North

Brae's meteorite

I have been translating a diary, as you may be aware. It is one I found some time ago, full of words written in a strange hand. Despite my best efforts, decoding the lines of its author takes effort and an accumulated number of hours far greater than I ever anticipate. In recent weeks I have made headway, now understanding the looping order of the months and days that are inked onto each page. Renn’s precise timeline, however, will remain obscure until I have translated the whole.

Presented here is the latest entry. It is a passage recounting a conversation with Alistair, seemingly after the moment when Brae disappeared. I won’t lie and pretend I wasn’t affected by his words.

---

Feshen, 1-on-Flax, 568

In those first hours with Alistair, as he scoured the hill and its surrounds, his movement distraught and frantic and with a fevered conviction he would find the one whom he sought, I had slumped against the trunk of an oak, numb and tired and unable to speak. The oracle, in its many cruel ways, had shown Alistair his own future. In so doing, it had robbed us both of Brae. Like rain attempting to soak an already sodden land, the unreality this presented would not easily permeate my mind.

Later, when Alistair calmed and I had found my tongue, we debated as to what we should do. To head south was to return to Toör, to confusion and anger and faces replete with doubt. I found myself thinking of my father and what he would say. I thought of those who would recognise Alistair, their disbelief more immediate than my own. Yet to continue would find us in Kareth, a city vast and unknown—the very place where Brae would have been my guide. In the end, Alistair could see little sense in the former. What hope would he find, with both the women of his life now gone? I found that I agreed, telling him that if there was hope, it would be in the city of scholars. With this decision so easily reached, we did nothing else that day but make camp, walking a short way down the slope of the oracle’s crippled hill, far enough to feel we could rid our minds of its proximity.

“I’m sorry,” I managed, sitting that night by the fire.

“Sorry? For what do you have to be sorry?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my gaze fixed on the flames. “I should have stopped her. Done something.”

Alistair rubbed his hands through the thick of his beard. “No action could have changed it, boy. I am convinced of that.”

“No,” I conceded. “I suppose you are right.”

“I sought it for answers. For hope and nothing more. My Brae sought it for me.”

I could say nothing to that, true as it was. That many in our village thought Alistair had abandoned his child was something I felt best left unsaid. Brae must have known the truth. Sitting there with Alistair that night, thinking on all that had come before, I had no way of knowing then how that could be so.

For a long while after, we said nothing more. The fire burned, then died, leaving just sulking embers, scattered flakes of ash. Eventually, sleep came, though occasionally I would awake and hear Alistair weeping. At other times there was only the silence of the land, the movement of leaves, the unseen chitter of insects. When dawn came, Alistair was awake. He seemed different, more composed. He made a nod in my direction and I nodded back, sitting up. The sky, a clear and pale blue, promised warmth and there was a faint scent of jasmine in the air along with a tinge of something distant and unfamiliar. The storm of two nights past seemed to have cleansed the land. It was the total opposite of what it had done to my mind.

*

We were walking again and had found the trail north. It was a proper path by now, one weathered by feet more than two, taking us up a subtle incline towards another set of hills. To our right, its growth low and sprawling, the unmistakable line of hedge clung to the earth, a marker we no longer required. Toör was long to our backs, and even with all that had happened and the slow comprehension it brought forth, I found a hint of the surreal in being so far north.

As though the silence of our steps had roused his words, Alistair spoke.

“Your name, boy?” he said.

“My name?” I asked, too slow to catch his meaning, the kind of response I would have offered his daughter.

He cast me a curious look, his beard hiding what must have been a smile. “It is short for Renndon, is it not?”

I realised what he meant. There were no others called such in Toör, the name uncommon as it is. Though I had not told him my full name, to extend Renn into Renndon may not have been the most difficult of leaps, but it could just as easily have been short for Rendel, Renner, or the more common Renwick.

“That it is,” I said.

Alistair let out a sigh. “That makes you Darrow’s son, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “That it does.”

At that, Alistair laughed, a great bellow from his broad chest. “Oh this is such madness.”

“I thought we’d established that,” I said, kicking a stone into the grass, wondering how long it would take for us to locate each and every fact.

