The Second Queen of Hirta
Chapter 1: Two and sometimes three
In the beginning was the bird, as large in relation to me then, by my recollection, as a young dog is now. Showing neither motion nor emotion, it stood to my left, its plump body an arrangement of browns and greys, few of them to be described as dark and some turning almost to white, both on its breast and above the black eyes which stared ahead as if exerting dominion over what they saw. At the back, a contrasting tail of stronger colours. Below, legs which seemed incapable, from their sharp angle and lack of girth, of supporting the body, save that they ended in claws imbued by God with just the dimensions required, neither more nor less, to provide balance.
Suddenly, there was movement in the world. The bird remained still, but the feathers on its head were excited into a brief frenzy by a gust of the wind which is so often present in our land. A cold wind, never mind that the sun was shining, and surely not the first gust of it that afternoon, but surely, too, the first I remember, the first I was aware of in enough measure to be able to recall the experience afterwards, and for that reason worthy of being considered, if there were any importance in doing so, as the first of my life.
Aware now of both the bird and the wind, I was not long after this transported to an appreciation of a third aspect of this world. The bird's claws were not fully visible because they were a little hidden in the grass which I could now see under the bird and feel under myself. I could neither see nor feel anything between the blades, but in this the bird was more observant, as it showed by shifting its gaze from the far distance to a point so near as to be within reach of its beak. A moment later that beak plunged towards the earth with such immediacy that I was unconscious of its movement. At one instant it was above the ground, at the next almost buried in it, and as soon again after that above it once more.
Nor could I follow the bird's progress as it now ventured, perhaps because its opportunity had not been realised, perhaps because a second had arisen immediately after the successful first, to a place three body lengths ahead of where it was when my conscious life began. Once more it travelled faster than my eyes were yet trained to understand, though I have the sense, without recalling the episode precisely, that the movement was a double hop and not a single one.
I believe that all this time I was still, but it may be that as the bird moved I unwittingly followed it in the most delicate of ways, leaning my upper body a little forward as I sat there. Possibly sensing this, the bird now hopped to a more distant location, not facing me directly but beyond doubt in a position where it would be aware of everything I did.
No longer merely observing but in my turn observed, I felt fear, and more than the fear an excitement which, the next time I recognised it, I knew was called joy. What I realised now was that there were four things, or it might yet have been five, in the world. There was the bird, there was the wind, there was the grass. There may have been something in the grass, or why had the bird commanded its beak to explore there? And fourth, or perhaps fifth, but in either case newest of all, there was me.
The first deliberate action of my life, for all I know, was to reach my hand towards the bird. I used my voice, too, but what sound I made I cannot say. I do not remember the words, if there were even words to remember. I knew that words existed and could understand them when I heard them, but I am sure that I was too young to be able to use them myself.
Words or no words, the sound I made and the approach of my hand were good enough reasons for the bird to decide that it no longer wished me to be in its presence, or itself to be in mine. The latter being the eventuality more easily achieved, it leaped backwards, making a quarter-turn away from me as it did so, and straight after took flight in this new direction. A second gust of wind, stronger by far than the first, carried it to the left, and as if esteeming this plan every bit as good as its own it continued in the same way, carried both by its wings and by God's breath.
As the bird whose presence marked the beginning of my life as a conscious being so abruptly vanished from it, I became aware of my second emotion, one which would lead to tears on future occasions though there were none now. I had been a baby, and so I must have cried many times already, but babies cry for reasons of physical need, when they desire food or warmth or the removal of discomfort. They do not cry for reasons of emotion, though it is surely emotion of the deepest kind which causes their parents to care for them. What I felt in the absence of the bird was a sense of loss, and I was not then aware, though how bitterly I knew this once I had learned it, that tears can and so often do follow on from the sudden acquisition of that sense.
