Ruby
It’s taken a while, but I’m finally growing used to the simmer dim, as the white nights of June are known.
The sky never really grows dark at all, although it’s suffused with a strange sort of twilight in the deepest hours of the night.
The light makes it hard to sleep, and sometimes, as I toss and turn and the thoughts churn endlessly in my head, I find myself craving proper darkness so my body and mind can switch off.
Then we reach the tipping point of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and I remind myself that I should be careful what I wish for.
In a few months, the days will be so short that I’ll remember these summer nights with longing.
The hay meadow overflows with summer wildflowers, and I spend my free time painting there in the afternoons, while Hanna reads for a couple of hours. Her love of books has never left her.
Three days after the solstice, it’s Midsummer’s Eve, and I’m perched on a stool in the meadow, listening to the rasp of the corncrake hidden somewhere nearby as I attempt to capture the delicate petals of the harebells that grow among the windblown grasses.
So intent is my concentration that I don’t notice the figure approaching the fence until he says my name, startling me slightly.
It’s the man we met that day when we’d been up on the peat moor, and for a moment I struggle to remember what he was called. Donald Kilgour—that was it.
I set down my sketch pad and get to my feet. As I walk over to meet him at the gate, tiny golden grasshoppers spring away from my boots, and the corncrake calls a warning from its hiding place.
“Sorry, am I disturbing you?” he says. He’s dressed in his uniform of khaki-colored waxed jacket and green Wellington boots, and he doffs his tweed cap.
“It is Ruby, isn’t it? Did I get that right?
I hope you’ve been settling in well since we last met?
” He nods toward my sketch pad. “I didn’t know that you’re an artist. You’d be very welcome to borrow some of my art books if you’d like.
I have quite a collection. I’m sure there isn’t much in the way of culture on offer in your byre over there. ”
“It’s very kind of you to offer,” I reply. “I’d love to.”
He smiles broadly and seems genuinely interested in getting to know me better, which is more than can be said for Hanna and Jamie, who seem entirely disinterested in me and have asked no questions about my life before I arrived in Shetland.
“Then it’s a date. Would tomorrow suit you?
Come over about seven. I’ll rustle up some supper for us.
You know where to find me at Greystane House?
It’s a couple of miles by road, or if you feel like stretching your legs, you can just follow the path along the coast. The walk doesn’t take more than about twenty minutes, and I can always run you back afterward if you like. ”
I nod. “Seven it is. Thank you.”
With a wave he turns away, striding toward the path he’s just mentioned.
As he disappears, I hear the farmhouse door open, and Hanna emerges.
I collect up my painting things and walk back toward the byre to put them away before going to see if there’s anything I can help her with.
Something tells me she won’t approve of my plan to visit Donald Kilgour’s house, so I decide not to mention it.
She’s dragging the tangle of driftwood from the sheep shed, stacking the bleached branches into a pile on the short-cropped grass between the meadow and the beach.
“What’s this for?” I ask, as I help heave a weathered pallet onto the top of the heap.
“Our bonfire. For Sankthans.” Surely that’s obvious to any fool, her tone implies.
I stare at her blankly, and she says, very slowly so even this fool can understand, “It’s Midsummer, St. John’s Eve. Sankthans in Norwegian. It’s a thin time.”
“What do you mean, a thin time?”
She sighs a little impatiently. “A thin time is a time when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is weak. There can be powerful forces at play, like on Samhain—the night I suppose you would call Hallowe’en.
Midsummer’s night is the same. Even William Shakespeare knew that—he wrote a whole play about it.
So, we light a fire to ward off the evil spirits. ”
Okay, I think. I’m up for it. It’ll be a bit of fun.
Before we light the fire, I help Hanna gather bunches of meadowsweet and oxeye daisies from the meadow and we sit at the kitchen table, weaving them into circlets.
Then she sets her wreath on her head and motions to me to do the same.
“These help keep us safe, too,” she says.
“And tonight when you go to bed, you must place your crown under your pillow so you’ll dream of your one true love. ”
I shrug as I settle the flowers on my hair.
If there really is one true love out there for me, I certainly haven’t met him yet.
