The Walrus Mutterer

by Mandy Haggith

  Rian led her new master towards the hearth.

  Ròn

  They sailed soon after sunrise.

  There was so much to do Rian did not have time to say goodbye properly to Beithe the cow, or to gather more than the most basic of her possessions. Danuta held a bag while she stuffed in a few clothes and made sure she had her new medicine pouch around her waist. Then she had to go, with only a quick hug from the wet-eyed old woman. Buia ran after her down to the boat offering a sheepskin but Ussa took it, laid it out on her bench and sat on it, saying, ‘She’s a slave. What does she want with things like that?’

  As the ropes were slipped and Li and Faradh pulled on the oars, Rian waved to Buia, trying to smile.

  ‘Be good,’ Buia called, then turned away, one hand smearing her tears.

  Ussa gave Rian a wooden scoop and pointed to the bottom of the boat. ‘Bail.’

  The water was stinking and its level did not seem to drop no matter how hard Rian worked. She had to stoop, fill the bailer, then stretch up and out to reach over and dump the water overboard. Once under way, sail up, the boat heeled and she had to be careful to ensure that what came out of the bailer didn’t splash back onto Ussa. A mistake earned her a kick in her back that she knew she’d feel for days. As she bailed, her hands softened, wrinkling, and the wet wood became harder to grip. Her lower back felt as if she would break in two, but she dared not rest. The stench made her feel sick.

  Pytheas and Og were laughing behind her. Og called her name. She stood and looked back. The boat was impressive, its four-pointed sail rounded and full of wind. At the stern, Toma the sailor stood with legs apart, hand on the tiller, talking to his boy, Callum, who was wearing a storm coat and hat identical to the skipper’s except only half the size. Adoration filled the youth’s face as he lapped up Toma’s training, pointing to named landmarks to show he had learned them and jumping to tighten a rope so the sail was the perfect shape.

  Just to the windward side of Toma, Pytheas lounged on a bench with his goose feather and the leather sheet that he scratched on. He patted the bench next to him. He was sitting on Rian’s fleece, which by gestures she deduced he had retrieved for her from Ussa. He beckoned to Rian to come to him, then pointed back towards the land they had come from. The mountains were ranged out in a line like stumps in a crone’s mouth, and Pytheas pointed to each one in turn with a question on his face.

  Og said, ‘He wants to know if the hills have names. I told him you might have some idea.’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘And you looked like you needed a break from the bailing. It’s hard work for a short arse like you.’

  Rian managed a smile. She pointed to the southerly ridge. It was a game she had played countless times with Danuta when they reached a high point on one of their many herb-gathering walks.

  ‘Coigach,’ she said.

  Pytheas made an attempt to repeat it back and, once he was satisfied he had the sound, he dipped the sharpened goose feather in a little pot of dark liquid which he clutched in one hand and scratched on the leather, making a little squiggle of curves. Rian realised it must be some record of the name. She peered at the writing, intrigued. He grinned at her and pointed at the next mountain peak.

  ‘Stac Pollaidh.’ The squiggle was different this time.

  And so it went on. ‘Cùl Beag. Cùl Mòr. Suilven, Canisp, Quinag.’ All went down in the Greek man’s script with only one blot, despite the motion of the boat. She wondered what strange magic this was that he was doing and whether the mountains would be affected by it in some way. She hoped that what she had done was not wrong and asked the Great Mother silently to forgive her, if her naming the mountains so this man could write them down had been some crime she did not know about.

  Pytheas asked Og something. He rummaged in a bag and gave them both an oatcake. Pytheas rolled up the feather and his leather sheet and stowed it in the box under his bench. Then he gave her a squeeze on the shoulder and leaned back beaming at the landscape.

  Rian sat as still as she could, although the boat heeled towards Pytheas, and she had to grip the bench under her to try to avoid leaning too much against the man’s body and to stop herself tumbling as the boat lurched on big waves. As they turned out of the bay, the sea’s motion grew and from time to time spray showered the boat. Beyond them was open water, a great expanse of grey to the north.