Innocent as I was of this knowledge, my eyes were in consequence dry as the world expanded vastly around me. In my vain search for the disappearing bird I gathered many more experiences with such rapidity that the order of them is lost to me. I believe, though, that one of the first was the realisation that the grass I sat on stretched far beyond me to the sides and ahead of me (I had not yet thought to look behind). To either side, though a long way off, the land rose gently and became hills. To the front, and more quickly, it sloped down towards a row of formations more precisely ordered than any closer to me. Of course I mean the houses which together made up our village, including, I was to discover, the one where I was born and still lived, and in which I would continue to live into what was then a future not so much intimidating as unimaginable, for I had no knowledge either of time or of its constant progression, and so was unable to think in terms of things being other than as they were in this moment.
A little more land, still sloping downward, and then the water, so often the colour of stone but on this first apprehension nearer blue and gently sparkling. The dancing light gave me as much as joy as the now forgotten bird had done, and I stared at it until I was no longer aware of anything else. At last tiring of this, I moved my eyes once more and saw that two narrow pieces of rocky land largely surrounded the water, forming what we call Village Bay, though there was a gap between the rocks and more water after that. At the end of the water there was a division, hazy yet unmistakeable, above which was a layer of light blue forming a background to small patches of white and some larger ones of grey. This layer continued upwards, reaching over my head, and my gaze followed it until my searching was brought to a halt by the occasion of my falling on my back.
Sitting up again was no easy matter, since my little body was lost in many layers of clothes which failed to promote ease of movement, but which in compensation served as protection against the increasing cold. When at last I returned to my former position, there was more grey against the high blue background, and the water sparkled less than when last I looked. This made it easier to see that formations existed there too, though fewer than those that made up the village. These were our boats, and in truth there were only two in sight. (Of course there were many more than two houses.) The nearer of them could be seen to be not quite at rest, as it rocked on the waves, but it made no definite progress in any direction across the bay. The farther, surely carrying men although I could not see them and would not have known to look for them, had more purpose. It was moving directly away from me, and once out of the bay it would turn to the left and make its way in a half circle to a destination not very much more distant behind me than it was now in front. Even so, the world as I knew it was not large enough to accommodate such a place, any more than I could have understood either the purpose of the voyage or the absolute necessity to our people of the work that was carried out before the boat set out on its short but perilous return journey.
"Come here."
A new thing, as unexpected as anything the bird had done, yet in some way familiar. A voice, a sound other than the gentle roaring of the wind in my ears. Beside me an immensity of height. I had learned to be wary of looking up, after what had happened the last time and the subsequent effort required to regain a seated position, but perhaps if I had done so I would still not have seen to the top, which might have been beyond the white and the grey and even, most distant of all, the blue.
"Rachel. Stand up and come here."
I stood up, took a few tottering steps towards the sound and, for no reason I recall other than that there seemed nothing better to do, reached my right hand into the air. An incomparably larger hand came down to meet it, a rough hand, with a surface like that of a rock (so had I already touched a rock, or am I anticipating something yet to happen, and does it matter?), with the warmth of sunshine, and of such magnitude that my tiny hand could grasp only the whole of one finger and the slightest part of a second. Other giant fingers then covered my hand completely, and in this fashion, with my right arm extending nearly vertically upwards, we walked, my father and I, down the gentle slope, two and sometimes three of my skips to each of his slow, huge strides, towards the village and in particular towards our house, which with every yard we trod I increasingly realised, though I could not have explained what lay there, was the place in this newly discovered world I most wanted to be.
My first memory fades to nothing before the time we reached home, but not before my catalogue of feelings had grown still further, including not merely fear and joy and loss but now also safety. And of these I think that the greatest was safety.
Map of Saint Kilda published in Saint Kilda past and present by George Seton, published 1878.
Public domain
Chapter 1: Two and sometimes three
Chapter 2: What the women did
Chapter 3: The poorer of God’s creatures
Chapter 4: Ignorance of trees
Chapter 5: The stranger’s cough
Chapter 6: Glasgow
Chapter 7: Anne
Chapter 8: Where there never was hair
Chapter 9: Insolence
Chapter 10: His first and only queen
Chapter 11: California
Chapter 12: In tempore belli
Chapter 13: Silly fellow
Chapter 14: As the animals do
Chapter 15: The stone
Top image: Saint Kilda wren (Troglodytes troglodytes hirtensis) illustrated by Johannes Gerardus Keulemans (1842-1912).