Words

JUST A FINGERTIP AWAY, by James Pickles

It was still dark when Moluag rose. His followers lay like shadows on the ground around him, still exhausted and broken from yesterday's long journey. It was bitterly cold as he knelt down amid the frosted leaves and hurriedly muttered his prayers, hands clasped tightly before his humbled forehead. By the time he finished the first whispers of dawn had begun to streak the darkness, and as he walked swiftly through the trees and down the hill to the water's edge the sun flickered out a long ray of fiery gold, as thin as an arrowshaft. Mist hovered thickly above the surface of the loch.

With his old heart beating ever quicker with excitement Moluag carefully pulled his small black coracle out of its hiding place in the yellow-budded gorse bushes by the shore. His joy almost surprised him as he smelt the wild fresh eagerness of the air. He had come home. The mountains seemed to call out to him in recognition, welcoming him back, bestowing on him their massively silent benediction, and his heart cried out with love and gratitude in return. Quickly he lifted his coracle up onto his shoulders, and began to step gingerly down over the rocks to the sea. The water was icy cold and almost made him gasp. Gently he floated the coracle, and pushing it before him he waded forward through the thick seaweed. Not more than three hundred yards from the shore, slept the island of his desire, long and grey in the first haze of morning.

There was a quiet splash off to his left. Moluag stiffened. His whole body tightened like a fist. Without looking, he knew who it was. He turned slowly, and there was that familiar head of red hair bending down over a coracle not ten yards away. Columba.

Columba was the only son of Fedhlimidh and Eithne, parents of royal blood who could count half the princes of Ireland as their allies and kinsmen. Moluag, some fifteen years his senior, had first met him in Dublin when they were both under the tutelage of St Finnian. Columba had told him to his face that he needed to be more earnest in his praying. Moluag didn't forget people who told him to be more earnest in his praying. Besides, there was something about Columba which stuck in the memory as well as the throat. After all, he had founded his first monastery at the age of twenty five, and the land was flooded with tales of his miracles and piety. Yet there had been those who had distrusted, and recoiled from, the ardour of his zeal. Some doubted whether his motives were as angelic as his smile. His devotional sighs and alert prayerfulness had by the grace of God not only propelled him through the monastic hierarchy but swelled his private funds to such a degree that they became a topic of more than just local conversation.

Moluag watched him push his own little craft out and wade after it, head down, eyes resting attentively on his feet moving through the water. The old man shivered. All strength and will was ebbing from him, and a cold knot of fear twisted nauseatingly in the pit of his stomach. Surely even Columba wouldn't dare try and claim Lismore. The Abbot of Dublin, St Finnian, had virtually given it into Moluag's care already through his blessing of the expedition. It was common knowledge that Moluag wanted to found a monastery in the place of his birth. A tremor of doubt had passed through Moluag's mind when he heard that Columba was also setting sail for Scotland and the Western Isles, but surely it was beyond even his temerity to try and steal it from under Moluag's appointed nose, so to speak. It was impossible. Moluag's hands curled tightly around his stout wooden paddle. Columba seemed totally absorbed and hadn't raised his eyes once. He hasn't even seen me, thought Moluag, scornfully...

"A fine day God has given us, brother Moluag."

Moluag dropped the oar sharply, and it fell noisily into the bottom of his coracle. He floundered helplessly for a reply.

"Indeed it is" he finally croaked.

Columba stepped lightly into his floating vessel.

"And so where might you be going then Moluag?"

His voice was casual, relaxed, carefree. He raised his eyes for the first time, and looked smilingly into Moluag's horrified face. That was so like him, thought Moluag. So patronising, so pretentious, always speaking as if he knew some special little secret.

"I go to the Isle of Lismore, where I stood in my youth."

Moluag said meaningfully, slowly, as he clambered into his own vessel. 

"And where might you be going, brother Columba?"

"Wherever God wills", returned the other, with a small smile. He knew Moluag was surprised to see him, he knew his anxieties. They were written on his face as clearly as his ageing years, and Columba revelled in the old man's discomfort. He was winning this little battle already. Moluag's ears were reddening by the minute.

They paddled for a while in silence in the cold bright sunshine. Their long, slow, rhythmic strokes whipped little gurgling whirlpools away in the water behind them. They bobbed together, stroke for stroke, unwaveringly towards the island, now not more than two hundred yards distant. Moluag was becoming increasingly unsettled. Columba showed no signs of altering course.

"So you wish to bring the word of the Lord to the Isle of Lismore, brother Moluag?" Columba questioned cheerfully.

Moluag's eyes never left the shore ahead.

"You know that I do." The young fool was always asking stupid questions, always using your name repeatedly as though you were a child. Moluag ever so slightly increased the length of his strokes, dug his paddle ever so slightly quicker into the water. Columba's coracle moved effortlessly along beside him. This was getting unbearable. In his mind's eye he could see Columba walking down the shore to greet him, arms outstretched in feigned affection, even his walk mocking. "Welcome to the holy monastery of Lismore, brother Moluag, which the dear Lord Christ -" a glance heavenward -"has entrusted to my faithful care." Moluag's oar splashed noisily into the loch, bringing the old man sharply to his senses. Everything seemed alien to him now, the leering mountains, the freezing water, all was hostile and mocking, laughing at him. He was hated and betrayed.

Columba smiled. "It is a fine island, is it not?"