He grunted and clapped me around the shoulders, an action I soon came to expect at all times. “You are just three to me, little Renndon, son of Amistel. Three, and barely a day.”

I winced. “I’m very much not, as you can well see.” I offered a small curtsy as though to emphasise the point, but any mirth was soon gone, replaced instead by our shared disbelief. For Alistair, in the space of a moment he had traversed the years of my childhood, my short span of adolescence, the days and months and eons of my fawning over his Brae. The answers to his future had been crafted, instantaneous, by my own present. This realisation, recurrent and bleak, shuttered us again into silence, and for a good while we did nothing but walk. As we moved I noticed that Alistair would assume the role of leader, edging always slightly ahead, his actions so like that of Brae.

Eventually, he spoke again.

“Tell me, what was she like to you?”

My cheeks began to burn and I was thankful the heat of the day could mask the betrayal of my skin.

I scratched at my neck and summoned the only word I could: “Cold.”

Alistair laughed, slapped me on the back. “Cold to you, eh boy?”

“Cold to me,” I reaffirmed.

“My little girl—,” at this Alistair paused and swallowed. “My big girl,” he resumed. “My big girl. Help me see her. Describe her.”

“Describe her?” I asked. My words, idiotic in their repetition, seemingly had no care of whether daughter or father.

“Yes, describe her. Her looks, the length of her hair, the way she speaks. Paint a picture.” There was a glimmer in his eyes, as though he knew how I felt.

“Well,” I started, trying to order my thoughts. “She ranged, as I told you. So she was gone much of the time. Sometimes with others, but mostly alone.”

Alistair nodded, emitting a gruff approval.

“She was fond of the Owl,” I continued.

“Ah, good lass. Alwick still there, no doubt?”

“Yes. Alwick’s still there. Part of the timber itself, we joke.”

Alistair smiled. “Good. A kind man. Go on.”

“She could drink. Knew her ale. Knew—”

“—like her father, then. Less so her mother, but like enough her father.” He seemed pleased, angled his head to the sky, as though reminiscing on memories—ones I was creating for him. “And you drank with her?”

“On occasion, yes. We would drink together.” I couldn’t help the half-lie, didn’t want to admit that most my attempts had gone awry, through my own idiocy or that of someone else.

“I’m sure she found your company to her liking.” Again Alistair turned and gave me a look that said all too much.

“I could make her laugh,” I said, the words too quick to come forth. That I had managed to achieve such a feat mere days before seemed, in the totality of her absence, a false memory.

“Ah, that be a talent.” Alistair stopped and waited until I was by his side. “She was slow to laugh, my girl.” His voice became pained. “Something restrained her, even as a babe.” He let out a sigh, then looked up as several birds wheeled overhead. “I would tickle her, stick out my tongue, do anything I could to hear that laughter. But do you know what she would do, boy?”

“No,” I said, my mind too slow once more.

He shook his head, laughed his low laugh. “It was as if she would take that laughter and move it. Push it up her face. She would laugh with her eyes, ye ken?” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I would die happy seeing that once more. You could see her love, scrunched up in her eyes. That’s where she kept her laughter, most times. But truly, that’s where she kept her love.” Alistair squeezed my shoulder, so very gently, as though from father to son. “Take my meaning?”

“Yes,” I said, all manner of things inside me breaking.

If Alistair told me more that day, I don’t recall. I spent the rest of our walk in a distant place, replaying in my mind each moment I had spoken with Brae, all the times I had stumbled in conversation, played the fool with such ease. I recounted the many attempts to make her laugh or smile, and thought on each moment I had made her eyes crease.

I tried to count the last, but I ran out of numbers.

Substack image generator.

---

This was an entry from my novella, Brae’s meteorite. Writing serialised fiction is difficult, especially when I often want to flit in and out of other pieces. Something I have done aplenty. It has been many months since I posted a new instalment from Renn (last month I did rewrite the first entry, as a means to kickstart my mind again and engage the editorial part of my brain, though perhaps that doesn’t count).

I am late this week, so very late. I am travelling, currently in the far north of Australia for a conference, so time, somehow, dilates.

You can find the original first entry here:

Introducing: Brae's meteorite

And the table of contents here:

Brae's meteorite | Table of contents