by Ken Hagan
Ma tells me to go with them — worse luck — I am to be their guide through the gullies, and lead them up-fell to where the nests are. As soon as we get up through the mist, I plan to make myself scarce. While the other two are gathering eggs, I will run off to cool my feet in the waters of the tarn.
*
‘Hell’s teeth,’ shouts Jofrid in anger. She flexes her foot and aims a kick at the puffin-hen. The seabird is too quick for Jo; it shuffles to a safe distance and stares at her angrily. With the hen out of reach, Jo stretches her hand inside the nesting hole, to grab at the egg. The mother puffin scuttles back, flapping her webbed feet, fluttering her wings. Her red beak nips the bare flesh of Jo’s ankles, drawing blood.
‘You little shit!’ howls Jo. Empty-handed, and no egg for her pains, Jo pulls her arm out from the burrow. She sits at the nesting-hole and rubs the beak marks — nothing injured but her pride — now she takes to lashing out with a stick in a vain attempt to smite the offending puffin.
It hops nimbly away from her. A warning goes up among the hen-birds; their breeding mates take to the air — hundreds and hundreds of puffins, more and more emerging from burrows to give vent to shrill cries; others calling from the air, ‘Ka-aar, ka-aar, ka-aar! Egg-thief, egg-thief!’
Vrekla is standing over the burrow with arms folded over her breast. My sister and I try not to laugh at her. We know better than to offer Jo advice.
‘What did you expect the hen to do?’ asks Vrekla, ‘did you think she would stand by and watch you steal her egg?’
‘It is all very well for Ma, asking us to gather eggs,’ say Jo. ‘These puffins are fierce little fighters. Their hen-birds don’t drop their eggs in an open nest like any normal bird. They bury them underground.’
‘Let’s be off,’ says Vrekla with a wink at Jo. ‘We will tell Ma we couldn’t make it. We will say we didn’t reach the top. You better not snitch on us, Kregin, do you hear?’
Jo is not to be beaten — especially as she knows Cormac was able to gather eggs with ease. ‘Kregin, tell us how he did it. How did Cormac manage to get so many?’
I won’t tell Jo that it was no easy matter for Cormac; that he had a hell of a time. ‘Nothing to it,’ I reply ‘Push down through the heather with a stick, break into the hole and feel inside for an egg — dig it up, simple as that. If a hen-bird gets troublesome, just swing your apron in the air to drive her off.’
Jo frowns. ‘As simple as that?’
‘You will see. Once you lift out an egg, the mother-hen loses interest and flies away.’
Jofrid has tied two aprons, hers and Vrekla’s, to act as a makeshift net. Her plan is to startle a hen-bird from the burrow, cover it under their aprons and snatch the eggs while the hen is trapped. Our task, mine and Vrekla’s, is to stamp on top of the burrow, so that the bird runs in panic from the nest and into the snare.
‘Got you!’ shouts Jofrid in triumph. While we stamp on a burrow, laughing and yelling, out runs a hen. Jo feels for the wriggling shape under her apron, she finds the puffin’s head, holds the shape of its beak, jerks the body down, and wrings the mother-bird’s neck.
Chapter 10
In the longer summer days we have less rain but more mist. The fog and damp closes in by evening and lasts through the night, sometimes lingering all next day without lifting. The mull-forse has slackened to a narrow chute of water no wider than a beck.
Ma says we have to dump the water that Cormac and I loaded on the Vigtyr. ‘Get rid of the stale water,’ she says. ‘Fill up with fresh,’ she looks straight at me. ‘We need to do it before the stream dries up altogether’.
My brothers will put up mast and rigging tomorrow. Einar plans to move off the isle in two days’ time, three at the most.
‘The wind off-shore is in our favour,’ he says, ‘it won’t be long before we cast off.’ I bite my tongue in disgust. I must be the only one who doesn’t want to leave.
Everyone is at the shore, everyone, that is, except me and Ma, and of course Mel and Bedwyr. My older sisters are working the skiff, to ferry our belongings out to the Vigtyr; my three brothers are on board ship seeing to the mast and rigging.
Our shelter no longer stands on the fell. Where it once stood is a patch of trodden earth beside the fire. A stretch of worn turf leads from the storm-drain to our cess-ditch and the bone-middens, and on the fell-side below that, twelve paces off, is a bulge under grass where the heifer was buried with her skull and hooves.
