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AUTUMN
It was just another wet day in October when Freya’s house fell into the sea.
Freya had not paid much attention to the recent weather warnings. She’d been too busy playing with her new black and white kitten to notice much of anything, although it was a shame that the wind and rain meant she couldn’t play outside. She picked up the kitten and squeezed it gently, glad that it was safe inside with her.
“You stick with me, Mr Fluffbum,” she murmured. “It’s too wet for girls and kittens out there. And you really don’t want to get too close to those waves.” The kitten squirmed out of her arms and ran under the bed.
“Oh, no, Mr Fluffbum. I need you to stay with me.” Freya got down on her knees and peered around to locate the kitten. Her long, mousy hair fell irritatingly into her eyes as she did so. “Come on, puss, come out.”
There was a clatter outside her door. Her mother was hurriedly piling food and bedding into wine boxes, running in and out of the house with their worldly possessions as Freya tried to coax Mr Fluffbum out from under her bed.
“Come on, you silly furball. There’s nothing to find under there except dust bunnies. And you can’t eat them when you catch them.”
The kitten ignored Freya, intent on stalking something unseen. As the kitten pounced at last, a sudden ‘crack’ resounded through the small cottage. Freya jumped, bumping her head on the bed.
“Ow! Mr Fluffbum, did you hear that? It didn’t sound like thunder.” She kept talking aloud in an effort to keep calm. It worked a little, but her voice was unsteady as she continued talking to the kitten.
“What have you caught under there? Show me.” The kitten was now lying on its back, scrabbling at something that might have been small and furry, but was still mostly invisible under the bed.
Rubbing the sore spot on her head Freya squinted at the creature Mr Fluffbum had captured. In her effort to discern its shape in the shadows, she failed to notice that a large crack had appeared in the floor behind her. She shuffled backwards to try to get a better view of what the kitten was doing, and scraped her knee on the new crack.
“This house is just full of nails and cracked bits,” she said.
Mr Fluffbum appeared near the edge of the bed, chasing a small hairy item that moved unexpectedly under its own power.
“Wow, I haven’t seen a house hob since we arrived here. Good find. Now chase it closer to me...”
In typical feline fashion, the kitten immediately batted the hob back under the bed. Freya sighed dramatically, and crawled under the bed in pursuit of her uncooperative kitten and its prey.
“Come on, Mr Fluffbum. It’s time to go. Mum says the storm should be gone by tomorrow, then we might get some sun at last. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Although then I suppose I’ll have to try and stop you from chasing birds again. I didn’t appreciate the sparrow you brought me last week - you know they’re endangered, don’t you? Well, I guess you don’t; you’re a cat. You probably just thought it was lunch. Endangered, tasty lunch.”
“Freya! What are you doing still inside? I told you to get out over an hour ago. Forget the cat, we have to get out right now! The house is going to go!”
Her mother stood in the doorway, blond hair darkened and bedraggled by rain, thin face marred by frown lines, her usually carefully tucked blouse half pulled out. Freya noticed that her mother’s hand on the doorframe was trembling.
“I can’t leave Mr Fluffbum!” she cried.
“You can’t stay in here. Quick, out now. No arguing.”
Freya lunged for Mr Fluffbum and grabbed him firmly by the scruff of the neck before running out into the hall, her heart pounding. She and her mother raced for the front door, bumping awkwardly into each other and into the walls as they ran. Freya stumbled as the floor beneath her began to tilt wildly and a terrible screech filled the air as the cottage’s foundations gave way. Panic gave wings to her feet as she leaped through the open doorway, her mother a heartbeat behind her.
They came to a halt on the far side of the crumbling asphalt road from their cottage. Freya’s older sister Tammy was loitering there, an anorak hood covering her pale hair, ripped jeans so full of holes that she might as well be wearing shorts. Freya could see her Dad further down the street, shoulders straining his wet shirt as he carried a large box away from the cottage.
“Thank goodness you did as you were told,” Freya’s Mum addressed Tammy in obvious relief.
Tammy shrugged.
“Not much else to do out here,” she said.
