Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— Snowstorm Cecilia is the most deadly winter weather on record for over two hundred years. In a short time we expect to hit the Maunder Minimum, which hasn’t been seen at this particular level for three hundred and sixty years. This is the very first tip of a winter that nobody has really expected! There are meetings today at the United Nations; many of the delegates are having to attend via video conference because they cannot fly in! As you can see, leading environmentalists have been invited to attend these meetings for the first time since this winter began. The delegates are saying this must be the first honest, serious conversation about climate change! Over to you, in the studio!

THE DOCTOR’S surgery is so quiet. He is only opening once a week in this weather. The rest of the time people are seeing him at the community centre, but Stella couldn’t do this there where other people might overhear her or even see her there and ask questions. He is looking down at her file like he will make decisions according to that, rather than what she says — his choices will be based upon what other doctors have to say and what he himself has said to them in the past. She will be asked to speak but he won’t listen.

— If you don’t give her the hormone-blockers, then we will need to see someone else.

— I am the only doctor in Clachan Fells region, Constance.

— I know that, but we’ll go elsewhere if we have to.

— Don’t you think Stella is very young to be making decisions about hormone-blockers? She only has a very small bit of body hair and her voice has not changed fully yet. What I would really like to do, Stella, is refer you to the clinic in town that specialises in hormone replacement. They will be far better able to help, in an informed manner.

— How long might that referral take?

— It could be a year, or more.

— She will begin to go through puberty long before that.

— And?

— And how would you feel if you grew breasts and got your period tomorrow, Doctor?

— That’s not very helpful, Constance, let’s be serious here.

— I am being deadly serious, Doctor, how would you feel about that?

— I don’t think we should be thinking about emotions. Let’s focus on the medical referral — realistically it might be a year, or more, before Stella can see a specialist, he says, putting her file back down.

Click-clack click-clack.

It’s that tiny door in her heart.

This feeling lately that a boy is following her, ready to take over her body. She will wake up and have to walk around inside someone else’s body. She’ll feel like a skinny girl who is being forced to wear a sumo suit and a guy’s hairy chest, but worse. When this boy who is coming turns up with his face hair and his deep voice, she won’t know where she is or who she is any more, but she’ll be stuck there like a witch has cursed her to stay inside someone else’s form, no matter how uncomfortable the fit of skin, hair, muscles, the protrusion of an Adam’s apple, a deepening in vocal tone.

— That’s really depressing, she whispers.

— Do you feel sad? he asks gently.

She looks at him.

— Are you suicidal?

— No!

— I think perhaps we should prescribe you some anti-depressants, just while you’re waiting for your hospital referral to come through.

— That’s not what we came here for, Constance says.

— Perhaps a light dose of Prozac, something easy to tolerate.

— She’s only twelve years old and you won’t give her hormone-blockers but you’ll whack her on tablets that can be detrimental to brain development!

— That isn’t proven.

— It makes depression a whole lot worse before it makes it better, if it makes it better at all! Or it can send a person properly loopy. She wants to feel comfortable in her own skin, and growing a beard is as distressing for her as it would be for any other young teenage girl! Can you imagine if your daughter grew a moustache and developed a baritone one morning? How do you think she would feel about it? Would you be telling her that somebody might get back to her in a year’s time, Doctor?

He has switched off already.

Time is running away and she knew this would happen and she ordered them a year ago online and didn’t think she’d have to take them, but now Stella knows she will. She feels the packet in her pocket. Looks at the doctor with his white beard and his utter conviction of his own rightness.

— Do you know about your raphe line, Doctor?

— Excuse me?

— That would have been your vagina! she says.

He opens his mouth but doesn’t say a thing as she scrapes her chair as loudly as she can along the plastic floor — and walks out.

DYLAN IS on the left-hand side of the ambulance. Stella is in the middle. Constance has put her glasses on to drive. She looks like some kind of secretary porn star. He has a hard-on like Donkey Kong. It’s seriously uncomfortable. The path down to Fort Harbour has been cleared by the snow-ploughs and stacks of snow are piled up on either side of the road. It is still snowing so much that the piles of snow haven’t even turned dirty or slushy around the bottom. Fort Harbour is small with stone walls curving around it. There are little wooden boats and a few bigger ones for fishing. The masts click in the wind and make a strange keening noise. Seagulls spiral at the trawlers’ baskets where there are usually lobsters or crabs. Nobody is going out in this. The sea is completely mapped over with ice.

— I have never seen anything like this in Fort Harbour in my whole fucking life, Constance says.

— Mum, this is so exciting!

— Better than going to school, huh?

— A hundred-million-gazillion times better.

— Why are you in such a good mood today, Stella?

She shrugs and looks ahead of them as the ambulance eases carefully down the icy slope to the car park. There are tourists taking photographs of the sea from the harbour wall. Constance pulls the ambulance in beside some public loos and there is a big brass sculpture of a seal and a map of a nearby island with puffins and another where gannets nest on the rocks. They jump down and each of them buttons up straight away, wrapping scarfs around, pulling gloves on.

— Aren’t you going to lock the ambulance? he calls after her.

— Nobody would steal it! she says.

The road has been heavily salted all round the harbour so that they don’t skid off it and land in the iced-over water. Stella skips ahead and Dylan falls into step with Constance, slips his arm round her waist for a second and she takes his hand and they both stop as they reach the shore. Stella smiles to herself, noticing them holding hands.

— What are they? Dylan asks.

— Ice-feathers, Constance says.

Sticks have been placed all along the shore to gather crystals of water. Fronds of ice have all blown in one direction, creating feathers — some of them are taller than Stella. She stands right in front of them with her phone out and her mohawk hat on, jumping up and down, leaning in to touch one.

— This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen in my life, he says.

— Look at the ice-floes all over the bay, Stella!

— Listen to them cracking, Dylan says.

— It is so utterly strange and perfect, Mum, I love it!

Dylan and Constance stand at the edge of the shore as sea-ice drifts across a flat grey ocean. Behind them the mountains rise up and a steam train chugs out of the lower forests all the way down past Fort Harbour, billowing smoke and steam — it is black and shiny against the snowy mountains. When it is gone, they can only hear the quiet lap of water and the crack of ice out there. It creaks and groans.