Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— It was lame, a shit party. I have no idea what I am talking about, I’m gibbering, he says.

They reach the barn and she grips his hand a bit harder, leading him through the barn doors. It smells musty and damp and there are a few old hay-bales in the corner and small hoof-prints across the floor. Long icicles have lengthened from the rooftop down into the dim.

— There’s nothing in here, she says.

— Except that.

He points at tyre tracks from a bike, in a figure-of-eight going back out another door.

— She’s gone home then, she says.

Constance is trying not to look at him. She stands in between the wide barn doors with panels of stained corrugated iron on either side of her. Behind her there are the peaks of white mountains. Her hood is up and she turns again and they lean against the wall, their tongues the only heat in a world dropping degrees by the hour. Wrapping one leg around his hip, him wanting to pull her up and into him, undoing her jacket. She pulls her hood back.

— This isn’t what we’re meant to be doing, she says.

— Isn’t it?

She pulls away. The snow has stopped and it is much thicker in the fields below them toward the bottom of the mountain, and further up there are peaks of white, but there are still some fields too exposed to the wind to have had much snow settle.

— Alistair lives there.

She points up the mountain to a cottage with a spire of smoke and claps her hands together in her gloves to keep them warm and glances back at him. It is a traditional white-house, large sloping roof and a wide wooden platform porch all around it. The windows are dark.

— Why didn’t you and Stella ever live with him?

Constance doesn’t answer. She gazes up the mountain and he looks toward the field. They walk out, still holding hands. A cacophony of jagged bray and honk rises into the air and down below them there is a blue loch. Geese swagger around each other in the field next to it, hundreds and hundreds of them.

— Barnacle geese — they’re late coming back from the Arctic and Iceland. It doesn’t look like they’re stopping, but they usually would. I’ve not seen any Bewick or whooper swans; we usually get them in autumn but they skipped it entirely this year.

— Is that why Barnacle is called that? Dylan asks.

— You mean Bill? No, he has been called Barnacle since he was a Casanova, back in the day, gambling away all his money and squandering the family estate on women and parties and classic cars. He hasn’t even one thing to show for it now. Look up Barnacle online — you’ll get the gist of why they called him that.

— It’s a big-dick thing?

— Huge, she says.

— You’ve seen it?

— Don’t be gross.

— Just checking, Dylan says.

— That was Barnacle’s place over there!

She points over to the big estate chimneys poking out of the forests.

— I want to see Clachan Fells in autumn when it’s all red and gold and yellow; and in spring. Even in the snow it is the most beautiful place, he says.

— It’s something else, she says softly.

Birds yak away in the fields, striding in circles. The flock calls out to each other, their gaggle getting louder and harsher, before the first few take a run forward and glide up into the air and then the whole flock lifts!

He holds his breath.

They begin to form a straggly V behind the leading geese; their wings beat harder and faster as they gain height and speed and swoop down the other side of the mountain across a frozen waterfall in the distance and then up over a cluster of stone whitewashed cottages. Chimneys stick out of the forest from the country house Barnacle used to own. The geese fly toward the coast — birds falling effortlessly back so that a longer V-formation emerges across the sky. Dylan links his pinky finger through hers and she curls her finger back around his.

— They can be a bit small-minded around here, Dylan. Most of the villagers don’t speak to me, just because I had two lovers all these years — or I have or … I don’t even fucking know what I have anymore, or what I want even.

— You don’t need to explain anything to me.

— I can’t stop worrying about Stella, it’s driving me nuts. You hear about some little kid who gets chased down in a community because they’re trans, or you read the suicide rates, or even the way the local boys look at her sometimes, you know. I don’t know how to protect her. When it comes right down to it, I can act as tough as I want, but I can’t always be there to make sure she is okay and it really fucking kills me!

She drags her cuff across her face, blinks hard and studies the trails Stella has left with her bike, leading straight toward the farm road. She’s probably back in the caravan already. There are other trails in the snow, small ones: does or stags. Tiny three-pronged prints of a bird.

— Think: one day she’s going to have to bring a guy home — to meet me!

She giggles.

— Don’t fucking envy him that one, Dylan says.

Snow whirls down from the mountaintop and the tips of trees sway. All this snow is going to get so heavy they won’t even be able to open their caravan door. How long can they stay in the caravans without going out? How long will the fuel last? He’s beginning to think like Constance. Watching snow rise up the side of their caravans in inches. Checking the death-rates online. This winter has tripled the usual amount already, and they are barely into the thing. Wind howls up around the back of the barn, rattling the tin walls. She takes his hand, the two of them silhouetted at the big dark square entrance to the barn as she leans up to kiss him.

STELLA MARCHES down past the farm. She is wet and shivering. Her teeth clatter. She must keep moving so that hypothermia doesn’t kick in. The farmer’s dogs bark and it sounds so loud in the silence. They are all out in the grounds today. Nobody is going to be out hunting or herding sheep in this. The farm estate has a twelve-foot-high metal fence around it to keep the dogs back. She always clenches her fists as she walks by them. They can smell fear, so they jump up at the fence, jaws snapping, running up and down alongside her.

If they got out they’d just go for her.

She hates having to walk past them.

The thing is to act like she’s not scared and push her bike, but the snow is deep up here and her boots plunge in up to her knees and she has to kick forward, using the bike to clear her way onto more solid ground. The dogs leap at the fence. Don’t look scared. Never let them know you’re frightened. Except they can smell it on her. To them she must look like walking dog-food. She keeps her face a still mask and tries to appear angry, like she would kick their heads in if they went for her. There must be thirty dogs in there. They are all different breeds and most of them are so vicious they need to be penned in. It’s all teeth and slaver and flashes of pink gums with black marks on them. Last year Barnacle bought her mum an antler keyring made by the farmer’s son.

A black dog runs up to the fence and rubs against the metal wire. It snarls, its fangs are yellow, it has tiny rabid eyes and its penis is out and that makes her want to vomit. She walks faster. Further up ahead on a little hill there is a separate enclosure where two dogs are kept on their own. Both of the dogs in there stand up on top of their kennels, watching her. They sniff the air. Those two are not allowed to integrate or they’d just kill the other dogs. The farmer’s four-wheel drive pulls out from the front of the farmhouse and he has a big green metal barrel fixed on the back of it, with a little hatch made of four black bars.

A dog snarls from inside the barrel, crazy, a flash of eyes and teeth. If it was able to, it would shoot out like a bullet to maul whatever it found. The farm gives her the creeps. The farmer’s wife lives up there surrounded by that and they hardly get any visitors. How does she do it? Night after night in the dark. All those dogs snapping around outside her house. The farmer slows down when he sees her and winds down his window.