathered in the entrance of the crypt looked at me doing this with blank faces, as if I were an insect climbing the wall. I felt momentarily sick at the thought of removing my clothes in front of them. The moment passed, and I stripped, slowly and deliberately, folding each item carefully. A woman came forward to take them from me. It was cold in the crypt, but I stood tall, proud, not allowing mysel
f to shiver.
‘Naked,’ I said, at last, declaring my readiness.
‘As you were born,’ Fiona said, and they led me away.
36. Back again
I was placed at the head of a slow procession. It marched ponderously out of the crypt, over the green grass of the cemetery, over the burial ground wall and down to the beach beneath, where a small motor boat was moored and waiting for me. The mainlanders followed behind me, two by two. I thought briefly about breaking from the procession and making a run for it, knowing how stupid and futile this thought was, but entertaining it anyway.
I did not run. What would be the point? I had nowhere to go. The constant headache that signalled the Island’s hold over me was already wearing me down, stretching me thin, and reminding me constantly that I was stuck here. It was manageable while I was this distance from the Island, but if I tried to escape again, I might trigger a brain aneurysm, or stroke, or worse.
More than that, if I tried to escape, I would be leaving Rhoda behind. If she was still alive.
I consoled myself with the thought that at the very least, going back to the Island meant my head would stop hurting, if only for a little while.
And I could still feel that connection with the place, could still feel those hooks in me.
But going back also meant seeing things. Awful things. Things I didn’t want to see.
And then, there was Nimrod.
‘Fiona,’ I said, as that sudden, terrible realisation hit me. ‘Fiona, what if the Hunter comes back while we are there?’
‘Nimrod has been fed,’ she replied, not breaking her step for a moment. ‘It should be a while before it gets hungry again.’
I thought of Johnny.
I was escorted through ankle-deep, freezing seawater, and deposited at the stern of the boat. Fiona sat next to me on a small wooden bench, close enough that every now and then, her clothed knee brushed against my bare knee, and I had to clench every fibre of my being in an effort not to flinch from her, or lash out, and push her over the side. I tried my hardest to be as she was. Calm. A blank slate. I tried my hardest not to display any emotion.
Murdo untied the boat and climbed in after us, his dog squeezing into the space by my feet. I stared at the collie as it hunkered down and rested its muzzle on its paws, remembering how eagerly it had eaten Mac’s tongue.
Murdo fidgeted for a moment, and then the engine started. The mainlanders stood in a neat line across the beach, and watched us go, their right hands all raised, fingertips drawing geometry in the fresh Highlands air by their heads. I turned my back to them, and we sped across the bay.
Cold sea spray battered my naked body, and dark clouds spread across the sky. It looked as if it might rain today. The Island loomed large before us, and despite my best efforts, I began to shake. Not with the cold, but with the memories. I remembered every single thing that had taken place there so vividly. Every detail of that nightmarish experience was burned into my brain, forever. I was changed, forever, because of it. The Island had taken a soft, privileged woman and chewed her up, remoulded her into something else, something raw, and desperate.
A piercing cry shrieked out from above. I shaded my eyes and saw a large bird of prey with wide wings and white tail feathers wheeling over our heads. It banked, swooped lower, then made for the Island, where it began circling the pine trees, as if looking for something.
‘What is that?’ I asked, gratefully distracted by the beauty of the bird. ‘A buzzard?’
‘White-tailed eagle,’ said Fiona. She watched it with a neutral expression on her face, hands stuffed in her pockets. As if she’d seen a hundred of these before, and would see a hundred more tomorrow.
‘It’s beaut-’ I started, and then the words died. The eagle, having soared over the top of the pine trees to the sky above the centre of the Island, vanished, mid-flight.
I sighed.
We approached the Island differently to how I’d expected, cutting across the water at a right angle rather than aiming straight for it. The motor boat reached the closest shore and then circled around it almost entirely, past the cave where Matthew and I had once stood looking out at a dark sea with stars all around, past the iron rungs hammered into the rock, past bare stone and heather and bracken, to the man-made spit we’d found on my first visit to the Island. The one shaped like a long, peaky nose that pointed at the mainland.
I felt immeasurably sad as it came into view. I’d been here last with Matthew.
So this is what it’s like when someone you love dies, I thought. Like constantly trying to swallow a sharp stone.