  As they approached Stoer Head, the boat rocked and tossed in the jabbly water. Rian was still nauseous from the bilges. Og pointed to the oatcake which she had left uneaten in her lap but she shook her head.

  He picked it up and jabbed it towards her, patting his stomach. ‘Best thing for it.’

  She didn’t believe him. But he kept thrusting the biscuit at her, Pytheas nodding, so she took it and nibbled and found to her surprise that she did feel better.

  She looked about her. The boat was more commodious than it had looked when she first came aboard. From the vantage of Pytheas’ bench at the stern she could see the whole vessel. The mast was closer to the front than the back and there were four rowing benches two on each side, to the fore and abaft the mast, and between them chests, presumably full of trade goods.

  From what Rian could tell, Ussa was no longer in charge. Although she had barely noticed him on land, Toma was clearly in command of the boat. He and Callum were calmly making adjustments to the rigging.

  Og saw Rian watching them and he shuffled her along the bench, squeezing her between him and Pytheas. ‘Toma runs the show on the boat.’

  Ussa was under a shelter of hide stretched across wooden beams at the bow. Rian could see her seal skin boots stretched out on a bench. From the waist upwards she was hidden from view but something about the way the feet were splayed told her that the trader was catching up on sleep.

  Gruach the smith and his daughter were also in the shelter. Fraoch was curled up, a blanket wrapped around her, on a kind of shelf suspended above a bench on which Gruach splayed, head pillowed on his toolbag, mouth open, snoring.

  Og pointed at them. ‘The smith was working until dawn. It’s always the same.’

  ‘Are they slaves too?’ Rian asked.

  Og shook his head. ‘No, far from it. Gruach is Ussa’s cousin. He often travels with her.’

  The two other slaves, Li and Faradh, sat on rowing benches, leaning against the side of the boat, hoods up, heads nodding. Callum was coiling a tangle of ropes.

  Their route had taken them out into the Minch, towards the northernmost of the Evening Isles. Pytheas and Og pointed to them, speaking in Pytheas’ tongue, then Og turned to Rian. ‘Have you been to this island?’

  ‘The Long Island. Yes, we go each year. To the Stones.’

  Og transmitted this to Pytheas, who raised his eyebrows. ‘What stones?’

  Rian was amazed. Didn’t everybody know? ‘Over there, on the far side of the island, the sacred ring of Callanish.’

  ‘Describe it,’ Pytheas demanded. And Og repeated what Rian told him.

  ‘They stand upright like stone people, a ring of them, and a double line where the road goes in. They were put there by the ancients. I love going there.’ Rian stopped, suddenly self-conscious. Had she said too much?

  ‘When do you go?’ asked Pytheas, through Og.

  ‘Beltane. People gather from all around.’

  ‘And the stones? What part do they play?’

  ‘They’re the centre of it all.’

  ‘And are there moon or sun readings?’

  Rian wasn’t sure what he meant and shook her head. Then something Danuta had told her came to mind. ‘In midwinter, the Sisters do a sun ceremony. And there are moon dances. Is that what he means?’

  Og translated and Pytheas nodded.

  ‘Have you seen these ceremonies?’ Og asked.

  A memory, sudden and vivid, reached out of the past. She had not sought it. ‘I once saw the moon dance, b
ut I was very small. I didn’t understand what they were doing.’

  The Sisters had come for them in the afternoon. It was normal for Danuta to go and take part in whatever they did but usually Rian would stay with all the other children. It was a horrible day, driving rain on a cold north-westerly wind, one of those spring reminders of winter, like a growling bear woken too early from its sleep.

  They went up to the stones. The big dome tent was in the centre, a plume of smoke issuing from the hole at the top. She had never been inside it. The Sister was about the same age as Danuta, though much shorter, dressed in a robe of pale cloth that made her movements seem fluid. She was light, fluttering along instead of walking, and her laughter was like the call of a little bird, a high piping trill. She and Danuta appeared to know each other well, though Rian had never set eyes on her. She was called, appropriately enough, The Wren.

  At the tent, she said, ‘No metal?’

  Danuta unpinned her brooch, then pointed to Rian’s belt, with the bronze buckle she had been given for her most recent birthday. It was her prize possession.

