Sun Dance (59 page)

Eilidh and the boy crouched low before the mast, her hand white and cold on the gunnel, her arm around young Eachan. In the glimmer cast by each toss of spray from the bow her thin face shone pale and tired. Her’s the intimate tears of song and poem that mirrored the grief of Highland folk severed by sheep and burning thatch from land and place; that listened to the lamentations which fed the stories of peat fire and sheiling and kept alive an affinity.

Blackness joined an island to the sky. The Hilda sailed an ocean dark as a path without a star. I looked astern, and in the tangle of our wake the specks of life which existed un-noticed by the day shed their light; the minutiae of the sea lived their few seconds of glory in the coils and eddies of our leaving; tiny phosphorous lamps, each had a moment’s glow, and then no more. Yet they carried us from Sandray on a stream of golden particles, flecks of existence, powerless as a comet’s tail ensnared in the warp of time and space without an edge. Each press of the breeze brought the slightest heel, we too were no more than particles in the flow of a greater ascendancy.

We sailed beyond the timescale of that night. To each pulse of conscious form is given a measure. Within the realm of particle decay and rebirth are the constructs of thought. To each particle is a lifespan entangled in a flow of energy, it binds the infinitesimal to an immeasurable. Two extremes bonded in the mystery of an unending change veiled by the swirls of cosmic dust which gave rise to a conscious being.

The golden specks trailed astern; out of the swell there rose an inexpressible calm. The sea around me seemed old and wise.

Late as we’d arrived, the table of Ach na Mara supper was laid for three. After Ella’s tumultuous hugging of Eilidh and young Eachan, I teased her, “You’re having guests tonight woman.” “Yes, and it’s yourselves,” her face rosy with excitement, “I knew you would be here tonight.” Although I’d always suspected Ella was gifted with an uncanny knack of perception, our unannounced appearance might just have been a shrewd guess. That was to change.

Supper over and although tired almost to the point of exhaustion, a little of the old treatment revived us and our talking took us into morning’s hour. Eilidh and I agreed not to mention the shooting, enough was enough. Eventually we got round to describing the bulldozing of the old Sandray house. As its painful detail emerged she nodded without any sign of surprise, “I knew that would be the way of it,” her eyes were downcast. “Eachan foresaw all the destruction,” she leant from one to another, “I never wanted to tell it to you, it was the last thing he said to me before he went down to the Hilda that day,” she took Eilidh’s hand, and eventually she whispered the words, “that day he died.” There was nothing to say. I sat swirling my glass, remembering the strangeness of my last day with him, our drams together and the depth of his thinking.

Silence pressed into the room, transposed the night. Even the sea was silent, nothing to break a penetrating stillness. I’d known it before, in this self same room, in this old house, by the edge of an ocean that ever murmured at its windows, built on the bones of those who’d wandered the beaches and lived by the riches of the tide. Built on the bones, the phrase repeated itself. The inner voice that speaks unbidden was guiding me through a hidden age. The people laid her in a grave amongst a ring of stones, a dark haired women, a necklace of gem stones around her neck. Sand blew, winnowing through the dunes, covering bones. I looked from the door to the fireplace, and in dread, up to the face above the mantelpiece.

Ella’s whispering startled me, “Last night I saw old MacKenzie sitting on that stone at the corner of Sandray house,” I realised Ella too was staring up at the sepia print. “He seemed to be looking into space,” her wavering voice sounded frail, “I heard him speak,” save the Viking stone,” he said, “save it from a grave.” Her words trailed out of existence, and slowly the Viking stone was on the ground before me. I could see the faint marks, the cuts which shaped it. I raised my eyes. A hunched figure sat, his back to me, immobile, transfixed by thought.

A sun was setting, thick, blood red. Gradually the figure grew transparent, his clothes fell away to dust, the sun’s last rays passed through his form, only an image remained, a skeletal imprint of glowing bones on the indigo night.

An utterance surrounded me, as an echo in the darkness will fill the entombing walls of some ancient sepulchre, “You tamper with the force that binds the atoms of the universe. All stones set one above another will crumble, beyond the grave is life’s false promise, into the cosmic abyss all will wander, roam as a wave of pure energy, destitute of hope until drawn spinning into the heart of an immutable blackness from which there is no escape, no escape.” Stars shone through a rib cage. The spectre rose from the stone, turned to me. The face of the macabre image slowly became flesh. Salt stained wrinkles, the death mask of the old man. His eyes were alive.

My head spun, the world revolved, turning faster and faster, I watched the globe receding, until it seemed a faint dot amongst a whirling crescendo of golden specks. Without warning the heavens erupted, unleashing a blinding flare of cataclysmic destruction.

Horizon blue eyes, they drew me towards the brink of a swirling vortex. Around its rim spun a light of indescribable brilliance. His voice was gradually fading, “Life’s purest emotion alone will survive. This is the whirlpool which devours all consciousness, the twist of an infinity through which this universe will pass, the ending which leads back to the beginning.”

The words were stretching, becoming fainter and fainter, I fought to hear them, “in a flash of consummate knowledge there will be a universe reborn, strands of emotion, pure, sublime as the music of the spheres will emerge afresh, held together by the inseparable bonds of en…..”

The final word receded, its ending syllables dissolved into the ripples beneath the Hilda’s bow. She was heeling too far. I gripped her tiller. Pull her head into the wind. Golden specks of phosphorescence swirled around me. Only a blue intensity remained above the horizon.

