I was lucky to have Denise with me, otherwise my Maeshowe experience would have held me back, Fiona, because the cairn of Cuween was much smaller, much darker, much more ominous, as it is fitting for a fairy knowe inhabited by spirits from a non-human realm. The experience of entering the earth is only romantic in theory.  In practice it involves a lot of hyperventilation, scraped elbows and knees, controlled panic attacks and a feral drive to get out of there as quickly as possible.  We didn’t bend over; we crawled in, against my every survival instinct, we crawled into the darkness of the earth, tightly cradled by corbelled stone slabs supporting what I can only guess was crushing weight from the dirt mound above, with barely enough space to turn around, careful not to bang our heads on the sharp stone edges. A strange elation overcame me, not panic, rather excited trepidation, the anticipation of an unusual journey outside normal reality, a visit to the realm of the dead. It’s not a physical journey one engages in here, I understood somehow; the constraints are intentional, the tight straightjacket made of stone is supposed to restrain all the movements we take for granted, and the dark silent space dampens the senses too. How else are you to understand the stillness of the body in death, what it’s like to exist in a state that no longer allows for the perks of the living?

We are social creatures, and we don't want to stand out, so we will give up almost anything just to be accepted and partake of the huge game that is society and master its many levels. We’re not all that different, my sister and I: while she pretends not to experience things she can’t explain, I keep mine to myself, neatly placed in their appropriate containers, lest they risk contaminating my very rational and scientific mind. I store them in the area of my mind that has to do with spirituality, the mysterious, which we researchers like to talk about but don't really take seriously. The same area which houses the intriguing article you read last week at the airport while waiting for the plane to board.  It tested the limits of what a reasonable person is allowed to believe, which was a bit daring for a scientific article, and that was exciting, like a guilty pleasure, but not as consequential as the tangible laws that explain why an aircraft can fly, or the extensive studies you did for your own paper, which you’re about to present upon arrival at your destination.

I didn’t want to wake Denise the next morning, between the beer and the late night I knew she’d be in a rotten mood if she didn’t get her beauty sleep, so I snuck out as quietly as I could, to get a cup of coffee. The streets were already filled with music and dancing and the rhythms of the drums, the festival atmosphere rushed me in the middle of the street, and carried me along with it, even a recluse like me. Life unfolded in all its joy, Fiona, and it looked so effortless, as if all its tribulations and cares were nothing but another performance at the festival.  I had a sudden insight into the lightness of being, which my sister seems to understand so well: you just don’t think about it, you get up, go out and live, that’s it. No expectations, no reservations, no past. I always thought of living in the now as some sort of gimmick people who have no plans like to pass for life philosophy, and I’m a little embarrassed by that now, when the collective life of Kirkwall flows through me, making me part of everything. The rhythm of the drums induced some sort of trance, muffling the other sounds and sharpening my hearing and I got a little lightheaded from the bright light and the sounds, so I grabbed an outdoor table at the corner cafe, ordered an espresso and closed my eyes to clear my head.

The green meadow was quiet. There was a large crowd present, but no one made a sound, standing on the grass in a circle, in the light of the torches, waiting. You are standing in the middle, wearing the white dress with green ribbons, and you have fragrant white flowers and green ribbons in your hair, very thin ribbons which make it look like that of a non-human creature, like an undine or a selkie.  Your mentor waits for you by the tallest stone, standing poised for the ceremony, and all your council is in attendance, dressed in festive attire and donning wild flower garlands. Is this your wedding, Fiona? I can’t see the groom, they’re all women. Some rite of passage, maybe? You walk across the circle of grass with slow ceremonial steps, as if in a trance, your eyes affixed on the top of the tallest stone, perfectly aligned with the moonrise of the solstice, and only then I realize it must be night, but it’s still daylight, and although the giant moon already rose above the stone, casting its long shadow towards you, the sun is shining too, casting your shadow towards it. The two shadows met, and you walked inside their joint corridor of darkness, while young girls in white dresses threw flowers at your feet. I always see your hair braided, Fiona, and I didn’t realize how long it was. It is let down now, and trails behind you like a train. You walk alone, barefoot on the path of grass and flowers, while the moon rises quickly in the sky, and the sun finally goes to rest, and daylight dims to twilight, but not really darkness, because the moon is so huge and so close it bathes everything in its silver light.

I had promised Denise I’d come to all the rehearsals, not knowing how many they were going to have. Three hours in, watching the same performance fragments over and over, I was on the verge of losing my mind, and my bum was numb from sitting on stone. “How much practice could you possibly need for an improv performance?” “That shows how much you know about theater,” Denise commented, annoyed by the interruption, and turned around to face the cast. “Let’s take it from the beginning of the dance again.” Oh, God, I don’t think I can take another repetition of this dance. “I know what you’re thinking, Ethel.” My sister hissed at me through her labored breath. “If you have no appreciation for the arts, why don’t you prop up that boulder? It’s about to fall.” ‘Fall where?’ I thought, bewildered. We were in the middle of the street, and everything rested securely on its stone pavers. My sister ignored me and started her dance again, a very agitated choreography set on absolute silence, which was supposed to engender the emotional waves of a Wagnerian opera, but with no sound at all.

