Mary

Something taps on the bedroom window. I bundle up with the moppet under the blanket, and keep still.

A low voice hisses from outside. ‘Mary, it’s Kelmar.’

Mam never let her come round.

She taps again, whispers, ‘It’s important.’ Tap tap tap on the window.

I cover my head with the pillow.

Hold my breath till I can feel she’s gone.

Mam must have not liked her for a reason. Kelmar’s the only midwife, so Mam must’ve had to let her birth Barney. Kelmar’s seen Langward’s eyes. So if Kelmar’s here to tell me Da isn’t Barney’s father, and Langward is, well. That I know already.

I lie in bed thinking, no, dreaming, no, thinking of Mam, broidering the diamond markings of the diamondback addersnake what killed her. I say, ‘Mam, broider me a picture of Barney …’

Mam’s sat at the table in the main room, I’m in bed smelling the lavender sachet under my pillow, but I’m stood right next to her as well.

She’s whispering, whispering, I lean in close but can’t hear what she’s saying. I feel my pillow on my cheek, but it’s not the pillow, it’s her hair against my skin. She sits there stitching by the window … her breath smells of lavender. Her eyes stare out of the window.

‘Mam, can you see where Barney is?’ I ask. My cheek presses against the pillow, I’m lying in bed and I’m standing next to her, I watch her stitching.

I ask her, ‘Would Da’ve given Barney to someone?’

The fabric she’s stitching stretches out of the window, all the way up to the sky. She’s lost in the stitches.

‘Please Mam, who would Da have given Barney to? Who would hide him from me?’ She dun reply. ‘Mam, if I dun know who, I’m going to have to search every cottage on the whole island …’ She’s using every colour of thread that she left behind her. Stitching diamonds full of secrets.

I start. I wasn’t asleep. Next to me on my pillow is a broiderie of Mam’s.

Threads tangled and knotted together on the back. I spread it out; the back of the picture is like a map. Threads lead everywhere, tangled together in knots and frays. I turn it over. It’s the broiderie she did of the owl with a woman’s face. The feathers are delicate and soft; shades of white, cream and honey-coloured threads. But her face is screaming, jagged black lines come from her mouth.

I roll it up and whisper, ‘Mam? Dun scare me …’ I listen, like she’ll speak, only she dun. The thought of Mam’s ghost being here makes my palms sweat though my fingers are freezing. Grandmam once told me ghosts could step inside the living and nudge the living person out. Though she made me scared of them, I still remember what she said:

Ghosts come after the living so them can possess us, step into our skins alongside us, breathe on just our in-breath, borrow half of our heartbeat, tangle half of our thoughts and choose from half our choices. But ghosts are greedy, them wants all of us. Ghosts dun get contentment with just half, them miss stupid things like thems own favourite foods, or the way them did thems hair, imagining it were better than anyone else’s. Ghosts dun want to share. If one side of a person’s face gets kissed and likes it well, what if the other side wants a kiss an’ all? Imagine if the side what got kissed was your face, and the ghost side of your face got jealous. What kind of a fight do you think that would make?

Like enough you’d never get kissed again, neither side of you.

Dun want to share my body with a ghost – the feeling of anyone, even Mam, just stepping into me makes my skin prickle, like my body could be haunted without me even knowing.

Sometimes my body dun feel like it’s mine. It gets numb or I get an itch and dun feel how bad I’m scratching it, or I get a bruise but never felt the blow what put it there. Grandmam never meant to scare me, for she told me this story to get me to stop being grouchy. Her moral were all about folks being happier in our own skin.

From the outside, if a living person has got a ghost in them, them’d still look the same, as them’re sharing the same skin. Skin is important to ghosts, as it’s part of what them misses; to be touched. No one would notice, while them’re sharing nicely, for the ghost learns how to act like the living person them’re inside of, only once them gets the hang of it, them can just nudge the living person out.

And no good can come of that.

