Inverness, Scotland
Fiona MacDonald stood on the sidewalk of a busy intersection, her banner unfurled behind her.
“We are not going to remain placid under the oppression from the English,” she shouted, fully conscious that there were several groans as she began her speech. She didn’t care; she knew there were some people she would never convert to the Cause.
Some, however, might stop and listen. These modern Scots might be stirred by words they’d heard from older members of their family.
“Give us back our freedom. If you don’t, we’ll take it. You’ll not take our dignity. You never will."
Her speech was gradually garnering the attention she craved. One by one, bystanders began to slow, then stop.
Sometimes, that's how freedom began, with a spark in the heart.
She smiled and continued.
Gull Island, Texas
Maggie was building a castle on the beach, concentrating on the shape and the form of it. She patted the sand into the orange juice can, upended it on a minuscule wall until it became a turret, her fingers tracing the shape of the tower.
In blind school, she'd learned the basics of her new life, including never to call it blind school in front of Sister Mary Agnes. The course was called Life Skills for the Visually Impaired and Sister Mary Agnes was its guru. A testament to Sister Agnes’ abilities that Maggie hadn't figured out the nun was also blind until well into the class.
"The only thing in life that can defeat you is your concept of limitation," Sister Mary Agnes had said every day. Wisdom spoken with an Irish accent by a dogged practitioner of positive thinking.
But Sister Mary Agnes’s course hadn't taught her how to retrieve her certainty, her optimism. Perhaps that’s why she was building a sand castle just like she had every summer of her childhood, in hopes of reconstructing her life as easily.
The sand flowing through her fingers was warm and familiar. She felt something solid, a bit of shell perhaps. How many times had she held something infinitesimal in her hand, marveling at its survival over the millennia?
She'd felt attuned to the past, more than the present. She'd wanted to know about the people who'd walked the same ground so many centuries ago. She'd wanted to know about their lives, dreams, hopes and fears.
Holding an amphora shaped like an opium seed pod would send her imagination soaring. Her fingers would trace the pattern on the vessel, wonder at the color darkened to black from its original ocher.
“It’s crooked."
Maggie jerked, startled. People should be forced to wear bells. Or at least call attention to their presence. They shouldn't be allowed to sneak up on someone.
“Your turret is about to be swamped, I’m afraid. Shall I help?”
With a plop, the girl sat beside her. Maggie felt the brush of hair on her bare arm as the child bent forward and pressed a hand next to hers.
“You’ve built too close to the waves. It will not survive. But it’s not meant to be permanent, is it? Sand castles never are.”
Maggie remained silent, startled by the child’s adult-like pronouncement.
"Still, perhaps we can salvage something of it."
“How old are you?” Maggie asked.
“I’m nine. Hardly an age advanced enough to accomplish anything. My nanny says that people never pay attention to single digit people. I shall have to be ten before I’m noticed.”
Maggie sat back on her heels, head tilted in the child’s direction. “If it makes any difference, you sound a great deal older than nine."
“I read prodigiously. My father says books are the way to learn basic truths about life."
“Does he?"
Silence, while Maggie wondered if the little girl was nodding.
“Is your father around?” Was he going to demand she leave again?
“Yes,” the child answered cheerfully.
“Right now?" She hated the idea of someone watching her when she didn’t know. Maggie turned toward the direction of the Landers’ house. “Where?”
“I expect he’s writing his letters now. He has a schedule, you see.”
“Does he?"
“Oh yes. A great many people wish his time, so every day he spends at least an hour on his correspondence. From ten until eleven. But after that, it’s our time. Charlie comes, of course, even though he’s too young. Today, Father promised to take me swimming. I have a raft."
Maggie chose the easiest subject. “Isn’t the surf a bit violent for a raft?”
Silence again.
“I don’t know if you’re nodding,” Maggie said gently.
“Of course, you’re blind. Does it hurt?”
“Did your father tell you? That I was blind, I mean?"
“Yes. Does it hurt?"
Tenacity was a trait Maggie admired; this child had it in spades.
“No, not anymore. I used to get headaches.”
“I hate headaches. I used to get them before I started wearing glasses. Nurse says it’s because I read so much, but Father says it’s because I’m owlish.”
“Owlish?" She could only hold onto the tail ends of the child’s conversation.
“Vicki."
A stranger’s voice, one she’d not heard before. Another Englishman. This voice was richer, with steel edges to it, like a shiny wine vat holding a voluptuous burgundy.
“Hello, Father. Are you finished with your letters? I was telling the lady. Oh, I am sorry. I’ve not introduced myself. I’m Vicki…”
“Vicki - " he interrupted. “You've not faxed your lessons."
The child sighed. “Yes, Father."
The resignation in her tone made Maggie want to smile. When Vicki spoke again her voice was determinedly cheerful. “Once I do my math, may we go swimming?”
“Not today, the weather’s not suitable."
“Then we shall simply have to find something else as fun.”
She stood, sending sand flying in Maggie’s direction.
"Goodbye," she said. "Best of luck with your castle."
Maggie said nothing, listening for the sounds of the man to depart as well.
“Forgive my daughter’s intrusion. I trust she hasn’t bothered you."
She tilted her head, turned toward the speaker.
"You aren't the man I met yesterday."
“No. That was Harold.”
“Are there any more of you? The island seems to be overflowing with the English."
“I was given to understand that the cottage was rarely used.”