I couldn’t sleep, and neither could Denise. The sun woke us up when I had barely slept three hours. As for Denise, she had made up her sleep deficit during the day and now was sharp as a tack. We drove to the stones of Stenness with the rosy glow of dawn behind us. The midnight sun bathed our shoulders and put haloes around our hair, and when we got out of the car in the middle of the wilderness, it compelled our silence. We walked in silence for a while through this fantastic landscape, where the stones felt like a natural land feature, like they’ve been there forever, carved by the storms and the winds. “Come on, Ethel! Not fun being old, eh?” I was born two years before Denise, a detail she never forgets to highlight when she deems it relevant. “See you in two years, Denise. I’ll remember to ask you then.” “This is awesome!” My sister started running up the gentle slope, twirling and dancing like an ancient priestess entranced by her deity, charged by the monoliths. “I am the goddess of Stenness! I bid glad tidings to all the little people.” She looked it too, a young goddess, one with the land, dancing with the grace of a willow branch. “Dance, Betty Lou! Don’t be a stick in the mud! Dance with me!”

I wondered if there was any sort of protocol when talking to ghosts. Is one allowed to call on them? Or is that considered too forward and one should wait to be acknowledged first? It seems rather rude to disturb the peace of an entity without the consent of the latter, especially when their home base is always overrun with people. Denise adamantly disagreed, saying Mr. Sinclair obviously enjoyed the company of the living and he’d be really disappointed to find out we came to the cathedral and didn’t bother to call. Unfortunately for my sister, our friendly guide seemed to be otherwise engaged; besides, the church was filled with the living, anyway. I’d stopped keeping track of the calendar in Kirkwall, my independent research schedule didn’t seem to find any usefulness for it and didn’t realize we had come to the cathedral on a Sunday.  The service was almost over when we arrived, and we slid into one of the pews as quietly as possible, careful not to disturb the ceremony. The familiar chants lulled me into a soft reverie as my eyes wondered, taking in the austere details of the Romanesque architecture, and I was startled when the soft voice behind me, a voice rather recognizable now, whispered from very close by, “I told you, young lady: second pillar on the right.”

Upon returning from Birsay the following morning, I found Denise sleeping across the doorway. “You forgot to leave a key,” she looked at me cross, but relieved I returned before it started raining. “The landlady could have let you in. Why didn’t you ask her?” “She’s out of town. How was your trip?” “Uneventful,” I didn’t elaborate. How was I to tell her that, cliche as it sounds, my journey to Birsay had been more interesting than arriving at the destination? Once there, I couldn’t think of things to do, walked around for a couple of hours and headed back. “How was your day? Did you have fun with your friends?” “And then some! Do you know people think your Fiona called out to you so you can find her bones and lay her to rest? They think you are a white lady who walks between worlds. Neil said that if you go to the Maeshowe cairn during solstice, she’ll talk to you then.” I didn’t mention seeing Fiona when I visited Maeshowe, not to my sister, not to anyone else. Except the young man, the tour guide who dragged me out of there before I made a total fool of myself, nobody paid enough attention to notice anything unusual.

It wouldn’t have been Denise if she didn’t change our plans at the last minute, based on the schedules of her new friends. Two days she’d been in a foreign country where she didn’t know a soul and she already made friends, promised to help them set up the stage for their Avant-Garde play and left me flopping in the wind. Strange how one can still get distressed over being excluded when one left home for a solitary pursuit and went far away from the familiar places and people in order to find oneself. I put on my best face for Denise’s benefit, and picked a destination to give her, annoyed more by my own reaction than my sister’s predictably harebrained schedule and arbitrary choice of activities. “Are you sure you’re not mad at me?” She gave me her loveliest smile, attached to a guilty cat's gaze. “Promise me you’re not mad at me, Louise! I hate the thought of leaving you here all by yourself.” She only called me Louise when she wanted to get on my good side. “Denise, you weren’t supposed to come here in the first place. I’ve been here alone for months now, remember? I have work. And plans.” “Ok, if you say so.” She headed for the door, then changed her mind. “You know, you could still come with us! I’m sure everyone would love to meet you and they could use another pair of hands.” “Thanks. Pass.” “Ok. Just call if you change your mind.” “Denise! Go!”