I knew this would happen. I am lumbered with the task of humping water from the forse. Bedwyr has been no help: the poor lad is not able. Ma has him sitting with her at the fire. As often as not he falls into a doze, resting his head on her lap.
My shoulders ache with the routine to the skiff. From forse-stream to the foot of the cliff, trudging down-fell with pails of water, over the sinking shingle, and back up-fell to refill them: I have been at it on my own since yesterday.
I ought to be on the Vigtyr with my brothers — with the men. I’d love to have been on deck while they hauled up the mast. I can do rigging as well as Sepp. I can fasten cleats quicker than Cormac; I could have worked on repairing the bilge, nailed down the deck-boards. Einar says he had no time to do it. He could have given the job to me. I might have helped Alu board the sheep, or minded the bull-calf on the jetty, or stowed the shelter hides with Vrekla and Jo.
Still more water is needed. I have another barrel to fill after this. I am always given the bum jobs.
‘Can’t we take Bruni now to the cairn?’ Mel asks as I trudge past her with empty pails. ‘You promised me, you said you would.’
Bruni was Mel’s pet name for one of the hen-crows, the one with brown tufts among the black feathers. She found Bruni dead in the cage this morning: the bird was moulting and refusing food. ‘Can’t we do it now?’ pleads Mel. ‘You said that we could bury her on the cairn.’
‘I can’t stop what I am doing,’ is my abrupt reply. ‘I have to finish this first.’
‘I could take Mel and her bird to the cairn,’ says Bedwyr, ‘if Ma lets me.’
‘Isn’t that a good idea, Mel?’ says Ma. ‘Bedwyr and I will go with you. Where is Bruni? Where is that piece of old leather I gave you to put her in?’
‘But Ma,’ says Mel, close to tears, ‘I want Kregin. He promised. I want him to take me to the cairn.’
*
Mel has insisted that we bring the two live birds in their cage, so that they can see their former cage-mate buried in the cairn. The hen-crows watch everything we do, hopping to and fro, cawing; flapping madly in the confines of the cage. They can see Mel with Bruni; they know something’s afoot. Mel holds the dead crow, gently supporting head and breast, letting the brownish wings rest limp over her wrists. She has thrown Ma’s piece of leather into the gorse; she had no intention of using it.
Bruni has one eye closed, the other left open as it was when Mel found her. It is strange to look at the one dead eye. Mel won’t have it shut; she wants it kept that way. The crow’s eye isn’t darting and alert, it has lost its brightness. One jaunty eye — open to the world and motionless— gives the bird an odd look, piercing and wise, as if she were still alive.
The cairn stones at the grave are usually dripping wet, moist with rain and mist, but they have dried in bright sunshine and taken on a lustre I haven’t noticed before, their surface speckled, embedded with a shiny grit.
I take the loose stones from the top of the cairn, three or four odd shapes of rock that pull out easily. Mel’s dead crow can be pushed into a crack, as a resting place, and the stones wedged back over the gap.
‘There. That should do it, Mel. Now put the bird in.’
My little sister shakes her head; she disapproves. ‘No Kregin, that’s not the right place, it’s too small for her.’
‘It looks big enough to me.’ I’m fed up with Mel’s fussing over the bird.
‘No,’ says Mel firmly. ‘Bruni won’t fit in there.’
‘Close her wings flat,’ I rep
ly. ‘Lay her on her side.’
‘I don’t want her wings closed like that: they should be spread out as if she is flying. Can’t you see that’s how it should be?’
What is Mel going to think of next? I take off the top layer of stones from the cairn, and toss them on the turf. ‘Is that enough space for you?’
‘Don’t be angry with me, Kregin; I am doing it for Dada and Feilan.’
‘What has the bird to do with them?’
Mel hears, but ignores me; she is too busy arranging the crow’s wings to a full span; she gets up on tiptoe, and sets her bird at the top of the cairn,
‘You can put the stones back now,’ she adds pointedly. ‘Be careful of the wings.’
Mel watches me closely. The two caged crows fix their eyes on me, the dead eye of Bruni stares at me while I put the stones over.
‘I know why Bruni is dead,’ says Mel at last, ‘but I am sorry that she had to die.’
My heart softens. I feel guilty for being grumpy and unhelpful. Poor Mel, she is not to blame for the crow’s death.
‘I’m sorry that Bruni is gone; but it’s not your fault, little one; it is just one of these things. You talked and played with Bruni; you fed her and took care of her. No one could have done more. Maybe she wasn’t happy in a cage.’
