Frelsi (Book Two of The Liminality)

By A. Sparrow

Nineteen year old James Moody, after a brief respite on a goat farm in Wales, resumes a life devoid of luck. He explores the threshold of the afterlife and gets caught up between two warring communities of freed souls, where he is forced to make some difficult allegiances while searching for his love in the land of the living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. Sparrow
• Release date: Sep 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301843190

A. Sparrow

I'm terribly unprofessional and self-loathing. I can't imagine why anyone here would want to know anything about me. I write mainly for my own entertainment. It's fun to chase stories. Anyone else who finds enjoyment from it is a plus.

Book preview

Chapter 1: Cwm Gwyrdd Farm

Who knew that a Welsh goat farm could restore my appetite for life? It was a bizarre turn for me, but no more surreal than the weirdness that had gone on before I had ridden down here on the back of Sturgie’s motorcycle.

The man who owned the farm, Renfrew Boyle, was a veteran of the Falklands War, a Royal Marine commando who had stormed ashore at San Carlos Bay and seized Mount Kent from the Argentineans. But that wasn’t how he lost his leg. He also happened to be a Type II diabetic with a fondness for cheesecake.

Renfrew wore an old school, second-hand prosthetic cobbled from leather strapping and steel. He had picked up at a flea market for fifty quid after refusing the springy, high-tech carbon-fiber contraption the government had offered. He said it made him feel like a grasshopper.

Renfrew made goat cheese that drew raves from gourmands and restaurateurs from Cardiff to London. Cwm Gwyrdd’s aged rounds won an award in 1999, and ever since the orders kept coming without the need for any marketing. People literally came beating on his door to buy his cheese.

Sturgie, his nephew, had been in line to take over the cheese business, but that was no longer in the cards. He had left the farm that summer to pursue a degree in communications at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Inverness. Shuttling me to Brynmawr on his motorcycle had been Sturgie’s way of making a peace offering to his uncle.

When I showed at the farm unannounced, Renfrew had been skeptical and dismissive of this dirty-faced and broke American kid devoid of any useful skills. Why wouldn’t he be? But eventually, with the steady but inexorable pace of a glacier, he had come to appreciate my presence.

Renfrew had a grand time mocking my noobness, but he also had vast reserves of patience and tolerance. He knew when to dive in to rescue me before things got out of hand.

He had me doing things I never imagined. Trimming hooves. Mending broken horns. Pressing curds into cheese. Every day there was some new task I was expected to figure out on the fly.

Milking time was when I really earned my keep. Since I didn’t quite have the touch, those does didn’t let me anywhere near their udders. So I functioned mainly in support, disinfecting the equipment, emptying pails, getting does in and out of their stanchions.

Twice a day we went down to the barns. Each session took an hour and a half. With a hundred fifty goats, it could get pretty hectic.

Most does hopped right up into the stanchions eager to be relieved of their burdens. When their udders went flaccid they got fussy and then it was just a matter of getting them out of the way for the next eager doe.

Some goats wanted nothing to do with the stanchions, and it was like wrestling demons. I can’t say I blamed them. They reminded me of the wooden stocks the old Puritans used to punish sinners.

These goats were Saanen and Nubian crosses, breeds whose milk produced the high fats and solids ideal for cheese-making. Saanens were big beasties, uniformly white or cream. Like little cows they were, nothing perturbed them and they minded their own business.

Their alter egos, the floppy-eared Nubians, were the troublemakers, always testing the defenses. Their coats were uniquely splashed with ink blots of black and brown, so I got to know them as individuals not just interchangeable members of a herd. I came to love their curiosity and spunk.

Otherworldly creatures, these goats. With those horizontal slitted pupils, how could you look at them and not think of aliens?

I served as their concierge and bodyguard. I got them fed, brought them where they needed to go, kept them safe and out of places they had no business being—like Renfrew’s little vineyard.

Some of the buggers had squeezed through a gap in the fence and plundered his vines, destroying a good third of the crop. When I had run to tell Renfrew he just tossed me a coil of stiff wire and told me to go fix it. At least it got me out of the evening milking.

