by Kirsty Logan
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Kirsty Logan
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Part 1
Let the Sea Take It
Dwam
Fankle
Toty
Hame
Chapping
Telt
Dram
Entrelacé
Dunt
Clype
Stramash
Bairn
Part 1 ½
Birling
Stravaig
Part 2
Fae
Drouthy
Tumshie
Bonny
Laldie
Skelf
Sickling
Skite
Messages
Loupin
Stooshie
Bareknuckle
Cabriole
Thrawn
Divertissement
Scunnered
Besom
Fash
Greet
Canny
Cannae
Balançoire
Détourné
Bidie-in
Ecarté
Tatties
Swither
Wheesht
Glaikit
Gallus
Shadow-boxer
Palooka
Sucker punch
Skelp
Ken
Part 2 ½
Gloam
Fouter
Part 3
Tae
Volé
Haar
Haver
Coorie
Shoogle
Sleekit
Mauchit
Fouetté
Stour
Pokey-hat
Dreich
Couthie
Ramassé
Willnae
Brae
Numpty
Reverence
Répéter
Barra
Braw
Soutenu
Drookit
Cowp
After
Glossary of Chapter Titles
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Copyright
About the Book
Mara’s island is one of stories and magic, but every story ends in the same way. She will finish her days on the cliff, turned to stone and gazing out at the horizon like all the islanders before her.
Mara’s parents – a boxer and a ballerina – chose this enchanted place as a refuge from the turbulence of their previous lives; they wanted to bring up their children somewhere special and safe. But the island and the sea don’t care what people want, and when they claim a price from her family, Mara’s world unravels.
It takes the arrival of Pearl, mysterious and irresistible, to light a spark in Mara again, and allow her to consider a different story for herself.
The Gloaming is a gorgeous tale of love and grief, and the gap between fairytales and real life.
About the Author
Kirsty Logan is the author of the novel The Gracekeepers, the short story collections A Portable Shelter and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales, the flash fiction chapbook The Psychology of Animals Swallowed Alive, and the short memoir The Old Asylum in the Woods at the Edge of the Town Where I Grew Up. Her books have won the Lambda Literary Award, the Polari First Book Prize, the Saboteur Award, the Scott Prize and the Gavin Wallace Fellowship, and been selected for the Radio 2 Book Club and the Waterstones Book Club. Her short fiction and poetry has been translated into Japanese and Spanish, recorded for radio and podcasts, exhibited in galleries and distributed from a vintage Wurlitzer cigarette machine. She lives in Glasgow with her wife.
Also by Kirsty Logan
The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales
The Gracekeepers
A Portable Shelter
For Ross. I’ll deny it, but I love you.
It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.
– D. W. WINNICOTT
PART 1
Let the Sea Take It
THAT LAST SUMMER, the sea gave us jellyfish. Every morning when the water slid back and revealed the stony beach, there they’d be: dozens of squishy, silvered things with their purple threaded innards. The girls shrieked to see them, especially when Bee prodded them with sticks to make them shudder. Dead or dying, they didn’t know. And it didn’t matter – no one was giving them back to the sea, so they’d die in the end, and when evening came the tide would creep back in and steal the corpses. The sea takes everything.
But it was a dark, drawn-out summer, and there is much to tell, so let’s look at one night in particular. First there’s Islay with her long curls red as blood, long limbs bare in her floaty nightdress, seventeen years old and as perfect as a painting. Then Mara in her swimsuit, fifteen and a half, boxy and fierce and sharp but still thinking one day she’d be beautiful, somehow, without having to give up anything for it.
Islay had the light: an old brass lantern, glass sides spidered with cracks, but still bright enough. It was never really night in the summer, not this far north, and the best the moon could do was a greyish glow from behind the clouds. There was only one way to get to the beach, and that was through the trees, so through the trees the girls went. Mara barrelled on ahead, bold in the darkness, leaving strands of her hair snagged on branches. Islay picked a delicate way, not wanting to jag her skin on twigs, the light held out to the side so she wasn’t blinded by it.
Then there was Bee, of jellyfish-prodding fame. Forgive him: he’d only known this world for five years, and there was so much still to learn. He was squat, pretty, golden-haired, strange in the best way. The girls hadn’t invited him to the beach, but as they passed his window Islay’s light pulled him from sleep and he pattered from his bed, pushing up the sash to lean his soft little body on the sill. Even in daylight, even standing at the end of the garden, you couldn’t quite see through the trees, but if Bee closed his eyes and stretched his ears hard he could hear the girls and know what they were doing. The snap of twigs changed to the clatter of tiny stones, and the girls were at the beach.
Mara ran straight into the sea. Wide leaps through the long shallows. An involuntary yelp at the chill. Arms arrowed and a dive into the depths past the sandbank. On the brightest days it was possible to stand on the sandbank, lean forward, dip your face below the surface, and – if your eyes could stand the salt water – look down into a drop-off so deep its end was invisible.
