THE MUSE (PART THREE)
“You look different, Lorna,” said MacDade the next morning. “I can’t put my finger on it. And Billy’s grinning like a cat. I’ve a mind to banish him to Sule Skerry.”
Lorna fished in her purse to pay the landlord barman. “A heavy night, that’s all,” she said.
MacDade leaned across her in a choking drift of aftershave, and handed a crisp, ten bob note to the landlord. His wily smile drooped.
“What’s that you’re humming?” he said. “Is it a poem? Don’t go getting any ideas, now.”
Lorna stopped tapping her foot, which, until MacDade mentioned it, was beating a strange tattoo upon the sticky carpet.
“Sorry, I don’t know what I was doing,” she murmured.
She had been dancing on a sandy shore, somewhere like Harris but not. A place where words had the power to reshape the sea. It took enormous willpower to concentrate on MacDade’s havering.
“My latest verse has been reviewed favourably,” MacDade said. “It’s been put forward for the National Prize again. What do you say to a pre-emptory celebration? There’s a cottage in Tiree Janet and I are fond of. I owe you.”
Lorna snapped her purse shut. “I’ll think about it.”
"And wear thou this - she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head:
The polish'd leaves and berries red
Did rustling play;
And, like a passing thought, she fled
In light away,” quoted MacDade, spinning off to his seat by the fire.
Pompous arse, thought Lorna. MacDade was at a low to pinch another poet’s verse. Perhaps Billy’s star burned bright only because the others faded.
The landlord slid a glass of dark, northern ale towards her.
“Has the guest been in?” she asked.
The landlord shook his head without having to ask which guest. “Not since last night, thank Christ,” he said.
“He’s been alone in that room for hours and hours. Shouldn’t someone check on him?” asked Lorna.
“I’ve slept off inferior hangovers for longer,” said an eavesdropping MacDade.
The landlord cleared a clutch of empty glasses from the poets’ table. “You’d have to cut my throat before I got involved in a fairy’s business,” he said.
The Makar spat into the fire. His ancient hands trembled on his thin knees. “Fairies—conscientious objectors more like. This century had need of their magic but they declined their help, as always.”
MacDade’s sly eyes narrowed, his grip tightening around his glass. The Makar ran a pointed tongue over his lips, but it was Billy who answered the barbed remark.
“Why should they involve themselves in human suffering?”
“Because they’re the bloody cause of it,” said MacDade, in a rare moment of accord with the Makar. His blue eyes scrutinised Lorna from beneath the wily brows. “They close their doors against us, but come into our world as they please, leaving longings we can’t account for. How else did we become poets?”
“If it’s in their nature they can’t help it,” said Lorna. “Maybe all they want is to be free.”
In the corner Arthur’s scribbling became slightly less furious. The poets’ bore dour expressions; their energetic evening polluted by uneasiness. Lorna knew they expected her to take her drink to her usual corner, but she leaned an elbow on the bar, as MacDade might. Something was on the tip of her tongue.
An agonised scream broke the silence. It came from the room above their heads; room seven.
Lorna mounted the stairs without permission, a clamjamfrey of poets at her heels. Only the Makar, infirm and cursing, couldn’t follow.
Lorna found the fairy’s door unlocked, as before. She entered a sparse room that contained a bed, desk and chair. A kelp-scented draught cooled her face. Draped around the chair was the stranger’s long fur coat. The poet’s crowded into the room, the landlord at their heels.
“Don’t touch anything, Lorna,” said MacDade.
She fished in the pockets of the coat. The fur of it bristled, damp and gritty. Sticking out of the left pocket she found a chanter of dark, black wood with strange engravings on the ferrule.
“Christ, look at this,” Billy cried from the bed, snapping Lorna out of her trance.
The landlord crossed himself. “This—” he pointed to the bed, “is why we shouldn’t mix with fairy folk.”
Lorna elbowed the poets aside. On the neat, white bedsheets lay a complete skeleton, replete with pitted skull and strong, sharpened teeth. The late fairy’s long white hair lay in wisps on the pillow.
