A Woman's Story at a Winter's Fire (1/2)
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By Melkur
- 764 reads
The sea was great in its surging, but not so great yet. Old Mother stood at the head of what would one day be called Harray Loch in the Orkney Isles, her hand to her brow, both holding back her long grey hair and shielding her face. The village of Skara Brae curled below her, in the shape of an ammonite shell. The thatched houses resembled beehives, linked in a honeycomb, yet also distinctly private and apart.
New life thrived in one of them, the House of the Oyster, since that morning. Old Mother had given her presence and conviction to the birth of a baby, perhaps the last to be born to that community. It kicked and screamed in the house nearest her, heard if not seen at present. Old Mother stepped out of the driving wind, and approached the house. She stood outside, holding a large, slopping leather pail, and shouted ‘I am here!’ The wailing from within grew louder as Young Mother unbarred the door, carrying the baby. She smiled at the sight of Old Mother. ‘Thank you for coming back. You represent the community to us,’ she said. The light from the fire flickered over the stone house, in its red and yellow and orange hues. Old Mother put the pail down and closed the door for her. She turned and looked deep into the fire, and how it cast its shadows.
‘Like a firebird,’ she said slowly. ‘It dies, and it rises.’ Young Mother rocked her baby gently. If she did not always understand Old Mother, she listened to her with respect. ‘She is the last to be born here. There will be no more children.’ The other woman frowned.
‘Did the smoke tell you-‘ she began, but Old Mother held up a hand.
‘Our patterns of life, they are retracting, they are coming together, and coming apart,’ she said fatalistically. Young Mother said nothing. The wind was rising outside, loud even for the winter. The rafters of the beehive house rose above them, sparse whale ribs supporting a thatched roof.
‘My granddaughter has her ceremony this afternoon,’ she said, squatting down and scratching at the ground. Young Mother nodded.
‘We will be there. We will all be there,’ she said. The baby gurgled. Her mother held her gently in animal furs. ‘Why do you think there will be no more children?’ she demanded, giving in to the child’s demand for milk. She was surprised at her own audacity; it was not the accepted thing, to question Old Mother.
‘Patterns,’ said Old Mother slowly. ‘As things were, so shall they be.’ Young Mother gave her a sharp look. The regular ploughing at her breast hurt her, sometimes. She winced. She looked up at the whale ribs, swaying slightly.
‘The wind is never usually this high,’ said Young Mother, rocking in sympathy with the baby, not the weather. She winced again, bit her lip and an involuntary tear came down her cheek.
‘Here,’ said Old Mother. ‘You have laboured long today, you have done enough.’ She took the child in her arms, dipped a cloth in milk from the pail, pressed it to the baby’s mouth. Her gurgles ceased, while the wind continued to rise. Old Mother looked up at the roof, her eyes narrowed. Her sight was less than it had been, yet more in other ways. ‘The death of the whale,’ she said softly. Young Mother nodded.
‘My father caught it on the beach last yester-moon,’ she said. ‘It was dying when he found it.’ Old Mother continued to look up at the roof.
‘Rich in supplies,’ she said. ‘Food, oil, fire, even a winter’s fire, to last us… a new roof, too.’ The kelp-built fire spluttered for a moment, feeling the draught under the door. The shadows leapt and formed new characters, a flickering song-script in the heart of winter. Old Mother bent her head to the baby. ‘When the days were longer,’ she said softly, ‘before the stones walked among us, there were trees, living, growing wood, that lent their songs and their shadows to us, they gave their blood and became the little ships to cross the passage to the other coast. Many of them died under the flint axes of the men, until there were no more.’ She coughed, and helped herself to some milk for a moment, tipping it into the palms of her hands. Young Mother leaned back and watched her, as rapt as when she was a child. ‘And so we use the skins of our visitors… our great whales and seals, their spirits do not know they come to the hall of the dead, when they visit us.’ She pointed up at one shadow, swaying with the wind. ‘The trees used to sway like that, long ago. So my mother told me, and her mother told her. We are a chain, unbroken, until today…’ the baby had stopped feeding, and fell asleep.
‘I know there are new settlements,’ said Young Mother softly, ‘but I do not want to go yet.’
‘We must go when it is our time,’ said Old Mother.
‘But you are so full of the past. You have led us in our ways. How can we leave now? What will become of us, of this house?’ Old Mother stretched, and stood up.
‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘One cycle will run its course, another will begin.’ The fire cast her craggy features into relief. She still held the baby, who slept at last. Young Mother made to stand up, and winced. Old Mother leaned over and replaced the child in the crook of her arm, and moved the leather pail beside her. Neither of the adults looked as peaceful as the baby. ‘Our roots here are strong, yes,’ she said, ‘but we must learn to blow with the wind sometimes.’ The limpet boxes were by the fire, awaiting the fisherman’s return. Old Mother unbarred the stone door, flush with the wall. She staggered back as the wind came in. With an effort she left the house, and returned to hers to help with the cooking.
***
More smoke flickered, from another fire. The House of the Red Bream, named for a dish no longer available in the changing climate, was nevertheless full of food, people and festivity. Old Mother drank from a cup, fired as grooved ware pottery with its whorled patterns on the sides, and looked proudly at her granddaughter, centre of the celebration. Kelpie stood dressed in finery, draped in white feathers stained with bright dyes, with a sash and necklace made of bones. She sat close to the fire, eating a side of fish and spitting out the bones, barely taking her eyes off her new husband. He was famous for his catching and boasting, and had built his boat from the skin of the recently caught whale. He was really no more adept than the other men, but he liked to think so. Known as Hair Shirt, his usual dress the skin of a goat, now augmented with coloured feathers too. He was just finishing the last verse of a song. Old Mother remembered that song at her own wedding, more than thirty winters ago. She frowned as a soot-stained man approached. She tried to step away, but she was cornered. Clearly, Smoke Man had been imbibing a lot of the ground barley drink that was the staple of the wedding feast. ‘A great day for you,’ he said.
‘Some might say so,’ said Old Mother, turning her head the other way to avoid his breath. He had conducted the ceremony a short while ago, speaking of their traditions and the long patterns of seedtime and harvest that would continue with the couple and their children to come.
‘A great day for all of us,’ he continued, labouring the point. Old Mother looked at him.
‘Perhaps it is the last day,’ she said, looking over his shoulder and calculating her chances of escape. He looked annoyed.
‘Surely not,’ he said, gesturing with his cup and spilling half of it. ‘All this… all this work, this life, beauty, your family so proud… why would it ever stop?’ Old Mother looked at the fire, beginning to die down again. A man came forward and stoked it up again.
‘The air is changing,’ she said wearily. ‘Can you not feel it?’ He opened his mouth, but she raised a finger. ‘I do not mean the blood-changes in the air that speak of long dark and winter and stories at the fire, those have come every winter that I have known.’ She paused, and he waited. ‘There is a deeper sea-change coming… I have felt it for at least our last five summers. The winter changes its coat for the warmer side of summer, and yet the coat grows thinner every summer and the sun is paler on our skins. We are the children of the sun, we must go where it beckons.’
‘And yet, here we are still,’ said Smoke Man, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and looking over to where more drink was offered. He was what future centuries might call the village priest: an interpreter of signs and wonders, in the light of his fires. Sometimes he dreamed dreams for days on end: others said he was sleeping off his potions, or recovering from the effects of the drink. Old Mother saw her own futures in the light of her own fires.
‘Go,’ she said to him directly, ‘go and enjoy what you can, on this our special day.’ He blinked, and wandered unsteadily over to the refreshments. His cup was soon running over again. Her granddaughter approached. Old Mother smiled broadly, for the first time that day. ‘Kelpie! You truly have the spirit of your ancestors. You make us all proud.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kelpie, sitting down and gazing up at her. Old Mother lowered herself to the floor with a sigh of relief. They sat together and watched the rhythms of the fire, climbing high, an orange tower with yellow tongues and a dark red heart. It cast shadows over the assembly. It would soon be time for Kelpie and her husband to go and greet others in the celebration in the next house, working their way through all the houses in turn, bringing songs and light before setting up in their own new house. But this time would be different, as it was their last day in Skara Brae: they were to boost the new community in the north-east, as would their children.
‘Something is coming,’ said Old Mother, ‘I feel it in my bones. I did not like to tell you. Perhaps we will all leave with you soon. Perhaps we will become as the whale.’ She saw Kelpie’s face fall, and added, ‘I do not mean to make you sad. We must move on, as the tides and the sun and the winds will take us. We are drawn into them, and we become them, in the end. Patterns in the sand, blood-bright and red and always moving.’ She smiled slowly. ‘You are moving on yourself, child, beginning a new and precious pattern. I hope you will have children, and harvests, and plenty, where you are going. They are much the same thing.’ Kelpie smiled.
