The Lyre Dancers Read online

  ‘I love this smell, it’s alive.’

  Rian shook her head, laughing. ‘I’ve carried too many baskets of it.’ It had seemed a joyful effort when she had been a child: everyone carrying the wrack up from the high tide mark to the fields together. But in Ictis it had become an annual duty and eventually a winter chore, although the smell still roused something in her. It was the fragrance of tides, of seasons passing. And it reminded her of Manigan. She missed him already. She always did, particularly sharply in the first few days of his absence. She wondered how far north he would have sailed already.

  They scrambled along the rocky shoreline until they had a good vantage over the loch that cut its way inland, creating a shining bowl surrounded by crags and wooded slopes. With a rasp, a heron lifted and flapped away to a safer shore and two ducks whirred off in alarm. A long, low crescent of land jutted out into the loch, on which a dozen seals lay. They lifted their heads at the new arrivals and two or three slid into the water, but the others seemed unalarmed. More lounged on weedy islands. Those in the water swamed towards the shore, a family of upturned faces – curious, welcoming.

  ‘Hello,’ Rian said. ‘I’ve been gone a long time. This is my daughter, Soyea.’ There was something in their eager glide that made them appear pleased to see her. Could they possibly recognise her from all those years ago?

  There were six of them lying on the island close to the south shore, one flapping its flipper as if it was waving. The swimming seals dipped under, leaving ring-ripples. Then one hurled itself out of the water, its sleek, wet body curving like a dolphin in a graceful arc of flight. And again! A leap up, across the loch. Again! A series of lifts, like a needle stitching a grey thread across the water, to gather up that moment so it could not be lost.

  Soyea and Rian stood side by side, sharing the freedom they had been shown. The aspen trees behind them rustled with applause.

  ‘Breakfast?’ Rian said.

  ‘Mmm.’

  They returned along a path through the woods, which were full of bluebells and primroses, their scents mingling with seasalt. Rian stopped at one point and fell to her knees to bury her nose in the blue flowers. ‘It’s the fragrance of the sea flowers, that’s what I’ve been missing most.’

  Soyea nodded, bent to sniff the perfume, and seemed to understand.

  As they made their way back to the crannog, Rian pointed out other flowers: thrift, vetch, scurvy grass. She gave Soyea wood sorrel leaves to chew and told her she could gather bedstraw to make their home smell a little less musty and bring sweet dreams.

  ‘When are we going to the place you grew up?’ Soyea asked, when they got back to the little loch.

  ‘Tomorrow, or the next day.’ Rian felt a twinge of terror. What would she find there? But having said it, she was committed.

  SOYEA

  SOYEA’S STORY

  Mother wears her scars with something close to pride. On a hot day like today she’ll wear nothing but her lightest underclothes and we can all see the brand on her shoulder and the marks she said she got from a flogging. She has never made a fuss about it, but nor has she been unwilling to talk about it: she was a slave and then she ran away with Manigan. She has another mark on her thigh. It is ugly and pains her when the weather is cold and wet, but she says it reminds her of her good fortune to be living in freedom. One day, she says, there is a slaver who might come looking for her, and then she’ll have to hide. She has told us this so often it has become a bit of a family joke. Whenever we come home and she isn’t there, or whenever we don’t know where she is, we say she’s hiding from Ussa. ‘Check the meal-bin’, Manigan will say, ‘she might be in there hiding from Ussa’. Or he’ll lift a pot lid and say, ‘Are you in there, Rian? Come out, Ussa’s not here.’

  She goes off on her own quite often. I used to think it was normal, but I’ve learned she isn’t normal at all. Sometimes she comes back with herbs. That’s her excuse, collecting medicines. But often she comes back empty handed, and I can tell from her hair and her cheeks that she’s been out on the edge of the ocean, and occasionally I can tell from her eyes that she’s been crying.

  Since we got here, to Assynt, she’s been off walking on her own a lot, but she comes back dry-eyed mostly, so I don’t mind too much. I don’t know what she does on her walks. One day perhaps I’ll ask her. I guess she thinks about Cleat, my brother. I hardly remember him, if I’m really honest. But he was always here. Still here but still not here. My twin. An absence.