From the street, Freya could see how the waves had undermined their small white-painted cottage where it sat perched at a jaunty angle on the cliff, leaning towards the waiting sea. The other cottages on the seaward side of the street sat a little further back than theirs, and it didn’t look like those dwellings would be badly impacted by the waves. Not today, at any rate.
Who knew a storm surge could affect us up here?
It was clear from the tilt of the house that the foggy layer of sea spray on the windows would not be a concern for long now. Her room, closest to the sea, would be the first to fall. She and her mother had escaped just in time.
A thought struck Freya.
“Mum, did you get my books out?” she asked. “I didn’t have a chance to, with Mr Fluffbum under the bed.”
“No, Freya. I got you out. The books were less important.”
“But they were library books!” cried Freya, starting towards the house again.
Her mother grabbed her arm, fingers digging into her skin.
“No, Freya, you can’t go back in.”
The wind buffeted Freya, unexpectedly strong. Salt spray lashed her cheeks, blown off the waves surging inches below the cliff top. Freya turned side-on to the wind while she adjusted her hold on Mr Fluffbum. A bigger splash soaked her legs - that last wave had over-topped the cliffs, gushing through the gaps between the houses. A dreadful sucking noise filled her ears as the wave retreated, and the house tilted further. Another wave swelled over the cliff and Freya backed up hastily, nearly fast enough to avoid being dragged by her mother’s still-clutching fingers. The library books were beyond help now. Freya’s retreat was halted by the low brick fence around their opposite neighbour’s property.
One more wave came and went, and the whole cottage tipped more drastically, timber creaking, leaning into the sea’s embrace. When that wave retreated, the cottage went with it, like a toy being sucked down into an emptying bathtub. The sound as it disappeared was more of a crunch than a splash. Somehow, that made it more final.
Freya and her sister crept closer to the cliff-edge to get a better view of where the cottage had landed, leaving their Mum trying to cover a pile of their things with a small blue tarpaulin. The thin tarp kept catching the wind and blowing off the pile.
“Wow. It’s like a jotunn dragged it into the sea! How cool!” said Tammy.
Freya nodded in gloomy agreement. It did look as though a giant’s hand had helped their house down the cliff. But...
“I wish it hadn’t gone over with my books. Do you think the library will charge me for losing them?”
“Oh Freya, never mind the books. Just look at it. How many people can say they’ve barely escaped their house falling off a cliff! I’m posting this on Flimflam for my friends to see.”
“But Tammy, don’t you mind? How can I get Mr Fluffbum settled enough to sleep on my bed?” Tears threatened to spill out of the corners of her eyes, and she squeezed them shut for a moment, wanting to appear as adult and carefree as her older sister. Then the realisation hit her, and she lost the battle with her tears.
“My bed was still in there! I don’t have anywhere to sleep!”
As always, it was the little things which broke her resolve. Large-scale catastrophes, Freya could deal with, keeping calm while those around her panicked. A house? No problem. But lost books and no bed? Now that was a problem.
“Oh, Mr Fluffbum. What will we do now?”
As Freya’s tears were alternately whipped away by the wind and then blended with the persistent rain, Tammy gave her a quick squeeze around the shoulders with one arm. This was as close as she came these days to the bearlike sisterly hugs she used to give Freya when they were smaller.
“Never mind, Frey-frey. We’ll be in a mansion before you know it. Or more likely another tumbledown house too close to the sea. But we’ll be somewhere. Cheer up and enjoy the view, now. Just think, you won’t have to worry about cleaning those salty windows anymore. People pay money for experiences like this, you know. I wish I’d filmed it with my phone; we could have sold the footage. Evidence of climate change and all that. We could’ve been famous!”
“Don’t call me Frey-frey, I’m not a baby. And your phone would have run out of charge before you could film it anyway. You’re always running out of battery. Anyway, everyone knows about climate change, I mean, it’s hard to miss. Especially when your house drowns because of it.” Despite her sister’s annoying attitude, Freya leaned against Tammy in an attempt at reassurance - whether for herself or her sister, she wasn’t quite sure - before Tammy shoved her gently away.