I put the broiderie of the owl woman in my drawer next to my box of keys. The box rattles. I take it out and put it on my bed. I pull Nell’s key from my dress pocket and it hums in my fingertips, sings with the feeling of her touch. I hear her voice in it:

This thing won’t go in the houses. Too wild for the indoors. Dun know how I know that, just feels right in my cockles, whatever them are. Doug’ll be angered when him comes round, only I’ve got to get him safe … that kind of wildness, it’ll tear at anyone in its path … not just the guilty … not just the tall men …

Nell’s key can’t tell me anything I need to know about Barney. Just Nell worrying over her Dougan, and thinking the tall men were guilty, as she were when she last touched it. I close my eyes and think of Barney, to make sure the metal hasn’t caught her thinking about him. But it’s blank behind my eyes. I put the key in my wooden box.

I’ve got the key from Chanty’s, but Annie never locks her door, nor Beattie, nor Jek. Them can’t think them’ve anything worth stealing. The keys in this box won’t tell me anything about Barney. But anything metal that folks have touched since Barney went missing, the metal will know. I need to get front door keys and listen to what them tell me. Keys will have all been touched often, and recent. And if someone has him hid, them’ll be locking thems door. So I’ve got to steal folks’ keys.

The floorboards creak as I stand up and push the moppet into my dress pocket. Dun want to sneak past Annie, so I pull on my boots, throw a thick shawl around myself and ease open the bedroom window. I climb out, drop down on the spiny grass and climb up the path to the cliffs.

I can hear the clicks, the whirrs, the creaks of the Thrashing House, only I know it’s inside of my head I hear it, like the thrashing is about to begin. It sounds like the beating of wood on stone. No. It’s my heart beating. Thudding and thwacking like there’s a judgment on me all the way from the Thrashing House. Is this how it calls, through a heartbeat? My heart thuds and thwacks as I climb the path and try not to slide where the soil is loose. I wonder what it feels like, to have truth thrashed out. If it hurts.

The smithy’s cottage windows are dark. I try the door, and it’s locked. There’s nothing by the door, no pot to hide a key under, so I go to the barn where him works, and listen. Nothing. I turn the handle and the door creaks open. I step inside.

The barn smells of burned saucepans. My eyes get used to the dark. In one corner is the forge, the great anvil stands next to it and I try not to trip over the tools with long handles him has left leaned up against all kinds of old blocks of wood. There’s a new birdcage hanging on a hook from a beam, all coils of metal and I think them’ve got great huge birds on the main land for the gaps between the bars are so wide. Unless them wear the birdcages like hats, for I never can tell which kind of fashion is going to take them all over from one month to the next.

On the ledge of the forge I find a box of matches. I strike one and walk back to the door. There’s no key in the lock. There’s wrenches hanging from hooks, sledge hammers leaned up against the wall. The match burns my fingers.

I drop it on the stone floor and light another. There’s a small set of drawers, the top one is full of nuts, bolts and hinges. The match burns my fingers again so I shake out the flame and light another. In the next drawer down, there’s a clutter of chains. I spark another match and rummage in all the drawers. No sign of hims key.

Another match. There’s a box of tacks on top of the drawers. Underneath is a key. I pick it up, blow out the match and close my eyes. The smithy’s face swirls up, hims cheeks red from the fire. So this is the right key to hear hims voice in. I put the matches and the key in my pocket, creak the door open and go outside.

I walk up the hill to a long low cottage that old Jessup and her man live in. I look through the window next to the front door. A small room with a couple of stools, a great basket of raw wool, carders and a spinning wheel by the grate. I look through another window at the kitchen. There are milk pails on the table and ridged butter hands in a small washbowl. I try the front door, and them haven’t locked it. The key’s in the lock on the other side, so I put it in my pocket and close the door, quiet.

I pass a barn, the cows moan, thems hooves shuffle. Chickens squall and a cockerel shrieks and joins in, so I leg it back down the hill, past the well them all share and dun stop till I’m at Dougan’s barn. I lean on the wall till my breathing slows down, and walk, quiet.

