Stories

Have you ever drifted into an experience so foreign you lack the means to communicate it and all the rules you relied upon to guide your life become useless? My sister and I ventured into the boreal night again, only this time it wasn’t dark. In the absence of light pollution, the sky burst open to reveal a profusion of stars, clustered tight along the bright path of the Milky Way. The night was a...

While listening to a lecture on postmodernism and influence, a sudden recognition stunned me.   Of course there are no new stories! Of course everything we think, regardless of our erudition or awareness, has been thought many times before! We all wade blindfolded through the endless pool of knowledge that is the collective unconscious, fishing out random revelations.  The human brain is not sophi...

Sometimes the river of thought flows through rapids, smothering the new born consciousness with the many faces of reality, so rich and thick with meaning you don’t even know if they’re yours, if they even relate to you, if they even exist, whether existence is something tangible, something whose presence you can guarantee tomorrow in this ever shifting unfolding of meaning that surrounds us. I am...

Have you ever drifted into an experience so foreign you lack the means to communicate it and all the rules you relied upon to guide your life become useless? My sister and I ventured into the boreal night again, only this time it wasn’t dark. In the absence of light pollution, the sky burst open to reveal a profusion of stars, clustered tight along the bright path of the Milky Way. The night was a...

I always thought my life would be like the novels I liked to read when I was a teenager, where the heroine’s life was a constantly unfolding drama, replete with emotionally charged moments and anchored in the importance of her actions, where every meaningful event was anticipated well in advance and everything turned out more or less as planned. Finding you was supposed to be a glorious profession...

There is an entire obscure half to life, one we avoid, forget, overlook.  You can’t overlook it in the northern realms, not during winter, when the nights are long, and where people sought refuge underground to escape the harshness of the weather for centuries. The dark half of the year, finding refuge in the earth, embracing stillness, these customs have been abandoned a long time ago, and becaus...

Night falls quickly in Orkney at the end of October, and we drove quietly past the lochs and the stones to reach the Storytelling Centre, braving a bone chilling rain that promised to turn into ice soon. We advanced through the darkness in silence, lulled by the rhythmic motion of the windshield wipers, like the last two people on earth, who reached the limits of their familiar realm and dared to...

The sunshine was warm and hazy at the equinox, brushing the grassy knolls and the tops of the stones and sparkling on the lochs. I know you’ve been here so many times, Fiona, that’s probably why I can’t keep away from this place, and here I am again, at the Stones of Stenness, waiting for the equinox like I’m expecting something to happen. Spend enough time at sacred sites and you start believing...

The clashing of swords was overwhelming, the sky filled with dirt and thunderheads. There I saw them in the lightning, riding their winged horses with their hair in the wind. In the middle of the battle I saw you too, Fiona, and couldn’t recognize you, as you rode across the field looking very much their equal, cutting a wide path through the enemy troops like a scythe through high grass, with far...

I spent some time on the pier after our parents left, watching the cruise ship get smaller and smaller into the horizon until I could barely make out its contours. Denise sat by my side with uncharacteristic patience and said nothing. I didn’t realize how different I was here until my old life visited, and brought all of its patterns and details with it, but I am two people, Fiona. Two people, wit...

Orkney takes great care to protect her ancient treasures and history: they are revealed, not discovered, and usually only when she allows it. Violent storms have uncovered many of the old sites, stripping away the topsoil and vegetation to expose millennium-old constructions that had been sleeping beneath the ground. I wanted to show mom and dad the enchanting beauty of the islands and figured goi...

As the ferry approached Kirkwall, I saw them from afar, waiting on the dock with bright smiles on their faces. “Guess who’s here?” I nudged Denise. “No!” “Oh, yes.” “They don’t trust either of us, I take it. At least we’re dining in style tonight.” “Do you ever think of anything other than food?” “Not right now, no.” “My beautiful daughters,” dad embraced us effusively. “This is how much effort a...

We celebrated the white nights in the streets of Kirkwall, so filled with music and laughter, and I played my ballad, as promised, encouraged by an accommodating and enthusiastic audience.  Denise was bursting with pride and kept urging me to put on another show in Eau Claire when we arrived back home, and wouldn't let up until I said yes. I felt guilty in the morning for having so much fun and ne...

I was lucky to have Denise with me, otherwise my Maeshowe experience would have held me back, Fiona, because the cairn of Cuween was much smaller, much darker, much more ominous, as it is fitting for a fairy knowe inhabited by spirits from a non-human realm. The experience of entering the earth is only romantic in theory.  In practice it involves a lot of hyperventilation, scraped elbows and knees...

We are social creatures, and we don't want to stand out, so we will give up almost anything just to be accepted and partake of the huge game that is society and master its many levels. We’re not all that different, my sister and I: while she pretends not to experience things she can’t explain, I keep mine to myself, neatly placed in their appropriate containers, lest they risk contaminating my ver...

I didn’t want to wake Denise the next morning, between the beer and the late night I knew she’d be in a rotten mood if she didn’t get her beauty sleep, so I snuck out as quietly as I could, to get a cup of coffee. The streets were already filled with music and dancing and the rhythms of the drums, the festival atmosphere rushed me in the middle of the street, and carried me along with it, even a r...

The green meadow was quiet. There was a large crowd present, but no one made a sound, standing on the grass in a circle, in the light of the torches, waiting. You are standing in the middle, wearing the white dress with green ribbons, and you have fragrant white flowers and green ribbons in your hair, very thin ribbons which make it look like that of a non-human creature, like an undine or a selki...

I had promised Denise I’d come to all the rehearsals, not knowing how many they were going to have. Three hours in, watching the same performance fragments over and over, I was on the verge of losing my mind, and my bum was numb from sitting on stone. “How much practice could you possibly need for an improv performance?” “That shows how much you know about theater,” Denise commented, annoyed by th...

I couldn’t sleep, and neither could Denise. The sun woke us up when I had barely slept three hours. As for Denise, she had made up her sleep deficit during the day and now was sharp as a tack. We drove to the stones of Stenness with the rosy glow of dawn behind us. The midnight sun bathed our shoulders and put haloes around our hair, and when we got out of the car in the middle of the wilderness,...

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...

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 Bir...

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 ho...

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 d...

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 th...

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 l...