‘Come on, move your arse!’ Mara, treading water, flexed her toes so they wouldn’t go numb. ‘It’s not even cold!’
Islay emerged from the trees, walked twenty steps across the stony beach, and stopped just before the lap of the tide. She loved the sea, just as all islanders love the sea – because why else would they want to live surrounded by it? But loving something did not mean you wanted to leap into it and let it drown you.
Islay didn’t yelp at the cold and she didn’t dive off the sandbank. Instead she took small and steady steps, letting the water creep up her calves until she began to feel unsteady, the yawn of the sandbank dropping away just in front of her. She stopped there in the shallows, the water licking her legs. The moonlight turned her floral nightgown monochrome. She held the light high, but the sea’s black surface was unbroken. Mara, breath held, waited underwater.
‘Are you ready?’ called Islay.
A stream of bubbles broke the surface.
‘I see you, Mara! Hurry up, I’m not standing here all night.’
Mara’s head followed the bubbles, her sleeked hair dark as the sky.
‘And you can start with that. Sin number one:
making my sister wait while I fanny about instead of getting on with naming my sins.’
‘Let the sea take it!’ announced Mara. She emphasised her point by turning away from the island and pushing the seawater away from her, then turned it into a backwards somersault, fish-slippery, making hardly any splash until she misjudged her feet and they ow-wowped in the water. She wouldn’t have admitted it to her sister, but she felt that if she kept moving, then all those ghostly dead jellyfish wouldn’t float over and brush against her legs.
‘Will we do another one of yours?’ called Islay. The lamp was heavy and her shoulder was beginning to ache.
‘I don’t have any more,’ Mara called back.
‘Liiiiiar,’ sang Islay. ‘You’ve got loads. I saw you eating after Mum said no snacks before dinner. Be honest. The sea can’t take it if you don’t tell.’
‘Fine,’ said Mara. ‘The bread and sugar I stole from the larder – let the sea take it.’
‘Let the sea take it!’ repeated Islay.
‘The tea I spilled on my dress and then blamed my brother – let the sea take it!’
‘The time I told my sister to piss off – let the sea take it!’
‘The shed window I broke and then just went away like nothing happened – let the sea take it!’
Between each of their confessions, Mara did somersaults and dives and flips, her awkward body effortless underwater.
‘The earrings I took from Islay’s jewellery box and then broke – let the sea take it!’
‘What? Mara! Which earrings?’ said Islay, but Mara had dived underwater and didn’t hear.
The things I took that weren’t mine, the things I said that weren’t true – let the sea take it! Let the sea take everything!
When the confessions were done, Islay held her light high to guide her sister back. Mara had to kick hard to get ashore – she’d drifted north-east, into deep water. It was easy to do.
The girls traipsed back through the trees, Mara leaving a trail of seawater and Islay letting her extinguished lantern catch against low branches. If they’d glanced up, they’d have seen Bee, asleep with his head resting on the windowsill. His eyes closed, his ears open, listening to it all.
Dwam
THE WORLD WAS so full of magic then that Mara didn’t always know when she was awake and when she was asleep and dreaming. At night she’d lean out of the window to see the sleeping island lit by stars. She’d watch the silvery flicker of midges catching the moon on their wings. She’d smell the coppery, sweet-rot scent of the enchantments she knew lurked under the earth. She’d hear the steady breathing of the sea, slow and deep as a giant’s. She knew that if she could stretch up over the treetops, she’d see dozens of jellyfish glistening on the stones. She knew that behind her and beneath her was home, this rambling storybook mansion of fifty rooms, some shut up for years, a sanctuary for tiny creeping things – four stone walls enclosing a land of mysteries, each of them belonging to her. She’d feel the cold breeze and jag herself on splinters from the buckled windowsill, and it would all feel as real as a dream.
Once she crept into Bee’s room and whispered him awake, asking him to please hit her as hard as he could, because the splinters didn’t hurt enough to be sure. He wouldn’t, and got upset, and cried soft little huffling tears until she tucked him in and said it wasn’t real, what she had said wasn’t real, he was only dreaming.
She never asked Islay to hit her, because she knew that she would, and then Mara might wake to find it all gone.
Fankle
‘DON’T FORGET ABOUT tonight, Mum,’ said Mara to Signe’s back. They were forever talking to Signe’s back as she was always at the cooker or bending over to clean under something or at the sink staring down at her motionless hands in the water. ‘It’s the special dinner. You said lamb stew.’
‘Now then,’ said Peter with a frown, ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
‘What? But you!’ Mara’s voice went up so high she couldn’t say more of the sentence.
Peter made his black eyebrows go up and down. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘that these ladies will manage to eat much of their lamb stew with such a distractingly handsome boy in our midst.’
‘Man,’ murmured Signe into his ear as she bustled past, spooning porridge into his bowl.
‘Man,’ amended Peter, adding sugar and cream, though when did a scrawny sixteen-year-old boy with a shaving rash on his throat earn the right to be called a man? ‘Such a handsome man.’