“Sure, it’s totally obvious. But honestly, haven’t you seen some of the stupid memes on Flimflam? Like the one where climate change activists and flat-earthers are put in the same boat to go swim the rising seas till they go off the edge? Climate change is so last decade, even though it’s getting worse. But I think a good house-down-the-cliff movie would get people’s attention.”
“Maybe if you gave me your phone and got yourself a new one, I could see those memes on Flimflam myself. And message my friends, like you do.”
“So not happening. You’re way too young for a phone. According to Mum and Dad, at least. Plus you only ever talk to your cat these days. You ought to work on that. But we should be calling a news station, getting some attention, not standing around gloomily in the rain. I’m going to try and get some at least. If Mum lets me any closer to the edge, of course. Honestly, if it wasn’t such a cliché, I’d say she was like a mother hen.”
Perhaps I am too young, maybe that’s why I’m not excited about this. I don’t have a silly Flimflam account to pay attention to, or post house-destruction videos to. And no-one talks to me at school, that’s why I only talk to Mr Fluffbum.
Freya didn’t understand Tammy’s careless attitude towards their home. Home meant books, her bed, her favourite corner with cushions in it for reading on. Freya herself was beginning to feel like she was floating away, as rudderless as the bits of her house she could see washing away below.
What was a person when they had no home? How do you define yourself without walls?
She shivered. The rain was coming down harder than ever. Mr Fluffbum meowed plaintively.
“Don’t worry, Mr Fluffbum. We’ll find somewhere soon. I hope. Surely the sea gods don’t hate us that much.”
“It’s a goddess in these parts,” said Freya’s mother, Danae, from just behind her. Freya jumped in surprise. Danae had abandoned her efforts with the tarp to intercept Tammy, who was indeed trying to get better photos of their ex-cottage as the roof began to float away.
“Don’t you remember? We talked about it when we moved in. Anyway, don’t talk about them here. We’re too close, they’ll hear us. And they’re all in a rage these days, what with the plastic crisis, the oil spills and the collapse of the fish stocks, so hush.” Her mother’s voice was harsh with stress and the tarp in her hand fluttered loudly in the wind.
Freya’s Dad loomed suddenly near, bearing another box away from the seaward side of the road. The box was plastered with ‘fragile’ and ‘this way up’ signs beside a picture of a wine bottle. He took the blue tarpaulin from Freya’s Mum and secured it quickly around his box.
“Listen to your mother, Freya. With her family background, she ought to know about the fishing crisis. Although I think it’s a god behind this storm,” he said, shooting a challenging glance at Freya’s Mum.
Freya wondered at the accusation in his voice. Her Mum never said much about her family, who’d moved countries a long time ago, leaving Danae alone here in Britain. Or maybe Danae had moved here by herself. Freya wasn’t quite clear on the details.
“Does it matter whether it’s a god or a goddess? That’s still our cottage down there in the waves,” Freya said, attempting to smooth troubled waters.
“It certainly matters to them. But don’t worry, we’ll find somewhere to go,” said Danae, ignoring Dion’s comment.
Freya thought her Mum was trying to put on a brave face, focusing on the opinions of deities to avoid the disaster zone that was now their house. Freya had never seen one of those deities her mother was always telling her and Tammy about. She wondered if such beings really existed. If they did, they weren’t on her family’s side right now.
Freya watched gloomily as what had once been her bedroom wall flaked off into the waves. The interior plasterboard submerged briefly under the sea, then reappeared with a single strand of seaweed draped over one corner. She could see her wallpaper. Off-white with small diamonds of blue, it contrasted sharply with the brown seaweed. The next wave sucked it further out to sea, where crest after crest broke over it until Freya could no longer see it. She suddenly remembered the house hob. Could it have escaped the sudden destruction? It was hard to see how. She gulped and crossed her fingers that it hadn’t gone over with the cottage. Hobs were supposed to bring good luck to a house, but today’s one certainly hadn’t brought any.
It was the middle of the afternoon when the cottage was washed away for good. A group of neighbours who had helped rescue furniture stood around, watching it go. Freya thought she and her family should be fortified with popcorn as they watched their former life wash away in the storm surge. That would go well with Tammy’s photos for social media.