None of the students I dated at art school would qualify.
And then, once Lucy became sick, any thoughts of romance I might have had seemed completely irrelevant as I tried to support her through her treatments.
We wear our floral coronets as I help her stuff sheets of the Shetland Times around the bottom of the woodpile, and she strews more stems of meadowsweet over the ground surrounding it.
“Helps with the second sight,” Hanna mutters, as if to herself.
“The flowers are linked to courage and protection, and to the gift of attuning to the fairy realm.” But then she shoots me a glance, making sure I’m listening, and adds, “They’re often used to make love potions, too. ”
Straightening up, I catch sight of Jamie walking up from the bothy, carrying a bottle of wine, which he brandishes at us with a flourish. I’ve not seen him since that afternoon in the bay when he went out fishing for mackerel, but he seems in as friendly a mood today as he did then.
“Hello, you two Midsummer princesses,” he says with a grin. “I come bearing a St. John’s Eve libation.”
Hanna nods. “Could you fetch some glasses, please, Ruby? And bring the matches from the kitchen while you’re at it.”
By the time I return, they’ve carried the bench from beside the farmhouse door and set it upwind of the bonfire.
Jamie pours the wine as Hanna sets a match to the paper.
Then we settle ourselves to watch as the wind chivvies the flame, chasing it into the heart of the wood stack, and the fire quickly takes hold.
There’s something hypnotic about watching a bonfire burn.
It’s getting on for midnight by the time all that’s left is a heap of glowing embers.
We’ve consumed some hastily assembled cheese sandwiches and another bottle of wine between the three of us, and I, for one, am feeling a bit tipsy.
Hanna gets to her feet, swaying just a little, and adjusts her floral crown, which has slipped low on her forehead.
I assume she’ll head back to the farmhouse and her bed, but instead, she sets off toward the beach.
“Surely she’s not thinking of going for another swim at this time of night,” I mutter.
“Come on,” Jamie says, standing and brushing sandwich crumbs from his jumper. “You can’t let your charge go wandering off on her own again.”
We follow her onto the beach, where the tide is almost fully out, leaving the causeway leading across to the island high and dry.
Hanna beckons us forward, and I understand that, at last, I’m going to be allowed to see the storm petrels’ nesting place.
Once or twice before now I’ve suggested we go, but Hanna has seemed a little reticent about taking me to see them, and the tides have been against us, too.
Jamie takes her arm, helping her balance, although she seems more sure-footed than I feel as she crosses the stones.
We clamber up the far slope, onto the little island.
The ruined stone walls of the broch form a perfect circle, open at one side, and we settle ourselves within their curve, sheltered from the wind.
A bat flits just above my head, and I duck involuntarily, the movement making my coronet slip to one side.
Jamie reaches over and straightens it for me.
“The first,” he whispers, and Hanna nods.
It’s only then that I realize what I thought was a bat is, in fact, one of the first storm petrels to arrive back at its roost for the night.
Suddenly, the eerie dusk is filled with a darting of wings.
The simmer dim seems to come alive with the birds.
They’re smaller than I’d imagined, about the size of a swallow, fluttering from every direction.
“They’re so fast!” I exclaim, thrilled by the way they appear and disappear, as if by magic, darting into the stones. “It’s a wonder they don’t break their wings.”
One of the petrels lands on the hard-packed earth at our feet.
Instantly, it’s transformed from a supreme aerial acrobat into a clumsy, lopsided creature, waddling toward the wall.
“See how awkward they are on their feet?” says Hanna.
“That’s why they’ll fly thousands of miles over the ocean to avoid crossing land, where they’d be vulnerable to predators.
They go to great lengths—literally—to keep themselves safe.
If they need to stop and rest, they do it at sea. ”
Jamie laughs. “The ultimate in avoidant behavior, wouldn’t you say, Hanna?”
She tuts and shakes her head, pretending to be annoyed, although I can see from her smile that she enjoys his teasing. Yet again, I feel excluded from their cozy friendship and whatever the joke is this time.
I’m soon distracted by the arrival of more birds.
As they settle in, the air around us fills with a strange churring noise.