So here I was, weaving the wire in and out of each square of mesh and pulling it tight. My patch work was ugly and amateurish, but Renfrew wouldn’t care so long as it kept his goats out.

It was a losing battle, if you asked me. His goats lusted over those grapes and did everything they could to get inside that fence. I didn’t blame them. Those grapes gave off a glorious aroma under that late September sun. I was tempted to nibble some myself.

Folding the end of the wire into a hook, my hand slipped and it caught my finger. I winced and yanked it free. A large drop of blood beaded on the throbbing tip. I wiped it across my lips, salt mingling with the metallic tang of dirt and rust.

I stepped back and surveyed my handiwork, already knowing it would be inadequate. These goats were crafty little buggers.

***

And so, my strange life came to revolve around goats and slag heaps in the south of Wales. The daily rhythms and routines of farm life replaced my wandering. Natural replaced supernatural. But nothing could fill the hole in my heart that leaving Karla had made.

The goat farm was supposed to have been a temporary haven. Karla had warned me not to stick around too long. I was supposed to have kept on the move, keeping one step ahead of our enemies including Edmund, her brutal, religious freak of a father who—lucky me—was newly added to my list.

But I had gotten attached to this place. The kind and quirky people. My cozy space in a barn loft. Three square meals a day. If only I could have learned to like goat cheese (I never could get over that pervasive muskiness).

They even gave me spending money—below minimum wage, but I didn’t complain. I was illegal, for one thing, and my needs were modest. This was a hard situation to give up.

But there was another thing that kept me anchored here. Karla knew how to find this place. If I moved on, she would have no means of contacting me, just as I didn’t know where to find her in the great big city of Glasgow.

Of course, not being able to find each other was supposed to have been the whole point of this arrangement. I guess the isolation was supposed to make us sad and desperate. That way our soul could surf down the spiral of deep depression into the Liminality or ‘Root,’ as I liked to call it—that nether place twixt life and death only the truly suicidal get to witness.

Karla, you see, had given up on life. She was firmly committed to Root. She had friends there—Bern and Lille. And those friends had heard rumors of a community of souls who had found a way to take up permanent residence in its upper reaches, none of this flitting back and forth that us ‘surfers’ had to do. Frelsi, the place was called. I even looked up the name to see if it meant anything. The best I could figure, it was Icelandic for ‘freedom.’

Root had been a revelation when it first came calling, offering me escape from a life where I came to dread every sunrise. Back then, I wanted the world to stop so I could get off. Root gave me an alternative.

But I liked my life these days. I liked me and I liked this world I lived in. I didn’t want to feel so depressed some threshold of the afterlife comes after me. I didn’t want to die.

And it hadn’t. Not since Inverness, in that train station where the bounty hunter tracked me down, had I crossed over into Root. My memories of it now seemed like wisps of some old dream.

But I didn’t miss Root. Not one bit. I missed Karla. Five weeks apart felt like forever. I had no pictures of her to obsess over and my mental image had already started to blur around the edges. All that persisted was the memory of the way she made me feel when I had been with her in Root. I pined for more.

Every day when the mail came, I would peek in Renfrew’s box, hoping for a letter or a postcard, something to let me know that she was alive and that I remained in her thoughts. But no letter ever came. I died a little, every day without her.

You might think that the misery would build enough to send me spiraling back to Root where maybe I could see her. But there was too much hope in my soul.

That was because of Sturgie, my trump card. He knew Linval, Karla’s cousin, who had driven her and her sister Isobel down to Glasgow the night we parted. And if Sturgie could tell me how to find him, chances were Linval would know how to find Karla.

That was by no means guaranteed if Karla had moved on and gone to extremes to erase their path. But it was a shred of hope and enough to squash any chance of going to Root and seeing Karla under her own terms.

***

As the sun fell behind the hills, I realized the Renfrew’s staff was all gathered in the milking barn by now, making do without me while I bolstered Renfrew’s anti-goat, grape defense system.

I daubed my bloody finger on my jeans and tucked the wire cutters into my belt. Fence duty had excused me from the evening milking and I needed a break, so I took the path through the reclaimed slag heaps into the heights that overlooked the town.