My sister surprised me and came to Kirkwall two weeks early, loaded with goodies from home like a female Santa Claus, to help me get in the spirit of the festival, she said, although it’s more likely mom sent her to check up on me and provide her with the precious details she thinks I don’t want to share. “Where is my instrument, Denise?” “Oh,” she mocked. “You wanted that? Won’t your dead crush disapprove of such frivolities?” I see you dancing around the fire, Fiona, giddy like a child, and carefree. What on earth gave you that lightness of being when your life was so dark and perilous? “No,” I replied. “No, she would not. Give!” She reached into her duffle bag and pulled out my ukulele by the sound hole, all tangled up in a knotted mess of cables and undergarments that instantly elevated my blood pressure. “How could you shove it in your bag like that? It’s a miracle it got here in one piece! I’m starting to remember why I never let you touch my stuff!” “Relax, it’s a ukulele, not the Holy Grail,” she faked giving it to me and quickly pulled it back. “You don’t get it unless you promise me you’ll play it at the festival.” “Denise, I only know ‘Over the Rainbow’ and I’m not playing that.”

You get mixed up in stories and legends and soon you can’t distinguish them from facts anymore, because history and legend are uninterrupted threads twining through the fabric of time, and the events’ meanings connect across centuries, as if they are all a part of a greater whole we could see if we lived long enough. How long is long enough, Fiona? Although I shouldn’t ask you, should I? In all the times I dreamt of you, I’ve never seen you old, my princess. I can’t see past that fateful day whose menace prompted you to pack all your power and will inside a gull and set it free. You looked so young it broke my heart, but I don’t think you died that day. In fact, I think you never died at all.   Hodr of the mail coat lets the halter of the arm hang on my hawk-trodden hawk-gallows; I know how to make the pin-string of the shield-tormentor ride the gallows of the spear-storm. The feeder of the battle-hawk enjoys the greater praise.   The florid poetry of your ancestors reverberates in the halls of the Gods, making you smile across centuries, fair child of Norway. What are you smiling about? What is it you’re not telling me?

I stopped by the church yesterday and the mystery of the black tombstones was explained: the graveyard experienced a massive fire, yet the church was unharmed, not even a speck of smoke or soot. I bet you’d be asking yourself right now, Fiona, how does one set stone on fire, and you’d be right. The priest couldn’t explain it either, hence the miracle designation of the phenomenon. It happened so long ago no written records of it remained, and oral history can be very imaginative in these parts. It’s hard to separate truth from fantasy after all these centuries. I’ll make a record of my notes and organize them later, I don't want to forget the stories I heard, which, although they may be unbelievable to most, are still too fascinating to ignore. Legend has it a beautiful young maiden, which strangely matches your description, used to sneak out at night and come to the cemetery to meet her beloved. The affair went on for years, and the maiden’s parents started to worry when she turned away every suitor that knocked on their door. Why, she was turning twenty and she was already an old maid, right, Fiona?

It feels like everything in Orkney is made of stone, meant to last forever, and that includes the old stonework of Saint Magnus’ Cathedral. The structure is Romanesque, and austere, with heavy, sturdy pillars built of red sandstone masonry, the kind it takes four people to surround, a strange stone forest again, built by the hands of men. I returned to the cathedral because the heritage society documents suggested it housed more human remains than that of the saint, and when I saw you playing with the bones, Fiona, I thought this could lead to new revelations. The most remarkable feats of humanity often come from its most wicked inclinations, and these triumphs start with bloodshed and sorrow, but life is brief, and so soon these tragedies are forgotten. Betrayal, martyrdom, assassination, lust for power and wars, all the things that governed the lives of people in those older times, seem trite and insignificant when viewed through the lens of history, but the cathedral still stands, now aged nine hundred years. And the Cairn of Maeshowe. And the Ring of Brodgar. And the happy underground homes of Skara Brae.

You sent me a dream when I was a child, Fiona, one of those weird dreams you don’t share, especially at that age, when nothing matters to you in the world, other than pleasing your parents. I couldn’t forget it, though, like I can’t forget any of my other dreams about you. Those dreams, they feel so real! So real! Like a second life unfolding, independent of this one. In the dream, I saw you standing in front of a green mound, smiling; it was summer, and you wore a white dress, held around your body with green ribbons. You had ribbons and flowers in your hair as well, and a torch, lit in the middle of the day, and I couldn’t help laugh at the absurdity of illuminating daylight, but you didn’t get upset, you smiled and signaled me with your other hand to follow. You turned around, and I followed, and as I did, I saw you were dead, merely a skeleton wrapped in leathery skin, but somehow I felt loved more than I ever did in my life before and since, and realized I didn’t care, you didn’t scare me in that state, and strange as it may sound, you were still beautiful.

