The Powercut
A standalone tale for Christmas
Author’s note: Our family has a tradition of writing short stories for Christmas, giving them to everyone along with other gifts on Christmas morning (or sometime during the holiday period). This short story (published here with minor alterations) was my contribution this year.
Nollaig Chridheil! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
The storm had been building all day, but it took everyone by surprise when the lights went out. I saw the moment’s hesitation in velvet darkness, waiting for the bulbs and sockets to spark back to life, because nowadays it was never out for long, before the unhurried hustle to find candles and matches, the flaring of small yellow flames, the coalescing of the family around the hearth where logs glowed red as blood. Snow and hail was whipping against the panes of the French windows; it was a wild night. I gave Wee Jimmy a skelp across the ear and told him to go up the road and see what was happening in the rest of the village.
It was a wild night, and bitter cold. I took hold of Magnus’ hand, though he still protests it as a nine-year-old will, and led him towards the living-room window. A soft warm rectangle of light was spilling out, profligate, onto the knife-sharp crust of ice outside. We stopped at the pane, and looked. It was some years, lonely years, since we’d come this close to the house. As I said, nowadays the electricity is never out for long. I could see the changes in the family. The parents were stiffer, and the pail of wood for the stove was carried in by the son, home with his family for the holidays. The grandchildren were bigger, taller, limbs and faces lengthening, voices deepening. Why, the smallest ones were bigger than Magnus, now. I held his hand tighter.
In the corner, the TV was blank and dead. But there were still pockets of screen-glow, blue and pale on hands and faces. I cursed silently. The laptops and tablets and phones and games machines, electrons still coursing through their gold and copper veins. Still enough to make my brain blur and my nerves stab if we went too close. So we stood at the window and watched, peering through the darkened branches of the Christmas tree.
“If it lasts long enough, the batteries’ll run out,” whispered Magnus. I nodded. I hoped so, for his sake. It had been so long.
Wee Jimmy whistled back in a gust of cold air. He was grinning ear to ear.
“It’s a big one,” he said. “Looks like half the island is out. Going to take a while.”
I thanked him then gave him another skelp across the ear for good measure. That boy, if he’s not up to his armpits in mischief, is almost certainly planning it. He disappeared off to see what was happening at his old house. His mother was still there, elderly and crippled and almost blind now. Magnus and I turned back to “our” house. Not that it was the same house we’d known, of course. Not even the same spot. The whole village has moved since our day. But there’s some blood connection with the family, still. Enough, though the thread is thin these days.
We watched through the cold window panes that night, biding our time. The snow fell thicker. Inside, the mother — grandmother, now, older than I had reached — put another thick log on the fire. They put the screens away, one by one. I could still feel the fizzing of the electronics, like a crawling of insects on flesh, but it was getting weaker. Magnus and I watched them, hungry. They played games in the rose-red warmth of the firelight. Charades, or something like it. We tried to guess along with them, but neither of us was any good at guessing anything but books. Never been able to endure movies or TV. The fire sank low, and the family took their stubby candles in holders or their burn-blinding torches with those nasty chemicals, and went one by one to bed.
The next day was wild and bright. The snow was heavy on the roads, thick as the centuries, and the wind had blown it into drifts and dunes against the walls of the house. Magnus and I watched the children snowballing and fort-building during the short hours of daylight. Wee Jimmy came by and pulled the hens’ tails and made clumps of snow fall off the trees onto people’s heads, until he got bored and wandered off again. He told us he’d been up to the electricity sub-station, but no sign of any repairmen yet. The road from town was closed, he said.
After sunset, we slipped inside. The fire was burning hot and bright in the dark. The candles blazed, each small orb a universe. Magnus and I stood quietly in the corner by the drinks cupboard. Most of the devices had died, and the one or two still with power were somewhere out of the way. We stood, just outside the circle. We soaked the heat of those flames into our cold bones, all the dark afternoon and all evening. It had been a long, long time. We soaked the laughter and warmth of breath into our cold lungs and veins. We heard the old stories retold, living again in the flames, and the beginnings of new stories being spun. I could follow the English well enough, though it was harder with each generation we were kept out of the houses. The Gaelic I had learned when I first came to the island from over the sea as a girl, and over the years we’d seen it rise and slowly ebb, and then we’d learned the English as that took over. Of my own language there was nothing left here but bones.
The second day was darker. The wind had died down, but the clouds hung heavy and grey as a wolf’s pelt, and by noon were shedding silent wet clots of snow. The children were getting restless indoors, and the adults were getting tired of the effort to keep them entertained and fed with the simple boiled meats and slow fries they could manage on the little wood stove. Magnus and I laughed at how they struggled, at how things have changed. All the electricity had died away now, bar one or two torches, and we were comfortable. It was enough to warm me almost to the core. Almost. I had long given up on anything touching the ice of my heart.
