The Winter Isles by Senior Antonia

Author:Senior, Antonia [Senior, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 2015-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

1135

EIMHEAR

I could hear birdsong, and little Sigrdrifa’s constant chatter. I pressed my shoulders back on to the rock, closing my eyes to the sun. A calm, unruffled loch. No midges, miracle of miracles. The languid joy of a warm day after a long and bitter winter.

‘I see bird. Bird, Mamma, bird. I see bird. Dadda, look, bird. My like bird.’

I listened in to her monologue sometimes, to check no response was required. I let the stream of it wash over me, and I smiled so fiercely it hurt.

‘Gil, look, bird. My want swim. My want swim.’

‘It’s too cold.’ Gillecolm’s voice was exaggeratedly gentle with her. I drifted, all silence and love.

‘He’s right, littlest Otter. It’s still cold for little ones,’ said Somerled.

‘My like cold. Mamma, my like cold.’ I knew without looking that her face would be crumpling into a tearless wail. I sympathized, as a rule, with children’s bewilderment at the world’s refusal to adapt itself around their implacable wants. Perhaps, I thought idly, that is the principal part of parenting – teaching them to bear the disappointment of how unyielding and unappeasable the world is. There is a space within your head, I tried to tell Gillecolm once, where everything makes sense and fairness reigns unchallenged. And then, unfortunately, there is a universe outside your head.

He understood. My shining boy.

They were throwing stones, the three people I loved best. Little Sigrdrifa threw one with such misplaced force she collapsed on her bottom, shrieking with infectious laughter. ‘My fall over. My fall over,’ she crowed, just in case we had missed it.

These were the things we did not talk about on that golden afternoon. Somerled’s shrunken band. Poor dear Ruaridh. The word reaching us from Man that Olaf Crobhan was stirring himself to move against us. The vassalage to David. Old Sigrdrifa’s failing strength. Little Sigrdrifa’s failure to recognize her father when he came back from his great defeat. Gillecolm lagging behind the other boys in swordplay. The Great Defeat.

These were the things we did talk about. The habits of otters and seals. Who could spin a stone across the still waters. The size of Sigrdrifa’s hands. The impossibility of Somerled and I existing before Sigrdrifa was alive. Gillecolm’s deep and passionate love for the sea.

They wandered at the shore’s edge, those miraculous beings of ours, laughing and picking up stones. Somerled and I sat watching. He held my hand as if we were young. I could feel the calluses, and I raised his fist to my lips, kissing his raw knuckles.

‘It seems impossible to be here,’ he said. ‘A bit like a dream. I will wake on an open mountainside, crying for you all.’

‘No use wasting it in thinking it a dream,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘It’s so hard, though, to grasp what is real and what is not. When both halves are so absurdly different.’

I squeezed his hand. ‘Let them be separate. No point trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.’

There was compassion in my kiss, and a lurching swell of love for him.

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