IV

By the middle of August, Aileen had left the boarding house in Possilpark where she had been renting a tiny, tick-ridden room. She had been sharing a low-income unit with a couple who would inject a drug Euna had not heard of, and then shriek at one another, make loud love, rake their hands over a guitar at four in the morning. All in the great, hanging heat of summer. All in the gloom and smother of Aileen’s new solitude. She described the place only as unspeakable. When she moved into the camper, which Muireall and Euna had parked semi-permanently in Castlemilk, it was only natural that Aileen and Euna would share a bed. After all, there was limited space, and necessity is the mother of affection.

Castlemilk was not by any means a beautiful place, but Euna had learned that in the uniformly grey tenements and the uniformly grey faces there was a particular kind of comfort, if not actual kindness. She found the size of the district familiar, charming, and every time she passed the same dishevelled woman with her five kids in tow, or even the same ned in his red sportclothes, it would give her a kind of pleasure. Not to see them stuck, as some were, in poverty amber, but to know that in a world with such fogged edges there were sharp and constant points: red hoodie, child with snotty nose, grocery bag ripped at bottom, crappy old aerials on each building.

She would have been rather happy, she thought, to stay within those frontiers entirely. She could have made quite a go of that. Mornings reading in the camper, afternoons buying groceries or doing the washing, evenings having a drink with her friends, every so often going to a concert. Only hitch was that Muireall frequently sent her and Aileen to do chores – walking all the way to the suburbs to pick up a particular kind of cake flour, or researching arcana at the library, despite how hard it was for Euna to read at a high level. One time Muireall even packed the two young women a picnic and rented them road bikes, although neither ban-Leòdhasach had learned to ride anything but a mare. Muireall never offered them a reason, nor a choice. On those near-daily occasions Euna felt that, for reasons obscure to her, she and Aileen were not welcome in the camper, and that did not sit well in her gut.

It was a grey, faded day, and Muireall had just finished her crossword. Though she had been awake for several hours, Euna was pretending to sleep, so she could stay with Aileen in dreamlain. When they were awake together, Aileen was fitfully distant. Euna felt desperate each time she read aloud a paragraph about first love, almond blooms, linen canopies, hoping to receive affection and instead earning a laugh, or worse, radio silence. But when they were asleep, the small bed pressed their bodies together. All the warmth she had dreamed possible with Aram, or with any other person, moved over and through their two sleeping forms.

Aileen bolted upright. Looks like mid-fecking-morning! she said. Ye can wake me up next time, ye ken.

Euna sat up then, too, and perched on the edge of the bed beside Aileen. Her back was stiff from lying for so long. Good morning.

Morning, hens, Muireall said. She straightened up from the dinette and went to start her daily pot of stout, hard-wearing coffee. You’re in for a treat today. We’re going on a field trip to the library.

The library – as far as Euna was concerned, one of Earth’s sacred scenes – was an hour and a half away by foot. A field trip meant a ride in the camper, and that was fine news. Euna started to sing a random soundtrack, hoping that by doing so she would subliminally move Muireall to start driving. Now that she knew they were going to the library, had selected its interior from her mind’s image archive, she could hardly stay still. When she was very young, this had been the trial of every Christmas morning: having pictured the roast in the oven, with its crest of thyme and moat of fat, she would feel as if a smaller version of herself were running around inside, in circles, restless, unable to unsee that one image. Each bided moment had felt then, as it did now, like a life sentence.

I get your hint, Muireall said. She went to the driver’s seat and started the engine. Buckle up, loves, she said over her shoulder.

On the drive, Euna watched the city through the fixed window. They followed the A730, a monotonous, single-veined road, its only grace a casing of wild cherry. Then as they came closer to the city centre, the road widened, leaving space for signs announcing barbers, pubs, surgeons, cemeteries. Muireall flew so swiftly past them that Euna, who wanted so badly to read every word, began to get aggravated. But then the steadiness of the non-colours, the sky and road and stoic buildings, pacified her.

They turned onto Shawfield Road, bounded by a squat brick fence and immense streetlamps, all azoic and industrial – then, round the bend, the primitive river. It reached into the adolescent parts of her heart. The camper coasted over the river smoothly, on a bridge that was, though man-made, as mesmeric as the water. On the far side, again, grey bricks were only outnumbered by clouds, sandstone by wild drivers.

She knew they were nearing the library when the business signs turned from cracked and peeling to freshly painted, revitalized. The city core was comelier than Castlemilk, where Euna had seen two menfolk running around with harpoon guns, and many others getting jumped and gashed and harassed, or else swigging from flagons in broad daylight. The only way she could understand the difference was this: thick of winter at Cala, her belly used to stay warm, while her hands and feet would go numb. When there was not enough blood to keep her whole body hot, it would pool in the centre.