Moira the cobbler, she’s not locked her door. Just behind the front door is her workroom. All her shoe trees with half-finished leather boots, a whole load of her tools laid out on the table, the awls what she stabs the holes in the leather with, her stretching pliers and the hammer she uses to bang the nails in the heels. She’s got leather strips piled on a shelf, and though the leather is from the tanners it’s lost the stench, for it’s been cured. But I can’t see where she’d put a key. I go through the doorway at the back of her workroom and I’m in her kitchen. It’s all quiet. On the right of the kitchen there’s another door what’s open a crack – there’s just the sound of her breathing. In her kitchen, I strike a match. There’s a hatch to her storm room in the floor, so I open it and hold five lit matches down. There’s a stack of leather cut-offs in the corner and shelves with jars of pickled onions, cabbage and eggs. The steps on the ladder are dusty, so she’s not been down here for a while. She’s nothing to hide. I dun need her key.

Outside, I walk back towards the cliff path to go home. I’ll go out and get more keys tomorrow night.

I walk along a stone wall, there’s about nine dead moles hanging on string along the top. The farmers kill them and put them there, to show all the other moles what them’re up against. But moles are blind. That’s why them keep getting caught.

The Thrashing House looms tall and dark. I get nearer, and stop, dead.

It’s thrashing inside. Clicking and creaking and whirring and beating. It’s come alive with the thrashing. It’s made of dark wood and it stretches so high the sky spins. An owl hoots and I near scream out. It’s a pale barn owl, high on the roof. It swoops over me, wings spread wide. I turn, watch it circle over the beach and it flies off into the dark.

I take a step towards the Thrashing House, and another. This place is ancient. The arrows carved in the door point up, and down. The sounds punch through the air, it judders through the soil under my feet, the sound thwacks and beats and whirrs and creaks like wood and I run to the top of the path what leads down the cliffs and I hit the top of the path too quick and

I trip

slide

fall,

catch my leg on a rock. Earth and sand fall away down the cliff. It’s a steep drop, right next to me. I pull myself away from the edge through damp earth, my heart thud thud thud against the soil. The soil thud thud thud against my chest. I feel with my hands, where folk’ve left footprints, for the crowd what put Da inside were stood right here. The Thrashing House creaks, groans, thwacks, but I pull myself towards it and slump on the ground. I push myself up and my fingers touch something metal. A heavy chain. It sings in my palm. There’s a link missing, the welding hasn’t held.

Something’s fallen off it.

I drop the chain and scrabble around in the footprints with my hands. The Thrashing House creaks and cracks and whirrs. My fingers find something else, cold and metal. Much heavier than the chain. It hums right through me. I sit up – it’s cold in my hands. This metal is strong. Old. I blink and the metal shows me a picture behind my eyelids.

I close my eyes, and see …

A tussle, the shoves and sounds of a crowd of people wash around me. Murmurs of ‘Speak. Speak. Speak,’ from voices of old and young, men and women. Annie’s husband Martyn’s voice. Slurred, confused. ‘No future here … not for Kieran …’ Another voice, Clorey’s, muttering over and over, ‘Better life than mine.’ Bill, Valmarie’s husband’s voice, sharp as slaps, ‘Jealous. Yes. No. Wanted her back. Got him gone …’ A picture of the Thrashing House, clicks of a lock, the door creaking open. Darkness inside. An angered shriek from a woman, the woman wearing this key. Valmarie. The crowd pitching, pushing and shoving the men through the door, Bill’s face, turning, eyes wide, mouth like a cave …

The Thrashing House creaks and clicks and thuds.

The metal shows me a dark sky. Flashes of faces, shawls and brown boots, angered voices, the smell of trampled earth, the sea, the flames in the torches, the Thrashing House towering above, a wash of faces, colours behind my eyelids. Trapped in a murmuring crowd, elbows, knees, pushing and shoving … pushing, then … falling onto earth. Still. Silent.

This metal were dropped in the crowd what were stood here tonight.

I look up at the Thrashing House – it creaks and cracks and whirrs and it’s battering inside, so loud that I know it’s too late for all the men inside it. Too late for Da.

But I’ve found the Thrashing House key.

I shouldn’t even touch this key till I’m twenty-one. I lean close and look at the maze of shapes cut out of the bit that would unlock a door. Like a part of a puzzle. The bow, the part held in the fingertips, it’s got a design made of arrows carved into it, one pointing up and one down.

