The Lyre Dancers

by Mandy Haggith

  ‘The sea!’ She gestures out of the hole. ‘You see?’

  Her eyes glimpse momentarily at me, then away, as if I am dangerous to look at. But she is looking for an answer to her question and when I nod, she nods as well and smiles the wide smile. We return to the silent conversation where she agrees with all my non-statements and I answer her non-questions satisfactorily.

  My stomach churns with fear of her, but she is so clearly capable of great magic I dare not move until she tells me I can go.

  ‘Today, it’s, you’re…it’s the sea. But some other day, would you show me the woods?’

  She stops plucking, her shoulders slump and she stares me full in the face, grimacing. Then her eyes close and she grunts, like a pig, twice, loudly, then says, ‘Rootle, rootle.’ Opening her eyes, she frowns at me. ‘What are you? Otter? Weasel? Otter?’

  I nod. I’d rather be an otter than a weasel.

  ‘Otter goes away now.’ She turns her head.

  I get up from my stool. ‘I’m going.’

  She nods. ‘Flying, flying,’ she says, in a squeaky voice. She brushes me away.

  I get out as fast as I can and close the door behind me. The thin cat sneaks around the side of the hut.

  Mother is waiting for me, sitting on the stone platform outside the broch. I am pleased to realise she was within earshot. I wish I’d known when I was in there, but perhaps I would have been even more frightened if I had been aware she was on sentry duty.

  ‘She’s flying,’ I say.

  ‘Oh well, we can go on our own.’ She pauses. ‘I wonder if it’s worth me asking her?’

  I shrug.

  She strides over to the door, raps once, calls, ‘Buia?’ and opens the door. I don’t hear what she says but Buia’s response is clear.

  She shrieks, ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’

  Mother is spat out of the hut, reeling. Then she turns to me as if nothing has happened and says, ‘Basket?’

  It is on the platform. I was forgetting it. I grab the decrepit object, vowing to make a new one if I can find some good willow. Mother has her own with her and I’m jealous. I try to think where the one I made last winter went but I can’t remember. I must have left it somewhere. Then I recall: I gave it to Rona, of course. Rona always ends up with the best of everything.

  I shall make a new one.

  RAMSONS

  ‘It’s a good day to see what we might gather in the woods,’ Mother says. ‘It’ll be too early for any of the mushrooms, even for birch slippers, but we’ll see.’

  It rained earlier but now the clouds seem to be dissolving away. There are thrushes singing and nettles everywhere. I want to stop to gather them but mother walks on, beyond the fields and the grazing land, back towards the woods. She doesn’t talk. I’m glad about that. I don’t need to know what she is thinking about and I don’t want to tell her my thoughts either.

  I can’t stop seeing all those bones in Buia’s hut. There were so many. Thousands. How many animals died to give her all those bones? Does she kill them? Why did she let me in but scream at Mother? How dangerous is she? What are the bones for? Do I dare ask her? Are any of them from humans?

  I don’t like the woods here as much as the shore. They aren’t like any woods I know: stunted and scrubby, most of the trees tumbling around, branching from the ground with no trunks to speak of. There is no space in here. Of course there are no fungi, but I can’t help looking. When I was a child, mother used to tell me about the little pixie people who camped underneath them, putting up their tents in the woods to shelter from storms. I used to check under every mushroom to see if I could spot one of the little ones and I still vaguely worry that I am making them homeless when I pick them, ripping the roof from over their heads. Is this just a story told to children?

  Mother points out ramsons. Once I know what I’m looking for I see the white flowers everywhere and my basket fills quickly. I find myself among a mass of them, so I can pick and choose just the young, succulent leaves. As I finish gathering from one clump, I look up and another cluster catches my eye. The fragrance is deep and powerful. I am not thinking of anything but selecting the best.

  And then I realise I am alone. I call, ‘Where are you?’

  No answer.

  I holler it more loudly.

  There’s no response. Just a green tangle of birch and hazel trees and sallow bushes in all directions.