The four-day festival was approaching the end, and after my friend’s departure I figured I’d better head back to Kirkwall and see if I can find more puzzle pieces for my study, but I just couldn’t face the stones again. Not yet. I headed north instead, not really sure about the destination, and followed the road until it reached the shore.  Living on an island offers one the unique experience of being bound by a circular water line: no matter what direction you travel in, you are soon stopped by the edge of the sea.  This makes some people feel closed in, in ways that start wearing on them as time passes, but for the true lovers of island living there is no greater comfort than the sight of the sea, and its effortless proximity always puts them at ease. The sea gives life, and it takes it. Brings riches and bounty, reveals and conceals what it chooses and keeps jealous guard over her secrets. For four thousand years the village of Skara Brae was just another green bluff battered by the whims of the sea, until 1850, when a deadly storm stripped the grass and the topsoil off the ruins of a stone settling, perfectly preserved by the sand for millennia, a time capsule of Neolithic living.

”You shouldn’t leave Stromness before you visit Hoy,” the lady at the front desk suggested with a motherly demeanor which tried to restore my sunny outlook on life, now sunk by the sudden circumstance through which I found myself alone again. She smiled encouragingly, and pointed towards the pier, to the approaching ferry. “Hurry up, now. If you rush, you can get there before it leaves.”  She nodded approvingly in response to my befuddled expression, and I obeyed her suggestion without too much mental struggle. There were only a few people on the ferry, braving a fog so thick the contours of Graemsay Island, which we almost brushed on our way to Hoy, were barely visible. As I entered the mist, the world as I knew it stayed behind: its joys and its pains, the music and the laughter, the plans and dreams. A different place awaited at the end of the fog, and the other travelers, veiled in the mist, looked like shadows, sharing a ride with me in Charon’s boat to the island of the dead.  This realm beyond the mists you approach in silence. Nobody talked.  We walked quietly, a distance from each other, to respect our solitary retreat, instinctively following in each other’s footsteps along the wooden path snaking through the eerie wilderness towards the giant monolith of Dwarfie Stane.

Life looked a lot cruder in the harsh light of the morning, even though the festival performances continued through the day, and the city was bathed in the unmistakable humid scent of spring. I met my new friend in the lobby and we walked through the narrow streets, sometimes so narrow a person could barely pass through, braving the rain and listening to the music in silence, like an understanding between us, and ended up huddled at the cafe on the pier, hungry and tired, looking forward to a toasty sandwich and a hot cup of coffee. “So, you’re not going to ask?” she said, eventually. “I wouldn’t know what,” I replied, still awkward about hijacking a perfect stranger’s time to satisfy my curiosity. “What do you know about the stones?” I started reciting the historical and anthropological data and the scientific opinions regarding the details of the sites, and she stopped me with a curt hand gesture. “No. Not that. What did the stones tell you when you were there?” I stopped, not knowing how to respond to that, hesitant to share my intimacy with the untold story of this place with someone I’d just met, but who, obviously, could read it on my face like in a book. I answered, eventually. “How did you know?” “It’s written all over you, girl. Do you speak to the Old?” “The Old? What is that?”

The entire city was caught up in the preparations for the Folk Festival, so I had to postpone my visit to the heritage society, whose normal hours were restricted for the duration. I gave myself the excuse there is nothing for me to do anyway, so I might as well drive back to Stromness and enjoy the performances. I stopped at the Stones of Stenness this time, Fiona, trying to find a reference we share. They are 5000 years old, and they must have felt just as old in your day as they do in mine, timeless. There was nobody else there, just the silence, swept by the wind, and I had this eerie feeling of stepping out of time altogether, into a “different” space I couldn’t understand.

I ended up back at Saint Magnus’ Cathedral, with my nose buried in the old records, strangely comforted by the smell of old ink. It is amazing, really, the church’s archives go back centuries! After a few hours of being fully immersed in the lives and the trades of the people of old, you forget what century you’re in; you lose track of time altogether. Marriages, home deeds, conflict resolutions, old public announcements, the births of children. This is what time really looks like, reading the birth announcements of people who passed out of existence centuries before you were born. Seeing their aspirations, hopes and heartbreaks, the bitter and the sweet displayed together like in a painting, equalizes their significance and turns them all into the same substance when watched from a distance.

The car trip to the Brough of Birsay led me through treeless landscapes, shy and soft in the sunshine, and filled with the bright smiles of wildflowers, a poem in white, rose, purple and green, laid down as scenery by a benevolent god. I stood beside them, with the wind in my face, trying to remember an older time, as if I’d been there before. But maybe those were your memories, Fiona, not mine. Maybe that’s what the stones are for, repositories of memories, remembering the fingers of all who had touched them. I was looking for an excuse to go to the other side of the island, and it was interesting to learn your family tree had spread some of its roots there. The ancient burial customs of this place exercise a strange fascination on me, like a spell cast centuries before I was born.