Short but Sweet Read online

her frown deepened. With precise motions she patted the hair back in place and then, as she picked off non-existent piece of lint, she smoothed down the sleeves of her pinstripe jacket.

  The double door of the house opened as she approached it and there, standing in the warm glow of the interior lights, stood her sister. Smiling. Fixing a smile on her own face, having to work hard to force her lips to obey and relax from their tightness into an approximation of warmth, Anne walked forwards.

  Their parents had named her, and her sister Shirley, after the title character in ‘Anne of Green Gables’. It had been her mother’s favourite book, one that she had read over and over while confined to bed during her difficult pregnancy. A twin pregnancy was like that, she had been told, difficult. What the doctor’s couldn’t have told her, couldn’t have known, was just how ‘difficult’ at least one of those twins was going to be; Anne. From birth she had been the one that had demanded constant attention – crying through the night to simply be held to her mother’s breast regardless of how often she fed. Shirley, of course, was content to sleep the night through or even just lie in her crib, awake but quiet, and watch. To outsiders the girls were identical – both tall and slim as they grew, both with fair skin, luxurious red hair and sparkling green eyes. To Anne, though, Shirley had the clearer complexion, the longer hair and even the greener eyes. Shirley always had, in Anne’s mind, everything that Anne wanted.

  Holding out both arms in a welcoming embrace Shirley smiled warmly, the twinkle in her eyes reflecting the smile. Her hair hung loose and natural, her skin unadorned with any make-up but still, despite the faint network of lines on her forehead, glowing. The house beckoned and, Anne sighed to herself; it was going to be a long night.

  The Good Boy

  “Don’t … don’t worry, kid,” the man with the blood on his hands stammered, his face whiter than his teeth. “Everything will be okay.”

  The faces cluttered around me, above me, leaning over and pressing in. They looked like the balloons my dad had got me for my last birthday; eleven balloons, one for each year, he had said. The faces were just like that – floating, though I couldn’t see the string.

  Car engines roared, just as they had when I started crossing the road, but I couldn’t see them. I could smell them, though; their fumes tickled my nose and made me want to cough. The cough wouldn’t come; my chest hurt. Horns blared, again, but the screeching sound I remembered hearing was gone, now. What had that been? I couldn’t remember.

  “Jesus.” The man’s voice shook. “Has someone called an ambulance?”

  I giggled a little when he said the bad word. Dad would have told him off for using that one. It wasn’t just a bad word, it made fun of God too, and Dad didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. Every Sunday we dressed up in our best clothes; him in his blues and me in my blazer; shirts finely pressed. I used to love watching the steam from the iron, blowing into shapes that only I could see. Dad said he could, too, but I don’t think he could.

  “Hold on, son, you just hold on!”

  I blinked the darkness out of my eyes and saw the man again; I could smell his breath. Just like dad’s. I must have fallen asleep. My eyes felt so heavy. I was cold. Why was I cold?

  Dad used to kiss me with his stubble tickling my face; his breath having that funny smell of coffee and fags. I used to like watching him flick the ashes of his cigarettes into the air. The wind took them, sometimes, and made them dance in the breeze; they made shapes like the steam did too, sometimes. I remember asking him, a long time ago, if I could have a cigarette so that I could have yellow teeth like him. He told me off. He said no. I was allowed to get stubble, though, sometime. He smiled when he said that and everything was all right again. He smiled a lot, my dad did, even on the day he got on his big boat. It wasn’t a Sunday but he was dressed in his blues anyway. He held me tight, kissing me with his stubbly lips and making me giggle.

  “I’ll be back soon, son,” he said with a smile, his teeth yellow. “You be a good boy, you hear?”

  He always held my hand when we crossed the street; told me to look both ways. I think that he would have told me off this time. I forgot to look; I wasn’t a good boy.

  “C’mon son, hold on!” The yellow teeth smiled through the darkness; I smiled back. I wasn’t cold; not anymore. I was floating warm and safe. And tired. So tired.

  “Yes, dad.”