‘Our new home will be warmer, we will have all these harvests, as you say,’ she said brightly. Old Mother sighed.
‘I hope so, child. I hope so. The world is changing. Still all the fools in it act the same. We owe so much of this…’ she gestured around them, ‘to one of our visitors, a whale who came to our borders last week.’ Kelpie smiled, preening her dyed feathers.
‘I know. My father found it on the shore,’ she said proudly, looking over at him, deep in a conversation with Smoke Man.
‘A whale,’ said Old Mother, slowly, thoughtfully, her sunken sloe-dark eyes looking beyond the fire at the centre of the room. ‘The nursing mother to the teeming horde.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Kelpie, absorbed in the moment, the fire, the brightness, the colours of the day. ‘He carved the bones for me, I combed my hair. I’m wearing one too, look!’ It was there as a top-knot. ‘Now we have oil, with the fire, night is day… a time to dance!’ She made to get up, but her grandmother was not willing to join her. ‘Now there is the new village, new work to do, more people to see!’
‘I have heard of this,’ said Old Mother a trifle wearily. ‘We have been here many moons, from the first sharp crescent to the swelling, the full blood moon, until it sets and begins again. Why would we leave the sea?’ Kelpie seemed oblivious in contemplating the future.
‘My mother’s brother and her children are going. There are new people there. New dyes for the face and hair.’
‘I like the ones you have,’ said Old Mother a little acerbically, peering critically at her wedding garb. ‘Our tribe is in its last quarter. We are reaching our fullness.’
Kelpie was used to Old Mother’s sayings and moods. She looked into the fire.
‘I’m for moving on. There will be so much more to do.’
‘Your time may be sooner than you think. Yes, child. I know the patterns of men, how they scratch in the sand. They think to take us with them, but we overtake them in the end.’
Kelpie peered at her. ‘Has the smoke been talking to you?’ Under certain conditions, it was seen as a portal to past times, or to the future.
‘I do not need the smoke,’ Old Mother asserted. ‘The truth is out there, with the moon to guide us,’ pointing to the roof. ‘and the truth is also in here,’ pointing at the floor, ‘with the memories of so many at our feet. I sat here in this house once, at the feet of the Old Mother the tribe had in those days. Now-‘
‘I know, she was buried under the floor.’
‘I see her stories continuing, they wind through my head like a long skein of wool. We are all her story, the winding wheel of time.’
Kelpie got to her feet. ‘Well, I must go and see to my man. He will be looking for me.’ She smiled in anticipation.
‘Be happy, my child.’ The fire was starting to die. Kelpie crossed over beside it, smiling at the guests, and made to open the door. It was blown back in her face with the fierceness of the wind. The fire flickered. She was scared, and eventually managed to shut it again. She made her way back to Old Mother.
‘I have never seen a storm like that. Not even last winter,’ she said, staring into the fire. ‘Where is Hair Shirt?’ she cried, looking around her.
‘It is all right,’ said Old Mother, ‘he went to the House of the Shell to see about moving to that… new village of yours. I knew this was coming. All this talk of new things, another creation, another village, another beehive… that is nothing before the wind.’
Kelpie viewed the door anxiously. The fire was being banked up by dried seaweed once again.
‘I want new things!’ she cried. ‘I want a new life, with my man. New things to do.’ The wind continued to get louder. Old Mother nodded.
‘So this is our last flowering.’
Kelpie stamped her foot. ‘I want a chance to tell your stories, too! I will be Old Mother some day!’ She paused, and seemed to think again. She reached out to touch her grandmother’s long, wispy hair, itself almost like fine wool.
‘This is the last turn of the wheel,’ she said, staring into the heart of the reviving fire. ‘Round and round, we celebrate our patterns for a while, then we turn to ash and fade on the wind. Fade…’ She seemed almost pleased at the prospect.
‘Oh no, we won’t. Not yet.’ Kelpie appeared to come to a decision. ‘I think something really bad is going on. Maybe we offended the spirit of the whale or the spirit of the sea, I don’t know, but whatever it is, we’re not safe here. I know we have to go. But not just yet.’
‘This is the hub, the meeting place for all our stories,’ said Old Mother.
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