AllFreeNovel
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In my hands lies the most beautiful object in the world.
It’s a porcelain egg, exquisitely decorated in coils of purple and gold. Its solid weight rests luxuriously in my palms and I don’t quite know what to do with it.
Rory pops a hidden clip and the crown of the egg opens to reveal a gently twirling dancer. “It’s a music box,” he explains as the ballerina rotates, sad and serene, to a delicate music that touches my soul. “It reminded me of you.”
I lick my lips, gazing down at the small dancer and her plush amethyst velvet surroundings. “This is too much.”
But Rory just laughs. “Weren’t you listening at the Christmas service? Presence.Presents. Yours is a gift enough.”
“I… That was aboutJesus.”
“I mean, I’m pretty sure you could turn any man religious.”
My nights are spent watching the sweet little ballerina as I drift to sleep. Its soothing celesta is the backdrop to several vivid but peaceful dreams where I find myself living on the island with the chiefs, including Luke, naked and free and undisturbed by the dark forces of the outside world.
The ground is a torrent of white. It brightly blankets across the grounds and into the woods, over the swollen hills, and as far as the eye can see. In my whole life, I’ve never seen snow as thick or flakes as fat and puffy. It looks fake, in a way, like a movie set with overdone art direction. But for one day only, after being cooped up indoors for an entire week, Baxter lets us roam outside. We play in the snow, laughing, running, falling, and it’sfreezing. The snow isn’t fake polystyrene packed closely together. This is the real, finger-numbing deal. Even wearing gloves, it’s too much, and part of why we throw snowballs at each other is to push the snow as far from our hands as possible. The other part is because it’s fun.
Danny builds a deliriously happy-looking snowman while I build a snow castle. Rory glances over from his massive pyramid of snowballs with an interested expression, and I realize after a beat that my castle is an exact replica of Lochkelvin. It hadn’t even been my intention. I’d just been sculpting, listening to the whisper of the snow.
Finlay strikes me in the back of the head with a snowball. I laugh and chase him around the grounds. When he disappears behind the stone curve of the castle tower, I stomp across the snow in search of him. He yanks me from his hiding place beside the wall and kisses me deeply, his warm tongue melting my frozen lips. Our game is quickly abandoned in favor of slow, hot kisses.
We trail puddles across the entrance hall. Hot drinks are supplied in the dining hall. Everyone looks so fresh-faced and free following our outing, though I have no doubt my cheeks are red for entirely different reasons.
Finally, days later, the snow stops falling and slowly melts, pulling away from the grounds like the sea going out with the tide. Younger students are shuttled away by irritated parents, the kind who think they can sue the weather for disrupting their Christmas plans. Rory gives us the all-clear to meet up with Luke, and we hug our goodbyes with the remainder of the school watching as I kiss boy after boy. I don’t care anymore. What we share is more powerful than anyone else’s judgment.
“Tell him I miss him,” Rory says quietly. “He’ll know that, but… I utterly do. And I’ll miss you, too, little saint.” His gaze flicks to Finlay, drawing him into our goodbye. “I’ll miss both of you so very much.”
And then it’s just me and Finlay. He looks strangely happy as he eases out from the icy castle grounds, the car passing Danny’s beheaded snowman and my shrunken castle, pockets of frosted green stretched between both. I wave goodbye to Danny and Rory, and maybe also to Lochkelvin itself, which seems to have touched me in ways I hadn’t expected this year, until it’s just me and Finlay and the open road.
He flashes me a bright grin at odds with my pining heart, adjusting the front mirror and snapping on the radio. Upbeat music blares. The windscreen wipers are swishing excitedly in front of us, clearing away moisture from the glass. “We’re on the way,” Finlay sings cheerfully, “uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh.” When I give him a blank look, he sighs and says, “The Proclaimers!” When my expression doesn’t change, he shakes his head and tells me I have an amazing time ahead of me, listening to all of their records, and he goes into deep detail about the merits of each one.
“You seem happy,” I say, not quite understanding. I’m overjoyed to be hours away from seeing Luke again — it’s been far too long — but not when it means leaving Rory and Danny behind. Maybe one day all of us will be able to be in the same room again.
“Whit’s better than this, sassenach? You and me and the motor. Bonny Scotland a’ around. Luke on the horizon. No’ cooped up like feral cats in that demonic castle.”
