The Winter Isles
“We are the afterthought to Iona, the pause at the end of the song.
Olaf of Man is dead. The man who sat on his island throne, lifted a finger in command and ruined my life. What should I feel? The laments drift over the water from Iona. Those who understand the music sigh and wilt with the song. I just shrug and spread manure.
Sigrdrifa skips to me across the heather. She is too old for skipping. We left home when she was five, and she is twenty now. The chattering, adventurous child is... a young woman. She is self-contained now, quiet. There is some essential relationship with the hollering ball of mischief she once was, but it is hard to discern.
‘Olaf dead, Mother,’ she says, flopping next to me on the heather. ‘Lord, think of it.’ She hands me an oatcake, and we munch companionably for a while, looking across to the strand of pure white sand on Iona’s shore.
‘Father Padeen sent me a book.MoreLess
Olaf of Man is dead. The man who sat on his island throne, lifted a finger in command and ruined my life. What should I feel? The laments drift over the water from Iona. Those who understand the music sigh and wilt with the song. I just shrug and spread manure.
Sigrdrifa skips to me across the heather. She is too old for skipping. We left home when she was five, and she is twenty now. The chattering, adventurous child is... a young woman. She is self-contained now, quiet. There is some essential relationship with the hollering ball of mischief she once was, but it is hard to discern.
‘Olaf dead, Mother,’ she says, flopping next to me on the heather. ‘Lord, think of it.’ She hands me an oatcake, and we munch companionably for a while, looking across to the strand of pure white sand on Iona’s shore.
‘Father Padeen sent me a book.MoreLess
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