We watched them playing Risk and squabbling. My man Bjorn would have enjoyed that, though he’d have shaken his head in wonder at the map of the world. Magnus and I chose champions to support, and amused ourselves passing comments on their strategies. Wee Jimmy came late in the afternoon to let us know the power was back in the town. We hoped it might take a while longer for us. It was Christmas Eve.
That evening, they simmered wine on the little stovetop, and heated mince pies, and lit more candles, though some of the adults were beginning to worry about running out. We sat and smelled the rich spicy wine and the tree and the mincemeat, and talked about the Yuletide feasts we’d had long ago, and how I’d seen that become Christmas, and then how we’d seen Christmas fade and resurge over the years. I held Magnus close and thought about how he’d been robbed of so many Christmas feasts. I was an old woman; I’d had my share, a good fifty and more. He’d had only nine, and I felt the ice in my chest harden again, while the family sat in the candlelight and read the story of the child in the manger and the shepherds and angels.
“You’re getting colder again, Granny,” said Magnus. He sounded sad. For his sake, I tried to turn my thoughts away from what young Somerled had done all those years ago, but inside I felt the ice grow thicker.
Christmas Day dawned grey and quiet. The grandmother was up first, as usual, clearing the dead ashes of last night’s fire and setting it anew. She is strong, as I was. Then the children came, running from the cold of the bedrooms, laughing. We watched them open their gifts. Magnus teased me, asking what gifts I would have bought or traded or made for him if that had been part of our tradition. I asked what he would have wanted, and he told me a fine walrus-ivory chess set like his father’s, or a sharp new seax with gold inlay. Things far beyond our means, of course, but this had become one of our little games over the centuries. He said he would have given me a warm new woollen shawl, or a golden brooch fit for a queen.
The smell of roasting meat filled the room for a long while that day. The pot sat on top of the stove, and they stoked it up as hot as it would go, but they all knew it would take longer than the electric oven. No matter. Today, they were content. While it was daylight, they read their new books and played a new game, one with ogres and elves. They ate chocolates and cake and smoked fish and drank fizzy Italian wine and the room filled with steam and warm breath and jokes while the tang of unwashed bodies and costly perfume merged with the roasting beef.
In the middle of the afternoon, they lit all the remaining candles and balanced their plates of meat and potatoes on their knees, sitting in a circle in the hot room. They pulled crackers and one of the children nearly set the house on fire when the paper hat got too close to a flame. Magnus and I drank it in. This would give us memories to sup on for a long time, tales to pass the time in the dull days when we were again banished from the house.
Someone raised a glass in toast to absent friends. There was a moment of silence. I thought of the many feasts where Magnus’ place had been empty, after what happened with the boy Somerled, and I felt the ice again. I thought of the many feasts I’d watched, after my own time had come, where I’d been the one they’d missed.
“Don’t cry, Granny.” Magnus was holding my hand, and looking at me with pain in his big brown eyes.
“You should have had longer,” I said, and I knew the hardness of the ice was in my voice. “He never paid for what he did.”
“It was a long time ago, Granny,” he said, and he sounded tired. “And mostly an accident. And I forgave him long ago.” Magnus looked around at the family, at the warm yellow candlelight, at the rich food. “You know, Granny, we could move on. You could forgive him, too. We could go home.”
I looked at his face, forever nine years old, and his hopeful eyes, and something thawed.
“Home?”
“There’s a real feast, you know. Waiting for us. A thousand years and more.”
At that moment, I smelt it. The rich meat, the fine wine. Winter roses. The house, the family, the candlelight faded a little, and I thought I glimpsed the brightness of sunlight streaming.
“You’ve forgiven him? You’ve forgiven Somerled?” My voice cracked a little as I asked.
“Long ago. You can, too,” he said.
A thousand years. The child was right. It was time to move on.
“What about Wee Jimmy?” I said. I didn’t like the thought of leaving the boy to wander the island by himself, cold and alone. There are others out there who might harm him.
“Wee Jimmy can move on any time he likes,” said Magnus. “He told me so. He only stays around because he likes the tricks he can play. And, you know, his mother.”
For a few minutes, we stood in silence, while the family ate and drank and were merry and knew not that we were there. Then I summoned up all my strength, and forced the words from my heart.
“Very well,” I said, shakily. “I forgive him. I forgive Somerled son of Olaf.”
Like springtime, I felt the ice shatter into a thousand pieces and melt into light. I saw the doorway open. I heard the voices, the laughter, my own language. Was that Bjorn’s voice? Was that Tormod? And Gormal?
My view of the house grew hazy. But before it disappeared into the mists, I felt the crack of the power coming back on, and heard the cries of happy surprise from the family.
“But let’s leave the lights off until we finish dinner,” someone said. “Powercuts are actually kind of cosy, aren’t they?”
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