Surrender - Part 2
an odd Scottish tale - 📖 FLASH FICTION
This story is a continuation from last week. You will want to read Part 1 first, if you haven’t already. CLICK HERE
Surrender - Part 2
Hamish pushes back the ivy that crowds the front door and invites the woman into the clutter and jumble of his home. She waits hesitantly near the open door as Hamish adds wood to the embers in the hearth. He pulls a skillet of fried turnips onto the grate for warming and sets in a kettle of water for tea.
“Ye must be hungry,” he says, “and cold. Please have a seat.” He pulls the arm chair up to the hearth for her, but she stays in the doorway, uncertain. “I’ll just go an find ye a coat,” he says, and then, considering her bare feet, “an maybe ye’d want some boots? You just wait here.”
Hamish flies up the stairs, and returns in a few minutes with an armful of things. He helps her put on a large wooly sweater. She looks curiously at the socks, as if she doesn’t know what they are. He sits her down and puts them on her feet. He laces up the boots. “These are too big, but they’ll do,” he tells her.
She speaks in a language he’s never heard, he pretends to understand her. He thinks she says her name is Weelu. She scans the room, looking at everything, touching everything, but always keeping her eyes on the door. The tall clock in the hallway captures her attention, its pendulum rocking back and forth, back and forth. She flinches at the mounted stag’s head on the wall, and aims a horrified look at Hamish. “It’ s a red deer,” he says. “My grandfather kelt it a long time ago.”
When the kettle begins to whistle loudly, it is too much. She bolts out the door. Removing the kettle quickly from the fire, Hamish calls, “I’m sorry! Weelu! Et’s okay now! Ets okay! Please, come away in — et’ll no happen again.”
Later, at the table, he hands her a bowl of steaming turnips and another of canned peaches. She eats the vegetable with little interest, but finishes all the sweet fruit, including that in Hamish’s bowl. She watches quietly out the window for a while, toward the south, toward the river. She looks over at him and says, “Hem-mes.” His name.
As the sky darkens, Weelu sits on the floor near the doorway, wrapped in a blanket. Hamish gives her a pillow and she seems content. Instead of going upstairs to his bed, he stretches out on the floor by the fire, not wanting to leave her alone. He awakens once and notices she’s moved closer to the hearth. In the middle of the night, waking a second time, she is lying next to him, back to back. At daybreak, she is gone.
He searches for her out in the morning frost. “Weelu!” He goes down to the river, but she’s not there. “Weelu! Where’d ye go?”
Hamish finishes chopping the day’s firewood and brings it in. He’s sits in the window now, trying to read, but his thoughts wander to the woman. Did she just move on? Will she come back? In the late afternoon, he sees her walking up the path to the house. She’s dragging a couple of fallen branches with one hand, and in the other she carries a basket with some brown tubers and small bruised apples. “Hem-mes,” she says, greeting him with a nod. She tells him how she spent the day, Hamish understands only that she is back.
She throws the firewood down on the porch and goes to prepare food. She washes the tubers and sets them in the coals under the grate to roast. She chops the sour, wizened apples and cooks them to mush. Hamish gives her a small jar of honey to add to the pot, but she eats most of it with her fingers. She talks to him while cooking, as if he knew her words. He doesn’t, but even so, her presence is a relief. He was lonelier than he thought.
During their meal they hear a muted rumbling from a great distance, a muffled thunder. Running outside, they can see in the sky away in the south, intermittent bursts of glowing orange, diffused in the mist and the fog. Closer now, he thinks, Glasgow, perhaps. They listen together for over an hour, she drapes one protective arm around Hamish’s shoulders.
As Weelu still refuses to go up the stairs, Hamish drags a mattress and blankets down and places them near the hearth. He invites her to bring her blanket and pillow and sleep by the fire. Hamish lies beside her, and back to back, they sleep.
The morning of the third day, Hamish and Weelu walk the dried fields, the forest and the river edge, foraging for any edible plants. They find the frilled funnels of chanterelles, the last of the blackberries, a few more windfall apples, wild garlic. He plays his flute for her, an old highland tune. She takes the flute and plays for him — a dissonant, atonal sequence that somehow cheers him. In the evening, a heavy frost gathers, and the sky begins to rumble again, accompanied by more flashes of orange light. Hamish thinks it is closer now, possibly near Perth.
They sleep on the pallet again by the fire. He wakes around midnight to find her arms wrapped around him. The distant booming still echoes in the night.
He turns to her, and she says, “Hem-mes?”
“ Aye, Weelu.” They talk to each other, each in their own way.
After a while, they stand in the firelight and remove their clothing. They discover each other carefully. As he suspected, she is, in fact, not human.
Though the two species really aren’t so different outwardly, once free of clothing, what they see is not what either expected. Considering the time in which they live, it may have little relevance.
Wow Sharron,
This gets more and more intriguing. You have developed the setting beautifully, I can picture every detail of the house and the surroundings. The ominous flashing in the night sky, coming closer on succcessive evenings and Hamish's reaction--resigned and maybe not surprised.
The dialect is spot-on.
A little surprise at the end!
You've gotten us down the rabbit hole now. We'll be waiting for more!
The intrigue deepens....! And now I'm hungry for turnips - I feel I'm right there, Sharron!