PART I.
One.
A sealish creature followed the rapidly sinking metal body to the floor
of the loch. It slipped gracefully through the broken cockpit to what,
moments before, had been a woman. The animal contemplated her empty
grey eyes with its own dark ones for a brief moment and then, in a decisive
swoop, raked its clawed hand over the drowned woman’s stomach, slicing
through the muscle to the space holding the woman’s innards. It tore
through the thin skin barrier to the being floating in the cramped cavity.
Splashes of yellow and white and pink womb viscera suspended in the
colorless atmosphere around the creature like a garland. As if it were its
own, it grasped the wee thing, cradled it to its breast—and quickly swam to
the surface.
Two.
The roving, drizzled-upon celebrators had surged into the London RAF
building some time after the royals waved limply to the assembled. In the
dank, labyrinthine hall, a war-thin reveler smashed her red, white, and
blue rosette to Calvin River’s chest. She glanced at the pin on his lapel, a
pin he had meant to remove as soon as Churchill decreed We may allow
ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, and asked, What did you do for the
effort?
Calvin: I…went to school.
She: I see. You’re Scottish.
Calvin: I know.
(Pause.)
She: Maureen Redgrave-Brown. And yourself?
The war, with a certain ratio in his favor, had been good to Calvin
Rivers in the woman department. By the time he was examined by
Maureen he had lost his virginity any number of times.
Do you mind, Calvin asked, noticing that her body and the wall left
little room between for his lungs to fill.
Why would I? I don’t know you. Why did you not fight?
Because of blood, actually.
He told women—and they all asked—that he was mysteriously unfit,
implying something too dreadful to discuss.
Maureen pulled in her chin and examined him.
What about blood?
Before he could respond she kissed him with a clinical verve, knocking
his head to the tea-stained wallpaper.
Indeed, what about it, he thought.
As the sanguine rose to the surface of etherized bodies, sobs tore out
of his like valkyries rushing their descent to deliver up another hero. In
short, blood eviscerated him. That, as well as the resultant disdain of
colleagues and teachers, corroded Calvin’s determination to become a
doctor of medicine. Frantic self-negotiations yielded no respite from the
unreasoned panic and no amount or intensity of pull yourself together
had a sliver of effect on the state of things.
King’s College divested him of his status as a medical candidate and he
was forced to wander until he settled on another focus. Unsettled still in
his second year, Calvin, like all his mates, went to enlist in an effort to
staunch the viral, creeping tide threatening to drown the islands.
A stripping, a poking, a few deep breaths, and a cough later, he was
handed a slip of paper with the word EXEMPT on it. He asked why. The
man replied, Never you mind.
(Do my insides whisper panics at the sight of blood into the
stethoscope?)
He wore a pin announcing his exemption so old ladies would not attack
him for shirkerism. On the whole, people assumed he bore some terrible
disease and did not like to pry. Calvin waited for a sign that his body was
failing. No weakness, however, announced itself and in the whirligig of life
the question of why he was not dead as his mates receded in importance.
She released him as quickly as she had held him and in the space
between the kiss and the awkward afterness, he asked, What did you do?
I filed papers here at the RAF, she said, with a certain disgust at
performing a task beneath her.
And now that it is over?
Now…I will fly, she replied.
Fly? Airplanes?
What else would I fly?
I don’t know.
During the war, Calvin’s parents had retreated, appalled by it all, to
frigid Yell—christened by Vikings, meaning barren in Norsk—as far up as
Scotland goes in its dance with the arctic. It was there that Dad had met
Mor, a native of the island, doing fieldwork on ice flows from the arctic.
After Calvin was born they moved south to fill appointments at Sloisir
College near Inverness and Mor became a specialist in the mundane habits
of otters; her single focus being that of someday returning to the barren
island.
Now newly wifed, Calvin fell victim to Maureen’s demands for the
Tudor cottage in the Caledonian Highlands where he had grown. She,
laboring under a spirit of colonizing quaintness from which many blitz
survivors suffered, had said, How adorable, when he showed her a
photograph of the cottage with a slate tile roof and roses growing up the
sides.
It’s rather cold and damp, darling.
Are there fireplaces?
Yes.
Is there centralized heating?
No.
Will you keep me warm?
You always tell me my feet are too cold.
No I don’t.
You do.
What is the name of it?
The cottage? It doesn’t have a name.
No, the town.
Dísírphedír.
Dísírphedír. How medieval. What does it mean?
A place of spinning…I think.
Is that its industry?
No, I don’t know why it’s called that.
(Silence.)
Calvin offers, It’s in Sutherland.
Yes, I’ve been, once, with father. We sailed to Cape Wrath.
It’s not that far north. Not on the sea.
Do you have friends there?
…Not really.
Then we shall make some.
The villagers are notoriously…
What?
I don’t know. Especially the women…
What about them?
They say that they crave honey after giving birth.
How odd. What’s that got to do with anything?
I don’t know; it’s just what they say. Country people.
Did your mother?
Crave honey? No. She’s not from there.
You have to be from there?
Yes, something about the old gods blessing you after.
After?
After birth.
I see. Then it won’t happen to me.
I guess it depends on two things.
Such as?
Whether it’s true at all…
And?
Whether we have children.
No it doesn’t, Maureen said sharply. And of course we will have
children.
She pauses, scrutinizing the photograph.
They will like me. I’ll make sure of it. I want to get out of London.
Perhaps the Cotswold would suit you better.
No. I want to go there, she said, pointing to the hazy image of the
cottage.
There’s Claire, I suppose. You might like her. She married someone or
other. I think she’s Lady Hughs now. It’s her title, not his. Actually, there’s
a funny thing the locals say—
Aren’t you a local?
No, local means your family has been there since the Pictian wars.
They say her grandmother on her mother’s side came from the sea.
The sea? Like a mermaid?
Not quite, something less…elegant.
How adorable…and is she?
Is she what?
Of the sea, stupid.
Of course not. I always thought it more accurate of my own mother.
Lady Hughs…I like the sound of her. And of the locals. I’m sure we will
be friends.
We’ll see.
Don’t use that tone with me. You know I hate that tone.
I didn’t use a tone.
You did.
The new couple shared a quality many who married under the hanging
hell of the war did: unsuitability.
—(Remember.), Chapter One
Crystal Gandrud