Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— Mum, is that an avalanche?

— What’s your fucking problem? Alistair says.

— No, that’s not the question, arsehole. The question is: what’s your fucking problem?

— Hello, Stella!

Alistair snaps the words out and his face has grown red, the blush beginning in his neck and going all the way up.

— Didn’t fucking kill you to get that out then, did it, mate!

Awkward. Moments. Passing. Stella scuffs her socks on the wooden floor and Constance flicks on a few lamps. She knows where they are, of course she does. Alistair goes into the kitchen and clicks on a kettle. Constance follows him and Stella sidles up to Dylan. He puts his arm round her and gives her a hug.

— Sorry if that got awkward, he says.

— Thanks for sticking up for me, she says.

— Do you want me to beat him up for you? Dylan asks.

— I don’t get the feeling you’d be doing that for me, Stella whispers.

Constance is laughing in the kitchen. She comes back through with hot tea.

— At least that rumbling noise is stopping outside, she says.

— I think it was just the snowstorm going over the forest, he says.

— Has there ever been an iceberg before in Scotland? Stella changes the subject.

— There was one in Treshnish in 1902, Constance says.

— I love the way your brain stores random trivia, Stella says.

— There was another in Sumburgh Head in 1927.

— You need to start reading some non-factual books one day, Mum. Are people older than icebergs?

— Modern humans are nearly two hundred thousand years old. They think the family tree could go back six or seven million years, though — earliest fossils of the genus Homo were about two-point-four million years ago, Constance says.

— Why are there black patches on the ice in winter?

— Wind can get trapped in there, Alistair says.

— Or bad spirits? Stella asks.

— There are no such things, Alistair says.

— I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Dylan says.

He is looking around for photographs of Olaf and imagining Gunn, just her, and thinking of Stella saying she saw an old lady in a donkey-jacket — it is too odd to be a coincidence.

— How old’s the earth then, Mum?

— The earth is about four-point-five billion years old, and they think it coalesced from material in orbit around the sun and split away, then another part of what made the earth broke away to make the moon. Some of the old myths say that the earth was so enamoured with her own beauty she needed a hand-mirror to hold, so she could gaze upon herself in admiration.

— So we were orbiting the sun and then we broke away, but we stayed close?

— Well, we weren’t, Stella! But the planet was, pretty much.

Dylan tries to stop jiggling his legs, let the adrenaline go down; he shouldn’t be so annoyed at the guy — okay, so he’s clearly a trans-phobic womanising fuck-tard but Constance still seems to like him.

— That’s why we need light, anywhere we can find it. Do you think the matter that was orbiting the sun came from the sun? Stella says.

— I don’t know, Constance says.

— If the moon broke away from the earth, then surely the matter that made earth could have broken away from the sun? I bet it did, or we were close enough to be made of the same stuff that the sun is made of. If the universe is mostly black matter and we can’t survive without light, or the moon, then it makes sense that part of the matter that made the sun and the moon is inside us. So, if we don’t get light, we will die. We’re essentially made of carbon and light.

— Plants need sunlight for photosynthesis or we can’t grow food. You could probably raise a human without it, but their bones wouldn’t form properly, they’d be all sort of sinewy and floppy and they’d have long, thin, ratty teeth, Constance says.

Dylan looks at her.

— So we’re surrounded by dark matter, but we came out of it into the light, which is a planet, or stars, we know that dark matter is all around us in the universe, if we can even feel it out there — and as we all know, goths have a direct line to any source of authentic darkness — but dark matter has no atoms, is that right?

Constance nods, grins at Dylan, who is shaking his head at the two of them. Alistair sits on his sofa looking awkward and confused.

— Where’s your wife, Alistair? Dylan asks.

— She’s with her sister in the city, she didn’t want to risk being snowed in here with me.

— No shit! he says.

— Stop it, Constance says.

— You two are an item as well then? And you have an issue with me — is that what is going on? Alistair asks.

Dylan ignores him completely as if he hasn’t heard a word.

— So if dark matter doesn’t absorb light and it doesn’t reflect light, but we do, then we need to store that shit up, so when our souls get catapulted out into the universe, we have our own battery to keep us going, and you know how bad it is here if it gets too grey, and it’s because when matter separated from the sun, the atoms that were going to make us went with light in it, with energy to create life, and we know if we stick our toe out into Coatlicue’s river, then all around it there is total darkness and if we go into that, horrible things will happen — we’ll be taken as light-slaves by the universe. Our cells crave light because that is what we started as, it’s what we are. All humans are sunlight pilgrims. Except me. Cos I’m a goth. I could totally live without light, Stella says.

Constance grins.

— She’s so your child, Dylan says.

— Truth.

— Mine too, Alistair adds.

— Is that your father, in that picture? Dylan asks.

— Aye, Olaf and that’s his wife.

— Big family?

— Not really.

— Did he have any sisters?

— One. She ran away.

— Where to?

— Australia was what they told me.

The snowstorm is howling down the mountain and he feels Constance place a hand on his leg and, just like that, he gets the feeling she knows. Constance looks at the picture of Olaf and back at Dylan.

Then the lights go out.

— Fuck’s sake, not again! Alistair snaps.

— Is the generator charged?

— Of course it is, Constance, I’m not some city idiot!

— Stella, don’t move!

— I’m not bloody moving, Mum!

The two of them head outside the cottage, banging around.

— If the snow never stops falling and we don’t ever get out of here, I will never have sex with Lewis Brown, Stella says.

— If the snow doesn’t stop, your mother will build an igloo village single-handed, he says.

— I don’t think so. Archaeologists will dig us up in years to come: the frozen community of Clachan Fells, the year of the freak winter, Stella says.

Alistair stamps back into the room and the generator kicks in, the lights flicker back on, but everything is a little dimmer than before. Dylan looks back at the photograph of Olaf.

— Constance, you did mention you got drunk with Vivienne one night?

— I didn’t say drunk.

— What did you talk about, exactly?

— Nothing, Dylan.

— It’s all fine — nothing to panic about, just owerblaw, blin drift, skirlie. Honestly, I have got enough roadkill in the freezer to last until summer, I reckon; well, maybe four weeks, and me and your mother and Dylan here, we’ll be civil, won’t we, Dylan? We’ll play Monopoly and cook soup, we won’t run short of fresh water.

— What about firewood? Dylan asks.

— Enough for a month.

— We won’t be here more than a day, Constance says.

— I wouldn’t count on that, Alistair says.

— Can you get a radio signal?

— No.

— Has anyone got a phone signal? Dylan asks.