  Rainbow

  It was dark, that was all I knew for sure.

  What time it was, where we were, even who was left of the crew I was proud to call friends – family – none of those questions had answers; not anymore. All I knew was that the storm, perfect and deadly in its fury, had swallowed us, holding us in its relentless grasp as it had done with the blessed light of day.

  My mind told me that I had only put the morning Sun behind me, setting our course running southeast true towards the straits, a matter of hours ago; my heart, though, screamed otherwise. It was convinced that we had been running against the storm for longer. Forever. Time no longer had any meaning. I knew that each and every second could bring us closer to breaking through the storm front and reaching calmer seas – reaching safety; I also knew that each and every second could bring us closer to the doom that waited for all who made their life from tempting Aegir’s fury. And the God of the Sea’s temper knew no bounds.

  My father’s father’s father had fished these straits, three hundred miles off the coast of our village, and every generation since we had gone out to where no other men – at least none who still claimed sanity as a friend – dared to go. The waves were more treacherous, the waters colder and the storms darker, stronger, and more unpredictable here than anywhere. The rewards, though, were just as mighty as the risks. The cod, the mackerel and the herring were bigger and more plentiful and, if you were lucky, good or blessed – all three, my father had boasted of himself the last night he spoke to me – you could make such a catch in one trip that would make your fortune and see you through the worst of winters. As my father’s father’s father before me had done I had taken my ship, and crew of one and twenty, out early on Winter’s coldest and longest day. I, Orik, son of Wulfgar, would cry out to Aegir, God of the Oceans’ depths, and let him know that I was coming. I would challenge him and take his riches. I would return to the Hall of my fathers having proved my worth. I would make my name and carve my legend.

  As the rain fell in horizontal fury, shards of ice hitting my skin with the sting of a thousand knives, as the clouds that gathered overhead became as dark and impenetrable as the gates of Nifelheim – only worse for they were real – as the waves that I had grown to love rose and fell as if the were trying to shake me free and as the relentless winds raged against us, threatening to take the sails from the mast and the mast from the ship itself, I forgot my boasts and claims. What mattered, now, the warmth of my father’s hearth? What mattered now the embrace of a willing woman? What mattered now my fame, my legend, my worth?

  Salt stung my eyes and, as frost limned my lashes so that I could hardly open them, I had only one thought in that ever-cursed darkness.

  Survival.

  Please, Odin – All-Father – let me simply survive.

  The ship – my father’s ship that was now mine by bequeathed right – lurched precariously in the roiling and rolling of the furious waves.

  I had laughed, as a child, as I found the name ‘Rainbow’ to be so funny but my father had proved – with hands calloused and deft in equal measure – that she could live up it. Under his hands she had danced across the waves. So light, her prow cutting the waves, that the spray left in her wake danced out with all the colours of her name. I had thought, in my younger days, that perhaps Odin had gifted him so that, at his hand, the ship could actually fly across the waves, never touching them at all. I had believed that this was how he, more than any of the hunters of our people, could go so far, so deep, into Aegir’s cold realm and always return with the finest of cat
ches.

  I stopped believing that the day that the ‘Rainbow’ limped back into the bay and he was not at her helm. I didn’t need Jogur, his oldest and dearest friend, to tell me where my father was. If he had been alive he would have been laughing his joy upon their return, steering his ship to safety and catching me in a rough embrace. I didn’t need

  him to tell me that Aegir had finally won. Finally beaten my father. I didn’t need him to tell me anything.

  I knew.

  My father was dead.

  Sideswiped the ship sluggishly responded to my silent efforts as I was brought back to reality. Muscles protested as tried to hold the wheel steady, to follow the course that I had set. It was dark, that was all I knew for sure. I was my father’s son, however, and he had stared Aegir in the face and laughed. He sailed the waves better than any man and he had taught me everything he knew. I had set my course and, while I couldn’t see the Sun nor stars – while I didn’t know if they even still existed or if this storm was THE storm … Ragnarok come among us – I trusted in his ship – my ship – and his training.