Stories

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 16 Marwick’s Hole

I wondered if there was any sort of protocol when talking to ghosts. Is one allowed to call on them? Or is that considered too forward and one should wait to be acknowledged first?
It seems rather rude to disturb the peace of an entity without the consent of the latter, especially when their home base is always overrun with people.
Denise adamantly disagreed, saying Mr. Sinclair obviously enjoyed the company of the living and he’d be really disappointed to find out we came to the cathedral and didn’t bother to call.
Unfortunately for my sister, our friendly guide seemed to be otherwise engaged; besides, the church was filled with the living, anyway.
I’d stopped keeping track of the calendar in Kirkwall, my independent research schedule didn’t seem to find any usefulness for it and didn’t realize we had come to the cathedral on a Sunday. 
The service was almost over when we arrived, and we slid into one of the pews as quietly as possible, careful not to disturb the ceremony.
The familiar chants lulled me into a soft reverie as my eyes wondered, taking in the austere details of the Romanesque architecture, and I was startled when the soft voice behind me, a voice rather recognizable now, whispered from very close by, “I told you, young lady: second pillar on the right.”

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 15 Betty the White Lady

Upon returning from Birsay the following morning, I found Denise sleeping across the doorway.
“You forgot to leave a key,” she looked at me cross, but relieved I returned before it started raining.
“The landlady could have let you in. Why didn’t you ask her?”
“She’s out of town. How was your trip?”
“Uneventful,” I didn’t elaborate. How was I to tell her that, cliche as it sounds, my journey to Birsay had been more interesting than arriving at the destination? Once there, I couldn’t think of things to do, walked around for a couple of hours and headed back. “How was your day? Did you have fun with your friends?”
“And then some! Do you know people think your Fiona called out to you so you can find her bones and lay her to rest? They think you are a white lady who walks between worlds. Neil said that if you go to the Maeshowe cairn during solstice, she’ll talk to you then.”
I didn’t mention seeing Fiona when I visited Maeshowe, not to my sister, not to anyone else. Except the young man, the tour guide who dragged me out of there before I made a total fool of myself, nobody paid enough attention to notice anything unusual.

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 14 - Viking Poetry

It wouldn’t have been Denise if she didn’t change our plans at the last minute, based on the schedules of her new friends. Two days she’d been in a foreign country where she didn’t know a soul and she already made friends, promised to help them set up the stage for their Avant-Garde play and left me flopping in the wind.
Strange how one can still get distressed over being excluded when one left home for a solitary pursuit and went far away from the familiar places and people in order to find oneself.
I put on my best face for Denise’s benefit, and picked a destination to give her, annoyed more by my own reaction than my sister’s predictably harebrained schedule and arbitrary choice of activities.
“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?” She gave me her loveliest smile, attached to a guilty cat's gaze. “Promise me you’re not mad at me, Louise! I hate the thought of leaving you here all by yourself.”
She only called me Louise when she wanted to get on my good side.
“Denise, you weren’t supposed to come here in the first place. I’ve been here alone for months now, remember? I have work. And plans.”
“Ok, if you say so.”
She headed for the door, then changed her mind.
“You know, you could still come with us! I’m sure everyone would love to meet you and they could use another pair of hands.”
“Thanks. Pass.”
“Ok. Just call if you change your mind.”
“Denise! Go!”

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 13 Earth to Betty

My sister surprised me and came to Kirkwall two weeks early, loaded with goodies from home like a female Santa Claus, to help me get in the spirit of the festival, she said, although it’s more likely mom sent her to check up on me and provide her with the precious details she thinks I don’t want to share.
“Where is my instrument, Denise?”
“Oh,” she mocked. “You wanted that? Won’t your dead crush disapprove of such frivolities?”
I see you dancing around the fire, Fiona, giddy like a child, and carefree. What on earth gave you that lightness of being when your life was so dark and perilous?
“No,” I replied. “No, she would not. Give!”
She reached into her duffle bag and pulled out my ukulele by the sound hole, all tangled up in a knotted mess of cables and undergarments that instantly elevated my blood pressure.
“How could you shove it in your bag like that? It’s a miracle it got here in one piece! I’m starting to remember why I never let you touch my stuff!”
“Relax, it’s a ukulele, not the Holy Grail,” she faked giving it to me and quickly pulled it back. “You don’t get it unless you promise me you’ll play it at the festival.”
“Denise, I only know ‘Over the Rainbow’ and I’m not playing that.”

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 12 Back at Skara Brae

You get mixed up in stories and legends and soon you can’t distinguish them from facts anymore, because history and legend are uninterrupted threads twining through the fabric of time, and the events’ meanings connect across centuries, as if they are all a part of a greater whole we could see if we lived long enough. How long is long enough, Fiona? Although I shouldn’t ask you, should I?
In all the times I dreamt of you, I’ve never seen you old, my princess. I can’t see past that fateful day whose menace prompted you to pack all your power and will inside a gull and set it free. You looked so young it broke my heart, but I don’t think you died that day. In fact, I think you never died at all.
 
Hodr of the mail coat lets the halter of the arm hang on my hawk-trodden hawk-gallows;
I know how to make the pin-string of the shield-tormentor ride the gallows of the spear-storm.
The feeder of the battle-hawk enjoys the greater praise.
 