I liked coming up here to think. Brynmawr looked purer from afar. The falling sun glazed its rooftops and twinkled in its window panes. Not that it was an especially ugly or dirty town. Like any place, it had its quaint parts along with the warts. It had never been wealthy, but some fancy houses remained from the glory days when coal and iron ruled the local economy.

The foundries were nothing but ruins now, jumbles of stone arches and chimneys. There were acres of overgrown slag heaps that could have passed for the burial mounds of giant trolls. Funny, how the slanting light of a September evening could make even a slag heap look pretty.

The barren and blunted ridges stretching into the distance looked nothing like the Scottish Highlands, but something in the air triggered memories of my ill-fated jaunt up the Llarig Ghru. I wondered what faerie worlds lay hidden here, visible only to human souls on the brink of death.

I decided to wait until dark before going down for dinner. The milking was likely done by now, but Renfrew had a habit of waylaying me for one last chore when my heart had packed it in for the day. Helen usually came to rescue me before dinner got cold, cursing Renfrew for exploiting me, telling me to put my broom down and finish up in the morning. Not that I was lazy or anything. I just wasn’t used to fourteen hour work days.

She was a saint, that Helen. I mistook her at first for Renfrew’s wife, but their relationship proved nothing of the sort. They regularly traded flirtations but Helen was divorcee who wanted nothing to do with men anymore. Her best friends were a trio of lesbian painters who shared a studio loft in town.

The farm’s entire staff lived on the premises and shared Renfrew’s dinner table. Besides Renfrew, Helen and me, there was Jessica and Harry.

Jess was the enigma. She could be as bold as a pit bull and shy as a fawn. She would talk your ear out one day and clam up the next. She was young, maybe half Helen’s age but she had this battle weariness to her that made me think she was a lot older than me. Mid twenties, I would guess, though I could never find a tactful way to ask her.

There wasn’t much to say about Harry, because Harry never had much to say. I took him for a simpleton when I first arrived, which only proved that all of my first impressions had been wrong. Harry was a jack of all trades and I mean ALL. Besides pitching in with the regular chores, he maintained Renfrew’s web page and handled all relations with the network of hoity-toity gourmet shops in Cardiff and London that stocked Renfrew’s cheeses.

He was an ace mechanic too. He could fix anything from tricycles to bulldozers. I consulted with him regularly in my efforts to restore an old motorcycle I had uncovered from the junked heaped in back of Renfrew’s storage barn.

***

As I watched the underbellies of the clouds turn pink, a twig crunched behind me. I jumped out of my skin as the very vision of a faerie princess came up the path, a strand of braided hair circling her brow like a crown.

Renfrew’s got a job for you, said Jessica, gazing down at her feet and the nubs of grass in the overgrazed meadow.

Don’t tell me. He wants his manure pile turned.

Nah. He wants you to drive to Cardiff. Harry was supposed to go, but he’s fallen out of the loft. He’s not going anywhere but the clinic.

Oh man! Is he okay?

He’ll survive. Broken ankle, Helen thinks. So anyhow, Ren wants you to drive his lorry to Cardiff. He’s got a shipment of cheese, needs to get to London.

Why not you … or Helen? I mean, I don’t even have a license.

Jessica frowned. Because you’ve got testicles and we don’t. Ren won’t trust a woman to drive his truck.

Why not?

She shrugged. It’s just how he is.

But I’ve never driven on the left. I don’t even know the way to Cardiff.

If it ain’t you, it’s gonna be him fiddling with that one good leg. One time his straps broke and he had to drive all the back from Pontypool in first gear.

I don’t understand why he won’t he let you guys drive.

She shrugged. What can I say? He says it’s a stiff clutch. Fit only for a man, the wanker insists.

Uh … let me go talk to him.

***

Trying to talk Renfrew out of something he had his mind set on was like trying to convince a boulder it was a frog. He wanted his cheese sent to market and he wanted me to be the one to take it to Cardiff.