  ‘Where are you?’ I shout again. I sing it out, so my voice carries, but the rustle of the leaves in the treetops muffles it and if there is an answering call it is smothered by them too. The trees crowd around me, peering down at me, clutching at me. They are no longer guardians of treasure. I understand that they were laying out the white flowers as temptation, as bait, to lure me onwards and trap me.

  ‘Where are you? Mother?’

  Only shuddering leaves answer, and a thrush, mocking me.

  ‘Maaaa!’ I howl, like a child. ‘Maaaa!’

  Which way did I come? I have been turning around so much I don’t really know. The trees are all different but all the same, all completely unfamiliar, or perhaps all ones I’ve seen before. I know I should be methodical, but I find myself bashing through the woods hollering, spooked, like a woodcock battering through branches trying to escape their clutches. Where has she gone? Why has she left me here?

  I find myself at a stream and my feet sink into mud. I grab at a tree but I’m up to my knees in sticky black wetness. My basket up-ends and all my leaves scatter. Part of me wants to cry, but a bigger part of me is furious and I lunge out of the mud roaring and swearing with a glorious spewing of foul words. It’s like being a boar. I’m a crazed animal. It’s monstrous and exhilarating at the same time, to be so full of rage and to allow it to explode out of me.

  I stomp about, a squall of fury, growling and berating the unfairness of my life.

  But then I am just wet-legged, and she is there on the bank above me, watching down, with that know-it-all smile on her face.

  ‘Don’t laugh at me,’ I shout. ‘Where were you?’

  She shakes her head and still that smile lingers. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ she says, or something like that.

  I hate her.

  ‘You left me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come when I shouted? Or answer? I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘Calm down. We just got separated while we gathered. It’s not a big panic. These are friendly woods.’

  ‘They’re not friendly. They’re dangerous. Look what they did.’ I spread my arms, pointing to my spilled harvest, much of which is floating away downstream. I am biting back tears. I won’t let her make me cry. I am too angry with her for leaving me and if I weep, her victory will be complete.

  ‘That rotten stream.’ Her sarcasm is thick. ‘Come on. You got lots, let’s not lose them all.’

  It’s as if it’s all normal again, the way she talks, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I know you hate me when I get out of earshot in the woods.’ I hate her for knowing what I’m thinking. I want her to get out of my head.

  ‘Don’t be grumpy with me.’

  She has a cheek! ‘Stop telling me how to feel.’ That shuts her up.

  We don’t speak much on the way home. Home? That big stone tower.

  RIAN

  HIDE

  As Rian and Soyea made their way out of the woods towards the broch, they met a hurrying figure. It was the girl they had seen tending her cow on previous days.

  ‘You have to go back,’ she said. ‘Hurry. My mother sent me to tell you Ussa’s at the broch. She says to ask Eilidh to hide you.’

  The girl’s speech came out in a blurt, like she had been rehearsing it. Rian stared at her, frozen, then looked wide-eyed out to sea as if expecting to see Ròn, Ussa’s boat, sailing towards her. Her heart raced and she had to breathe deeply to keep control.

  ‘Oh by the Goddess wil
l I never be free of her?’ It was barely a whisper, not intended to be heard by either girl. In a normal voice she asked, ‘Who’s your mother?’ She tried to sound as calm as if the girl had merely commented on the weather.

  ‘Duileag. I’m Duileag too. I’ve got to go.’ She turned away, then back, and smiled at Soyea as if seeing something in her she recognised. ‘Good luck.’ Then she scampered away.

  Rian swivelled and placed her palm flat on Soyea’s shoulder. ‘Back to Achmelvich.’ She dogged her daughter’s footsteps, trying to hurry her without creating alarm.

  Eilidh was waiting for them. ‘Thormid was out fishing and saw the trader’s boat. He came to tell you but you’d gone. But I see there are folk looking out for you in Clachtoll as well. Unfortunately you can never tell who’ll take Bael’s side. Come.’

  She led away into the woods that ran down to the shore of the rocky fjord stretching inland. Rian gestured for Soyea to go ahead of her. If necessary, she would act like a lapwing, limping, hanging back and flapping about as if injured, to enable her daughter to escape.

