At first Angus didn’t notice. Then, he wouldn’t notice. It didn’t make sense. Illness was for other people. Mary was constant, like the hills: something time passed by, not something it changed. She was strong, like the rocks—nothing could bend her.

But, soon, Angus had to accept his mistake—Mary was mortal. He saw the difference in her eyes. They’d grown dark, and the light had left. Now she would sit by the fire, staring into the flames for hours on end—hands by her side, empty. If it weren’t for Angus, the cows would have gone unfed and the crops untended.

The extra work didn’t bother him. Mary bothered him. To see her as she was now—so close by his side, but so far from him in her mind—tore him up. She seldom spoke. And when she did, she talked of strange fanciful stuff—and that was worse. She didn’t ask after the cows, tell him to fetch firewood, or sweep the floor. Now, with her eyes lifted to the skies, she would babble of fish.

‘The fish, Angus.’ she would say. ‘It’s coming. I can see it’ and she would clench her fists, and smile. ‘It’s getting nearer, it’s getting closer.’

He would pull a seat up by her side, pat her back in a way he’d seen other men pet their wives, and ask what she meant.

‘A flying fish.’ she would whisper. ‘It’s coming through the skies, with a ladder to escape.’

And Angus would withdraw his hand from her back, head out onto the hills, and try to clear his mind. Try to understand how this could have happened to Mary. Try to understand when all this madness and sorrow had started. In truth, something in her words made his skin prickle. She spoke with such conviction. Her tone, so calm. To her, this madness was truth. She absolutely believed a flying fish was coming to save them.

And then, when he was sure he was alone, he would cry.

A few days later, Mary grew worse. All day she spoke of her father, golden fish, iron discs and strange singing.

Angus never strayed from her side. Hour by hour, he watched her fade. After all these years, she was leaving him.

When night fell, she grew silent—watching the moon. And when morning came, she watched the sun. He tried to make her look away, but she would not. Her eyes grew red and sore.

Around midday, with a faint smile and a sigh, she died.

That afternoon Angus sat on the rock, gazing down at the glen. There was nothing, now Mary was gone.

Weeks passed. Every day found Angus seated on the rock, staring at the sky. All day he sat watching the shifting clouds, whispering ‘A fish, Mary? A fish?’

He grew thin, and so did his cows. But there was a spark in his eye that hadn’t been there before. It might have been madness.

Then the news came, again—the Clearances were coming.

It was around this time Mary began speaking to him at night. The voice didn’t sound like Mary’s—it was unearthly, metallic and distant. But, like a dream where one thing represents another, Angus knew it was his wife. ‘Ach, you’re slow! Tsk, tsk’ she’d mock, with a laugh. And Angus would speed up whatever task he was about, but it made no difference. A tingle would run down his spine and the words ‘God, man! Are you no done yet?’ would ring in the air. What he wasn’t doing fast enough for her liking, he couldn’t guess—she never told him.

Sometimes, she’d just sing. And the sound would thrum through his bones and into his brain. Then, at night, he would dream of strange iron discs, men and women with shining faces, and a golden place far beyond the clouds.

But the voice never caused him terror. It was just Mary. If there was a body who’d not be put off by death, it was Mary. Interfering from the afterlife? Aye, no surprises there.

One night she spoke to him louder than ever. ‘Wake up, Angus! They’re coming.’ Her voice cracked down his spine like a whip. ‘Leave, leave!’

He sat up in bed, his brain still fogged with sleep. ‘What? And go where?’

‘The tree by the cairn.’ she answered, her voice sharp and quick—like it used to be when they were chopping timber, and he wasn’t working fast enough. ‘Wait there ’til morning, and dinnae stir!’

He got up. Somewhere in the distance he could hear men’s cries. He didn’t look back, but headed straight for the cairn.

He’d always told her she had eyes like a witch. They were so dark and wild. They seemed to know secrets stolen from another world.

Angus waited on the hillside, stopping his ears with his fingers, watching as fires sprang up in the glen.

Moment by moment, they grew closer.

At last, a few men drew up to the croft. He watched as they banged on the door. They waited a few minutes, before breaking it down and stepping inside. Then they were out again, empty handed. With a shrug, a thin man threw a lit torch towards the thatch.

The weather’d been dry these last few days, and the flames leapt up.

Angus watched, numb.

After a while, a feeling started in his chest. He couldn’t describe it. There in the pre-dawn darkness, it grew with the flames. It tugged through his body, like briar thorns and nettle stings. It wound tighter and tighter, until his chest ached and he vomited.

To lose everything at once—it seemed impossible. To spend so much time building so much—to lose it all so fast. The world was mad. He was mad—widowed, speaking to his dead wife through dreams, watching their house burn to nothing.

What was he? Who was Angus MacDonald? That man had a wife, a house, livestock.

The man’s body he was in now had none of those things. He was a bundle of nerves, drenched in vomit, cold in the night.

Morning came. He didn’t remember falling asleep. It must have been exhaustion.

The ruin of his home lay before him. There it was—just a frame and stones. The soul had burned away. Little silver grey wisps of smoke curled up from the last few glowing embers. He imagined the soul of his home going to greet the afterlife.

‘Farewell,’ he sighed, his voice hollow. There was nothing to feel. His loss was so complete—he was no one. Even his emotions were gone. They’d taken them, too—when they killed his Mary and set his life on fire.

But the sensation, deep in his chest, was strengthening. It throbbed in the darkness inside him. It was heavy, dull and colourless. And as he sat, it grew. He felt it spreading out—like a tree, with branches thorned with ice. Hour after hour, it kept growing.

After a time, Angus realised what it meant.

Death. He wanted death to come down and take him away.

He lay on the earth, watching the sky. Hour after hour, the clouds shifted above. He felt nothing, but the prickling branches of the tree as it continued to grow.

Darkness faded the sky. He watched as sunset painted the clouds a beautiful blood red. He felt no need for food, he could live off those colours—the colours the heavens sent. He drank them deep, pulling them inside. He felt the tree stop growing, but it didn’t fade. It stayed.

The sky flecked a thousand different colours, growing more and more beautiful. How had he never noticed this miracle before? His eyes had always been bent to the earth; too busy toiling for himself to notice the glory of a sunset.

Night came, and the tree started growing again. Its roots filled his stomach; staving off hunger. Its branches crawled upwards, till they clutched his throat, and tightened there. The pain went beyond tears.

Somewhere in the distance came the drumming of a snipe. The bird’s weird trilling filled the air with an unearthly quality and Angus found his mind wandering to strange places. He dreamt of fairies, ghosts, water horses, witches and demons. He thought of all the children that went missing, and were never heard of again. If anything unholy existed, it would find him tonight.

Morning came, and with it nothing.

‘Where do the dead go when they die? For them no world, but empty sky,’ whispered the tree in his chest.

How many days had passed since he last ate? He didn’t know. But, he hadn’t grown thinner. He wasn’t hungry. Eating didn’t seem like something he needed to do.

Night was coming, again.

Then, he heard it: a strange, distant creaking. A breeze stirred the grass by his side. Angus listened for the sound. Steadily, it grew louder. Every now and then a soft creak and distant whir floated to him on the air. It reminded him of the heave of the plough, but stretched out further.

The sound came louder and closer than before. Now it was like the strain of a saddle on a pony’s back.