The lorry was an old brick red Leyland with a raised bed and a canvas awning. It looked like a snub-nosed pickup truck, the cab shunted forward almost on top of the engine. It had to be at least thirty years old, but it didn’t look a day over twenty. I just couldn’t see myself driving it, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

We sat out on a picnic table in the tractor yard sharing mugs of bitter while Jess gathered her things from the guest cottage she shared with Helen. My own quarters were in a converted loft in one of the barns. My toilet was an outhouse. I showered under a hose out back.

It was a poor man’s solar heater. A sunny day gave me two minutes of tepid water in the afternoons, cold water when it was cloudy. Renfrew offered to share his bath, but I didn’t like intruding, though I might have to take him up on his offer if I was still around come winter.

I’m not sure this is a great idea, I said. That steering wheel on the passenger side really freaks me out.

Oh, it’s nothing, said Renfrew. Five seconds on the road and you’ll have the knack. It’s no harder than combing your hair with your left hand. You just flip your brain around and it all becomes natural. You’ll have Jess by your side to coach you. No worries, lad. None at all. I had Sturgie driving this beastie before he was even twelve.

I got up and peered into the grimy windows of the cab, grimacing at shredded seats exposing the springs beneath. How many gears?

It’s a simple five-speed. Single clutch. Take care in the shifting. The upper gears are sometimes reluctant to engage. Other than that, it’s a piece of cake. The cheese is already packed. Two coolers on wet ice. A trial run for a new shop in Waverly.

Jessica appeared around the corner of the barn, clutching a large canvas bag packed with sundries.

So where did you want us to bring this stuff?

Cardiff Central. Jess knows the way. Just do what she says and you can’t go wrong.

Wait a minute, isn’t that a … a train station?

Chapter 2: Caerdydd Canolog

It was already dark when I got the lorry started and popped it into gear. Jessica was in the cab with me, a thermos of coffee and fleshly baked sweet buns in her bag.

Harry was back from the clinic, his leg in a cast. He and Renfrew, the pair of gimps, looked on from the lighted porch with wicked grins, as if hoping I would mess up.

If so, they were disappointed, because starting up a truck and riding the brakes as we rolled down a hill was pretty much idiot-proof. Helen had already trotted down to swing open the gate for us.

When we reached the paved road, I went to up shift and found that Renfrew wasn’t kidding about that clutch. It resisted like someone had wedged a rock beneath the pedal. And when it gave way, it collapsed completely, like someone giving up an arm wrestle. There was only a narrow range near the top where it actually engaged the gears.

Nevertheless, I managed to get it into second, and then third as we trundled down the main road. And I was doing it! Driving on the left. It was disorienting, making me dizzy and slightly queasy.

The engine started to whine. Feel free to shift, any time now, said Jessica.

I slammed down the clutch and searched for fourth gear. Jessica watched me struggle before sighing and reaching for the stick. Here. Let me help. She reached over and slipped the shifter into place with a firm jiggle and a shove. I engaged the clutch as smoothly as I could, my thigh trembling from the strain.

The engine revved down. Ah, that’s better, I said. Maybe I’ll just stick with this speed. You’re not in any hurry are you?

It isn’t about me. The last train leaves for London at nine thirty.

Well, it’s that not that far to Cardiff, is it?

No, but I wouldn’t dilly-dally. You never know what we might encounter on the way.

I sighed. After what had happened to me in Inverness, my skin crawled at the thought of visiting another urban rail station. It was probably ludicrous to expect there to be bounty hunters looking for me at every train stop in the UK, but once bitten, twice shy.

Want to do anything, while we’re in Cardiff? said Jessica.

Not particularly.

But you’ve never been to Cardiff. I can show you around.

Isn’t it gonna be kind of late?

Not really, but…. Jess sighed. What is it? Are you tired? If so, I can drive back. That way you can sleep. Just don’t tell Renfrew.

That’s alright … I just want to get this over with.

Traffic was light, the road straight and flat, lined by scrubby trees and the flanks of barren hills, their outlines only implied by the headlights. I tried turning on the radio but it didn’t seem to work. It picked up only static, so I turned it off.

Jess kept looking over at me, agitated, as if she wanted to say something, but couldn’t summon the courage.

James?

Yeah.

I know it’s none of our business, but Helen and I were wondering … might you be you gay?

