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Authors: Helen Sedgwick
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that had smiled at her through splashing water. She wants to die here.
He carries her to the stream, away from the village to where the smell is less thick. He follows the shooting star because there has to be some help and it is all that is left. He saw it, the bright flying star, on the battlefield, watched it from the ground where he lay, pierced, bleeding. And now here he is. He doesn’t understand it. And there it is, the flying star, still in the sky.
They stumble through the night, following the flight of the shooting star; when he falls she takes over, supports him in her arms so they can keep going even though she doesn’t know where they are going to. As the sun rises they see a building of stone high on the hill, an impossible shadow. They don’t know if it’s real or a death-dream but they start to climb. She trips, crawls up the steep hillside, feet bleeding against the stones. There are doors of thick wood; she beats on them with a fist and falls to her knees.
My child.
She looks up. A woman is standing above her; the doors are open.
She tries to stand, collapses into the woman’s arms.
What is your name? she asks.
She doesn’t know if her voice will work; she thinks she is dead.
Ælfgifu, she says, letting the shapes form on her lips and hoping the sound will follow. And—
She turns to the soldier boy but he is gone. Something in her changes. It is a loss too far and she will spend the next thirteen years trying to bring him back; trying to protect their child. She has lost too much family and she knows she cannot stand to lose any more and now – and now she allows herself to be carried by a stranger into the safety of ancient stone and shade.
1994
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9
FRANÇOIS SQUIRMS ON HIS SEAT as he looks out of the aeroplane window, trying to turn far enough that he could press himself through the glass and into the clouds.
Look, Mama, he gasps, Mama, do you see?
They are over the sea; there is land rising up from the water.
Most of the Earth is water, his mama says, and below the water is magma. The land on top, it’s just floating, like the croutons in your soup.
François laughs at the image – Mama is so silly – but he doesn’t take his eyes from the view. As they descend through the clouds there is a moment when the world through his window is striped; golden sky, silver cloud, blue sea far below.
Look! he cries again. Mama, look!
And he turns, flattens his head back against his seat so she can see through the window, and she leans over him and presses her nose to the glass, and he laughs and kicks his legs against the seat in front, oblivious to the complaints of the man sitting there.
It’s not easy, taking a child on an aeroplane. Severine is learning the hard way, just like she has with everything else. Holidays have been by car so far, sometimes by train – though when he was younger she was too exhausted to take him anywhere. But they have seen Paris and Nice and stood at the foothills of the Alps; they travelled whenever she could take the time away from the épicerie, though every time they went away she wished her granny had been there to help. It’s not enough, not for her and not for what she wants for him, but she has tried to show him some of the world, at least the country beyond Bayeux. She has tried not to mention the ghosts that she saw in the days before he was born, because she wants him to have a normal childhood. Besides, she’s not even sure they were real now, though she still dreams of their voices.
And so now, for her first plane journey in ten years, they are going to Scotland; to feel the cold and the rain and the beauty and the music, to climb the seven hills and to start seeing the rest of the world. Perhaps she will even have a moment or two to herself; to feel like herself.
Every time she thinks that she tries to unthink it, but cannot.
As they land, he squeals with joy rather than pain – if his ears hurt like the other
He carries her to the stream, away from the village to where the smell is less thick. He follows the shooting star because there has to be some help and it is all that is left. He saw it, the bright flying star, on the battlefield, watched it from the ground where he lay, pierced, bleeding. And now here he is. He doesn’t understand it. And there it is, the flying star, still in the sky.
They stumble through the night, following the flight of the shooting star; when he falls she takes over, supports him in her arms so they can keep going even though she doesn’t know where they are going to. As the sun rises they see a building of stone high on the hill, an impossible shadow. They don’t know if it’s real or a death-dream but they start to climb. She trips, crawls up the steep hillside, feet bleeding against the stones. There are doors of thick wood; she beats on them with a fist and falls to her knees.
My child.
She looks up. A woman is standing above her; the doors are open.
She tries to stand, collapses into the woman’s arms.
What is your name? she asks.
She doesn’t know if her voice will work; she thinks she is dead.
Ælfgifu, she says, letting the shapes form on her lips and hoping the sound will follow. And—
She turns to the soldier boy but he is gone. Something in her changes. It is a loss too far and she will spend the next thirteen years trying to bring him back; trying to protect their child. She has lost too much family and she knows she cannot stand to lose any more and now – and now she allows herself to be carried by a stranger into the safety of ancient stone and shade.
1994
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9
FRANÇOIS SQUIRMS ON HIS SEAT as he looks out of the aeroplane window, trying to turn far enough that he could press himself through the glass and into the clouds.
Look, Mama, he gasps, Mama, do you see?
They are over the sea; there is land rising up from the water.
Most of the Earth is water, his mama says, and below the water is magma. The land on top, it’s just floating, like the croutons in your soup.
François laughs at the image – Mama is so silly – but he doesn’t take his eyes from the view. As they descend through the clouds there is a moment when the world through his window is striped; golden sky, silver cloud, blue sea far below.
Look! he cries again. Mama, look!
And he turns, flattens his head back against his seat so she can see through the window, and she leans over him and presses her nose to the glass, and he laughs and kicks his legs against the seat in front, oblivious to the complaints of the man sitting there.
It’s not easy, taking a child on an aeroplane. Severine is learning the hard way, just like she has with everything else. Holidays have been by car so far, sometimes by train – though when he was younger she was too exhausted to take him anywhere. But they have seen Paris and Nice and stood at the foothills of the Alps; they travelled whenever she could take the time away from the épicerie, though every time they went away she wished her granny had been there to help. It’s not enough, not for her and not for what she wants for him, but she has tried to show him some of the world, at least the country beyond Bayeux. She has tried not to mention the ghosts that she saw in the days before he was born, because she wants him to have a normal childhood. Besides, she’s not even sure they were real now, though she still dreams of their voices.
And so now, for her first plane journey in ten years, they are going to Scotland; to feel the cold and the rain and the beauty and the music, to climb the seven hills and to start seeing the rest of the world. Perhaps she will even have a moment or two to herself; to feel like herself.
Every time she thinks that she tries to unthink it, but cannot.
As they land, he squeals with joy rather than pain – if his ears hurt like the other
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