  ‘Take it off,’ Danuta said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We must not take metal into the Mother’s womb.’

  ‘But it’s…’

  Danuta was giving her one of those stares. She obeyed and stripped off the belt.

  ‘I’ll put them in a safe place, don’t worry,’ The Wren had said, examining it. ‘Very fine. Is that Sorok’s work?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Danuta. ‘He stayed with us last winter.’

  Sorok was Danuta’s brother, a smith and a magician who travelled like most smiths, far and wide, searching for metals and trade and never settling for long. But he was getting old and spent his winters with them more often than not. He had not been well that last winter, coughing badly, and in the following autumn he had not come and word had eventually reached them that he had died on some far distant island to the north.

  Now Ussa was wearing that buckle, ostentatiously, and Rian was reduced to a piece of rope around her middle. But the belt was hers, it had been designed for her, decorated with her favourite things, the twist of ivy and the tern. She loved the sweeping grace of a flock of terns, their massed flight like a wedding dance, the way one day they were here, the next gone. Although the day they left the shore was a void after months of their squealing calls, the joy they brought in springtime made up for it every time. Sorok said that they became snowflakes during winter. He also said that one day she too might fly. Looking at the main sail filling with wind, the ropes tugging, the boat coursing over the sea, she felt a little as if she was flying, but it wasn’t what she had imagined when Sorok had given her her fate. She should be at the helm with her belt on and a good knife about her person, free to follow the terns. This was all wrong.

  Rian shook her head and tried to return to the memory of Callanish. Her hand rested on her belly, remembering. These experiences had suddenly taken on a significance: the look of intrigue on the Greek man’s face, a sense of this stretch of water being her place, the lands on either side her lands, the ceremonies that went on there being for the spirits of her people, the Sisters being her sisters. They had said she would be one of them one day. The Wren had said so that time in the warm tent when she had led them in, holding back the hide flap, then drawing it closed behind them.

  It was dimly lit inside and Rian was bewildered by all the smoke and fumes. Something was bubbling on a fire in the centre and the tent was crowded with women. An argument seemed to be going on over on the far side of the hearth and everyone was watching. Rian was pressed to sit on a cushion next to another girl, several years older than her, who gave her a tense frown of irritation whenever she so much as moved. The older girl’s attention was focussed on the shouting women. Danuta sat away over across the fire and was being whispered to by the woman next to her, a wrinkled hag. The old one pointed over at Rian and gestured to her to watch the fracas by the hearth.

  One of the women was wearing a mask made of black wood with huge baleful eyes and a drooping mouth. Her body was flabby and wobbled as she dodged the shrieks and blows of the other, whose face was red and full of ferocity, snarling and ranting. She was wearing a wolf’s tail and she reached behind her to catch it, then flicked it in the face of the other woman, who howled, grabbed it and pulled. The wolf-woman fell to the ground, her face to the floor, and the fat one stood over her, waving the tail.

  Everyone seemed to be laughing. An ancient figure emerged from inside a cloth, silver-haired, pale-faced and all wrapped in white. Rian knew this must be the cailleach of winter. She sang a bitter tune in a thin, reedy voice, and then produced a little wooden whistle and played the same melody in an even thinner, reedier manner. The big woman swayed with the tail of the wolf in a sleepy kind of dance, then hunkered down, and the crone covered them both with her white cloth. Her piping had stopped but it left a painful feeling.

  Rian gave an involuntary shudder and once more caught the eye of the woman next to Danuta. She winked. Rian shivered again. It was cold. It was too quiet. She didn’t like it.

  Then someone was poking her in the back, and she remembered what Danuta had told her when they had been walking to the tent. She had to take the whistle from the white cailleach and play the tune she had been taught. It was a very simple tune. Rian thought it was a bit stupid, just three rising notes, over and over, the first two close, the third higher. She knew lots of better tunes.

  Now she had to take this old woman’s pipe and play in front of all these women. The person behind her was pushing her to her feet and the winter cailleach was pointedly looking away, playing the odd creepy couple of notes on her whistle, then letting it dangle in her left hand, the hand closest to Rian.