  We have been due to come to Assynt forever. Ever since I can remember it has been, ‘When Cleat comes home, I’ll take you to Assynt to see the islands you’re named after.’ Mother has promised this all my life, ever since Cleat went away with our father. We knew he might be gone a few months, but then it became a year, then two, then more. He never came back. My father was from far away. His name was Pytheas and he was taking Cleat to see his home and then they would come back. That was what was supposed to happen. Every spring we would prepare again and every year when the autumn storms began, Mother would slump. Then we would decide that they would come next year.

  This year is different. I don’t know if she has given up, or whether it was Rona’s marriage that made her decide that this year she would take me to Assynt anyway, Cleat or no Cleat. If he ever does come, he’ll be a man now.

  Rona is my half-sister. Manigan is her father. She is beautiful and I am ugly. She is small and dark like a fairy girl. I am too big, with dull brown hair and a face like a horse.

  Manigan adores my sister and often took her away with him to visit his family on the islands south of here. It was on one of those trips that she met the man who is now her husband, Eadha. He is like her, another beautiful creature.

  I look strange because my father came from far away. Manigan says I am beautiful too. He says I am exotic. But he lies all the time. That’s his role in life, telling long, elaborate stories that are made up and mostly not true, just to make some little point that could have been made with a single gesture.

  Mother is more likely just to make the gesture.

  They are so different it is hard to see why they get on so well, but they adore each other. I used to think that was normal, too, but I know different now. Many people are not so lucky. I am thankful that I am not married. I will not settle for less than Mother has with Manigan. I will only handfast with a man I love. Perhaps I never will, on account of being ugly and exotic. When she was my age she had already given birth to the three of us, but she says she was too young. She says there is plenty of time for me, that there is no hurry.

  But sometimes I am in a hurry. I want life to offer me up a romance like in one of Manigan’s stories. Maybe a handsome Selkie man will come out of the sea and claim me as his own. Or a hunter will sail in from the north and anchor himself to me. Or perhaps he is here already, living in a towering stone house beside the shore, like the one in my dream.

  I only met my father once when I was very small, when he took my brother away. Mother says I got my love of writing from him. I can’t remember a time before I knew how to write, and I think I recall playing with his feather and parchment, but maybe I’ve simply heard the story so many times it has become a picture in my head. I imagine a tall, thin, upright man, but he is shadowy, and I do not believe he is a real memory. But perhaps he is. Does it matter?

  I don’t want this story to be like one of Manigan’s – long and tangled and with loose ends hanging off it everywhere. I want to tell you everything you need to know to keep on with it, wanting to hear a little bit more, dying to find out what happens in the end, with satisfying twists and surprises, everything linking to something else. And, of course, a happy ending. It might not be real, but it would be a good tale. That’s what matters. Mother says the truth matters, but I know she loves a good story too and I sometimes think she loves Manigan because he has wrapped her in so many stories. She says there are still dozens he hasn’t ever quite got around to finishing for her. She says if I want
to make a good story, I should practise on some of his, and where there are bits missing or no ending, I should finish them, make them whole, then see if Manigan likes them. I’m going to try with the story of the stone. Or one of them. There are many.

  Once upon a time there was a king called Ban. He was powerful, both physically and mentally. He was a brave and strategically clever warrior and had already protected his kingdom for many years when his wife bore him a son, Geevor.

  I already don’t like the way I am telling this tale. I want to be able to picture Ban, and to know about his wife. Perhaps I can understand why Manigan’s stories are all so convoluted. He gets interested in all these things as well, and one story leads to another, and they weave in and out of each other, nesting inside one another like magic toys.

  I am going to think about how to tell the tale of Ban and Geevor, and while I am considering this I shall instead relate my own history. Or Mother’s story, which almost amounts to the same thing, or so it seems to me.

  I was born on Whale Island in the Seal Isles, where there is a temple in the shape of the body of a whale, tended by a priestess called Shadow. Whale Island is fertile and beautiful I am told, although I have never seen it as I left it during the first summer of my life.