Muireall parked around the corner from the library and helped Aileen and Euna down the stairs. They reeled a bit, stepping onto solid ground after the feverish ride. Together they all turned the corner. Each time Euna saw among the many outdated buildings that single modern one, its face etched with the names of eminent novels, she brightened. For years she had believed herself to be the only reader on earth, the only creature strange or dissocial enough to need life support from lifeless things. And now a whole building had been raised to prove her wrong.

Euna moved behind Aileen and put one hand on her love’s waist, the other on Aram’s child. Pretty magical, isn’t it? she asked.

Waste ay fecking money, Aileen said.

Hey there, quacking ducks, Muireall said with a laugh. Stop bickering. Play nice for the dead poets.

Sorry, Aileen said, with an exaggerated curtsy. I’m going to blame my hormones. I’m glad you’ve finally found a welcoming place. You really went through hell back then.

And what was that supposed to mean? Neck prickles. Sure, Aileen had seen Cala, on one of its most suffocating days. But she did not know the place at all, not the intimate way Euna knew it, not well enough to pass such casual judgement. They had been a family, and only someone on the inside of a family can salt and beat its laundry. So she entered the library feeling guarded, and miffed, and a bit homesick. But if she could weather this mood anywhere in the world, it was here, where in this massive archive there were bound to be a few books that spoke to her.

The library’s smell calmed her. It was not musty, as she remembered, but sweet and lightly floral. She knew as soon as she came inside that she was safe. Muireall drifted to the poetry stacks – she lived for landscape verses, reading Li Po, Christina Rossetti to the younger women, which thrilled Euna no end – while Aileen grabbed a stack of comics and dumped herself, spread-legged, onto the middle of the hardwood. Euna knew a person was only allowed to read in a wing chair or else reclined on a daybed, but the librarian did not seem bothered by Aileen’s dumping. Euna stood in front of a random shelf and ran her finger along each spine, unable to read the words without also touching them. Her finger stopped suddenly on a paperback she must have overlooked on her previous outings.

The Witches Speak. She had not seen it in its entirety since leaving the north, and now here was a worn copy, smudged by others’ thumbs. She stretched the belly of her tunic in front of her, making a hammock for the book, as she had for the prawns some months before. Farther down the shelf she found a volume called Malleus Maleficarum, subtitled The Hammer of Witches which destroyeth Witches and their heresy as with a two-edged sword. This one weighed down the tunic-hammock too much. Once it was in there, she barely had room for one more.

She was attracted to a book with a title she could not understand, Le miroir des âmes simples. Were those words in a different language, or were they simply beyond her narrow English window? For once, the Bad Witch Muireall wasn’t there to help her read the big-girl parts. Still Euna was drawn to the book by a sort of magnetic pull, a heavy aura she could not ignore. So she took it into the hammock and then, having considered a wing chair, she splayed on the floor as she had seen Aileen do. The librarian looked at her longer than she had at Aileen, perhaps because her plopping down now seemed to be part of a trend, one of young people plopping, but she let Euna’s oddness breathe.

Ploughing through The Witches Speak, she found that, in this new setting, the words she had once taken to be sacred were in fact fairly dull, full of holes. They failed to strike awe into her, and more importantly, they were not the divine truths they were masquerading as. They were just something a person had come up with and then written down. Anyone could have done it, even Euna, had she the assurance that people would read it.

Before long she was on Malleus Maleficarum, which scared the cac out of her. Witches should be made extinct, it said, in essence. Over hundreds of pages he advocated for torture, for tying witches to pickets and burning them alive, in view of the public. Euna thought of Cairstìne, stalked and sunk to the bottom of the loch, and her cheeks started to bake. Near the back of the book she found an historical note. The treatise had been written by a German clergyman in the fifteenth century, after his sexual obsessions with an alleged witch caused him to be expelled from his home. A bit angry, a bit lusty, a lot ready to fight. Theologians called the work immoral, counter to demonology, but among the public at the time its sales were second only to the Bible.

So it was written by a nutter, yes, but one who had appealed to, or at least intrigued, a whole nutter segment of the public. A significant one, it seemed.

Hey, hen, Muireall said, snapping her fingers in front of Euna’s face. How’s the air in dreamlain?

I’m sorry, Euna said, eyes still down. This book was taking me somewhere strange.

Don’t read that shite, Muireall said. I mean, you’re an adult and you can read whatever you want and blah blah. But I’m telling you that book is torrid, blistering garbage, and a non-garbage person like you shouldn’t be wasting your time in the pish and tush.

Now Euna looked up. You have a way of putting things…

There was the twinkle in Muireall’s eye again, punch-drunk, wicked. Here lies Muireall, she said. She had a way of putting things.

Euna laughed and snapped the book in her lap closed. Still she held its great leather weight there as a kind of mooring.

