Prompts

The Gift Shop at the End of the World

The prompt: a little shop at Land's End in Cornwall called 'The Gift Shop at the End of the World'. I carried the idea around for a year, not sure how to start it, until I visited Slains Castle in Aberdeen, Scotland - the opposite end of the UK - almost exactly one year later, and sat looking around at the ruined castle perched on the edge of the cliff ...

It was a calm day – normally the winds on the cliff edge would snatch away sounds before you'd hear them – but today there was nearly no wind at all. Maggie could hear the song of the gulls on the rocks below with crystal clarity, and the waves of the calm sea lapping gently against the craggy shore. The smells were clear too – the tang of salt and seaweed pricking her nostrils now and then as the slight breeze drifted them up.

She allowed herself a moment to sit on the cliff's edge – her favourite spot, a patch of grass on a tiny outcropping, where on three sides she was surrounded by empty air – and watch the gulls on the rocks. They went about their business calmly, confident of not being disturbed though they knew she was there, calling to each other across the small rivers of seawater that separated their islands of rock, minding their young who scree'd thinly for food, occasionally gliding up on the breeze to scan the waters for fish. Other birds mingled with them on the lower rocks – large black and white puffins with their orange beaks, and the occasional wild goose, skimming the shoreline or picking at rock pools among the lower rocks, but forbidden to alight on the gulls' high, seaweed-encrusted fortresses.

Behind her the castle rose – what was left of it anyway – a tall, sprawling ruin perilously close to the edge of the cliff. Roofless round towers and triangular gables were silhouetted against the iron grey sky. The clouds half-heartedly threatened rain, but Maggie knew she could shelter in the ruins if she had to. She looked up at the empty windows, small narrow turret windows, large parlour and picture windows, empty doorways ... and she could almost see the stained glass glinting in the dull July sun, the tall chimneys trailing white smoke. She could almost feel the old writer's contentment here, the love of the jagged cliffs, the chattering gulls. No wonder he had been inspired to write.

As if hearing her thoughts, a raven croaked hoarsely from somewhere inside the ruins. Maggie smiled to herself and, with a tired groan of old, protesting joints, got up – being very careful of the long drop on three sides – and went to find him.

Winding through the narrow corridors of what was once the main building, she saw him perched at the top of the internal tower, picturesquely posed in the frame of an empty window. She circled round and climbed the stone spiral stairs until they came to an abrupt, crumbling end, and looked up. "Bram," she said, her voice almost as dry and croaky as the raven's. "Fancy meeting you here."

The raven tilted its head and looked down at her with one beady eye, staying silent.

"No pickings here, you silly old thing," she said, and carefully lowered herself to a sitting position on the stone steps. The cold of the stone instantly began to seep into her old bones, but she thought she could bear it for a short time. Looking up, she was as always mildly amused to see grass growing on the bricks at the top of the ruined tower. Nature reasserting itself. Before long, she supposed, everything else would look like this place.

The raven let out another loud, rattling croak. She looked back at it and sighed. "Fine, fine," she muttered, and fished around in her bag. Eventually she pulled out some dried meat and, pulling off a small strip, held it out to the bird. It snapped it up eagerly, wings fluttering to keep its balance. She watched, smiling. The raven knew by now that she posed no threat.

Chewing on her piece of the meat, she gazed out through the arch of what had once been a second floor doorway, and her gaze went back to the gulls on the rocks. Then, as it often did, it turned to the building in which she now sat, to the bricks still stubbornly clinging to the form of what they used to be. She considered the stubs of greying wood jutting out from the crumbling red brick that used to be floorboards, long since erased by time and the salty, moist sea air. The uniform gaps that had once held roof beams. The circular towers rising high, the rectangular walls that had come later. The layers of soil hiding the stones beneath except for the occasional stubborn doorstep showing through. Spiral steps that still went up, but to nowhere. The still visible arch of a fireplace, the delicate scrollwork of one sea-facing section of wall that defiantly refused to be worn away. Red brick and yellow stone, all fading to grey with age but still, here and there, vibrant, holding onto its memories. She couldn't see all this from her perch halfway up the central tower, but she knew it from fond familiarity, just as she knew where the nettles and grass and heather grew, where once there had been fine rugs and expensive furniture. Nature reclaims all, she thought again, and felt a solemn, awed sadness for what had been forgotten to nature, and what was waiting to be forgotten now.