  They hurried after Eilidh along the leaf and twig strewn path, not speaking until they reached a little stone shelter among some bouldery scree. Beyond it was the shore, with a space cleared of rocks where a boat could be hauled up.

  ‘I’ll come back later and tell you what’s happening,’ Eilidh said. ‘We’ll find a way to make out you’ve gone south again, never fear.’

  Sure enough, before the afternoon had begun to dwindle into dusk, the stout woman reappeared, chuckling, with a basket of food. Rian and Soyea ate and drank gratefully as Eilidh reassured them that Ròn had been seen sailing for Coigach.

  ‘Thormid went and complained to Bael that his good-for-nothing brother-in-law Badger has stolen a boat and sailed away south with the two of you. Seemingly Ussa was more than ready to believe that any associate of your man is nothing better than a pirate and off they went in hot pursuit.’ She thrust the basket of rolls at them. ‘Dig in.’

  Soyea swallowed and took another.

  Rian shook her head. ‘I don’t know how we can thank you.’

  Eilidh waved her hand. ‘You’d do the same. I know you would.’

  Soyea was frowning. ‘So how did Ussa know Mother is here?’

  Eilidh smiled. ‘News travels fast here. She was over on the Long Island, apparently.’

  ‘Bael may have sent word,’ Rian said. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him.’

  ‘So does that mean we can’t go back to the broch?’ Soyea was pale.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, little bird.’ Rian patted her arm. ‘My days of being cowed by Bael are over. If Ussa turns up again, we’ll make ourselves scarce. I know this area far better than she does and there are plenty of places to hide.’

  ‘And you have a good number of us who will do what we can for you, never fear.’ Eilidh offered Soyea the rest of the rolls from the basket. ‘Take these with you and get away back to the broch. Danuta needs your mother and you.’

  SOYEA

  BROCH

  It’s amazing how quickly I feel I belong here. Is it amazing? I don’t know. I just do. I have my space, my cubby hole between the walls.

  There’s a big room inside where the fire is, where everything goes on, and where the herbs and fish and mushrooms that we have gathered hang from the rafters. And then there is the outside world. Between these, I have my heather bed, my fleece, my nest. I haven’t got used to the idea that Mother grew up here and my Grandfather built this tower. I can reach up from my bed to the stones, laid cleverly over each other to make a pleasing curve over my head and down to my feet.

  Danuta is sleeping and Mother has gone to pick herbs again, I do not know where. She wanted to go alone. So today I am making pottery with Donnag. I like her.

  We roll out the clay, which she brings in a bucket. It is heavy. She says she dug it up from the stream bed between here and the beach and it is good clay. The slimy brown mud is surprisingly firm under my fingers, but whereas she seems able to smooth it into forms, I am clumsy with it and find it hard to shape. It squashes. It resists what I want. It gives the impression of being malleable but then, as I am bringing it up into a curving bowl-shape it disintegrates, or crumbles, or tears, and I am left with clay lumps, bad thoughts and nothing to offer to the flames.

  Meanwhile she makes cups. We could do with some plates, but I do not know her well enough to suggest what she might make, and as I flounder with the clay she creates drinking vessels, one after another, a clutch of palm-sized, identically curved cups, arranged in a neat line. They are without handles or ornament, except for the ridiculous pinches she puts in. They are repetitively misshapen. I watch her make one after another as if she were an insect, mindlessly repeating its action, making a perfect shape and then ruining each pot with the same distorted pattern.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ I say. ‘They are so perfect until you dent them.’

  ‘You must not try for perfection,’ she murmurs. ‘Only a goddess can make a flawless thing.’ Her voice is so quiet. It is a wispy, dried out voice, and it fits her frame. She is frail in every way. There is no more flesh on her than on Danuta and she seems brittle, feather light, as if she could easily break up and blow away in a storm. Yet she handles the clay with confidence and there is surprising strength in her hands.