I swallow the sickness down what’s in my throat, wrap the key in my skirt, tie a knot in the fabric, so it’s hid and I’m not touching the metal.

This key will have passed through the hands of all the women when them’ve took thems turns on the bell list. The women’s voices will all be stored in the metal of this key. So I won’t need to take any others. This is the only one I’ll need. For women know everything what’s going on. I’ve got to get this key home, and get it well hid.

This morning the early sun shines as I open the curtains of the bedroom window. All seems still outside. My cottage is full of creakings and footstep noises and nothing making the sounds.

Something small and grey moves on the floor.

It’s the moppet.

It crawls out from under my bed. It crawls awkward, its arms and legs aren’t the same length so it moves like it’s drunk. The moppet’s head is sewn on straight up, so as it crawls it can’t see where it’s going. It faces the floor, with its raggedy ears dragging on the boards. It reaches my feet, sits back and looks up at me.

Barney’s voice says, ‘Mary, I tired. Stay home warm.’

I pick it up and sit down on Barney’s bed. Tears make me not see right. I hold the moppet in my shaking hands. Dun want it to be able to move, not if it’s going to make me fearful. But I look down at the squinty mouth what should be Barney’s mouth, the raggedy ears what should be hims curly hair. And I dun mind if it scares me, for it’s got the voice I love the most. I even miss wiping hims snotty nose and washing off the dirt behind hims ears.

I want to ask it the question I should have asked it already. The one I’ve been too afraid to ask. So I do.

‘Barney, are you dead?’

Before it can answer, the sobs shake so hard in me I can’t stop them up. I wish I could unspeak it. Dun want to hear the answer. I bury the moppet in Barney’s blankets.

A clatter from outside the bedroom stops up my tears. I crouch down and look through the keyhole. A wide eye looks back at me. I fall on the floor and bang my arm.

Annie curses on the other side. ‘Thrashes been, Mary! You gave me some shock there.’

I scramble up and wrench open the door.

Her hair frazzles around her face, a pink smudge on her cheek from where her face rested on Mam’s chair. ‘I were only seeing if you were still asleep or no. I must have nodded off. Dogs woke me up knocking over the stool. Best get going home.’

‘Annie, stay a while.’

She puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘Oh Mary, what we going to do? We lost too much too quick ‘ent we?’

I nod.

She takes my hand and we sit by the empty grate. She says, ‘Ah, you poor thing, me in such a state, you must have been feeling right bad about your Da, only you managed to get both of us warmed and fed. You just got to take care of yourself. Feeding one is easier than two or even three. You’re still young, you’ll get through.’

‘So you’re saying I should forget Barney?’ My voice cracks.

Annie says, ‘I’m feeling a whole lot better, after a good sleep in your Mam’s chair.’ She whispers, ‘Tragic what happened to her. Your Mam, my friend. Beatrice.’

It’s a pinprick in my belly, to hear her name. Everyone always calls her ‘Your poor Mam’, or ‘Remember Mary’s Ma?’ Sometimes I forget she were ever called anything else.

I say, ‘With the amount of diamondback addersnakes folks say we’ve got on the island, you’d have thought someone could have come up with something in time.’

Annie starts, eyes wide. ‘No Mary, it were a deep, deep bite, she never even saw that diamondback. She were filled with the venom so fast she were out cold in a heartbeat.’

‘Well, you’d best get back home to feed your dogs.’

Thems tails thud on the floorboards as Annie stands up.

I smile at her. ‘I’ve never been alone here. Not proper alone. Even with Barney gone, when Da were fishing, I knew him’d be coming back.’

‘If your Mam were here, she’d tell you to get to doing your broideries. So I’m saying it for her.’ She squeezes my arm.

‘Ta, Annie. I wish …’

‘I know, pet. Me an’ all.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘Dun tell folks I knew about the boys being traded. I’ll not say anything about your Mam and that tall man. Stick together, we should.’

I nod but dun look at her.

‘For your Mam’s sake, Mary. Stick with me.’

‘Aye. All right. For Mam.’

We walk to the door and I’m thinking about what Grandmam said:

The Thrashing House beats the truth out of a person and turns it into some small object what can be seen and held. These objects are kept safe inside a glass cabinet, in the Weaving Rooms, where only the women go, and when you’re of age, you will be able to go an’ all.

