INTRODUCTION:
Although the show makes it obvious that Clark travelled extensively in the years before he settled in Metropolis, we are told very little about the places he went to. We know even less about the people he met. But Clark is a likeable man. Despite maintaining a cautious distance from those around him, he nonetheless seems to have a gift for making friends. It's hard, therefore, to believe that he would have forged no lasting relationships before he started work at the Daily Planet.
That, then, was the starting point from which this story grew. The final result? Well, you'll have to read on to find out where my musings led me.
I apologise in advance for any mistakes I have made in getting cultural and geographical nuances right. While I've tried to do my best here, I am by no means an expert. The Shetland Islands are beautiful, but, alas, I know them only as a visitor, not as a resident.
With many, many thanks to Yvonne for beta-reading. Thanks, also, to Wendy for suggesting "Grannanna" as a term of endearment and the kind people on IRC who found more things for me to alter.
DISCLAIMER: This story has been written for fun, not profit. No attempt is being made to infringe any existing copyrights held by December 3rd Productions, Warner Bros, D C Comics, or any other copyright holders.
A Gift From Shetland
by Chris CarrAs Winnie Byrne, née Eunson, grew older she found herself remembering the old days more and more. She remembered life in the old croft house, which had long since been abandoned. These days, gutted of its contents, its timbers, windows and slates, it was a ruin, barely more than a pile of stones rising out of the long grass on the other side of the voe. She remembered sleeping in a box bed – a cupboardlike arrangement with sliding doors that had been set into the wall of the bedroom. She had shared it with one of her sisters and some friendly fleas.
Winnie remembered the long summer days and the not-quite darkness of the short summer nights that the Shetlanders call the simmer dim. In her memory they were times of endless sun, the kind of perfect summers that only exist in an adult's memory of childhood.
Winnie remembered the long, dark winter nights, and the evenings spent huddled around the peat fires as she listened to her father telling stories while he mended the fishing nets and her mother taught her to knit.
Along with more recent ones of her own, Winnie had passed her father's stories down to her children and her children's children. Now she was passing them on to her first great grandchild, Jessi.
Winnie told Jessi how life had been when she was young. She told Jessi about the doomed love her sister had had for a Norwegian fisherman, who had been a refugee on the islands during World War II. She told Jessi what life had been like before oil wealth had come to Shetland. But most of all, she told Jessi about the old beliefs.
Of course, in more enlightened days, children no longer believed in the selkie folk or the trows. And Winnie Byrne, née Eunson, also knew better than to believe in such nonsense.
And yet...
When Jessi pointed out a stranger on the beach, Winnie's first thought was of the stories she had learned at her father's knee. She remembered the legends of the selkie and of the Finn because who, or what, else could have emerged out of the tempestuous sea in human guise?
*****
"Grannanna! Grannanna!"
"What is it, Jess?" Winnie asked. She lifted her eyes from her knitting to look at the eight year old who was kneeling on the window seat. Jessi was pressing her nose against the glass so that she could peer around the rivulets of water that were streaming down the window pane.
Jessica turned her head slightly and replied, "There's a man down on the beach!"
"People come down to visit the beach all the time, Jessi," Winnie said. "There's no need to make a song and dance about it."
"People don't come down here on a day like today," Jessica argued in the patented manner of a child talking to a particularly dense adult. As if to reinforce her argument, the wind chose that moment to howl particularly loudly around the eaves. "In any case, that's not the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing is that he wasn't there a moment ago. He just... appeared. It was like magic."
Winnie shook her head. "You must be mistaken," she said. "He probably just walked down by the side of the house."
"Grannanna!" protested Jessi, as well she might. It was, even to Winnie's ears, a feeble suggestion. For one thing, there were no trees anywhere on the island, let alone around the house, to hide a fully grown man from view. For another, Jessi had spend the last half-hour staring out of the window, watching the lashing rain and wishing petulantly and vociferously that she could go outside. Moreover, Jessi was the most observant child Winnie had ever known. If Jessi said the man had just appeared from nowhere then, as improbable as it sounded, Winnie was inclined to believe her.
Winnie carefully heaved her arthritic body upright and put her knitting to one side. "Let me see," she said.
Jessi shifted sideways so that Winnie could peer over her shoulder. Like Jessi, Winnie had to press her face close to one of the window panes so that she could squint around the glistening streaks of water that were streaming down the glass.
They watched the stranger pace along the sand, getting wetter and wetter, his dark hair plastering against his skull, his jeans clinging wetly to his legs, and his jacket darkening by the second with all the water it was absorbing. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his shoulders were hunched against the wind.
Jessi looked up at Winnie and asked, "What's he doing?"
"Just walking, by the looks of it."
"Why?"
Winnie frowned and said, "I've no idea, Jessi."
Winnie Byrne's life had been a difficult one. She'd known hardship and sorrow, yet there was no bitterness in her heart. She knew the meaning of compassion and she shivered in automatic sympathy with the stranger. What kind of a fool came out into a spring storm dressed only in a light summer jacket and jeans?