“You’ll hear them more easily than you’ll see them,” says Hanna, her eyes alight with joy.
Once again, I’m struck by how much more alive she seems when she’s out of doors, in her natural habitat.
She’s completely at ease in the wildness of her island home.
“It’s otherworldly. The birds…they’re like fairies. The light…this place…it feels enchanted.”
She nods her approval. “Like I told you earlier, Midsummer’s Eve is a thin time. And just as there are thin times, so there are thin places. This is one of them. A trowie place, as they call them here, where the other world peeps through. You can feel it now, can’t you?”
I remember her words. A time when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is weak.
“Are you there, Lucy?” I whisper, so quietly the others won’t hear me.
The magic flutter of wings and churring of the fairy-birds is reply enough.
There are mysteries in this world that we can never know.
To witness one is all the knowledge I will be permitted.
But maybe the not-knowing leaves us room for hope.
Perhaps Hanna is thinking something along the same lines, because she is the one to break the spell. “I come here to feel closer to Liv,” she says quietly. “They used to call us the Storm Petrels, you see. We were the girls who could flit across the sea and be in two places at once.”
I think she must still be a bit tipsy, because as she continues, her words don’t really make sense to me.
“But then we were locked away in that prison. Like the one in Pappa’s story, east of the sun and west of the moon.
No one could find us. No one could come and set us free.
” Her voice quivers, breaking off in a gasp.
The twilit night is already turning to dawn, and her face appears to wear a white mask of terror in the first glow of sunlight.
She seems not to see us, to have slipped away into another time and place.
Jamie reaches over and takes both her hands in his, as if physically pulling her back to the here and the now.
“It’s all right. You’re free now, Hanna.
You’re safe, remember.” She seems to calm a little, her fears soothed by his words.
He stands, nods at me, and we each take one of her arms and help her stand.
“The tide’s on the turn,” he says. “It’s time to be getting home. ”
We make our way back across the causeway to the beach and up the road to the farmhouse, where Jamie takes his leave. He seems reluctant to go and touches my arm gently as he hands Hanna into my care. “Will you be okay?” he asks. “I can stay if you need me.”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine, but thanks for the offer.” Whatever it was that triggered Hanna’s panic attack has faded now. A little bit of me wants him to stay, though. He was so good with her, and his capable kindness is very reassuring to be around. It’s a side of him I hadn’t noticed before.
Once indoors, I help Hanna into her bed. She’s shivering, and I pull the covers up to her chin.
“My crown,” she says, pointing to the circlet of meadowsweet and daisies I’d put on her bedside table. She tucks it under her pillow, then smiles at me, and I’m relieved to see a little color returning to her cheeks. “Just in case,” she murmurs, already falling asleep.
I pull her door softly closed behind me and head for the byre, exhausted after the long day and night.
I put my own fraying crown of flowers beneath my pillow.
But instead of seeing a vision of my one true love as Hanna had promised, it’s Lucy who comes to me in my dreams. I see her so clearly, as if she really has slipped through the thin veil between this world and the next and come back to me on this Midsummer’s night.
She’s herself again, as she was before the cancer began to erode her body.
I give her my hand, just as I did during those long hours spent sitting at her bedside in the hospital, and she holds it as tightly as she did back then.
But after a few moments, she lets go and turns to walk away, stepping back through the veil.
I try to follow her, but she looks back and then she speaks. “It’s not your time, Ruby. You have a whole life to live. You can’t avoid making the decision forever. You know what you have to do.”
I try to tell her I can’t do it on my own. I’d rather be with her in that world than without her in this one, so perhaps my decision is already made. But she smiles and shakes her head. “You aren’t on your own, though, Ruby. The birds will show you the way.”
Then she’s gone, and in my dream, the air around me is filled with a fluttering of wings.
They transport me back to the island and the circle of stones.
And suddenly I see Jamie’s face in the ruined broch, with the fairy-birds whirring about our heads, in that moment when he took Hanna’s trembling hands and drew her back to the land of the living.
There was something in his expression that was at once tender and strong. Something I hadn’t glimpsed in him before. Something that makes me realize…he understands loss, too.