‘Annie, you’ll go to the Weaving Rooms soon? You’ll get to see what the objects are what come out the hatch – will you tell me what object comes from Da?’

‘No, Mary, I will not speak of Weaving Room talk. And you’ve got to get on, keep going.’ Her eyes shine with tears. She runs her thin hand across her nose. ‘If I think about Martyn, I’ll want everything to stop. There’s no good can come from that kind of thinking. Right.’ She steps forwards. ‘I’ve got to get these dogs out before them piss all over your floor.’

Right enough, as soon as we look at them, the dogs all clatter over to the front door and scratch at it to get out.

Annie kisses my cheek. ‘I’ll check on you later. You’ll have a lot of broideries to do if you’re to keep this cottage on. I’m sorry Mary, sorry for us both.’ She opens the door. The dogs lurch out and head straight for the beach. Annie follows them. The wind blows her hair, it looks like golden smoke.

I make grey porridge, it glugs in the pot. I sit at the kitchen table and eat it on my own.

I get the buckets and go out of the back door. I walk along behind the row of cottages and up a small track to the well these cottages share. No one else is out back, but Camery’s chickens chatter to be let out of the hut. Beattie’s left her washing out on her line all night, her big white drawers and yellowed pillowcases sag. I fill the buckets from the well, take them home and slosh the water in the biggest pots on the range, go in and out with buckets, till I’ve filled the washtub in the kitchen. I lock the front and back doors, close the curtains up and use the copper jug to wash my hair and scrub the rest of myself clean till the water’s gone cold.

After I’ve dried off, I bind my breasts flat with a damp roll of bandage. Been binding them for a long time, and I dun remember when I started. Mam must’ve gave me these bandages when them started to grow. A blank in my memory. Mam never bound hers, and I dun think other women do, but the bindings make me feel stronger. It’s hard to breathe when I’ve bound them too tight, as I do often. As the bandages dry, them get tighter and tighter. I change my vest, drawers and socks and put on a clean grey dress.

I put dried heather in the grate on top of half a firelighter, spark a match, light the twigs and blow on them to get them burning. I put a brick of peat on and get the fire built up. Grey snakes of smoke rise up the chimney.

In the bedroom I reach under the mattress on my bed and get out the Thrashing House key, wrapped in the broiderie of the owl woman.

I’ve put the other keys that I took last night in my wooden box. Dun need them, but them’re mine now. Them’ll manage fine without them.

But no one’ll manage fine without this one.

Even wrapped in fabric, the metal of the Thrashing House key pulls at my thoughts. I sit in Mam’s rickety chair by the fire.

The key is made from a strong old metal. It’s gathering a sense of me, so it knows how to talk back when I touch it. I want to get at the stories caught inside it. But it’s pulling at my thoughts, not giving the stories up.

It’s trading for memories.

No other metal has ever wanted anything back from me. Just given up what it knows at the first quiet touch.

The smell of peat fills the room. Outside, the waves swish swash along the shore. I unwrap the edge of the broiderie and hold my finger over the bow of the key. It hums, pulls at my fingertip. It makes me think of Grandmam, we’re curled up in her bed and I’m fidgeting with her hair. It makes me think of Mam, watching her carry Barney down the beach to show him the sea. And Da, grinning so proud, when Mam told him how much she’d got from the tall men for one of the best broideries she’d stitched – a picture of red poppies, the petals blowing off in the winds.

I think about when I’m grown to be twenty-one. Then I’ll get given the Thrashing House key for my turn on the bells. It won’t be hid here in my cottage with me. A woman will walk up to me and put it, on its chain, around my neck. Everyone’ll talk nice to me for the whole day while I wear it, and I’ll go up to the bell tower that night and ring out the bells.

There’s a separate door to the bell tower, though it’s attached to the Thrashing House, and it’s this same key what unlocks both doors. The bell tower has just one flight of steps all curled around, no doors inside it that go into the main building. Ringing out the bells must be like reaching up to the stars to pull them down and sew them together, and tucking up the whole island under a bedspread made of stars.