Mel looks at me as if I have completely missed the point. ‘It’s because Dada and Feilan need Bruni for where they are going. That’s why she died; she had to be with them.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, little one.’
Mel takes a deep breath and heaves a sigh like a child who has something big to say. ‘Bruni will show Dada how to make it over the sea. She will go ahead and find land. Dada will follow her flight to the ice lands and wait for us, so will Feilan and Kol, and our dead boys too.’ All I can do is nod, as she goes on. ‘When Einar tells me to do it, I will set our birds free to fly in search of land.’ She points to the live crows in the cage. ‘They will lead us to Bruni, to Dada and Feilan, and to the boys. We will all be together.’
*
We are on the Vigtyr a league from the shore. Einar is at the helm, giving the skerries a wide berth to larboard. He is taking great care edging past the rocks. We will keep going due north until we are past these shallow reefs that lie off the mull. A fairish wind, warm from the south, blowing steady out of the sound. The sail is reefed low, but taking all the slack we give her. The keel of the Vigtyr bounces comfortably on the wave, leaving a creamy furrow in our wake.
Einar did some repairs to stern deck with wood carried from Cormac’s cove. He didn’t finish the job: some deck-boards are missing where we are sitting amidships. Ma is aft, bracing her heels against the swell. She’s chosen to be on stern deck, where Da used to be, standing close to Einar — Ma does nothing without reason.
‘Can’t see the waterfall now,’ says Vrekla, ‘not that there was much of it left.’
‘I see it,’ says Alu, who has sharper eyes than Vrekla. ‘From here, it is just a tear-drop sparkling on the mull.’
‘Or a spike of ice,’ says Jo, to go one better than Alu, ‘a dripping icicle.’
Ma ponders. ‘Whoever would have thought that the falls would dry up?’
‘If I hadn’t been on the top yesterday,’ says Cormac, ‘and seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed that it could happen: the tarn is caked dry, nothing but a bowl of mud.’
‘The time was right to go,’ agrees Sepp; ‘can’t keep animals without water.
‘What about us?’ This is said with indignation by Vrekla. ‘Don’t we get to drink too?’
‘No one forget my crows,’ says Mel.
‘The poor crows,’ says Alu absently, and gets a strange look from Mel.
Our bull-calf is snoring, lulled to sleep by the roll of the wave. Bedwyr snuggles against the calf’s shaggy hide to keep warm; the lad has shivers, even in this heat.
‘Kregin, take in steer-board brace a span or two,’ shouts Einar.
‘Aye, aye, skip,’ is my quick reply. I cross the slippery tarps, deck-boards missing, holding the ram’s cage as a precaution on my way to steer-board. The ram’s cage was re-built from scraps of wood, Sepp’s handiwork; it stands amidships as sturdy as the two crossbeams it is resting on. The ram is grumpy and silent, unhappy to be back on the ship. He stares at me from his cage as I go past him.
‘Look there.’ says Mel. She is pointing to larboard, where the skerries break water.
‘Ah,’ says Cormac, ‘the same fisher folk I saw the first day from the cove.’
‘They are net-fishing,’ shouts Ma, ‘dragging a net between two boats.’
‘No wonder they don’t rig up sails hereabouts,’ says Einar. ‘To make way between the skerries, it’s more a matter of paddling, pushing down to feel the bottom, punting an oar in and out of the water. Look at the shallow draught of their boats.’
‘If you touch rock here,’ says Sepp, ‘you need more than shallow draught to save you.’ He lifts open the ram’s cage and stuffs in straw to keep the old buffer quiet.
The crew in the rowing-boat nearer to us have their faces turned, attending to their draw-net. They haven’t seen us approach, but the front oarsman in the other boat stands, oar in hand, and sends a signal of sorts, waving his free arm in the air, as you would to greet a friend.
‘Look, look, the fisherman is waving to us,’ shouts Mel, and she ducks under the sail and runs to larboard on my side to wave back at him.
I, too, return the oarsman’s greeting. His appearance is strangely familiar, his pale body stripped to the waist, hands and face weathered brown. He is lean and sinewy like Da was. Now that I have had time to study him, his gestures seem more urgent: it’s not a welcome, it’s a warning!