Say what?

You don’t have to answer, we just—

No, it’s okay. I mean, no I’m not. Not that I know of, anyhow. What made you think I was?

It’s just … you’re different. For a young guy like yourself … you don’t show much interest in girls.

Well, that’s because … I already have a girlfriend.

Oh? You mean back in the States?

No, she’s in Glasgow. I think.

You think?

Well, she might have moved on.

Without telling you?

It’s kinda complicated.

Are you separated?

Kinda. Not really. But kinda.

Well, it’s obvious you don’t want to talk about it, so I won’t press any further. But if you ever do … want to talk, that is.

Thanks.

We rolled through Blaina, where the houses closed in tight on the road, like a canyon. At the other side the lanes parted around a traffic circle. Jessica gasped.

What’s wrong?

You just went the wrong away around that roundabout.

Oh crap! Sorry about that.

No harm done.

Another mile and we came to a crossroads. I suffered a moment of confusion, contemplating a right turn that would me swinging out wide across a lane. It felt unnatural. I waited for the traffic to clear, and when there was a nice, big gap, I went for it.

Second gear, third gear locked in just fine. Again, the dang transmission refused to accept fourth.

Give it a nudge and hold it, said Jess.

I am nudging it and holding it!

Jess leaned over and grabbed the shifter from me. I’ll push it in. Put your hand over mine so you get the feel for it.

Wait. Let me try again. I need to—

Just do it! she said sharply, as sharp as I had ever heard her speak.

I put my hand over hers. Her fingers were long and cool, but her knuckles were rough with callous.

She gave the shifter a little wiggle, and the transmission locked into gear. Now come up easy on the clutch.

I did as she said and the engine spun back down, as if relieved.

Now did you feel how that went? That firm little jiggle you need to show it who’s boss?

Yeah, I guess so.

You’ll get it yet, she said. You just need practice.

So you’ve driven this thing before?

No, she said. Not Renfrew’s But I’ve driven lorries in sadder shape than this. Bigger ones, too.

Hmm. Never took you for a trucker.

My Pa had a sand and gravel business. In truth, I’d rather be doing that than making stinky cheese.

So why aren’t you?

He got caught up in some bad investments. Had to sell. He’s early retired out on the isle of Jersey. Left my mom behind in Cheltenham. Divorced.

Sorry to hear that.

She shrugged. They’re both better off for it. My mom would’ve made a good spinster. She’s like a middle-aged version of me.

Huh? You’re no spinster. You’re only like, what … twenty-five?

She took a breath and pursed her lips.

What’s wrong?

You think I’m twenty-five?

Just a guess.

I’m nineteen. I turn twenty in a month.

Really?

She touched her face. Is it the crow’s feet?

Not at all, I said, scrambling to recover. You have got a young face, you just act really … mature … for your age.

Mature? She gave me this look of such disbelief and disappointment. I didn’t understand.

It killed the conversation. She just sat there the rest of the way into Cardiff, hands folded in her lap, her head tilted towards the window. I was on my own when it came to shifting.

***

Cardiff turned out to be nowhere near as horrible as I had imagined. I had pictured some destitute industrial city, grimy with coal soot, smokestacks and crumbling brick walls. Instead I found a place that looked as tidy as Inverness and maybe even a little more gentrified. But then again, the night had a way of making everything look shiny.

By now, I had gotten really comfortable with driving. Renfrew had been right. It was really no big deal once you got the hang of switching to another side. I still had trouble shifting, but if I kept at it, it would eventually snap into gear.

It felt so liberating to be here after all those weeks, stuck on the farm and Brynmawr. I wondered if Renfrew ever did any business in Glasgow, if I could volunteer to make a delivery run or something. The thought of going back up to Scotland gave me tingles.

Take a left here, said Jessica, breaking her silence. Two blocks and it will be on out right.

And what are we looking for again?

Cardiff Central. The main train station.

I took a deep breath at the mention of the word ‘train.’

Something wrong?

Um … well … I just have this thing about train stations.

You mean like a phobia?

Yeah, kinda. I couldn’t very well tell her I was worried about bounty hunters.