Mam told me, once, when she’d been up there for her turn on the bells, ‘It’s like the Thrashing House were pulling at me through the walls. I were in the bell tower, but the pull of the Thrashing House made me jittery. I could have left the bells, gone downstairs, outside, and found myself going through the great front door. I felt it was gathering a sense of me so it could call me, make me do just that.’

I were sat up in bed, couldn’t sleep. Barney must’ve been crying.

She whispered, ‘I could hear clicks and whirrs in there; the Thrashing House were trying to figure me out. Trying to listen close, to the truth of me.’

Mam said, ‘You dun think bad of me, Mary, do you?’ She looked stricken.

I said, ‘No, Mam, I dun think bad of you.’ Though I dun know what she were talking of. I felt freezing, when she said that. Her eyes were wide and scared so she put her arms around me. I wanted to touch the Thrashing House key then, and I reached out for it, but she took the chain off from around her neck and gripped me tight again. It felt like she were tangling me up in blackthorn branches instead of her arms, but I let her hang on till she were calm, for she seemed so upset.

Remembering made me fall asleep. The morning has gone. I build up the fire again, keep all the curtains closed up and make kale and tattie soup.

Back in the main room, I sit by the fire. Unwrapping the key from the broiderie, I lie it on my lap and hold my hands over it. It pulls. The air between my palms and the key buzzes.

Think of Barney. Who knows where him is?

But the key wants more memories. It’s still trading. If I let it take what it wants, it will speak back. It chooses this memory …

Grandmam came to live with us before she died, when I were about seven. Well before Barney were born. Mam said she were too old and crazed to live in her own cottage.

She dun like it here at first, ran around our home with bare feet, spitting curses at all of us. She saw us like something else, not the belonging people, the family we were. Kept pulling at our hair, mumbling that five were a bad number of folks to have living together, though we were just four. Mam said Grandmam’d never got over her husband, Mam’s Da, taking off to live with some other woman. Mam said best not to ask Grandmam about that, for as she’d got older her mind were crumpling. Grandmam sometimes thought him were stood right next to her, like the ghost of a living man.

Grandmam rambled about all kinds of things: outsiders and insiders, marriages shipwrecked, the locked-up pink fence on the other side of the island, the Glimmeras fighting. Said we were all cooped up together like chickens peck pecking at each other. Well, her and Mam pecked hard enough at each other for sure.

She dun have to broider or mend or stitch, as she told Mam, ‘I’m far too ancient to be using up the last snippet of my eyes on the needles and pins.’

Mam weren’t best pleased, but she broidered more than ever.

Me and Grandmam used to play together like she were a child. It seemed sometimes to me like we were the same age on the inside. Though on the outside her wrinkles creased her face up, to smiles or tears like tracks in the sand.

We used to trade secrets, I’d tell her about the things I’d done and pretended I hadn’t, like when I ran away to see the pink fence when the chalk flowers were drawn on it, and then ran right back home again. Grandmam said, ‘That were a good one, take me along when you run away the next time.’

She told me the secrets of when she’d pissed where she shouldn’t have, and she’d laugh so loud Mam’d dash in for them secrets, like she could smell them. Truth is, she probably could.

It were when Grandmam were telling a story that she’d sound her age. The part of her what were the same age as me would sometimes play with the stories, find different morals and meanings from what were meant. Some of the morals she played with made more sense from her lips than the morals other folks would’ve come up with.

Grandmam lived here with us, sharing my room, for only a few years before she died. Them years were the most I’d laughed and fought and been afraid and felt like I were with someone who knew everything, but knew how to play all at the same time. My job was ‘Look after Grandmam’, and it were the best job I’ve ever been given to do.

I looked after her so well, I got her laughing till she coughed, not caring how loud she snored, eating the butter cream cakes Mam baked before anyone else had one, breaking things deliberate and helping me steal keys for my collection.

But she would never have let me steal this one.

Grandmam loved tangling up Da’s fishing nets when no one were watching. She had a child’s heart, so my job to take care of her were easy. I kept it beating so hard in her she lived longer than them said she would, but I had no games in me to fight against death; not playing with her, listening to her stories, cooking her broth or warming her with fires or soft blankets could look after her from that.