The whole family stood together now, watching the destruction. Their nearest neighbours were glancing sideways at their own houses, perhaps wondering if they were safe. Freya’s house had been the closest to the cliff-edge though; no-one else would be out of a home today. When the drama was over, the neighbours edged away. Nothing could make it clearer that they would be offering no further help today.
Freya watched them go resentfully, only now realising that she was soaked to the bone and cold. Mr Fluffbum scratched irritably at her as she held him too tightly. She had just realised how close she had come to going into the sea along with the cottage.
“Come on then, Tammy, Freya. Come on, Dion. Let’s see if we can find somewhere to stay before all our things are ruined by the rain. Oh, what shall we do first?” Despite her obvious fluster, Freya’s Mum took charge. She kept up a constant monologue of suggestions, complaints and recriminations.
“I knew the place was too good to be true. It was too cheap. Not that we could have afforded anything more expensive. But we’d settled in here, my plants were growing well. I wish...” Her voice wobbled momentarily, before she regained a veneer of calm, leaving whatever she wished unsaid. She addressed her husband, who was standing a few feet away, looking out to sea with a frown on his face.
“Dion, help me get something covering the pillows, they’ll be sodden else. Or the food, we can’t use wet flour. Tammy, get your things covered. We’ll need to get everything moved by nightfall, or lose them. This isn’t a great neighbourhood. I know the neighbours helped us move our things out of the house, but just wait and see what happens after dark. Or rather, let’s not. Freya, get that cat into a box or something and help, now.”
“But Mum...” Freya’s voice trailed off as she realised that she didn’t have much choice. Tammy didn’t say anything as she piled her few possessions into a rucksack. Her face was pinched, lips pressed tightly together. Freya decided against complaining to her. She didn’t look like she would be sympathetic to anyone. Maybe she was still wishing she hadn’t missed the opportunity to film their house being washed away.
Freya’s Dad stood with his hands in his pockets, ignoring the goings-on as the family tried to figure out what they could take with them. His brown hair was black with rain, and droplets ran down his face unheeded. He was the one who had found this house, had enthused about the sea view and the good fortune that they could afford the rent. It was clear now that the rent had been low for a reason, and the sea view was all too visible with the house no longer blocking it. Surreptitiously looking at her Dad’s thunderous expression, as she cast about for a box that might hold a squirming kitten, Freya decided that she wanted to speak to him even less than she wanted to complain to Tammy - even though her Dad was usually her first choice of confidant.
Finding a reasonably solid box under a soggy duvet, she manoeuvred Mr Fluffbum into it, not without difficulty, as he somehow managed to get both front paws stuck on the sides of the box as Freya slid him in. Even after she’d tied the box with string, a white-mittened paw slipped out through the top of the box as Mr Fluffbum explored his new string toy. Despite the disaster that had struck their family, Freya couldn’t help but grin at his antics. The world couldn’t be all that bad, not when there were kittens like Mr Fluffbum in it.
Freya bundled up her wet duvet into a parcel. Perhaps they could dry it out somewhere, later. Now that she’d removed the duvet, water dripped into Mr Fluffbum’s box. He yowled irritably.
“Sorry. I’ll get you somewhere dry soon,” she promised the kitten. She looked over at her sister, who was juggling mysterious jars into her bag.
“So, Tammy, if you wanted to sell a video of our house being destroyed, why didn’t you? I mean, you have a phone. And photos too now, assuming your battery lasted. According to Mum, the storm surge was forecast. Someone knew it was coming, even if we didn’t expect the surge to carry the house with it.”
Tammy was silent a moment, then muttered.
“I don’t know who I’d send it to.”
“Well, any of those friends who are always texting you, maybe?”
“They wouldn’t care. They’re mostly trolls anyway. They don’t go near the sea. Though I guess they might have to if it keeps rising.”
“Real trolls?!” Freya asked disbelievingly.
“Well, part-trolls, at least. You wouldn’t believe how many half-breeds I’ve met at high school. I’m sure the PE teacher is a werewolf too. No pure human could be that keen on ball sports.”
Once again, Tammy and Freya’s Mum passed by at an inopportune time, this time carrying a tray full of seedlings that she’d evidently rescued from their house’s former site.