Einar jerks the tiller to alter course, sudden, abrupt, taking us out to steer-board, and now, a frantic shout from the helm, ‘He’s telling us to keep off the reefs. Look! There are shoals ahead.’ My brother pulls hard to steer-board and takes the Vigtyr abeam the wind. ‘Haul in steer-board brace,’ shouts skip.
‘Aye, aye, skip,’ returns Cormac. ‘I am on to it.’
‘Out full to larboard.’
‘Aye, aye, skip,’ my return. ‘I’m on to it.’ I let our sail draw out as far it will go.
Einar has the Vigtyr running on a broad reach, away from the shoals. When I turn to look, the oarsman who stood to warn us has sat down to his sculls. The last we see of him is a distant wave of farewell, and the fishing boats are gone.
‘It is Kregin’s water,’ says Ma with a wink and a grin in my direction. ‘Will you ladle for me, Alu, there’s a dear? I have a terrible thirst.’ Alu, for no reason, bursts into tears. ‘What’s wrong with you, daughter?’ asks Ma. Alu is unable to speak through her sobs, she hides her face in her hands, and slumps to her knees. Jo and Vrekla drop what they are doing and run to her. Ma is soon over the tarp, to lay a hand on Alu’s thick red hair. ‘Alu dear, what’s wrong, pet?’
‘Da should have let me stay back home in Thwartdale,’ says Alu with sobbing in her throat. ‘Bjorn said he would have me; he kept asking and asking; Da turned him away.’
Jo sways awkwardly in the swell, looking queasy, and rubbing her belly. Ma stumbles as she gives Jo a hug: ‘Hell’s teeth!’ Jo and Ma have lost their footing amidships, the next thing we know Jo has rolled over on the tarp; her stout thighs, bare-white to the hips, are thrown up in the air. Poor Jo is red-faced; my sisters fuss over her. Ma and Cormac are in splits of laughter.
‘Sepp,’ shouts Einar in annoyance. ‘See to the gaff-beam; open the sail as far as the luff can go. We are going to turn about; time to make our bearing west.’
*
To the southeast — back there astern over the bright waves — I see only a tip of the grey headland that was our island home. It is no bigger than my thumbnail on a warm expanse of sea.
Chapter 11
Southerly seas to larboard and we are two days out from the Lundies, an evening wind freshening behind us, driving our hull we
stwards on a broad reach of sail. As soon as sun dips below the line, and stars are out, Einar says he will turn about, head into the night sky, and bear a course for the north-star. He expects us to reach landfall in the ice lands some time tomorrow.
Yesterday’s dispute between Ma and Jo has blown over. I wasn’t to blame. I tried to keep out of the argument, but I couldn’t stand by and say nothing: my name was in the thick of it. Ma got her way and that’s a good thing. I am glad she stood up to Jo. It was for Ma to decide, for the sake of Da’s memory and for Feilan’s, how things should be.
I suppose for Ma, and for the rest of us, that is an end to it, but if I know Jo, she will harbour a grudge; she won’t cast her gripe in the sea and forget it — she is not one to let bygones sink harmlessly in her wake. I bet she’s still furious that Einar missed out, mad as hell that I was favoured at his expense.
The fuss was about Da’s nails. Ma had trimmed his toe-nails and finger-nails, and Feilan’s too, the last duty of a widow and mother, before their bodies were laid in the grave. Afterwards, she ground the trimmings to dust, one little pile from Da’s nails, another from Feilan’s, and sealed each under tallow-wax in a tip of the horns saved from our slaughtered she-calf.
When Ma said that Bedwyr should have Feilan’s nails, not one of us batted an eye-lid. After what happened to him on the Vigtyr, and with Ma having nursed him through fever, she says that Bedwyr is the answer to her prayers — a gift from the saints — in place of the son who was taken. I doubt if Bedwyr understood what it signified when the gift of nails was pressed on him. But he saw how Ma wept while she handed them over; he put the hornlet sheepishly under his serk.
What comes next is a shock to me, as much as to anyone else. She passes the second hornlet, Da’s nails, into my hands. We had all expected them to go to Sepp. A father’s nails, the death-trimmings of his fingers and toes, are usually given to the eldest son, the one chosen to carry his sword. By age and birth, that ought to be Sepp. Sepp was a farm man back home, he had no call for a sword, but things have changed, and as the eldest he should have Da’s war-beaten sword — if only in honour of Da’s memory. The rusty old thing, battered and chipped in countless battles, might not last for many more blade-fights, but no one can deny that on the Vigtyr Sepp earned the right to carry it.