In the last few days I had a Grandmam, I saw death, a shadow with no face, waiting in the corner. Only it weren’t going to let me bring it into any game, fight it for Grandmam and win, and by then, Grandmam were propped up on cushions and weren’t able to play, other than with how fast or slow her breathing went.

Sometimes Grandmam’s breath stopped for a moment, I’d call in Mam, we’d watch her, then she’d breathe again. In the gaps between breathing not me or Mam would breathe them breaths for her, lest we took the life out of her before her time. But that shadow with no face were stood there in the corner, and it must have breathed for her, even without a mouth, for Grandmam died anyway.

‘She were old,’ Mam said, and hugged me. ‘It were the way of time.’

I told myself Grandmam’s stories over and over again after she died, so I’d never forget them. I can still remember the stories in her exact words. I’m warm now, even in my hands, thinking of her fireside voice.

The key wants me to remember Grandmam’s stories for comfort. So I’m calm when I listen to what it tells me. I put the key on the floor, for I want this memory just for myself.

Grandmam told me about the Glimmeras, and she would moan and groan, tug at her hair when she spoke. The story of five old women what live on a tiny rocky island just to the north of ours. How them got there, Grandmam weren’t sure. She said them’d been there forever.

This is what she said:

Be mindful you never become like them, for though once them must have been like normal folk, them are not like us any longer.

The Glimmeras are a family to each other. Five of them, all old, all ancient. Them are mothers or sisters or daughters or grandmothers to one another. Them have been alive for so long that no one remembers. Each one has a different colour of hair: red, gold, grey, white and black. Them have claws for hands, and them eat only dead fish, for that’s all them can get.

Them always used to bicker. Each believed herself to be better than the others, to be the greatest of the five: the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss. One day a rare thing happened, and all of them agreed on something. The thing them agreed on was that them would have a competition that would decide, once and for all, which one would be the best of the five: the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss.

The competition was called ‘The Thronebuilding’. Them were all very excited about the idea as this were the most important thing ever to happen on thems tiny island. It were the first time them all agreed on anything. Them made sure each understood the terms before them began.

Each of the five was to build her own throne using only the rocks on the island. The competition was held on the tallest part of the island, so them could all see the thrones that the others were making, so them could see what them were competing with. It dun matter who finished first, but them agreed that the winner would be the one with the grandest throne. The one who won would make all decisions and settle all arguments. All agreed with each other that the winner would have the final say on everything.

The Glimmeras set to work. Each tried to make her own throne grander than all the others. But because them all could see what the others were doing, every single good idea worked on the thrones was copied. No one wanted to lose, so them copied each other, stone by stone, rock by rock, pebble by pebble. When them finished, all the thrones stood along the pinnacle of the top of the tallest part of thems island, all lined up next to each other.

When it was time to judge the winner of the competition, them all stepped back and looked at the thrones. Them roared with anger and flew at each other, lashing out with thems fists and teeth, as all the thrones, while very grand, looked exactly the same. No one could win.

Them fought and fought till all were exhausted. Them slumped down all cut and bruised, each in thems own throne. A whisper started between them about having a new competition. Them argued and hissed and cursed and swore at each other while the sun rose and set and rose again, but them finally agreed on the terms of the new competition: the one that could sit on her throne for the longest time would be the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss of all the others.

The whole thing was, there only ever were them five what lived on that rocky island. Them could only ever rule over one another. Perhaps if other folks, not related, lived there, the Glimmeras would have saved themselves from thems fate by bossing everyone else around. But there never were any other folk, so that never came to pass.

The Glimmeras sat next to each other for a week, arguing the whole time, then a month passed and them scratched and screeched at each other. Of course them were all soiling thems clothes, sweating in the sunshine and shaking in the icy winds of night. Not one would budge. The whole place smelled rank.

Them stewed in thems own filth, screeched and argued and fought and scratched and wriggled and snarled at one another for so many years while thems hair grew long, then longer and longer still. It got all matted together.

