Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Ashes To Dust

It was as though the blood in his veins was as exhausted as his brain. The smile disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Leifur thought it must be the pain of his cracked lip. But that wasn’t the case. He looked straight into Leifur’s eyes with rare lucidity, his stare unwavering. ‘That was a nasty trick we played on her,’ he said, gripping his son’s upper arm tightly. Feeling his bony fingers, Leifur thought that if he closed his eyes it would have been easy to imagine a skeleton had taken hold of him.

‘On who, Dad?’ asked Leifur calmly. ‘Were you having a bad dream?’

‘Alda,’ replied the old man.‘You forgive me, don’t you?’

‘Me?’ asked Leifur, surprised.‘Of course I forgive you, Dad.’

‘Good,’ replied the old man.‘I know how much you like her, Markus.’ He shut his eyes.‘Don’t be late for school, my boy,’ he said, letting go of Leifur. ‘Don’t be late.’

Leifur had long ago given up taking it personally when his father didn’t recognize him, though he remembered how much it had hurt the first time it happened. His father had been telling his secretary that he was going to take a week off and that Leifur would fill in for him, but when he came to his son’s name he had stood gaping at Leifur, just as surprised as his son at his inability to recall it.

‘I won’t be late,’ said Leifur, and went to stand up. His father was already asleep, and it would only upset him to sit with him any longer.

‘Do you think the falcon will be all right?’ said a weak voice as Leifur was trying to open the door without the hinges creaking.

‘Yes, Dad,’ whispered Leifur.‘The falcon will be fine. Don’t worry.’ He shut the door behind him, confused. He’d never known his father to have much interest in birds, with the exception of puffin, which had been his favourite food. Now that they had to force-feed him everything he never got puffin, only whatever was easiest to get into his mouth and least likely to get caught in his throat. Leifur had never heard his father talk about falcons before. It could be random nonsense, jumbled memories, even fragments of some television programme that were still floating around in his dusty mind. Whatever this bird meant to him, it was a shame his father seemed unable to forget the bad things in his life and remember only the positive. It certainly wasn’t fair that he should have to remember Alda.

Not fair at all.

As the boat left the jetty, Thóra waved at two boys who were swimming around the harbour in wetsuits. One winked back but the other, who appeared to be several years older, acted as though he didn’t see her and kept swimming after a little boat that had left the harbour at the same time as Thóra, Bella and their guide.

‘Haven’t they banned puffin-hunting now?’ Thóra asked the weather-beaten man at the tiller when she saw the pocket- nets lined up in the other boat. ‘I read somewhere that they were having trouble nesting, for the third year in a row,’ she added, wondering if she sounded like a resident of the Islands.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the man, clearly unimpressed. ‘It’s not a ban, just a recommendation. People can hunt puffins for their own consumption as long as they don’t affect the stock.’

‘Is that what those men are doing?’ she asked, pointing at the little boat about to overtake them.

Paddi the Hook waved at the three men, who lifted their hands in return. None of them smiled or showed any emotion. Thóra watched Paddi at the helm as he stared out to sea. When they met him she had been relieved to see he still had both hands, since she’d been wondering why he had the nickname ‘Hook’. As they sailed past Heimaklettur Cliff they saw a young man sitting at the top, many metres above them. He was surrounded by dead puffins. At his side lay a pocket-net,and he had stuck a yellow flag into a grassy patch just behind him. Puffins were circling all around him. ‘What’s the flag for?’ asked Thóra, expecting it to be some sort of security measure.

‘Puffins are curious by nature,’replied Paddi the Hook, after looking up to see what Thóra was pointing at. ‘They want to see the flag, which makes it easier for the boy to catch them.’

‘Does he have a large family?’said Thóra, surprised at the number of birds lying like felled saplings around the young hunter.

‘Lining up the dead birds like that calms the fear of the ones still flying around,’ replied Paddi, choosing to ignore Thóra’s snide remark about the number of puffins.‘They don’t know what happened to their comrades so they think it’s safe to come near.’

Thóra decided to stop asking about puffin hunting. She knew the man saw her as a typical city mouse who knew nothing about hunting and didn’t really have the right to comment. She knew how he felt; it really got on her nerves when foreign whaling activists protested against Icelanders hunting whales. She didn’t want to offend the skipper, so she settled for silently watching the boy on the cliff edge as he swept the net in wide arcs over his head. She smiled to herself when the puffin he had his eye on narrowly avoided capture and continued its ungainly flight. She was on the puffin’s side; there was something quite appealing about it, the clumsy little thing. The booklet Thóra had read while waiting for Bella to get changed said that the puffin mated for life. In the autumn each member of the nesting pair went its own way, but the male would return several weeks ahead of the female. Thóra was particularly impressed that the male used the time to clean the cave and make it presentable for his spouse. When their palace was fit for a queen, he would sit at the entrance and wait for his mate. She was equally struck by the fact that if the female did not come back the male took a new mate, who he kicked out immediately if the first one returned. ‘Are we going far?’ she asked as they entered open water.

‘If you want to catch anything we’ve got to go a bit farther out,’ said Paddi, scanning the horizon as if he expected leaping schools of fish to appear any second.

‘It doesn’t bother me if we don’t catch anything,’ chirped Bella. ‘I don’t eat fish. I think it’s disgusting.’ Thóra turned to her and scowled meaningfully – they had to keep Paddi sweet, and that wasn’t the way to do it. Bella gave her a sharp look in return, but added: ‘I think puffin is absolutely delicious, though.’Thóra breathed easier.

Paddi the Hook muttered something unintelligible and continued to scrutinize the calm water. They couldn’t have asked for better weather. The rays of the sun bounced off the shallow waves, creating a glittering sea of light.

Paddi stopped the boat just beyond Bjarnarey Island. On the tall, sheer cliff walls rising from the sea they could see the ropes that were used to clamber up to the grassy area at the top of the island, where there was a handsome hunting shed. Thóra didn’t know what would induce her to climb up there. If she ever did go up, she would have to live there forever – she would never make it back down.‘Let’s try here,’ said the old sailor, wiping his hands on his tattered jeans. ‘We should be able to catch something.’ A gaggle of seagulls that had been hovering above the boat drifted down and settled on the sea, where they rocked in the waves. They were obviously hoping for a free lunch.

‘Well then, now the great hunt begins,’ said Paddi, and he showed them to the lower deck where several large, powerful rods were set up next to an open barrel. Paddi handed each of them their own leather belt with a holster for the rod, and helped them to fasten them. Luckily the belt just reached around Bella, who took all Paddi’s comments about it calmly, without blushing. He showed them how to position themselves before strapping on his own belt and taking his place next to them. ‘You’ve got to make sure you let the line go all the way to the bottom,’ he said, taking a pinch of snuff. ‘That’s where the fish are,’ he said, and watched them critically. Thóra’s sunglasses had slipped down her nose, but she didn’t dare let go of the rod for fear that it would fall into the sea.