Eilidh was shaking my elbow. Starting bolt upright I looked up, the same blueness was in her laughing eyes. “Hector,” she smiling down at me, “you’ll pull off the arm of that chair, anyway you’re past sleeping, come on.”

At the limits of physical and mental exhaustion, I remembered nothing more.

Next night was again without a moon as suited our purpose. Iain and I headed to Sandray. There was no need of a compass, we steered to a profile of an island created by floodlights. The summit of the Hill of the Shroud blazed like a beacon. Turning into the bay we lost the breeze. Iain at the mast had just lowered the sail when a resounding explosion shocked the atmosphere with the effect of broadside. He spoke in disbelief. “That’s rock blasting, they must be knocking the top off the Shroud.”

Neither of us moved. The Hilda drifted in. The slopes of the hill were totally blacked out by the gantries of arc lights ringing the summit. Giant earth moving equipment appeared to be operating in a silver void suspended between a black pit of nothingness and the darkness of the heavens. Machines made grotesque silhouettes; insects waving pincers whilst devouring their prey. We moored at the jetty to the toneless rumble of diesel generators; their fumes clung to the surface of the water on the calmness of damp night air.

“What about the sheep?” I’d worried about them since we’d left. “Sheep, they’ll be away to the old village on the south side,” and Iain being the typical crofter, “so long as their mouths are busy grazing just leave them alone till you see what happens. There’ll be more when you come for them.” Up from the shore, telescopic cranes and fork lift trucks were moving amongst the prefab huts, a night shift of working shadows. We clambered over the levelled dunes hardly able to get our bearings in the dazzle of overhead lighting. “Surely this is where the house was?” I kicked at the soil. Nothing remained, fresh earth rolled and flattened, not a trace of house, garden, fences, no stone or lintel saved, all levelled as over, a newly closed grave.

Though Iain had not asked me directly he must have wondered at my obsession with a stone. In fairness, the oddness of our mission prompted me to tell him of old MacKenzie’s plea to Ella, ‘Save the Viking stone from a grave.’ “She might have dreamed it.” I thought for a moment before revealing such personal happenings, “you know Iain I’ve had some strange experiences sitting under the old grandfather’s photo late at night.”

He laughed a little, “Eachan was always good with the drams,” and then, maybe it was the incongruity ranged about us, he went on seriously, “Though I’m telling you I doubt if anyone else knows, maybe Ella herself.” His manner surprised me. “When Eachan was digging the foundations for the extension he put on the back of their house at Ach na Mara, it was long since, when they first came there, before I was born, but he told me this one night,” the lights shone on Iain’s face. I saw he was wishing he hadn’t started to tell me something of which perhaps only he knew.

“Well whatever, he was digging, it’s sand of course and he went deep, looking for a foundation, though I’m telling you he came on stones, that surprised him and he dug carefully, Eachan never went past the school in Castleton but his knowledge was wide, anyway, bit by bit he uncovered a ring of stones, they’d all been placed carefully, so he recognised he was opening a prehistoric grave.”

In the silence between us, the thump, thump of diesel engines beat tomorrow’s excavation. “At one side of the grave, he was just scraping with his hands, he found an earthenware jar, a bell shaped pot with little slanted markings round the neck. Near it where the ground was stained he told me he’d found teeth and a few strands of dark hair and a circle of wee polished stones.” I breathed deeply. All of this, before Iain’s telling, I knew. Built over bones, I saw again the hair, the necklace of gem stones, the people, small dark figures, laid a woman within a circle of stones, on her side, her knees drawn up as a foetus lies in the womb. A tingle of static energy lifted the hair on my neck.

“Eachan reckoned maybe five thousand years ago, and he set to putting it back, near as he could the way he’d found it, and told nobody. You see, he didn’t want teams of archaeologists swarming over the place, taking stuff away. He’d always a respect for things of the past. Anyway he’d no option, concrete founds went on top of the grave. That worried him for the rest of his life,” and very quietly Iain remarked. “You know, he was given to, how will I say it, seeing things.”

The house of the croft Ach na Mara built over an ancient burial site, a place of other worldly visions where spirits past and future communed with those receptive. I spoke for the first time, my words hesitant and stilted, “Iain, though I was never told this before, I knew.” Garish lights flashed across the dark humps of an incoming tide which spread in yellow pools on the beach of an island carved by the ocean. Amongst the dunes, the noise of machinery made them soundless. I said nothing more; nor did Iain.

We cast about, searching wider and wider. Nothing. I’d failed to save the stone. Head back for the boat. “Hi there!” We stopped. I realised the approaching man carrying a spade was the digger driver, “You two looking for a stone?” he obviously recognised me, “Dig under that sand bank. I hid it there. Sorry about the lintel, that bugger of a foreman was watching.” The driver had honoured his word. I shook his hand. “See here mate,” the man sounded almost serious, “your bloody stone nearly got me the sack,” and he pushed away the note I offered. Laughing with relief I informed him, “It’s a Scottish bank note, worth twice as much.” Eventually he accepted, “Thanks mate, I’ll send it to the missus, it’ll do as a souvenir of this hell hole.”

Moving the stone taxed our combined strength. Two slings beneath it and we staggered down to the waiting Hilda. Below the bottom boards the stone fitted snugly across her ribs. It seemed with her new found ballast she sailed as effortless as a tiny petrel skims the waves.

In the chill early hours we placed the Viking stone at the gable of Tigh na Mara, the gable which looked to Tir nan Og, Land of the Young.