Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— Is that what I think it is?

Dylan points to the right.

A great hulk of ice is way out there on the water.

Locals begin to point and raise cameras. They gravitate toward the shore as the iceberg turns, so they can see it more clearly even though it is still miles away.

— Fuck-a-shitting-duck! Stella says.

She cups her hands to call up the shore to them. She is walking further away and two girls stand on the pebble beach with cameras, and a cluster of seagulls sit on a crooked arc of grey-cerulean ice.

— Look at those seagulls, surveying the humans, they look like they’re about to bestow a riddle on us!

— The riddle of how to stay warm in an Ice Age, he says.

— The riddle of Constance and Dylan.

Stella snaps a photograph of her mother standing in front of all these ice-feathers. Constance is wearing welly boots and tight jeans and a headscarf and a hat on top of that, and she sips a coffee from the metal travel mug she uses whenever she is out working. She shelters her eyes so she can take in the view.

— Sometimes you get a minute where it all seems worth it: all the stress, the struggling, life, death, all the shit in between. You see something like this and it all becomes sharper — oh yeah, you remember, this is it, this is it!

— It’s what? he says.

— It! she laughs.

— It is minus twenty, that’s what it is, he says.

— Don’t try and tell me this isn’t better than shining a light in the dark, Mr MacRae?

Stella has almost every inch of herself swaddled in layers and she casts a critical eye across the landscape.

— Are you missing London a little bit then?

— Nope, weirdly. I thought I would be, but I’m not.

Stella skids up toward them, she gives her mum a hug and steps back to look out at the sea again.

— You know what it feels like, Mum? It feels like snow is going to cover the whole world, even the pyramids, even the beaches and like all those deserted airports and even those big skeletons of roller coasters in those empty amusement parks that nobody has been in for ages? They will all get covered in snow too, and so will the cities and the skyscrapers and even big cargo containers out on the ocean, and San Francisco bay and all the streets in Rome and the taverns of Athens. White wolves will roam everywhere. Goths will be kings, Stella says darkly.

— I love wolves, Constance says.

— I figured that out at the bonfire party, he says.

Sea-ice bumps together and separates and the noise of cracking under the ice gets louder. Their breath is a clear mist and there is the tiniest hint of frost on Constance’s eyelashes. They need to get back soon. They can’t stay out too long in this weather. Dylan looks from one to the other and all three of them are staring out across the ocean now.

— Do you think the ambulance will make it back? he asks.

— I’ve skis in the back, just in case it doesn’t, Constance says.

— You are kidding?

— Nope.

— Mum has something to survive every situation. You’ll get used to it!

Stella walks along the beach to where a spiral of ice has curled out in the thinnest layers from a flower stem to create a petiole. She lifts her camera and photographs it.

— Look, it’s an ice-flower!

She has to shout from down the beach while floes collide and snap at each other. Somewhere underneath the water they grind up against each other and growl. Something innately pleasing about hearing the sound of ice breaking and colliding, while your own feet are placed firmly on the ground. Dylan’s wearing green welly boots — the man in the shop said he was lucky that even though he is the biggest man he’s ever met, a pair were ordered for a farmer at Saint Bernadette’s but he got stuck in a plough and he’s dead; so lucky for Dylan. He could have them. They are good boots. Fur-lined. Just there on the ground. Not like he’s hovering. Not like he’s a trespasser. Like something in him comes from this rock, these mountains, this landscape, something older than time and generational — all those links to people who survived this place and thrived and lived, all those suicidal monks and one lone sunlight pilgrim, butt-naked and tough as hell. Each day they are chased by darkness here; it comes down at night and everyone is already going cabin-crazy. Out on the seashore ice mimics the high sounds of a whale, then is followed by the smack of a hard block against rock.

— It sounds like malcontented mermaids are about to sink every whaling ship around, Constance says.

— That’s a bit poetic for you, he says.

— I must be trying to impress you!

The wind calls out, high-pitched as a baby. They stand with feet wide to brace against the elements, and moving crags of ice settle and creak.

— Mum, why is the ice making those noises?

— It’s all freezing up, Stella. All those platelets will be frozen into one sheet in a few weeks. I came down a few hours ago and it was just frazil ice, so the temperature is really dropping crazy fast, to get it to solid big bits of ice like this in only a few hours. The Gaelic for it is cuan eighre , she says.

— Mum is basically becoming Siri, she says.

— No, I’m not!

They crunch back over to the ambulance, too cold to stay out any longer.

— Can we come back and see the iceberg again in a few days?

— We’ll see what the temperature’s like.

Dylan pulls on a door handle held on with string. His mind is snow. They are two bridges. Separated by a river. She likes him and she wants him, but she can’t let go. Of what? Alistair or Caleb, or both? They pull out of the beach car park and the ambulance rolls slowly down along the coastline.

— Why are we going at five miles an hour? Stella asks.

— Because the ice is packed under the snow. Salt is good for grip but it’s still really dangerous!

As if to back her up, the ambulance groans and slides a little along the ice and she changes gear and it screeches its way up the hill. It misfires a few times at the top and then they are onto the motorway, where stacks of snow are piled in hillocks and clods of grass jab out at odd angles and a gritter is in front of them, which slows everyone down even more. It’s not that anyone is driving anywhere near the speed limit anyway. Even 20 m.p.h. feels like high speed when the roads are like this.

— It gets dark too early, he says.

— What’s the temperature now, Mum?

Constance checks the temperature gauge on the bonnet and flicks it a couple of times with her nail, but the dial still hangs down.

— Cold-as-fuck, she declares.

Stella sighs.

They drive through the village and the church bell calls out in a heavy gong. Snowy council houses and narrow streets are lit by bright Christmas lights. Ornament snowmen have been attached high up on lamp posts and someone has set up a nativity scene in the square. The village shop has a display outside it of real pine Christmas trees. Round bits of cut log sit in a pile to be used as bases for the trees. The chip-shop window glows hot and greasy, with a queue of people trailing out the door. It is Friday night and everyone is getting ready to drink and eat and watch telly and not worry about the rising snow as it settles even thicker outside on gates, fences, rooftops.

— I heard Lewis Brown’s mum found their dog frozen by their bin yesterday, Constance says.

— That’s horrible!

— I know.

Stella taps her fingers against the dashboard. She saw Lewis on the way home from the doctor’s and he waved hello. It is the first time he has acknowledged her since they kissed this summer, the two of them lying on a hay-bale holding hands and watching clouds, and then him not answering her texts and her getting battered at Ellie’s Hole and Lewis pretending they never even knew each other at all, then just like that — a wave, a hello. She didn’t wave back. Not at all.