Anyway, Muireall said, your girlfriend has somehow managed to fall asleep reading about mutant massacres. She pointed to Aileen, who was lying on the floor, an issue of X-Men tented over her. You should take her for a coffee or something, eh, pet?

Come with us? Euna regretted asking as soon as she had done it. She knew the answer was going to be no; she had that unnerving and unnamed sense that Muireall was trying to get rid of her.

I need to give the camper a bit of a tune-up, Muireall said. Take her for a cup at Papertrail and I’ll collect you both in a couple hours.

Yes, ma’am. Should we pick up something sweet for you? I’ve seen how much you like black buns.

Whoa, mistress of surveillance! Muireall said. It’s nice and weird that you know that. But nobody serves black buns outside of Hogmanay. I’d love some cranachan.

Cranachan. The word ignited an ache in her. But Muireall was already trying to get rid of Euna, and she could not stand to push her friend farther away by telling that horrid truth. So she held the story of her childhood and the burning church. She held it like pee all night at Cala with Lili beside her, held it within her four walls, like Aram in the nearby castle. I’ll do what I can, she said.

Muireall pulled a few banknotes from her jacket pocket and tucked them into Euna’s tight grip. Buy her a drink, okay? Something fancy with whipped cream. Gotta be nice to our loved ones so they don’t split.

She winked and was off, leaving Euna on her own, anchored by the leather. She hesitated, then carefully moved it from her lap and onto the library floor, before going to kneel beside Aileen. She stroked the girl’s temples until she wiggled her nose in a charming and even tempting way, slowly waking up. What had made her seem grotesque in the pinched atmosphere of Cala, the far-apart eyes, the broad nose, now made her seem rare. And rareness, in this room, was something to be celebrated.

Ìosa Crìost. Was I really just sleeping on the floor of the library? This baby’s an energy leech.

Euna stroked Aileen’s temples again, this time beaming. It had not occurred to her before Muireall said it, since Euna had always been the one to split, but it was true that Aileen had made no promises, nor had she ever seemed smitten in the same way Euna was. Euna had to accept that, as Samhain gives way to Nollaig, then Eanáir, people follow their own seasons, and between them the climate can change. Let’s get you the tidiest coffee in Glasgow, she said.

Aileen seemed eager to do that, tramping to her feet and leading the way outside. Euna had not had a chance to read the final book with the inscrutable name, the one she had initially been so drawn to. So, with her heart hammering and her conscience a two-edged sword, she hid it in the folds of her tunic, then followed Aileen into the dowdy day. Though she had stolen the book, the dust around her did not turn suddenly to lice, nor did frogs begin to fall from the sky or boils to cover the intimate parts of her body. She puffed out her relief and took Aileen’s hand. To steal and not be caught or punished, it turned out, was pretty fun.

So they went on their way to the cafe, as if they were two normal women, not rank ones from a cocked-up little village, troubled ones with DAMAGED GOODS signs around their necks. Not saints or whores. Not sorceresses or scum-witches. Just two ordinary, coffee-drinking women on an ordinary, coffee-drinking date. As they moved down the street, Euna smiled and smiled at all the people who hardly seemed to notice them. It was wonderful to walk and not be looked at.

In the pale white cafe were a handful of people wearing headphones, absorbed in the still life of their notebooks. Euna was struck by the handsome plants in every corner, a fiddle fig, a maidenhair fern, well and bright as anything in the Cala greenhouse. And then, she was struck again: from sleek speakers around the cafe came a song she had heard first in the Moog circle, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Until now it had been immobile in time, held in that stone room full of women and synthesizers. She had only heard Lili singing the words in her motley, overly emotive way – and now, to have a woman singing them beautifully, her voice both sensitive and assertive, Euna was entranced. She led Aileen as far as the cash register but then stood there mute, held hostage by the single. Aileen seemed to have no such problem. Biggest mug you’ve got, she said. Full of hot and sweet.

Euna pointed at the chalkboard behind the barista to order a coffee and cranachan. She had spent the past weeks studying the way Muireall and Aileen spoke, trying in turn to mimic their lilts and diction. But she was not ready to test herself in public yet, especially not while surrounded by this exquisite song.

Drinks in hand, they tucked themselves into a booth across from a pair of strangers who were clearly besotted with one another. Euna felt a need to outperform them. Especially after what Muireall had said, about the whipped cream and the splitting. So she played with Aileen’s tangled red hair, lifted the mug to her lips and tipped the coffee down her throat. Aileen coughed. What the hell! she cried.

Euna felt terrible for spilling such a hot mess on Aileen’s chin and tartan. But she ignored her instinct to say sorry, and as soon as she did, the whole thing took on a fresh absurdity. She laughed. A big, bubbling, dumpling-in-a-pot laugh. Whoops, she said. That was really weird of me.