  She looked across at Danuta who was urging her on, smiling and tilting her head towards the white woman. She plucked up her courage and stood, stepped up to the crone, snatched the whistle from her hand and put it to her mouth.

  It was bigger than the one she was used to. She had to look where the finger holes were. Then she took a breath and played the first three notes. The old woman slumped beside her. To her amazement, a chorus from the women, in full throat, sang her notes back to her.

  ‘Spring will come,’ they sang. Then there was silence.

  She played the notes again. Again, they sang in response. Now the tune made sense. Each time she played it, they sang back in ever richer harmony.

  With a clap and a rattle, the girl who had been sitting beside her got to her feet and began to dance. She had wooden beads around her wrists and ankles that made the rattling sound. Someone took the whistle from her hands and began one of the tunes she loved. Someone else led her back to her cushion. Danuta was beaming at her, clapping along. She found herself joining in. Everyone was singing. The girl danced with a big smile on her face, slowly lifting her arms. The song was about the flowers of spring, beginning with shy primroses in the woods. Each verse brought another flower into bloom: violets, celandines and wood sorrel, then bluebells blooming with their colour of summer sky. As the flowers were named, the girl’s arms reached up over her head and she span, her skirt billowing out like the petals of a flower opening. Rian overflowed with love for her and her beautiful blossoming dress. She was magnificent.

  ‘Math dha riribh! Math dha riribh!’ The women shouted, cheering the Spring Dancer. She grinned shyly now she had finished and came to sit again beside Rian, sweating and out of breath. Rian adored her. They squeezed hands as the women whooped and called their praises. A drinking horn passed round, everyone taking a swig. Rian met Danuta’s big smile across the fire and she glowed to be in the orbit of the Spring Dancer.

  The cailleach was suddenly transforming, pulling her white hair off her head, then splashing her face from a bowl of water and wiping it with a ragged grey cloth: under all that white was a golden woman. She let loose a torrent of corn-coloured hair and stepped
out of the crone’s white coat to reveal a robe the colour of buttercups, embroidered and decorated with white and green leaves.

  Rian was mesmerised by the transformation. She had seen the pupae of moths and watched dragonflies hatching by pools but now she had seen an equally magical metamorphosis of a woman. The yellow angel caught her gaze and smiled. She bent to the woman who had been playing the whistle for the spring song and said something to her. She nodded and handed it up to her. She gave a few toots and the women ceased their chatter and gave her their attention.

  ‘You’ll all agree our spring maidens have excelled themselves today. Rian, I hope you will be a Sister one day, and to help you on your way, here is the whistle you played so beautifully to herald the end of winter.’ She knelt in front of Rian, drew her hand forward, and laid the little wooden instrument gently across her palm. Her fingers closed around its wonder.

  The golden woman turned to the dancer but Rian could not take in what was being said. She blazed with pride and questions. Women were patting her on the back, touching her head as if she was a lucky talisman, stroking her like a kitten. Then Danuta was there and she could hide her flaming face inside the hug that she hadn’t realised until then was what she really wanted.

  The memory of it was enough to make Rian tremble still. Although she couldn’t remember what had happened to the Spring Dancer that day, she knew what must have ensued. It had been her turn last year. She had danced the invitation and fulfilled the promise of her childhood.

  But before she could follow the memory of that event she was interrupted by Pytheas. He wanted her, Og said, to describe to him if she knew of any other stones used for predicting the moon or the sun.

  ‘Of course.’ Then she bit her lip. How much of what she knew was she at liberty to tell this strange man? She wondered if Ussa knew she had begun training for the Sisterhood. Danuta had kept it from many people. There were few men who were allowed to know much at all of what the Sisters did – everyone knew that she had herbal knowledge and it was accepted that Danuta was passing it onto her as well as Buia. But the other lore – the ceremonies to invoke spirits, rituals for fertility and birth and all the moon-magic – that was never spoken of beyond the Sisterhood. Rian realised she wasn’t sure exactly how much of what she knew was secret. It was better to err on the safe side and play dumb.