The florid poetry of your ancestors reverberates in the halls of the Gods, making you smile across centuries, fair child of Norway. What are you smiling about? What is it you’re not telling me?

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 11 - East Over Water I Fared

I stopped by the church yesterday and the mystery of the black tombstones was explained: the graveyard experienced a massive fire, yet the church was unharmed, not even a speck of smoke or soot.
I bet you’d be asking yourself right now, Fiona, how does one set stone on fire, and you’d be right. The priest couldn’t explain it either, hence the miracle designation of the phenomenon. It happened so long ago no written records of it remained, and oral history can be very imaginative in these parts. It’s hard to separate truth from fantasy after all these centuries.
I’ll make a record of my notes and organize them later, I don't want to forget the stories I heard, which, although they may be unbelievable to most, are still too fascinating to ignore.
Legend has it a beautiful young maiden, which strangely matches your description, used to sneak out at night and come to the cemetery to meet her beloved. The affair went on for years, and the maiden’s parents started to worry when she turned away every suitor that knocked on their door. Why, she was turning twenty and she was already an old maid, right, Fiona? 

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 10 - Saint Magnus’ Bones

It feels like everything in Orkney is made of stone, meant to last forever, and that includes the old stonework of Saint Magnus’ Cathedral.
The structure is Romanesque, and austere, with heavy, sturdy pillars built of red sandstone masonry, the kind it takes four people to surround, a strange stone forest again, built by the hands of men.
I returned to the cathedral because the heritage society documents suggested it housed more human remains than that of the saint, and when I saw you playing with the bones, Fiona, I thought this could lead to new revelations.
The most remarkable feats of humanity often come from its most wicked inclinations, and these triumphs start with bloodshed and sorrow, but life is brief, and so soon these tragedies are forgotten.
Betrayal, martyrdom, assassination, lust for power and wars, all the things that governed the lives of people in those older times, seem trite and insignificant when viewed through the lens of history, but the cathedral still stands, now aged nine hundred years.
And the Cairn of Maeshowe.
And the Ring of Brodgar.
And the happy underground homes of Skara Brae.

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 9 Entering the Earth

You sent me a dream when I was a child, Fiona, one of those weird dreams you don’t share, especially at that age, when nothing matters to you in the world, other than pleasing your parents.
I couldn’t forget it, though, like I can’t forget any of my other dreams about you. Those dreams, they feel so real! So real! Like a second life unfolding, independent of this one.
In the dream, I saw you standing in front of a green mound, smiling; it was summer, and you wore a white dress, held around your body with green ribbons. You had ribbons and flowers in your hair as well, and a torch, lit in the middle of the day, and I couldn’t help laugh at the absurdity of illuminating daylight, but you didn’t get upset, you smiled and signaled me with your other hand to follow.
You turned around, and I followed, and as I did, I saw you were dead, merely a skeleton wrapped in leathery skin, but somehow I felt loved more than I ever did in my life before and since, and realized I didn’t care, you didn’t scare me in that state, and strange as it may sound, you were still beautiful.

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 8 - Souterrains

The four-day festival was approaching the end, and after my friend’s departure I figured I’d better head back to Kirkwall and see if I can find more puzzle pieces for my study, but I just couldn’t face the stones again. Not yet.
I headed north instead, not really sure about the destination, and followed the road until it reached the shore. 
Living on an island offers one the unique experience of being bound by a circular water line: no matter what direction you travel in, you are soon stopped by the edge of the sea. 
This makes some people feel closed in, in ways that start wearing on them as time passes, but for the true lovers of island living there is no greater comfort than the sight of the sea, and its effortless proximity always puts them at ease.
The sea gives life, and it takes it. Brings riches and bounty, reveals and conceals what it chooses and keeps jealous guard over her secrets.
For four thousand years the village of Skara Brae was just another green bluff battered by the whims of the sea, until 1850, when a deadly storm stripped the grass and the topsoil off the ruins of a stone settling, perfectly preserved by the sand for millennia, a time capsule of Neolithic living.

My Dear Fiona - Chapter 7 Charon’s Boat

”You shouldn’t leave Stromness before you visit Hoy,” the lady at the front desk suggested with a motherly demeanor which tried to restore my sunny outlook on life, now sunk by the sudden circumstance through which I found myself alone again.
She smiled encouragingly, and pointed towards the pier, to the approaching ferry.
“Hurry up, now. If you rush, you can get there before it leaves.” 
She nodded approvingly in response to my befuddled expression, and I obeyed her suggestion without too much mental struggle.
There were only a few people on the ferry, braving a fog so thick the contours of Graemsay Island, which we almost brushed on our way to Hoy, were barely visible.
As I entered the mist, the world as I knew it stayed behind: its joys and its pains, the music and the laughter, the plans and dreams. A different place awaited at the end of the fog, and the other travelers, veiled in the mist, looked like shadows, sharing a ride with me in Charon’s boat to the island of the dead. 
This realm beyond the mists you approach in silence.
Nobody talked. 
We walked quietly, a distance from each other, to respect our solitary retreat, instinctively following in each other’s footsteps along the wooden path snaking through the eerie wilderness towards the giant monolith of Dwarfie Stane.