Aileen looked pissed off, briefly, before her expression eased and she started to laugh, too. For the first time with real intention, she leaned in and kissed Euna. The electric cage around Euna began to light up again. The pleasure was so fast and frantic she was afraid to lose herself in it. She pulled back. The voice she had lost by the chalkboard now came out without strain. I love you, it said to Aileen.

You’re a fecking nut, Aileen said.

The song changed. This next track sounded more like Deliverance, though it was likely a different artist. Euna drank her coffee, and under the bitterness was a sweet trace, of blackberry, or syrup from a silk tree. Aileen kissed her again, this time with less passion and more care. Euna was wary of that warmth, having just had her feelings scorned.

Aileen looked at Euna. Her expression was blunt. My life was rubbish before I met you, she said.

And now?

I mean, honestly, she said, it’s still not great. I’m as big as Castlemilk and I’m carrying a random man’s baby. Sometimes when I’m hanging out with you I forget that.

Euna felt as if she had just eaten henbane, the way her arms roasted and reddened, her body clammed and clotted. She could not stop showing Aileen her missing molar.

I’m not such a sap about it, she said. But you took me in at my worst and didn’t want anything in return. Do you know how uncommon that makes you?

I don’t see why that would be uncommon, Euna said. You needed help.

You haven’t met enough people yet, I guess.

Euna drank the rest of her sweetbitter coffee with one neat little finger pointing all the way to the sky. She could not look Aileen in the eyes. And if you haven’t noticed, Aileen said, pinching Euna’s little finger, you’re quite pretty.

She had, of course, never noticed that. Grace was the attractive one, and she had made sure everyone knew that undeniable fact. Euna tried to peek at herself in an upside-down teaspoon, but the reflection was distorted. Instead she pulled the stolen hardcover from her tunic and turned it over, to see herself in its shiny laminate.

See what I mean? Aileen asked. She traced the reflected features, which did look quite pleasant now, at least as long as Aileen was touching them.

Aileen picked up Le miroir des âmes simples from the table. She started to flip through the book, and as she did Euna tried to read it over her shoulder. Euna struggled with the obscure words, some of which she had never seen in her life, maybe because they were old and out of fashion. Aileen pointed to a passage partway through the book. Hey, wee tutor, what does that say?

The first part was easy enough to read – I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love – but Euna had to wrestle with the rest of the passage. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment.

Euna turned to Aileen. The couple across the table paled in her periphery. The two women were alone in the white room. Euna played with Aileen’s hair not because anyone was watching, but because she wanted to. Bliss was not possible outside of the red tangle, the two inches Aileen’s head tilted when touched. To stroke that surface, alive with kinks and knots, was to rocket very close to heaven.

Mid-touch, Aileen spotted a stain on her blouse. Oh, fur fuck’s sake, you’ve spilled coffee aw ower me.

Well then. This particular heaven had fences. This particular heaven had sea-lice. This particular heaven had curfews, rules regarding speech and touch, prison guards to keep folks under control – and yes, blouse stains and romance slanted to the left, so that love tended to roll in one direction.

Aileen went to the bathroom to wash herself off. As she was walking away, Euna had a double sense, grief on the one side and relief on the other. While Aileen was gone, Muireall, as promised, came to find them. She had something in her hand, a large, hard case curved like a waterbody.

I got you something, she said.

There was that Christmas morning feeling again. Euna started running around inside of herself. She took the case and cracked it open, and in it was something she had fantasized about, though she had been too afraid to give voice to that vision – a guitar, a gorgeous, polished bass guitar. Ink black, with humbucking pickups and a lean neck. She touched the object and was shocked.

Euna wanted to show her gratitude but did not know how. She had never seen anyone perform that act. Then Aileen came back from the bathroom with her shirt doused in water and partway see-through, and started to jaw at Muireall for taking so long. She did not seem to notice the guitar, warm, no, aflame, in Euna’s hands. She did not seem to notice that in the time it had taken her to scrub one shirt clean, Euna had grown a new set of veins, made only for rafting pure, red light.

Let’s get out of here, Muireall said. I left the motor running. We don’t want some numpty making off with the camper. The three women left together, Muireall winking at Euna as thanks for the cranachan.

Back in the camper, Euna started to finger the fretboard. She did not know, at all, what she was doing. And though these first notes were ugly, what they aroused in her was not. She spent the rest of the day doing this, playing without an amp, making small and half-formed sounds, while her friends rested and stewed mutton and scoured their summer shoes until they shone.

It was in this afternoon of half-formed sounds, of humdrum chores, that Euna found her âmes simples. She could do her lyric work while a few paces away someone puttered, someone ran the tap – not speaking, of course, just making those soft hums of I’m here. This sense was different from làn but no less vital. She decided this was beathachadh, benefice, nutrition, living. Here, after all, was her heaven without fences.