Now them can’t move away from one another or thems thrones unless them all go, thems hair is so tangled and tousled and woven together. Them look like them are one body with five faces, all joined together, covered over by hair. Them must still have thems own arms and legs and bodies beneath it, hidden away.

Thems hair coils and twists, in parts like a woven rug, in other parts like a tangle of bushes or a whisper of light. In the sunshine the whole mass of hair glimmers, shines back up at the sun like it’s competing with its brightness.

The hair covers the whole island; nothing can grow beneath it, as it blocks out all the sunlight. When them walk around thems stony island, them all have to decide when to go as them have to walk together.

If one trips and falls into the sea, them all fall into the sea.

If one has a nightmare, them all have a nightmare.

If one gets sick, all get sick.

If one is hungry, them all have to go to the sea and snatch at the dead fish: only them hate doing anything together almost as much as them hate each other.

Them fight all the time, pull out chunks of each other’s hair, trying to break free. Thems fights cause storms. In the winter blizzards the snow is the dandruff from thems heads where them pull and tear at one another, trying to break apart.

We know this is true because the snow here is warm.

The fire is glowing, so I lay on another block of peat. Grandmam wouldn’t tell me the moral for the story of the Glimmeras herself. She’d ask me for it. I’d say something different each time, so she’d get mad like a Glimmera and chase me around the cottage, tugging at my hair. I said the moral were:

dun fight if you can’t win, or

dun argue with someone if you dun want to get stuck with them forever, or

if you want snow what isn’t cold, dun wash your hair, or

if your family stink, stay on an island together so no one else can smell you.

That last moral were always my favourite, as she’d go for me then and we’d knock chairs sliding and rugs flying, chasing after one another. We broke Mam’s mixing bowl, skidding into the kitchen table.

Mam told Grandmam off, said, ‘You’re acting more like a child than Mary does.’ Me and Grandmam both sat in the corner on the floor, plaiting our hair together so our heads were all joined up.

When Mam called us for our tea, we played a game where we would only speak if we could both say the same words as each other, loudly, at the same time. We only ate when we raised our spoons together. Soon we were feeding tattie soup into each other’s mouths. Made a right mess.

I know some of the stories Grandmam told me over and over could be just stories, but all stories have some truth in them. The snow here has always been warm since Grandmam told me it were. And there are other reasons I know this story must be true, because from the north shore, where no one lives, we can see a small rocky island with a mound on the top far away in the distance. A glimmering comes off it, like it shines the sun right back at itself.

The men dun go to the north of our island to fish, for there’s something in the sea what makes it shine too bright. It looks like stringy seaweed, but we know it’s the Glimmeras’ hair. There’s some kind of poison what fizzes and burrows all the way through it. Whatever it is, the fishes can’t swim, can’t even live, it’s so choked up. It creeps closer when folks step too near the water, so we keep well away.

If the Glimmeras’ hair crept up from the sea and covered over our island, we’d get deaded, choked in it. It never has happened yet. I think someone cuts it away from the north shore with a knife. Only there’s so much of it, it’d take a boatload of knives to do the job.

I stand up and stretch. Make a cup of mint tea and stir in a little honey. It’s getting dark outside. The whole day has gone so fast. Remembering makes me feel more tired than anything else. The key’s making me remember things in the time them really took, not like a quick picture memory, or one of the blanks I’ve got where a memory should be. Dun remember Barney being born, but Mam always said I were terrible sick around then and she had to keep me in my bedroom, so I dun make her get sick and hurt Barney when him were still in her

belly.

If Grandmam had still been alive, she’d have nursed me, and I might’ve remembered that, for she were never patient when I were sick. She were always prodding at me, saying I had to get better and play with her. And them prods of hers did make me get well faster than any kind of tincture. It’s comfort, like warm snow, remembering Grandmam. Warm snow makes me not mind so much about being alone.

I take the tea back to the fire, sit down and blank my thoughts. Just think of Grandmam saying ‘warm snow’. Not hard to do. Just blink, make my mind blank. Refuse any other thoughts before them twist in and unravel.

My thoughts are still. I’m blank enough to listen. I pick up the key. It’s cold in my hands. Not pulling at memories. So I’ve done my part of this trade.

Now it will speak back.