  I have the urge to cover her in clay, to flesh out her bony body with it. Perhaps that is what she is doing, creating a substitute in clay for the muscle she does not have in her own limbs. Her big eyes peer out from the caves of her eye sockets, strange lights above the thin cheekbones, the narrow chin, the scrawny neck.

  ‘And anyway,’ she says, ‘it makes them easier to hold. Our hands are not symmetrical.’

  It seems sad to me, a shame. She looks at the struggle I am having with the bowl I am trying to make. She comes and stands behind me and reaches around from the back. Her hands cover mine, guiding me to shape the clay. The pressure of her palms across my fingers transfers to the pot. It helps. The bowl curves, the clay smooths.

  ‘There,’ she says. ‘Cut the top.’ She puts a thin blade into my hand, and somehow without touching me, her hovering fingers guide it around and across, slicing an even cut, and the bowl stands, as near to perfect as I dare to imagine.

  ‘Do I have to dent it?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ she says.

  I don’t want to.

  ‘Put it with these ones to dry.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘A few days.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We’ll fire them.’

  ‘In here?’

  ‘No. You’ll see.’

  ‘What now?’

  She points to the bucket of clay. ‘Make another.’

  She is already shaping something big.

  ‘Can I make a plate?’

  She shrugs. ‘Better to try the same again if you want to learn, but…’ Her shoulders nudge up and down again and her voice shrinks away. ‘Do what you want.’

  Something in the way she says it makes me willing to take her advice, and I make another bowl, more carefully and successfully this time, my hands remembering the pressure she applied. It goes wrong in places but I manage to correct it. The clay begins to seem a bit less as if it has a mind of its own. My second bowl is not as even as the first one, but it’s all my own work.

  She gives a grave nod at it. ‘And again,’ she says.

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Oh well.’ She really seems not to care less what I do.

  I make a third, but the base is too thin and it breaks, and I’ve had enough when Mother appears, ducking in through the broch entrance. She seems surprised to see what we’re doing.

  ‘How’s Danuta?’ She looks at each of us in turn.

  I remember I promised I’d look in on her but I’ve been so engrossed by the potting I forgot. I leap to my feet to dash into her chamber to check she’s all right but Mother beats me to it, turning away fr
om us as if we have been doing something filthy. I can see her thoughts in her turned back, her pointed footsteps. We are untrustworthy. We are negligent.

  I stand, halfway between Donnag and Mother. I look back at Donnag. She is immersed in her clay-shaping. Mother may as well not exist. Her arrival has left Donnag completely unmoved whereas waves of shame and anxiety are breaking across me. I follow Mother into Danuta’s chamber.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I am saying, as I walk in. ‘I got engrossed. Donnag was showing me how to make bowls, how to work the clay.’

  I peter out once I see Mother is holding Danuta’s hand. Her eyes are closed. She is pale, small, still. Is she dead? I have a bird in my chest.

  All mother says is, ‘Shhh.’ I sit down on the stool.

  She is pressing Danuta’s wrist. Then she touches her throat. ‘Danu?’ she asks. ‘Are you sleeping?’

  There is no sound from the woman on the bed, but I hear her breath rasp. At least my neglect hasn’t killed her. I breathe out. But Mother remains tense.

  ‘Have you looked in on her at all?’

  ‘Once,’ I lie.

  ‘And was she awake?’

  I shake my head. I can’t speak.

  ‘Perhaps she’s tired. We’ll leave her.’ Mother has her sanctimonious voice on. I loathe it. There’ll be something else later. She looks at me, but as I am sitting and she is blocking the light I know she can barely see me.

  ‘We’ll leave her in peace,’ she says.

  Isn’t that what I’ve been doing all day?

  She pulls the curtain aside and steps out. I get up to follow her. I risk an anxious look at Danuta, the old woman nearly killed by my neglect, and where I expected a near corpse, I see a face looking brightly out at me. She winks!

  ‘Your first pot?’ Her voice is a crackle, but it’s alive.

  I nod.

  She gives an approving blink. Then her eyes drop to the cup beside the bed, and the wrinkle of her nose says everything.

  ‘Do you want something?’ I ask. ‘A fresh drink? Some soup?’