Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

The bird faces away from the forest, looking out at the panorama.

Yellow eye-rings circle black eyes, which dart around at all those mountains. The bird flies straight down through the trees and snow falls through branches onto the forest floor. Dylan is buzzy in the head. Hyper-aware. There are more marching snow-figures than he can count, they must be at least five feet tall. Stella stands next to one and puts her arm around the thing to hug it and Constance takes a photo on her phone and laughs, easier than she has seemed for weeks. His eyes ache from the brightness. Constance offers him a hand and he takes it and steps onto the highest ledge of the mountain.

— They must be sixteen or even eighteen feet high, he says.

— What are they, Mum?

— Penitentes are something to do with the sun and dew and carbon and ice. They must have been forming up here for weeks — maybe all month — and that iceberg, look at it!

— Mum, look, there’s news crews down there! They must be here to film the penitentes and the iceberg. Do you think Clachan Fells will be on the news tonight?

— I think it probably will, yeah.

Constance wraps her arms around her daughter and kisses her head and holds her tight. Stella nestles into her mother. Constance’s grey eyes scan the horizon and she looks down behind them to the caravan park, and behind her the peaks of snow-penitentes march like snow-people, all soaking up sunlight until they sparkle and appear to be moving just as clearly as they are standing still.

— We would never have seen these properly if we hadn’t come up here, Stella says.

— The weather is turning. We should get back, Constance says.

— It looks okay, Dylan says.

— It isn’t. I can feel it.

Away down in the caravan park he can see Ash Lane. The farm road is quiet, with no snow-plough out — it has already been this morning. Stella digs the toe of her boot into the snow.

— We should have a quick nip for the road then, Dylan says.

He takes out his little pewter flask.

Constance takes a hit of gin.

— What are you drinking to? Stella asks.

— To a man who took the sky as his wife, Dylan says.

He raises the pewter bottle up and takes a swig and Constance has another and Stella clicks her water bottle against the flask.

— Come on then, get out the Carte D’Or, she says.

A little smile drawn on the sticker on the side of the ice-cream tub. He drew that in Babylon, surrounded by a cold building that had made up their family home for ever — it feels like a million years ago already. He checks the wind, makes sure it won’t just coat them or lie thick on the snow, reaches right out as tall as he can until a gust of wind carries the ashes down out over the penitentes. He taps the empty ice-cream container off the solid ice, taking another nip — at this altitude everything begins to blur seamlessly into lines of ice and ease, and a gladness in him that she is out there sparkling across the snow on a day like this, rather than stuck in a dark cupboard in a caravan.

He feels lighter.

— So, if winter has come to us now from millions of years ago, then time-travel is really possible. If the world has fifteen million years of frozen geology there and it can enter the present and melt and bring forth another Ice Age, then it’s like the planet has kept them as an insurance system.

— Insurance against what?

— Humans. I took my first hormone-blocker this morning, Dylan, she grins.

— HIGH-THE-FIVE! he says.

Dylan puts his hand up to high-five her and instead of high-fiving him, she makes her hand like a paintbrush going up and down his, in one fluid movement. It has become their own private in-joke lately.

— That iceberg could be up to ten thousand years old, Constance says.

— Let me see, Mum!

Stella holds her hand out, excited. He follows her gaze down toward the coast and the sea is mapped over with ice-floes; right by the harbour the chunk of ice juts out and up, like it is mocking the mountain by holding such a similar shape out there on the ocean.

— It must be three hundred feet long, Constance says.

— It looks like a pyramid.

Dylan takes the binoculars and looks down towards Fort Hope. There are boats moored by the harbour wall and tall stacks of frozen lobster crates. He can see the shack that sells chips and home-made banana bread and cups of tea to fishermen and tourists who would normally be getting on ferries, but now they are all simply enthralled to be here when something so astounding is going on. Clusters of people hold up camera phones. The iceberg is peaked at one side with a smaller spike at the back and streaks of blue and cavities. The sea is still enough to reflect the mountains as the sun begins to go down, and the sky turning from blue to white and Constance looking nervous and the temperature dropping, and just like that out over the sea they see the snowstorm coming in, a whorl of white and grey moving toward Clachan Fells.

— What the fuck is that? he asks.

— Mum, that looks really, really bad!

— Right, get your skis on — hurry up, Constance says.

She is reaching in her backpack, undoing the strap holding the skis on. Dylan watches the snow turn in the air, heading low over the sea; people are scattering from the harbour below.

— Mum! I’m scared, Mum!

— It’s okay, stop freaking out. Come on, get your snow-grips into here, quick — keep your head down, come on, hurry up! We’re heading for Alistair’s, we won’t make it back to the park. You’re going to have to go fast, Stella, are you listening to me?

Constance is shouting; she straps on her own grips and Dylan has already snapped his into place, a feeling of dread all the way down his gut. They can’t see the frozen sea behind them now, it is just a thick white blizzard, and cars and news crews skidding out of the harbour.

THEY FLY past the farm where wild dogs used to bark outside. It is eerily silent. Further on they reach Alistair’s croft, feeling the snow storm catch up behind them. The windows are lit yellow. A first blur of snow passes overhead as Constance hammers on the cottage door. Stella has her head tucked down and she is holding onto her ski-poles. Alistair opens the door and ushers them in, and he has to shove the door shut on the storm until the wind and snow are locked out. Dylan ducks his head in the cottage hallway. They take off the skis and stamp their boots in the hall to get snow off. He can already feel the heat of a fire. Alistair places his hand on the small of Constance’s back, a quick smile from her to him. Dylan wonders if he would be better off out there in the snowstorm.

— Come through, Dylan, nice to meet you under different circumstances. Perhaps it will go a bit better than last time, what do you think? Constance, it’s really fucking scary out there, what the fuck were you doing up on the mountain in this?

— The weather reports were fine earlier. We were going crazy down in the caravan — we’ve been in there for weeks without going out!

— How’s your nuclear food-bunker holding up? he grins.

— Not well, Constance says.

His smile falters.

— Hello, Alistair, Stella says.

Alistair glances over at Stella.

— Hello, he says.

Stella’s face falls.

— What are you looking at me like that for, Dylan? Are you going to try and flick my fucking nose again? he says angrily.

— You flicked Alistair’s nose? Stella says.

— Not hard.

— It was hard! I don’t actually have to let you stay in here, Alistair says.

— Are you going to throw me out?

Dylan is so tall his head almost skims the roof of the little cottage. Outside the world darkens and the mountain feels like it is rumbling under their feet.