Moluag increased his speed still more, paddling with deep, intense strokes, his knuckles beginning to show white through his old hands. The coracle skimmed across the waves, and yet still Columba kept pace with him. Under his breath Moluag whispered, it seemed, with his soul.

"It is my island."

The shore was now less than a hundred yards distant. Behind the two coracles lay a trail of broken foam. No-one spoke now. No-one heard the mournful cry of the wheeling gulls, or heeded the streaming glory of the sun. Their world was contained in the throbbing of their heartbeats and the narrowing distance between them and the shore. Columba no longer smiled - his mouth set in a tight, thin line, his breathing hard and determined. Moluag was almost purple with restraint. The veins stood from his perspiring forehead, and his white hair was smeared with sweat. His anger boiled in his chest. All his dreams were being stolen by that false Irish priest with the smug smile. He used to wake up smiling after dreaming of Lismore, refreshed by just the thought of it. All his hopes rested there on that island, and all were now being denied. Not just denied - laughed at, smashed in his face, torn out by the root.

His progress became more and more frenzied. His grip bit into the paddle as he plunged it into the quiet water. Columba too, began to strike out with all his might. The two vessels bobbed furiously over the churning surface, matching each other yard for yard. Then, as Moluag stabbed his paddle once again into the foam, the desperation and wildness of his action flipped it from his hands, and for a moment it almost floated teasingly out of reach. Moluag soon snatched it back , but in those vital seconds Columba had nosed past him. The old man bellowed with rage and violently struck out again, but now there was despair in his heart.

Columba paddled like a hunted animal, hunched forward in his coracle, scrabbling at the water with quick, short, powerful strokes. He gasped for breath as the sweat broke out on his forehead, but already the triumph was glowing in his white face. The shore was scarcely thirty yards distant, and Moluag was some ten yards behind. Columba spurred his coracle forward over the shrinking distance. He was scarcely fifteen strokes from victory when a great cry from behind made him stop and turn as effectively as if someone had wrenched him round by the shoulder.

As Columba's coracle forged ahead of him Moluag felt a raging helplessness flood through his body. His stroke faltered, his hands shook. His soul shuddered with disbelief and sorrow, and in that darkening moment his mind danced along the borders of sanity. Seizing his fishknife from the folds of his habit, he held out his left hand. The sun glinted on the dark silver blade.

Columba looked at Moluag, sitting in his coracle, gently pulsing on the water. Once again the vast tranquillity of the surroundings woke around him. He shivered in the cold wind. The white sun burned its way up the horizon. Columba's gaze fell on the paddle in his hands, the grain worn hard and smooth. The light flickered where the water dripped. Unwillingly, he looked back at Moluag.

The old monk's hands were shaking and wet with blood. His eyes glittered wildly and his whole body glowed with exultation. He slowly drew himself up erect, and then leaning back he hurled something far over Columba's head onto the shore. It fell noiselessly on the stones. Columba did not see where it fell, however. His eyes were fixed on Moluag's left hand. It looked curious, almost claw-like, as though belonging to a strange animal. Three long bony fingers and a thumb protruded awkwardly from the palm. The little finger had been severed at the knuckle.

"My blood claims the island, brother Columba." Moluag's voice was quiet, but it wavered on the brink of self-control. He pointed to the shore, and Columba could make out the small pale finger lying amid the weed and stones below the ragged high watermark. Moluag smiled. Tentatively he picked up his oar and paddled, with one arm, slowly towards the shingle. His left hand clenched into a fist he did not dare look at.

At last the bottom of his coracle grated on the shore, and he climbed unsteadily out. He had dreamed so much of this moment, of what it would be like, of how he would feel fulfilled and contented. He had savoured it and consumed it. But when the moment came it was all he could do not to pass out. He dimly remembered looking forward to it, that was all. The salt water burned like acid in his wound, but it was the knowledge of what he had done that now swelled agonisingly in his mind. He tried desperately to blank it out, to deny it, but it kept sweeping back, an irrefutable tide of horror that crept further and further into his thought.

"Enjoy the rewards of your sacrifice, Moluag. Doubtless the Lord shall thank you for it." He had almost forgotten about Columba. He had almost forgotten about everything. Leaning against his coracle he turned to look at his red-headed rival, still floating a little way from the shore. Words failed him. There was nothing left to say.

"I leave you with your prize. Fare you well, old man." Columba's voice rang with scorn. He slowly spun his coracle about to face the mainland, and as he did so he suddenly laughed. A clean, free laugh. Then he paddled away.

Moluag slumped to the ground and squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the sound of Columba's laughter which echoed and echoed and echoed in his ears. He could deal with Columba's angry scorn - in many ways it was the proof of his success - but not his indifference. It supported the tiny repellent voice in the back of his brain that said this was all folly, that it didn't really matter, that no-one really cared. The voice whose conviction grew in proportion to his increasing physical pain. His whole arm throbbed furiously now. Salt water had crept into the wound sending acid stabs of pain racing through his body. He lifted his wounded hand, and stretched it open. Then he looked at it. He retched horribly, and his senses left him.

It was still morning when he recovered himself, but the sky had clouded over and now a heavy greyness hung over the sea. To his relief he saw his followers' small boat crawling through the waves toward the island. He would think about explanations later, but for the moment all he wanted was balm for his hand. He staggered to his feet and looked about him. Beneath the dull cloud cover it was an unspectacular island. As he waited for his companions Moluag absorbed the tangled, matted grassland, the tussocked heather, and the small dark copse sitting on the back of a low hill. And far off he heard the inane bleating of a goat.

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