Mara looked smugly into her porridge. Islay made a sicky face. Bee didn’t notice because he was wiping the sugary dust from his cereal into his fists and hiding them under the table. Islay watched him while piling her toast crusts up to make a barrier around the edge of her plate.
‘Now listen, because I have to tell you about today,’ said Peter. ‘Today you all have to go away and stay quiet and not bother me with questions every five minutes, and definitely not come to me telling tales about your sister, because I’ll be working.’
‘Windows?’ asked Islay.
‘Floors?’ asked Mara.
‘Roof,’ said Peter. ‘The clattery tile that keeps you awake when it’s windy, Islay – that will be gone. The drip-drip-drip in the corner of your room, Bee – that will be gone.’
‘Finished?’ signed Bee with his sugary fists, confused because he wasn’t listening.
‘Yes, finished. I’m going to patch it up. I’m going to fix all the tiles on that whole roof. Our roof will be perfect, like something from a magazine.’
‘A magazine of roofs? Sounds thrilling,’ murmured Islay, but under her breath so Peter didn’t hear. Mara heard, though, and snorted, then regretted it when she remembered that ladies with gentlemen coming to dinner didn’t snort.
‘This house will be fixed up in no time. I’ll be done with the tiles in time for dinner. Tomorrow I’m going to do something else, and that will be done in time for dinner too. The floors. Or the replastering upstairs. By the end of the month – the end of the week! – we’ll all be living in paradise.’
Signe didn’t think that was likely. It wasn’t likely that the roof would be fixed at all, never mind in a single day. And who on earth could replaster twenty rooms in a week? They’d been in this house for six years now, and it seemed that every time Peter managed to fix something, another three things broke. But she said nothing.
‘Finished,’ signed Bee as he pushed back his chair, the legs shrieking on the stone floor. He held his clenched fists out to his sisters.
‘I’m finished too. Thanks, Mum, love you, Mum.’ Islay slid sideways off her chair so it didn’t shriek and wrapped her hand around Bee’s wrist. They had to squash together to fit through the doorway, but Islay didn’t let go. Mara spooned up her porridge in three bites, but she was too late. She followed as close as she could.
Peter lifted his porridge bowl and licked the last of the cream from the rim. He patted his wife’s bottom as he passed, aiming a kiss towards her forehead.
‘Thanks, my dove. You won’t believe how beautiful I will make these tiles for you. They’ll be the loveliest things you ever had above your head.’
‘Lovelier than the sky?’ Signe asked, in what she hoped would sound like a teasing way, but Peter had already wandered out – to be wildly optimistic on the roof, presumably – and her words fell down to her bustling hands. She ate the leftover porridge from the pot, standing at the kitchen sink. She tried to think: not about what she had to clean or move or organise in the house today, but about something bigger than that. Something noble and dramatic. But she couldn’t grasp hold of a single thought. Her mind was loud and white and chaotic, like a dozen swans taking flight.
Toty
BEE STAMPED DOWN the hallway, one arm raised, dragging his sister behind him. This made him look angry, except that he stamped whatever mood he was in, and his fists were only clenched so he didn’t lose any of his cereal. He headed for the front door, which was usually to be avoided because an enormou
s shark jaw was hung, open, in the doorway, and you had to walk through it to get outside. The jaw was there when they bought the house, and at least once a month Signe asked Peter to take it down – it would scare the tourists, she said, and he agreed, but said that’s exactly why he wouldn’t take it down, because tourists liked to be scared sometimes; why come to a rocky little island and stare out to the endless, ravenous sea if you don’t want to feel small and temporary? They knew the jaw couldn’t be real. No shark was ever so big. But that didn’t make its teeth any less sharp.
Through the doorway, past the empty paint tins and splintering ladders piled up against the front wall of the house. Skirting the mass of lavender, scent clouding, stems twitching under questing bees. Ducking under the frayed washing line. Clambering over the drystone wall. Pushing aside the branches of the pear trees to creep in under them.
Bee came to an abrupt stop and Islay tripped over him, her arm thwacking against a root.
‘Shitting shitty shit!’ She sat up and rubbed the sore bit. Bee didn’t notice. Under the branches’ canopy, he spread his arms like wings. Sugar-dust scattered.
‘Hide,’ he signed, and shuffled back behind a tree. The girls followed – Islay a little grumpily – and sat beside him, bottoms on the hard earth, arms around knees.
Bee had always been the golden boy, but that summer he gleamed. Buttercup sun lolled through the branches, catching the fuzz on his bare shoulders and back. Their tiny haloed lion. Islay pulled him closer so his heavy head rested on her lap and began twisting a thin braid in his hair.
The orchard had a dozen trees, and the pears hung pale and heavy from the branches. Mara reached up and pulled one from its stalk, letting the branch rebound with a swish. She made sure Bee was looking at her, then rolled the pear to him. It trundled an arc across the ground. He sat up, shaking off Islay’s hands, and rolled the pear back. Mara grinned and returned it. The pear trundled back, and halfway through its arc, Islay snatched it up and took a big bite.
