Dagmars Daughter by Kim Echlin Page A

calling, Springlegs, you’ll have us both in the drink!
    But the girl had stopped and was listening gravely to something up the cliffs.
    Together they listened beyond the light clinking of the ice to the moan of cold settled over the earth and from far up on the gaze they made out the sound of Moll’s pot, tiny variations in a pitch that slid along the tones between the notes.
    Nyssa asked, Is it true men go to her at night?
    What would you know about that?
    She thrust her stick down her fingers, breaking the surface of the icy water and poled them farther out from shore.
    I heard them talking behind Da’s rooms, she said.
    Danny said, Men should mind who’s in the shadows. I wouldn’t know about it.
    He whooped, spread his legs and started to rock the ice. Hands outstretched toward the sky, her tousled hair aflame around her ruddy skin, Nyssa slid to the middle. Danny leapt to the next pan and the next, scrambling toward shore. Hard on his heels Nyssa jumped and slipped and rocked on the thick white rafts. Panting, she caught up with him as the off-shore winds stirred up. They were both stuck on a large floating pan and too far to jump to shore.
    Now we’re done, Danny teased, his quick eye searching for a way back. Stuck on the back of snake that won’t be charmed!
    The open water grew all around. Nyssa hurled herself toward the shore, slipped and fell. Her leap rocked the clumper and as she swam under the icy brine to the surface a thick blue and mottled iceberg blocked her passage. Down below the water, the clinking of the ice sounded like wooden bells and she did not struggle but was strangely drawn to these sounds she had never heard before. She hung below, still and listening.
    Danny was standing waist-deep in the water now and he pushed at the heavy ice pan. He saw her limp fingers poking out, grabbed them, pulled her out sideways from under the iceberg and stood her up in the water. One arm around her waist he half lifted her up to the shore. Moll stood there at her full height, watching silent. Danny pulled Nyssa right past her, wrapped her in his own damp jacket and walked her back up to their mother’s house.
    I almost lost you under that bellycater, he said, pulling her to him and soaked in saltwater, safe beside her brother, Nyssa felt all the plain contentment of a girl much loved growing up on Millstone Nether.

    N ature abounds in what we call catastrophe. All it takes is a little pressure. Storms. Floods. Mudslides. All caused by pressure, the overturning of the old pattern into something new. Time passes and old patterns are forgotten. But they are not lost and can still exert pressure, remembered or not. Consumed by either fire or fire. While Donal had tried to prepare himself, Dagmar had walked away from him down the shore, held his best friend in her embrace and he hadn’t even guessed that he was losing what he thought he most wanted.
    The night Donal fled, Madeleine saw the freak hailstorm over the ocean. She was bent over a pot of boiling haywater for an orphaned goat. The warm scent of the hay clouded up around her face and she filled an old baby’s bottle with the fragrant liquid, took the bleating kid in her lap and urged it to suckle.
    Donal pushed through the half door and shed his wet clothes in a pile on the floor. He went into the back room and returned with his bass in one hand and a travelling bag in the other. He said, I’m going now. I won’t be back.
    You’re leaving before light? said Madeleine, shifting the kid in her arms.
    They’re marrying. It’s dawn soon anyway.
    Half the island knew and the other half guessed, said Madeleine. Your friend’s no friend, Donal, but it doesn’t mean you have to go.
    I’d choke every time I saw them.
    He’s a jader, Donal. Time heals.
    With the bristling anger of a young man betrayed he answered, What odds is it to you?
    Donal took his double bass and sailed out into the ocean. He had no heart for the great cathedrals to the west and