Except he’s not dead. He’s not. He’s out there somewhere, in the Other Place.
Him, and Luke.
And the thousand or so people who had lived in White Pines.
Murdo steered the boat into the spit, and moored it next to the handful of others which still rested there, motioning for us to climb out. I put a tentative foot out onto the stony embankment. The stones were cold, and painful underfoot. Fiona moved around in the boat next to me, and my balance shifted suddenly. The stones slipped under my toes and I fell forward, awkwardly, landing on my hands and knees, skinning both painfully. Fiona did nothing to help. She climbed out after me and stood on the shingle, looking bored and waiting for me to get up again. I held onto the hate that warmed me as I scrabbled around trying to find a steady place to put my feet so that I could stand up again. I would need that hate, later. I would need it to fuel me, carry me through whatever awaited.
Murdo’s large hands hoisted me upright. His touch on my naked flesh was difficult to bear, and I slapped his hands away in a panic. He stepped back and I noticed a long-handled shovel lying by his feet. He must have brought it with him from the boat.
‘What’s that for?’ I said, panting slightly.
He motioned for me to walk.
I did as I was told, noting that my headache had gone.
We took the small path that led from the spit to the trees by way of the old, ruined shepherd's hut I’d seen before. I had not looked closely at it then, but now it was daylight, I could see a heavy stone lintel above the door frame, the same style as the one over my front door at Taigh-Faire. The triangle was there, carved deeply into the stone in the centre of the lintel. A little worn from the elements, but definitely there.
We passed the hut, and left it behind us. Fiona led, and Murdo brought up the rear whilst I tried to keep pace with them both on bare feet. When we hit the tree line of the pine stand, we stopped. Fiona looked up at the towering, white trees that stretched so high over our heads.
‘The first thing we will do after today is cut these down,’ she said, her lip curled in distaste.
For once, she and I were in agreement about something, for I hated the trees too, hated how they watched me.
A faint rustle rippled through the treetops as if in response.
‘Careful,’ I muttered. ‘They’re listening.’
Fiona, unimpressed, snorted and marched on. We followed her into the trees, into the preternatural quiet. The dense carpet of needles prickled and stabbed at the soles of my feet as I walked.
And then, much more quickly than last time, as if the Island was hungrier than ever for me, the forest spat us out. We emerged into the centre of the Island, and there it was, in all its horrifying glory: the big blackened triangle where a town had once sat, had once thrived. A place for people to live away from the pressures of a modern civilisation. Away from machines and noise and currency and politics and television and celebrity. A place to be at one with nature, and the outdoors, and practice self-sufficiency. A place founded by a man called Mac, who burned alive in a van on the side of the road.
We had come out of the trees at the bottom southeast corner of the triangle, not far from where one of the smaller cairns lay. A dot at a triangle tip. What were they for, these cairns? Boundary markers? Crude coordinates? Burial mounds? I didn’t know.
But Fiona seemed to.
I thought of Nimrod, the Hunter of people.
We stopped next to the small pile of rocks.
‘What now?’ I asked, shivering with anticipation.
‘Watch,’ she said, and reached out her hand. She delicately removed a tiny stone from where it was balanced at the top of the mound. I heard a sizzling sound, smelt singed flesh. Fiona hissed and dropped the stone, wincing and shaking her hand. Her fingertips looked burned, and raw. She blew on them.
‘Now you,’ she said, pointing to the rock pile, which was one rock fewer.
‘Why?’ I said, knowing she wouldn’t answer me.
She pressed her lips together tightly. Her eyes, one brown, one blue, bored into me.
I hesitated. The last time I had touched one of these, the cairn in the centre of the triangle, it had hurt. A lot.
‘Do it,’ Fiona ordered.
‘What’s under these stones?’ I asked.
‘No questions,’ she replied, her calm exterior slipping just a little. She was not used to being challenged, only obeyed. ‘Just do as you’re told.’
I narrowed my eyes, and found a small stone near the top of the pile, as Fiona had. I let my fingers hover over it without touching, trying to establish how much pain I was about to experience.
Then, I picked it up, balanced it in the palm of my hand.
Nothing. No pain. No jolt of electricity. Nothing.
I set the rock down on the ground by my feet, and looked to Fiona for further instruction. She folded her arms.
‘Keep going,’ she said. I understood then that she wanted me to dismantle the cairn, stone by stone.