“Tammy, how many times have I told you not to call people half breeds and weres! It’s rude, it will get you in trouble - with me and them - and it’s probably not even true.”
“Oh, it’s true, all right. But they’re sort of friends, so surely I can call them what they are?”
“No, you can’t. No-one is supposed to know about people like us. If you bandy about phrases like half-breeds, either they’ll think you’re racist, or they’ll guess the truth. Neither is a good outcome, so kindly find a new description, whatever your friends are.”
Tammy rolled her eyes when their mother turned her back.
“I don’t see why we’re always so shrouded in secrecy. It’s not like we have anything to lose by being known. I mean - look, we can’t even save our own house. It’s not like we’d lose power by telling.”
Freya glanced around quickly to see if their Mum was in hearing distance. She wasn’t.
“Don’t say that to Mum, Tammy. She’d probably go spare if you did, right now. But... I wish we did have power. Enough to save my books, and not have to hide what we are.” She looked down towards the site of their cottage again and felt a niggle of guilt about that hob. “Enough that finding a hob meant the cottage wouldn’t get washed out to sea without warning!”
“Oh, don’t I know it. I don’t think hobs could manage that much though. They’re small fry, power-wise. But if I had power like those stuck-up deities, I wouldn’t waste it on washing away some innocent demi’s cottage just because you had an argument with their oh-so-glorious ancestors.”
Tammy glared at the waves as though her stare alone would hold back the sea.
“Are we truly demi-gods then?” Freya asked. “Or demi-goddesses, anyway?”
“Sure we are. Can’t you feel it in yourself?” Tammy struck a dramatic pose, arms raised to the sky, ignoring the rain dripping off her nose.
Freya wondered when her sister had stopped minding the rain. At one point she’d had quite a water phobia.
“That sounds rude, Tammy.”
“So not what I meant. If you don’t know yet, you’ll have to figure it out when you’re older. Not my job.”
“Alright, don’t give me a straight answer. You do know that I still don’t know what power I’m supposed to have, right?”
“You’re supposed to figure that out when you go through puberty, Freya. Ask me again when you’re older. Just be glad I figured out the rain issue for us.”
Freya couldn’t remember much of an issue with rain, except that there was usually too much of it. And she really didn’t want to discuss puberty with Tammy out here on the streets. She pursued another topic instead.
“So who had an argument with a god then? Do you know? I’ve always wondered why we don’t move away from the sea.”
“Mum’s never quite told me, but as far as I can gather, her ancestors were in some argument with a sea god. Or maybe goddess. Probably a god, the way she always goes on about the important difference between gods and goddesses. But I don’t know why we don’t go inland either. Especially now!”
“So, the gods are real, then?”
“Frigg, yes. Better not let Mum hear you asking that. Bastard gods. Fenris’ teeth, I wish they weren’t real.”
After a moment, Freya attempted to defuse her sister’s anger with distraction. Although she was angry herself, it also seemed a dangerous emotion, here on the edge of the cliff, so near the sucking waves and whatever gods or goddesses they might be hiding.
“So. Anyway. What are part-trolls like?” Freya was processing her sister’s earlier comments about half-breeds.
“Oh, you know. A bit hairy, the girls too, not just the boys. Arms like spaghetti, keen on rock music. Surely, you’ve seen them at school? And there were those werewolves in the last town, too.”
Freya shook her head. “I’m never sure what I’m seeing.”
Tammy warmed to her topic. “There was one in my class last year who turned up to all the school discos in pink pyjama shorts and an orange muscle top. He just stood around waving his arms in the air in time to the music though, so no harm done except to fashion and my nostrils. That troll’s B.O. was something else. To be honest, from what I can see, half-trolls are pretty much what Mum tells us they are. But don’t tell her I said so, she’d rub it in for years.”
“Do all the part-trolls have bad taste in clothes then?”
Tammy nodded, her eyes on the sea.
“Far as I can tell they do. That was a supreme example though.”
“Tammy, why are we talking about trolls and their fashion choices?”
“You got anything happier to talk about?”
“I guess not.”
“There you are then.”
***
