Linksshifter II

A Path Between The Waves - ~~~~~

Sonali shrugged. "No mind – I mean, it's not like you've just to duck down and then gather them all up and pop right up in five minutes. I've got another trackie home, I can go get it, bring it back over, and you can change behind a rock or whit while I try to get the weans to change. And aye, I'd better get some blankets or anoraks for them besides, we'd no want to have the police down with any of them in seal shape." She slid down off the rocks and started to gather up the remains of the carry out. "Where would you bring them back to? That cave's fair small, and you can't know for sure the tide'll be with you."

Colleen stood still for a second, thinking. "Well... what about that beach, back behind the golf course by the lighthouse point? It's no too popular, so there won't be many looking, but it's close enough to the roads that it's no too hard for them to get back. Do you know the place?"

Sonali nodded, thinking back, a few weeks before and the long sunset sinking behind her, the endless black ocean stretching away, and the feeling out of the trilobite that she belonged down in it, diving deep with her nostrils closed. "Aye. I mind that beach; I go by it on my bike now and again. You're right; I was just by late, a month back or so, and it was clean deserted."

The hair blew and flowed over Colleen's face as she reached out to brace herself, climbing off of the rock. "I – I thought it might have been you, when you've met me these times with your bike. So high up and with the sun behind, I didn't see who it was so good, but sometimes I swim off that point, and up there one evening, I saw a girl standing on the cliffs with a bike, looking out – and I had the queerest feeling that she might be looking for me." She stood up, feet on the ground again, and her face almost seemed a little flushed; the wind, probably, and the beer, like happened to Shauna because her dad was from Hong Kong. "Like you said, I can't ask it of anyone just so, but you said you had your problems, and by us it'll be lonely with the weans gone. If you'd like –"

Sonali shook her head, pushing an arm of the heather out of the way with one of the bottles. "No; well, I don't quite know for now. My family, aye, it's rough, but I think I still want to fix it – and I'd miss my mum and the twins and texting Naresh; even baba's no so bad if I take him in small doses and he gets the idea I'm a person and no just a dowry waiting to be paid out." She turned back and smiled. "But ahead of anything else, you canny play football with flippers. All this row with baba goes back to him no letting me play for A-LFC, the hell I'm to run away and no get to play football there either." She pushed up on the branch and nodded Colleen through.

Almost hesitantly, Colleen reached out to untangle part of Sonali's sleeve from an arm of briars that she hadn't noticed it getting stuck in, pushing her bike around another clump of heather. "Here, hold still." She pulled gently at the fabric, squeezing the thorns together to slide them out. "Are you sure that your clothes would fit me? You're not as tall as I am, and you wear these pretty close, and –"

"No, it's no bother," Sonali said, looking Colleen up and down as she made sure that nothing was still caught. "My bottoms should be fine, and I'll pinch a top from Naresh's room; baba wanted to bin all his kit after he left, but mum wouldn't have it, thinks he's going to come home someday and apologize and be a good son, he's got to still have a trackie top or a jumper or summat in his closet. He's well tall, so it should fit you no bother." She pushed the bike out of the last bunch of heather and onto the path leading up to the rail cut. "Actually, haud on a bit – how do you do for clothes? I've no seen you in anything but that school uniform, but that wisny sewn out of seaweed – how'd you get the school blazer to come up to code?"

Colleen smiled, her eyes laughing. "John Lewis does deliver, you know."

"Aye, but, no to the sea. How –"

"My da's got a post box up in Fraserburgh; it's a well long swim, but up there they don't blink an eye when an old boy in greasy rags turns up smelling like fish, soaking wet. And after that, enough plastic film and packing tape, and the water won't get in to bring it down by us. Simples."

Sonali shook her head as she mounted her bike; she couldn't tell any more whether Colleen was playing this straight, or just messing with her. "Aye right; John Lewis, gies peace." She straddled the frame, bracing herself on the handlebars. "Right then; I'll see you up the beach when you can come back with them, as long as baba doesny ground me for rowing with him the morning. And if he does – I'll still be there, but you might need that skin for me after all." Colleen half-nodded, like she wasn't sure what to say, and Sonali pushed down on the pedals, staring straight on ahead.

It was cold – colder than Sonali expected, colder than it probably ought to be at this time of summer. She fidgeted, drawing herself a little closer together. It wasn't the cold getting to her, maybe, so much as the waiting; waiting for Colleen to come in to this beach with the missing children like she said she would, and not to run far and deep, away to Norway or the Isles, and steal them for good and all. If that happened – if she didn't come – maybe she really might have to dive herself into the water and disappear for good.

Baba had been in the shop when she got home, and mum had been just barely rousing him, calling him back in, as she snuck out with an armful of Naresh's spare trackies and winter coats, taking her bag with her proper in case she needed her phone or anything, and when she got back, there would be sure hell to pay, sure to be grounded for the rest of summer break, driven to work and back under guard, her bike chained up and bolted to something out in the shed. For now, such as it was, for a last whisper, she was free; free, as far as it went.

Free, free to grab a bus down to Dundee or Edinburgh and wait tables and hope she didn't have to let the manager feel her up to keep a roof over her head. Free to go home head bowed, take the medicine, and bite her tongue for two years, watching her skills fall away from her until all she could do at uni was do a course like anyone else and end up just another accountant or corner-shopkeeper or god forbid the wife of a corner-shopkeeper. Free to take Colleen's hand and put on a sealskin and leave all of this behind. Was that really so bad?

She looked up, out from the beach to the distant curve where the sky melted into the sea. Out that way, through the waves, she could get away – but in the end, she had her own dreams, and being a seal didn't figure into them so big. Seals couldn't play football – and Sonali was going to play football, and get paid for it, even if it was barely pocket change, and pull on that dark blue shirt and lead her team out to show the world that Scotland hadn't all gone to rust, not yet. She would do it, or knock herself all to pieces trying, and she would do it from here: this place, these parks, this school, these friends, this family, this life.

Sonali pushed herself up, stretching her legs out, the wind pulling at strands of her hair, the jackets flipping over themselves at her feet. From out in the surf, there was a sound, the distant cries of seals in the breaking whitecaps, coming in on the rising tide. She shaded her eyes and she could see them, bobbing black spots in the deep green flow, and she reached up, waving her arms over her head, calling Aberdeen's wandering children home.