  I am the daughter of an explorer, Pytheas, who traveled from a place far to the south called Massalia, which is part of a huge empire centred upon an even more distant place called Athens. My father spoke a language, Greek, but also other tongues. He was searching for the origins of amber, ivory and tin. Mother was a slave and he bought her with amber and that is why he is my father. He sold her again later and she ended up belonging to the chieftain of a land in the north. But there she met a walrus hunter called Manigan and ran away with him. It was he who took her to Whale Island. She was pregnant with me and my brother (she didn’t know there would be two of us, of course) so she stayed with the priestess Shadow while Manigan sailed away to hunt and trade his walrus ivory.

  She missed him and wondered if he would ever return, but he did. He brought her a gold bracelet and asked her to handfast with him. He did not seem to mind the fact that she had a son and a daughter by another man. Nor did he mind that she was a runaway slave with brands on her shoulder and thigh. He loved her and she loved him.

  My brother Cleat and I were born just after Imbolc. Manigan went away north to hunt walruses, but he came back in time for Beltane and they handfasted, leaping the sacred fire together in the whale temple. At the end of the summer hunting season, he took Mother and the two of us south to Belerion, to a tidal island called Ictis where the Spirit Keepers live. They made an offering of a walrus tusk to the Keepers and Manigan’s Great Aunt Fraoch took us all in and gave Mother a role in the temple so she would feel she belonged. She and Manigan were given a hut to live in and they spent the next winter there, by the end of which Mother was pregnant again with my sister Rona, which is an island near to where Manigan grew up.

  All three of us are named after islands, which seems appropriate, as we are all separated from each other, no matter how close we seem or try to be. Mother and Manigan are different; they are joined together. Even when Manigan travels away to hunt or trade, which he does a lot, Mother seems somehow still to be linked to him. She talks about him as if he is just on the other side of the fire even when he is far away over the ocean, as if a causeway still connects them, the way Ictis is joined to the mainland.

  There is a story – I don’t know how real it is – that we stayed on Ictis while Manigan went away to hunt every year, because Mother was safe there from Ussa. She is the trader who first bought my mother. They say she still wants to take Mother back into slavery, but back then she could not, as long as we were protected by the Keepers. That’s the story of my life, in essence: hiding, caged with Mother, trying to believe in her fear.

  THE BEACH

  Mother and I get up early to walk to the place where she grew up. I don’t know quite what to expect and I am pleasantly surprised. It is a long walk, but splendid, full of wonderful corners. It seems to waken my mother out of her despondency as each feature we encounter brings her back to some incident of her childhood. This place is full of happy memories for her.

  We walk the main track from here down to the beach and then head north up to another, smaller, lovelier beach at the far end of which is a shrine to the Goddess. It is still early when we reach there and the moon is beaming across the sea from the west, into the shrine. It is so beautiful, it is impossible not to worship. I begin to speculate that Mother has been planning this for days, just so we could watch the moon set over the ocean.

  The moon seems to be guiding us on this journey. On our voyage north to the Winged Isle, one beautiful evening we sailed into a bay and anchored just off a small island. It was protected to the west by an even smaller island, silhouetted by the setting sun. The full moon rose out of the eastern landmass and its silver beam rippled across to our boat as if it was a blessing. We poured a few drops of mead onto the shining water and Mother sang a strange song I had never heard her sing before. Then Manigan spoiled it all by groping and kissing her and telling her how much he loved her. In front of me! I wish they would keep it to when they’re alone, in private, but Mother says he has been away so much of their lives, they must squeeze every drop out of the time they have together.

  For me, though, it was a moment to be respectful, to allow the moon herself to be the centre of our attention. I focused on her white orb, slightly dented, a day away from full, like a bone button, not quite a true circle but all the more beautiful for its flaw, easier to be with than perfection.

  Right now, Mother’s having one of her holy moments. ‘The cave is sacred,’ she says, as if that was not obvious, ‘it is one of the yonis.’

  I nod. I don’t know why, but I’m not interested in doing a ceremony with her, here, with the moon sinking into the sea.

  ‘Are we going to your broch?’ I must sound petulant. She doesn’t notice.

  ‘After we have made a blessing.’

  ‘We already made one this morning.’