I almost feel hurt on Lochkelvin’s behalf.
The countryside blasts past us, crowned with white. There’s something about snow that makes the rest of the world vibrate with secret, magical energy. When the radio trills with an hourly news bulletin, Finlay switches it to something deliberately non-provocative, and we listen to a Scottish radio station promising ‘Pure pop music on the hour, every hour!’ Eventually The Proclaimers come on again during our many-hours-long car journey, and Finlay gabbles excitedly, singing all the words inLetter From America. I begin to find it in myself to laugh. When the radio plays Flirtmagicks, I turn the volume up with an embarrassing squeal and dance along in my seat. Finlay rolls his eyes and mutters that there’s no accounting for taste.
Countryside morphs bitterly into city life, the snow here yellow-brown slush and the air thick with fumes. Everything’s boarded up, the few unprotected windows smashed into gaping maws. There are signs of fire damage to buildings, black-stained walls and ash. In a public square, plinths exist without their statues — although on closer inspection, I note hooves, and sometimes I see boots, everything from the ankles up having been shorn off. It’s like protesters have left the stumps as a warning sign.
I recognize this place from our drive in summer; there had been statues of royalty here and fights breaking out over their existence. As we crawl through a junction, Finlay turns down the happy pop music out of some kind of respect. Not much seems to have changed here for the better. For whatever reason, this forgotten city of industry seems to have depreciated into little more than a noisy highway, and as we sit idle in congestion and gray clouds of pollution, I wonder why revolution always promises so much and delivers only ugliness to those who buy into its hype.
“You have places like this,” Finlay says quietly, a confused crease denting his brow, “and they’re made o’ concrete. Metal. Fuckin’ Soviet-inspired bombsites. Cold. Hard. Ugly.Brutal. And… it reminds me o’ hame mair than any place else in the world.” When I glance at him in surprise, his expression turns hesitant. “Before we hit the jackpot and became sickeninglynouveau riche, I grew up somewhere a lot like this. Is it fucked that this shitty aesthetic reminds me o’ hame? That I grew up so surrounded by this kind o’ deprived shite that I ended up forced tae see the beauty in it, just tae keep me sane? They didnae stick this up on the tourist posters. But this, tae me… this is proper Scotland.”
My heart gives a protective throb at the sincerity of Finlay’s words. Somewhere in there, he’s still just a frightened, underprivileged kid who expects his life to shatter, and to cartwheel back into poverty.
“I don’t know,” I say, measuring my words carefully. “I think, to me,you’reScotland.”
Finlay sits in stunned silence for a long, long time. His swallow is loud in the quiet of the car. He leans his elbow against the fogged-up window, which he gazes out unseeingly. “Oh, sassenach,” he murmurs in a roughened, laugh-tinged voice. “Ye always ken how tae ruin me.”
After a while, the traffic eases up and we inch toward the end of the road. “Ye’ve got places like this in existence and the rest o’ the world’s moanin’ about fuckin’ royalty.Royalty! People here cannae afford taelive.” Finlay sounds utterly jaded. “Who gives a shit, honestly.”
As the engine purrs beneath us, Finlay continues in a bitter voice, “Other than me, apparently. I shouldnae have got involved wi’ the dossier. It goes against everythin’ I grew up wi’, tae no’ be a snide wee grass, but I suppose Lochkelvin’s been workin’ its influence on me for years. Couldnae escape the hype. I mean, ye think people who live oot here have the resources tae gie two shiny shits about who wears a fuckin’ crown? Some fancy wee hat wi’ its ain cushion? No. Debatin’ the semantics o’ royalty is a luxury afforded only tae the maist comfortable in society, the fuckin’Tattle-buyin’ chatterin’ classes.”
“Really?” I ask, surprised. “You don’t think this affects everyone?”
“It disnae. Itdisnae. Luke’s family — aye, they represent the insane inequality dominatin’ oor society but they’re no’ the root cause. A hundred mair effective acts could have been taken by Munro’s government tae address inequality than abolishin’ the monarchy. Fixin’ the health service, the hoosin’ crisis, the electoral system… a’ that could have still happened wi’ the monarchy and would have helped far mair people. But no,hisbig-brain strategy was tae blame the government’s fuck-ups on Luke’s family, get rid o’ the lot o’ them and fuck off half the country, and then install his activist puppet-clown instead.”
