On the last night before we left Vágur, I lay in the basement room in silence. I made up stories about Beate’s Gull. Maybe I slept. Ragnar and Beate, they belonged inside me, like organs whose function I didn’t understand. I wanted to believe they were reconciled, that in the end Beate forgave him for dying.

I thought of her listening that evening at the nursing home. Of her listening as the home went quiet for the night. Long, white hands feigning sleep in her lap. Beak jabbering noiselessly. Eyes small and black with longing. The nursing home, high above the plain of grass and the flat lake, grey water; yes, there she sits, and the window is as high and wide as a portal out of time. 155

The gulls are sailing on the currents outside.

That night, a May night, some light is caught in the falling blue. Now it’s silent, now she rises. She folds the blanket. Shakes off her housecoat. Naked and liver-spotted she walks across the room, opens the window and steps onto the low sill. The air plucks at the downy feathers on her chest. Head flung back, beak wide, she lets a long, creaking call roll out across the valley. From Skúvanes, and this I’d so love to believe, there is an answer.

156

MYKINES

They used to think there were floating islands in the sea around Faroe, Abbe told me. We were standing on the quay, each with a fishing line. This was in my childhood, or in the bottle-green month of August, or it could have been any of the summers we went home. Abbe was fond of telling a good story more than once.

But let’s say this was in my childhood—maybe the summer we lived in the white house.

It’s Sørvágur, at any rate.

The little harbour. A mild corner of the bay. There’s a pizzeria there, or is it a kiosk? Some tool sheds. Behind them, green slopes. On one side you can see the village houses crowding upwards. The flat grey beach.

On the other side, the bay opens out towards the sea.

The bait was meat that had passed its expiry date.

Gouging the hook through, I hurried to cast off. The smell clung to my fingers.

‘Where did they come from?’ I asked.

Abbe bounced softly in his knees. Took aim. Cast. Then he said there was more than one answer to that. 157

Take Svínoy, for instance. That had once been a floating island. Where it came from he couldn’t say, but it hid in the depths by day. Every night it broke the surface, and if you were lucky you might see it: the island roaring up towards the sky, up out of nothing, water pouring off in streams.