  She ignores me, gathering shells and bits of weed, a washed-up stick. I can’t help but do the same. It is not worth a fight.

  ‘Good,’ she says, when she sees the feather and the intact cockle shell, like a butterfly, that I find. I pick up a scraggy bit of dry seaweed as well, the first thing I set my eyes on. It’s slimy and I regret it. And then I see a skull, a small bird’s brain case, with beak, and I drop the wrack and lift the bone delicacy. It weighs nothing at all.

  Mother gives a little gasp when she sees it.

  ‘Beautiful. Perfect.’ Her rapture is pleasing, and a bit infectious. With this skull, I do feel as if I now need to do something formal. I am holding flight in my hands: a bird’s brain and feather and a shell in the form of wings.

  I follow mother into the cave, and I lay down my offering and wish I could fly away, to be free like my sister, to be unleashed from my mother and her constant penance.

  ‘You’ll fly soon enough.’ She is reading my mind as usual and she has spoiled my ceremony. I leave. I can see myself in her eyes and no doubt she is thinking I have ‘flounced off.’

  She stays. I hope she will ask forgiveness for me from the Yoni spirit. I ask myself, under my breath.

  On my own I could have made myself a nice ceremony, a gift to the spirit in there, and I would have listened for the Goddess to speak to me. But I can’t hear anything when my mother is eavesdropping on my thoughts.

  I wander back down to the edge of the sea and watch a soaring gannet. It dives, allowing itself to fall like a dead weight, and as it hits the water, spray splashes up as if a rock has fallen. What must that feel like? Terrifying. Exhilarating also. Another plummets, and then another. Then they lift themselves up out of the waves and with their big, strong wings they power up again, skywards. One flies towards me and looks down with its beautiful yellow head, its long, graceful black-tipped wings outstretched. I reach my arms out, sh
owing the bird my full wingspan in greeting, and wish myself up into the sky. As it beats out to join its fellows, I am there with it. They rise to meet us, flanking us, wings in synchrony, up, up into the blue, blue sky. It is glorious. We soar onwards, now in a line, now like an arrowhead shooting away into whatever is beyond.

  ‘If you want some time alone in there, with your gifts…’ Mother is beside me. ‘I’m sorry if I presumed to know your thoughts.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Then we can carry on, whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Soyea.’

  ‘Which way is it?’

  ‘Up there.’ She indicates the sheer rock face to the north. ‘There’s a lovely path, or there used to be.’

  We make our way up around a strange pooling of water in the sand. ‘It’s never the same twice,’ Mother says. ‘Nothing lovely ever is.’

  Why is she talking? I want her to quieten down and allow the world to talk instead, in smells and colours and the sounds of other animals.

  ‘There’s a dragon along here,’ she says, ‘and we might see an otter, or at least the signs of it. You know my old medicine pouch? That was an otter I caught along here, well, not really me, it was Drost that set the snare, but I found the otter in it.’

  She points out bright green mounds where the otters come to mark their territory with spraint. Although I don’t ask her for details, I get the full story of the capture and killing of the animal and how she learned to cure a skin.

  There is a pool of dark water, like the pupil of an eye, and around it a mat of short, tight grass of the greenest green. I stare into the water. Eventually she stops talking and we both stand there gazing silently down into the blackness.

  ‘Is it magic?’ I say.

  ‘Ask the otter.’

  I glance at her and see she is not looking at the pool, but away to our left. And then I see it too: the sleek, black catlike creature bounding across rocks towards us. Either it hasn’t seen us or it doesn’t care that we are there. Perhaps it knows we mean it no harm. It is on a journey, stopping to peer into dark gaps under rocks, sniffing occasionally, but intent on its way, beautifully purposeful. It gleams. Its pelt is far more vibrant than Mother’s bag, which is soft and smooth. This creature is glossy and has burnished-brown glints among its fur. Its bright eyes dart, pretty little head cocking to one side or the other. It is more alive than anything I have ever seen. No wonder its spraint post is such bright green. Everything about this animal is more intense than the world normally is. Mother and I are stock still as the otter seems suddenly to decide to attend to us. It looks up, and scrutinises us as if trying to decide what to say to such an intrusion.