“He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there,” said MacDade, aroused by the decrepit bones.
The landlord moved towards the stair. “I’m calling the police. I don’t want to, but I must. I’ll probably have to close the pub. God, why can’t they pick somewhere convenient to die!”
MacDade held up an imperious finger. “Hold your horses. It might be a hoax.”
Arthur squinnied at the mossy bones. Leaf litter clung to the bed and the ribs were packed with earth. He sifted a handful through his fingers.
“It’s not Scottish soil,” he said. “Maybe not Scottish bones either. Yet he came here to die, why?”
“I suppose Hyde’s hotel is as good a grave as any,” said MacDade, lighting a cigarette. His fingers trembled.
“I know why he’s here,” said Billy, examining the long overcoat draped over the chair. “This is a selkie’s coat. We encounter them every so often on North Ronaldsaay. He’s here to pass his coat onto the next generation selkie. It’s the custom of the seal-folk.”
The landlord seized the coat and pushed it into the young poet’s hands. “Take it then,” he said, “This is your fault. Bloody poets! You lads likely attract fairies, spouting mystical nonsense night after night. I don’t understand the half of it. Well, you’re not welcome anymore. You’re all barred.”
He pushed them downstairs against MacDade’s protestations. Lorna held onto the chanter as Arthur gathered up the frail skeleton in the bedsheet. They descended the stairs and stepped outside into the freshness of the street. Lorna examined the ferrule’s engravings in the sunlight.
“Mind and wipe it before putting it against your lips,” said Arthur at her side.
Billy joined them, holding the fur coat in his arms as if it were a child. “I’ll do you a swap,” he said.
Lorna shook her head. “I think things turned out as intended.”
Arthur jiggled his pile of bones. “Count yourselves lucky, I got saddled with the remains. I suppose I’ll bury them outside Greyfriars Kirk.”
“Outrageous,” said MacDade, wheeling the Makar onto the street. “We turned that hotel into a bloody institution and that’s the thanks we get.”
The Makar cackled. “Good. I was tired of drinking the piss-water that passes for ale in that place. We’ll find a shebeen worthy of our infamy. Gee up, MacDade—and don’t wheel me through every puddle in Edinburgh.”
MacDade obeyed without protest. He glared over his shoulder at the straggling youths. “What are you waiting for? Independence?”
Billy and Arthur toed the kerb.
Lorna slipped the chanter into the pocket of her overcoat. “I can’t go with you to Tiree,” she told MacDade.
“Tiree?” Billy looked up, dark eyes brimming.
Lorna waited for an epistle but MacDade only grunted. He turned, resumed creaking the Makar down the gloomy street. Words without voice drifted into Lorna’s head, tugging her west. She started walking in that direction when Billy caught her hand.
“I can’t accept your proposal, either, Billy,” Lorna said.
“Proposal?” MacDade whirled around.
“Write poems about me if you like, but I’ve outgrown the Hyde bar,” said Lorna.
Her voice sounded uncanny in her own ears, as if it were a stranger speaking.
Billy’s hand retreated into the folds of the fairy’s coat. “You’re changing before our eyes, Lorna,” he said.
Lorna cocked her head to one side. “Can’t you hear the music? It’s blowing through us like a wind. I need to catch it before it disappears. Or maybe I’m supposed to play it back? Aye, that’s it…” She broke off, laughing at the mystified poets. “I’m not explaining this properly, it sounds daft.”
“Daft doesn’t pay rent,” said Arthur with a mischievous smile.
Lorna pinched his earlobe. “I’ll give up the flat to someone more sensible, then. Well, this is cheerio boys. I’ve a notion to catch the next westbound train.” She hugged them both. “Goodbye.”
Sunlight sparkled off the newly wet pavements and the lowering hills behind the city spires. A mysterious yearning guided her steps. It had something to do with the refrain playing in her head. She suspected fairy music would haunt her all her life, but it was her task, somehow, to replicate this sound for human ears. She might never see the Hyde bar again. Or Billy, or MacDade. This path would take her to a land beyond the hills, out of sight. There was little she could do about any of this; she had been touched by the Muse.