“It's being used now.”
“Yes. Well."
“I've every right to be here,” she said, getting to her feet.
He didn’t move, remaining where he was and smelling of something essentially masculine: ironed cotton and a scent with a touch of citrus.
She was dressed in cutoffs and a tank top, and fervently hoped that everything was covered. Her knees were abraded by kneeling in the sand too long, and her hair felt thick with brine. There was a smarting on her nose - sunburn? - and she had a mosquito bite on the base of her neck that she refrained from scratching only by sheer will.
"Why are you building a sand castle?"
"You mean, why is a blind woman building a sand castle"?
“Did I sound that ungracious?"
She hesitated for a moment, realizing that it wasn’t his question she objected to, or even his way of asking it, but simply the fact that he could see the destruction of her efforts and she couldn’t.
“No, you didn’t."
She wished he would disappear, his shoes making whispery sounds in the sand. But he didn’t leave.
"I have no prejudice to handicap."
The annoyance she felt should have diverted her attention from his voice. His was as deep and bristling as a Scottish actor’s, with the hint of burr brushed out of it and made smooth. There was something decidedly fascinating about that voice.
“Am I supposed to thank you for your civility or your condescension?”
Silence.
“I've angered you,” he finally said.
Yes, he had. But then, so had all the other well meaning people who spoke of being blind as if it were no different from having red hair or blue eyes. It wasn’t natural to her; blindness was something for which she’d been unprepared and was still ill-equipped.
“Everyone has handicaps,” he said. “Some show, others do not." A conciliatory comment that did nothing to soften her irritation.
"And yours? What would your handicap be?"
Silence again. She had the oddest thought that she’d discomfited him with her question.
“Being who I am, perhaps."
The answer surprised her. Her hands stilled, clasped together, the wet sand abrading her palms.
“And who are you?"
“A visitor to your country at the moment."
A formal, almost stilted, response from a man who sounded as ill at ease with conversation as she.
“Have you been here before?"
It wasn’t fair to resent him for forcing her into conversation but she did, strangely enough.
“To America. Yes." He seemed to weigh each of his answers with deliberation, as if afraid of divulging too much of himself. “I quite like Americans."
“Do you?” she asked, suddenly amused by his pomposity. “I quite like the British."
Despite the fact that his voice sounded young, he had all the formality of her grandfather. No doubt an English trait, although she’d never found her British co-workers in Egypt to be overly stuffy.
Yet his daughter had been the same, a precocious child with an almost adult-like air.
“You should have built your castle a little higher in the dunes. You’ll lose your turrets next. If you'd buttressed your walls, they would have withstood the tide.”
She smiled at the tone in his voice. Twice, he'd reverted to that crisp autocracy, as if he'd had years of experience giving orders. Maggie wanted to know, in a spurt of curiosity that surprised her, what made him so self-assured.
He moved and for a moment she thought he was leaving her. But he knelt beside her, not unlike his daughter’s pose. In a gesture that felt almost intimate, he placed his hand over hers, guiding it to a spot where one wall was crumbling under an encroaching wave.
“You’re losing your south face."
She began digging a trench, pushing the sand up and patting it with her palm. He did the same, surprising her further. The silence was one she might have shared with a childhood companion. Except that he wasn't an unknown boy appearing out of nowhere. He was an adult, a stranger in her narrowed black world.
But that was the very reason she was here, wasn’t it? To venture out of her bubble of protection. She'd been hospitalized for weeks, followed by months of disorientation. Through it all, she'd been surrounded by friends and family, cosseted in a way that might have shamed her had she not been buried to her neck in self-pity.
The journey to Gull Island was a desperate attempt to pull herself free, not only from the suffocating comfort but the grief of her loss. She could, too easily, wallow in both but neither was healthy.
Just before she’d left San Antonio, her mother had finally broken down, speaking the words that must have been on her tongue ever since learning of Maggie’s decision.
“Don't go. There's no reason for you to leave. I know you need your independence, Maggie. Just as I know that I've been a little too intrusive in the last year. It’s only because I love you. But I'm more than willing to step back now. I just don't think it's a good idea for you to go off by yourself."
“Mom, do you realize I haven’t been alone since the accident? I need a little solitude, and I don’t know a safer place than the island."
A place to go and flutter her wings, to take her measure, and to decide her life. An island brushed by the ocean breeze, inhabited by gulls, and now too many Englishmen.
“Will you please go away,” she said softly, feeling inept and clumsy and suddenly vulnerable.
He stood and she heard the sound of his hands brushing against fabric.
She tried to explain, forced to do so by a politeness that irked her. A habit of a lifetime, to consider her words.
"Just because we seem to be the only people inhabiting this island doesn't mean we have to be friends. I'll ignore you and your daughter and the other man. Are there any more of you? You never said."
"No one else."
"In turn, I'd appreciate it if you left me alone."
“Certainly,” he said, in that formal clipped tone. “Forgive my intrusion."
She didn’t answer, the omission stark and rude. A moment later she heard him move away.
The childish pleasure she’d taken in playing in the sand was gone. She knelt again, gathering up her tools and placing them in the satchel like a tidy, obedient child.
With stiff movements, she stood, one arm flailing in the air as she gained her balance. Blindness had brought to her a new dimension of discomfort, a sense that she could not quite control her body’s responses. Her sight had given her perspective, something missing in this new, dark world.