Scared of choo-choos, are you? Did you have a traumatic experience as a child?

No, it’s … it’s just this … thing. It’s not rational.

Well, I promise you won’t have to go anywhere near the tracks. You just stay with the goods and I’ll go find the gentlemen who’ll be taking the cheese to London for us.

Cardiff Central was a modest marble building with ‘Great Western Railway’ carved in large block letters above the entrance. I parked in a lot around the corner. Each of us lugged one of the coolers. They were fairly small but remarkably heavy.

When we ducked inside that lobby, the smells and sounds of that place made my heart rate accelerate. It was probably silly to be so worried. Weeks had passed since the run-in at Inverness. Bounty hunters wouldn’t still be monitoring every transportation hub in the UK. Would they? How big a grudge could those Cleveland bastards hold over small potatoes like me, a mule who tried to sell a truck packed with their dope

You wait right here, said Jess.

I stacked one cooler atop the other and stood behind them, as if Styrofoam and goat cheese could protect me.

The lobby was cool, but I was sweating through my shirt. My palms were slick. I knew I was over-reacting but I was powerless to stop it. It wasn’t like that incident in Inverness had been all that traumatic. Sure, there had been guns and a knife drawn, but not a drop of blood had been spilt.

My fear was proof that I had chosen life over Root. That was quite a step for a kid who had been regularly contemplating suicide a couple months before.

I scanned the crowd, homing in on a young guy browsing a magazine near the entrance to the train platforms. He wore a rakish hat with a narrow brim; another one of those ubiquitous loners I had been seeing at train stations all over Europe. He kept glancing up as if he were waiting for someone.

He caught me looking at him. Our gazes stuck until I could rip mine away. Oh crap! Next he would be checking his cell phone for the photo that the Cleveland traffickers had broadcast to every corner of their cartel’s global network. And then they would have me.

I paced and fidgeted. Where the hell was Jessica? My breaths came quickly. I started to get dizzy.

Excuse me son, but may I ask what you have in those coolers?

I turned to find this guy in a uniform standing beside me.

It’s none of your business! I snapped, startled.

Now, now. No need to get testy. His salt and pepper mustache wiggled when he spoke. He showed a silvery badge pinned to the inside of a wallet. I’m with station security. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a look inside those coolers.

It’s cheese, for Christ’s sake. It’s just goat cheese.

Maybe so, but from the way you’re acting, I think we had better make certain.

Jessica came walking up with two men in tow, an older guy in a rumpled shirt and tie and that kid with the magazine. What’s going on here? she said.

This guy wants to sniff our cheese, I said, eyes flitting to the kid with the magazine.

No worries, officer. We’re from Gwyrdd Cym Farm up in Brynmawr. She peeled off a long strip of wrapping tape that sealed the lid. James, this is Jackie Taylor and his son Ralph. They’ll be taking the cheese for us on the London train.

H-hi, I shook their hands. My fingers trembled.

Are you feeling okay James? You’re looking mighty pale.

I’m fine.

She pulled off the lid of the first cooler and went to work on the second while the security guard poked around through the little round cakes of pure white goat cheese sealed in plastic, each adorned with a sticker depicting a ruined foundry. Not the most appetizing logo, but it was distinctive.

Alright then, he said, nodding. Everything seems to be in order. He stood up and shook hands all around. He lowered his voice. This lad needs to calm down. We get a lot of trafficking through here, and I must say his posture and behavior do fit the profile of a drug smuggler.

He just has a phobia, whispered Jessica. A fear of trains.

My eyes had already fixated on another young loner who had walked into the station.

Jess, can we go now? Please?

Chapter 3: Dirty Laundry

The attic smelled of dust and turpentine. The odor had permeated all of their belongings, but to Karla it was the smell of freedom.

She gathered her and Isobel’s dirty clothes from the mass collected in the corner, sorting what absolutely needed a washing from what could be worn again. Linval had no washer in his flat. She would need to haul them to the self service launderette down the street.

Isobel lounged in a tattered armchair, engrossed in one of Linval’s George R. R. Martin paperbacks. Fantasy fiction was a revelation for her. That entire genre had not been allowed in the Raeth household. Not even C.S. Lewis or J.K. Rowling Especially not J.K. Rowling.

