Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

His whitehouse is just over there. If Stella knocked on the door it would be like she was a spook come to haunt them. That’s how they like to think of her really. Dead. Devil spawn. Other. As if she never existed in the first place. Alistair’s wife hates her. Stella reminds her of all the things that go bump in the night. She doesn’t like the black nails or the stripy tights or the eyeliner, but what she hates most is that, to her, Stella is a girl who used to be a boy, and even more than that: she is her mother’s daughter through and through, and Alistair’s wife loathes Constance. Her husband still loves someone far more than her. She’s never been able to take it, so she hated Stella and convinced him it was Stella that had the problem, it was her that wasn’t right and she is so sure of it, so utterly righteous and vindictive in her piety. She doesn’t want to think about them. She wants to think about clean things. Birds in flight. The noise of an axe — silent on the swing, then the thud, the crack, so satisfying — wood splitting. A whole two sheds full is what her mother has done now. Her mother smelling of oil and wax, her hands calloused. Showing her how to paint the furniture. Letting her paint the drawers that sit under the telly in the living room and each one painted a different colour and each glass knob a different colour, and on the bottom drawer two skull-head knobs found specially and kept for her birthday.

The farm road is empty. A dark blanket pulls itself across the mountains and the air grows dense and it doesn’t seem like snow is going to fall, but it might begin to hail.

Stella’s phone vibrates in her pocket.

Home.

Home.

— Mum?

— Are you turning back?

— Yup.

She clicks her phone off and she has one foot on the bike pedal and the other on the ground. She must talk later on. To. A. Doctor. She wishes it wasn’t a doctor. It’s not like she is ill. Hail snakes in a thick line down the mountains. Stella watches to see where the weather will go. She sits back on her bike and pedals even harder, and cycles past where she and Marie (the skank) made Richard’s sister eat ten stalks of barley; she boaked up rough spiky bits for ages and then she trailed after them all the way home, repeatedly bleating Am I in your gang yet? Stella slammed the door in her face, then went and had her tea, and even now when she thinks about it — even in this cold — her face stings red. It’s a thing that makes her cycle further than she should each time she goes out. Better to be alone. At least it is honest. She takes her metal spikes off so she can cycle easier, slings them over the handlebars. She cannot help this thing in her that makes her always wants to go further, to keep going, and as the first drops of hail begin to fall she is by the forest where trees sway — they shake, tall skinny boughs, and snow slides off them. It is too dark to go through the forest in this weather, but she can go over the stile instead, away from the mulched forest floor: that bit where you can fall through the false roof at the buried cottage and not get back out. A place to break your ankle or your leg and get trapped like an animal. In the summer there are always kids doing something down in that cottage that is sunk under the ground. Something disgusting. Or even pirates. Or even worse than pirates: paedophiles, or child murderers. It makes her sad. What’s wrong with people?

She’s up high now. She can see the old water pump, it’s how you know where the cottage roof is on the forest floor — right there, because it is only uncovered in summer and in autumn is hidden by leaves and the mulch is dangerous and sometimes a dog or a walker falls through it. This whole area is built over old mine shafts too, massive hollow things. Leaves fall between exposed wooden beams in the cottage, come spring, and then you can look down and see the whole building has just dropped into the forest floor, under the ground like a troll lair that no self-respecting troll would be seen dead in. The place is full of pornos and the remnants of fires. Richard’s sister said a man once caught her in the cottage and he made her pull her top up and then he got his dick out and made her touch it. He still lives in the village. Kids still go to his house to get drunk. All the kids know who he is and half the parents, so how come he still gets to live there? Stella cycles as close to the cottage as she dares but she can’t see anything. All the walls are crumbly with a faded imprint of flowery wallpaper and swear words daubed on them. Sometimes the older kids get wasted and play music in there. This year there was a drum kit set up for months, and a boy gave her a joint last time and she held it like she was going to smoke it, and he stared at her top like he was trying to see tits through it. The smell of weed is disgusting. She pretended to smoke some, then handed it back. The farmer’s old scarecrow is in that cottage and he’s going to be down there all winter — laid out on a brass bedstead over broken springs. The boys turned it into a Mrs Scarecrow and one of the older boys kept bending it over and saying he was doing it up the arse and he’d show them how to bukakke. Stella had to pretend it was funny, the same as the other girls did, but her heart was beating so fast and nobody from her class made one mention about her being anything than just a straight girl that day; they didn’t want the older kids to turn on her. That was something. She wanted those boys to let the scarecrow be. There’s something wrong with her. She even feels empathy for stones.

A shower of hail clatters off the frozen snow on the ground and it bounces back up, gets bigger every second. The hailstones batter off the earth — it’s a comforting sound. Stella tucks her head down now and cycles fast and she should be heading for home, but she wants to see where they’ve kept the cows. If snow starts she’ll have to get off and walk. In a field below a tractor snaps its lights onto full beam and farm buildings in the distance are flooded yellow. Stella picks up speed and she does not look back to where the fallen cottage is. She doesn’t think about an outhouse, or six pairs of girl knickers stuffed down a rabbit hole. They were her first girly ones and she stole them all from Morag who lived on Oak Tree Lane. Stella’s mum found out and it made her cry. She’d never seen her mother cry before. There is a clatter of hail on the ground, but it thins and the second and third sun disappear from the sky. Her boots slip on the pedals as she cycles toward the farm, tractors in the distance. The hail ceases and right through the middle of Clachan Fells silence builds until twenty deer bolt from the forest. They curve across the fields — the fawns big now, their hooves barely touch the ground. Stella races them down through the white valley.

Hooves clatter off the ground.

The deer gain speed and she is only yards from them now, her chest burns and for a fraction of a second she is flying! They arc ahead of her and she careens after the fleeing herd. The hailstorm has come back right overhead now. Round white pellets batter the ground as the deer disappear into a big empty cowshed. Her muscles burn. She skids into the big old shed behind them. It is dark enough that it takes her a few minutes until her eyes adjust and she breathes in the smell of hay and manure. As her vision adjusts to the light inside the barn, she sees the deer all clustered together at the far end of the echoey old corrugated-iron building. Hail beats on the tin roof and the deer all watch her. She stops so they know she is not anything to worry about. Water drips off her chin. She checks her phone and finds no signal. The barn doors are wide open and it is so, so cold. She will have to find her way back before dark. If the snow begins to fall and doesn’t stop, then she’s in trouble. Stella unzips her jacket and wrings the damp out of it. She throws it over a pen to dry.