Machair - Part 1
A THREE-MINUTE fiction on a Scottish Isle
A thin cry is heard in the distance, like the plaintive call of a herring gull. But not that. Ian walks down the beach and ascends the low-lying dune. He’s curious. And there, hidden in the grass of the machair, is a baby in a basket. He looks round and sees no one. “Hallo?” he calls. And again, “Hallo!?” There’s no answer.
He surveys the empty shore, the long strip of sand, and picks up the crying child, tentatively. He knows nothing about babies, but he knows about fear, and about being alone, and what it is to need comfort. “Hello, little one,” he whispers. “Why are ye out here alone? Where’s yer mother?” The baby stares up at Ian with a frown, on the edge of another outburst. He holds the infant awkwardly, swinging it side to side. He pats the baby’s head, and touches its cheek.
He waits for a long while with the baby at the edge of the machair, and continues to call out, but no one appears. Not knowing what else to do, he writes a note on his lunch bag and leaves it on a rock, anchored with a piece of driftwood, against a sudden gust of wind. “I have taken the baby to the police. Don’t worry. It is safe.”
He’s carrying the sleeping child across the blooming sea fields toward the car park, when he finds the woman. She’s lying in the wildflowers, the sun on her face. Surrounded by clover and meadow-sweet, she looks like a sleeping angel, with a halo of blond hair.
But she is not sleeping.
triple click arrow
Machair: low-lying, flat fields in northwest Scotland and the Scottish Outer Hebrides, which lie next to the sea and are formed of blown sand and crushed shell. They are covered in grass and wildflowers. Machair, from Scots Gaelic, is roughly pronounced mock’-her.
REscuers everywhere. ))))
A very interesting start, abrupt end…. Beautiful video….