Karla peeked out the little grimy window in the gable. Hmm. The sun seems to have come out. Isn’t that nice? I thought it was going to rain all day.

She stuffed the filthiest of their filthy clothes into a pair of pillow cases.

I’m heading off to do the wash. Do you need what you’re wearing cleaned? Isobel did not respond. Izzie? The armchair was empty. Footsteps creaked down the attic stairs.

Now, where has she gone off to?

She grabbed the overstuffed pillow cases and hauled them down the stairs. Down in the main flat, the drapes were drawn to block the light. Linval snored on the couch after another late night gig. He had returned home barely an hour before dawn.

Karla knew this because she had spent a fitful night, full of anxiety for no good reason. That happened sometimes, when her accumulated worries caught up with her and bubbled to the surface.

A shape whirled to face her in the shadows of the kitchenette. Something clicked against the counter. Izzie, she whispered. What are you up to over there? You’re not cooking, are you?

No, she said, standing there stiffly with her arms by her sides. Just getting myself a drink.

Well don’t bang around any pans. Don’t want you waking Linval.

Don’t worry, I won’t. Isobel stood there with that weird posture, sporting a strained smile. Karla stared, wondering why her sister was acting so squirrely.

Those jeans you’re wearing. Need them washed?

No. They’re good. They passed the sniff test.

Karla rolled her eyes. I’ll be back in an hour or two. Stay out of trouble, you.

She tied a kerchief around her head and bolted down the back stairs. Her newly shorn hair still felt strange. Both girls had shed the shoulder length locks they had possessed since they were little and sold them to a wig maker. They had gotten top money for what the dealer had called ‘virgin’ hair, never exposed to chemical treatments.

Their new butch cuts were cool and much lower maintenance. As a bonus, it had altered their looks dramatically.

They had also shed the long dresses their Sedevacantist family required them to wear, replacing them with jeans and low cut tank tops from a secondhand shop—items blasphemous to their extreme Catholic sect.

Five Sundays in a row now they had not been to mass, although Karla had caught Isobel simulating one under her blanket, humming the hymns, whispering recitations from memory. She couldn’t even bring herself to visit a mainstream congregation. As far as she was concerned, if she ever went inside a church again it would be too soon.

She pushed the door open and stepped out into the alley, pillowcases beating against the doorframe. After the morning sprinkle, it had turned into a balmy day by Glasgow standards, a veritable heat wave. She skipped across the street, heading to the commercial district by the roundabout.

Linval’s neighborhood straddled the Springboig and Barlanark wards of East Glasgow, one of the poorer parts of the city, but not nearly as bad as its reputation among upscale Glaswegians.

Karla felt more at home here than she ever had in Inverness. It was almost like being in Rome again. She had independence and anonymity, luxuries she could not enjoy up north, where her father’s cultish friends and acquaintances seemed ubiquitous.

She passed a grocery, a news agent and a medical clinic before veering into the propped open door of the launderette, steamy from the wall of spinning dryers.

Only one of the smaller washers was available and she pounced on it. It would have been better to split the load into lights and darks, to separate delicate from heavy, but beggars could not be choosers. She stuffed the contents of both pillow cases into the one hopper, poured in a small packet of detergent purchased from a vending machine, fed three pound coins in the money slot and pushed the button to start the cycle.

There were some plastic chairs beside a table bearing a stack of ravaged, coverless magazines. She took a seat and thumbed through a glamour rag, taking note of any person who came into the shop or even walked past the window. She had yet to relax her public vigilance and had come to realize it might never happen.

That magazine was a window into a world more alien than any she knew. People lounging by pools, drinking, dancing and loving so openly. Were these real people?

And then she hesitated on a picture of a shirtless young man in a vodka advert. The guy looked like James—a prettier, more stylish version, of course, but the geometry of his face sent a pang jabbing through her.

She had stumbled into traps like this before. Faces in the crowd, the way certain men walked, American accents—each was enough to send her soul sinking. When it happened she became aware of the shadows of roots lurking just beyond her perception.

She found it ironic that thoughts of James were about the only thing that could bring her down these days. It was he who had wanted her to give life a chance. And now that she had, he was gone from her world.

She enjoyed her days now, no matter how poor they were, how dependent on Linval for food and shelter. James had been right. She had given up prematurely. There was hope enough in this world to build a tolerable life.

She had grilled Sturgie for news of James when he had come to Glasgow for one of Linval’s gigs. But Sturgie was useless. He was not on speaking terms with his uncle, so he knew nothing.

James was probably long gone from Brynmawr by now. If he was smart, he would not have let anyone know where he had gone, not with bounty hunters on his trail.

She wondered if James still visited Root, if he wandered the tunnels in search of her. But she could not afford to indulge in the deep funks and fugue states that brought Root calling in a situation as precarious as theirs. She needed to remain present and aware in this world. When she couldn’t push him out of her mind completely, she tried thinking nice thoughts of a happy James, content wherever he roamed.

Isobel, as well, had not been back to Root. She was out of the woods, so to speak, now that she was out of Inverness and away from Papa. She was moody as any pre-pubescent girl, but her moods were no longer extreme, never suicidal. Her epic silences had pretty much evaporated. She loved their modest life in East Glasgow.

Karla picked up another magazine. The theme was food this time, another alien world of gourmet delicacies, a world beyond boiled eggs for breakfast, bread, butter and Marmite for lunch, cheap pasta for dinner

A man came loping down the walk, a tall man, wearing a tweed jacket despite the warmth and a long, blocky beard, black with a grey strip down the center.

Karla threw down the magazine and scrambled on her knees down the row of washers, crawling behind the one at the very end. An old, black woman folding clothes glanced down and glanced away without a word.

Karla chanced a peek. The man came up to the door, perhaps attracted by her sudden movement. She ducked back behind the washer. The ache of remembered damage spread through her bones. It was Edmund—her father.

***

Karla did not dare look again. She gazed up at the old woman. That man, is he still there?

For the moment, the old woman kept mum, folding her clothes, eyes straight ahead. He just stepped away from the window. Just now. Who is he, darlin’? Your landlord? Your boss?

He’s … my father.

Calculations cycled behind the old woman’s gaze. She nodded, as if she had deciphered Karla’s life story from three words and a look.

Isobel was alone in the flat with Linval! If Papa went there and she answered the door…!

Karla bounced to her feet and rushed to the door. She peeked warily down the pavement. Edmund was paused at the end of the block, consulting his leather bound prayer book. He glanced up at a street sign and then over his shoulder. Karla ducked into the launderette.

The old woman looked on, her eyes burning with concern.

Honey, there’s a back room if you need to—

No, it’s okay. She looked again, Edmund had moved on, his grizzled hair bobbing past a group of chatting ladies He’s leaving.

She fished around in her purse for something, anything that would be useful in defense … or offense, something sharp, something she could spray in his eyes, but she found nothing but coins, receipts and old hair ties.

The shotgun was back at the flat, tucked away in Linval’s closet. Isobel would never think to bring it to the door.

She saw him cross the street. A bad sign. He was heading straight for Linval’s flat. She waited a bit before following after him. There was a broken bicycle chain lying on the ground. She scooped it up.

How strange it was seeing that loose-limbed gait again. How many places had they walked together like these, she following at least one step behind as was proper for a deferent daughter.

His clothes were looking baggy. She wondered if he was doing his own cooking. Not that she felt any pity. He had beaten any capacity for empathy out of her years ago. Edmund had become an object to her, a nasty thing to be avoided and forgotten.

How had he found them? Linval had zero contact with his mother in Inverness anymore. She had sequestered herself deep within the fold of the Sedevacantist cult. From time to time, he spoke to his father, a Jamaican immigrant living in London, but as far as she knew, Linval had never told him about his new roommates.

Karla swooped down and pried a whitewashed rock from the border of someone’s tiny front garden and slipped it into her purse. She discarded the bike chain. It would likely only sting him and make him mad, and then he could turn it against her as a garrote. Her purse now had the mass to take him out with a well-landed blow. Any move towards