The elderly clock on the mantelpiece ticked wheezily as they watched, and the frown lines on Winnie's forehead carved themselves deeper as her concern grew. Finally, she could stand it no more. No matter who he was, he had to come in out of the driving rain.
"Stay here," Winnie said. "I'll only be a minute." Then she went into the porch, pulled on her boots and shrugged on her oilskin coat. She pulled the hood over her head and held it tightly closed with her left hand as she opened the front door with her right.
The wind was fierce, and Winnie could taste the salt spray that was blowing off the sea when she licked her lips, where it mingled with the rain. There were whitecaps on the water, and the waves pounded against the sand, foaming angrily.
The storm pushed at Winnie; she pushed back, determined to defy it. Maybe, had she not been struggling so hard, she would have realised that the stranger was not fighting the storm. Instead, he seemed immune to its fury, walking around in it as if it were nothing more severe that a light July shower. However, it would only be later – much later – that Winnie would think about that.
As it was, Winnie concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, taking a route down to the shore that avoided all the cotton-grass and moss covered bog. The grass, normally ankle-deep, was almost flattened by the wind, and the few sheep she could see were huddling miserably in the lee of the house.
Winnie make it onto the beach and called out, but her words were ripped away by the storm. She couldn't hear them herself, so there was no way that the stranger should have been able to. Yet, he turned around to look at her, his whole face a question.
He mouthed something, but Winnie had no hope of deciphering the words. Her "I can't hear you!" should have been futile, too, so she reinforced it by pantomiming a cupping of her ears and then beckoning him towards her.
He came, and when he drew level with her, she yelled in his ear, "You should come along inside, before this weather is the death of you!"
Winnie surely imagined his response: a wry laugh and the words, "The wind and rain can't hurt me!"
"Don't be a fool, man!" she shouted brusquely. "You need warmth. And, I dare say, some tea wouldn't hurt, either!"
He smiled at her, either amused by her manner or grateful for her care. Winnie wasn't sure which. All she knew for sure was that his was a gleaming white smile.
It was a movie-star kind of smile, Winnie thought. It made her ageing heart skip beats and remember how it felt to be young. If she had been fifty years younger, she might have been attracted to him. Even now, in her seventies, she could appreciate the beauty of his smile. She was old, not dead!
Then again, Winnie Byrne, née Eunson, had always been a one man kind of woman. Arthur had stolen her heart the moment she had first set eyes on him, back when she was only fifteen. She'd had to wait impatiently for three years before he'd got a clue, then another four before they'd finally married.
This young man would never have stood a chance with her.
It was easier going back to the house, with the wind at their backs and their arms intertwined together to give them added balance. Indeed, so strong were some of the gusts that once or twice Winnie was sure that she would have been swept off her feet were it not for the stranger's firm grip.
Winnie opened the front door and ushered the stranger in before her. It took the two of them to push it shut again. Then she called out, "Jessi! Fetch me some towels and blankets!" as she began to peel off her waterproofs.
The stranger and she stood in the enclosed porch and looked at each other. Even though Winnie had lived on the islands all her life, she could not be described as naïve. She knew exotic when she saw it, and this young man was certainly that. She'd never seen a face quite like his, not even amongst the tourists who sometimes passed through. His wet hair gleamed like onyx, his cheekbones were chiselled high, and his eyes were of the gentlest, deepest brown that she'd ever seen in a man. They were seal's eyes, Winnie thought, and she shivered.
Seal eyes... and he'd come from the sea. And she remembered all the stories she had learned at her father's knee some seventy years before.
But Winnie was a wise and practical woman. She was too sensible to entertain the mad thoughts that had just come to her, so she pushed them away and busied herself with more practical matters.
Jessi bustled in self-importantly with a huge pile of towels and blankets. It looked as though she had the entire contents of the linen cupboard gathered precariously in her little arms.
Winnie passed a bath sheet over to the stranger – now their guest – and bade him to dry his hair. Then she led him through the house to the bathroom. She told him to go inside, take off his wet things and pass them to her so that she could hang them up. "I'm sorry," Winnie said, "but it's been a few years since there has been a man in the house, and I've nothing to offer you to wear except blankets until your own things are dry. Now, take a good, hot shower and get the chill out of your bones!"
He smiled again, and again Winnie saw a flash of perfect white.
*****
By the time she heard the plumbing give the tell-tale clank that told her the stranger had switched off the water, Winnie had put his clothes on a clothes horse in front of the fire in the living room, had made a pot of tea and had set some bannocks and jam out on the kitchen table.
Winnie felt, rather than heard, his arrival, and she turned to find him hovering self-consciously in the doorway. He'd wrapped one of the blankets around his midriff as though it were a generous bath towel and he'd draped another around his shoulders in the manner of a cape. Tanned forearms, hands and feet poked out from beneath the voluminous material.
"Come in, come in and sit down," Winnie said. She managed, with an effort, not to stare. Then she called, "Jessi! Come and have a drink with us!"
The clatter of what Winnie guessed to be pens and paper being dumped unceremoniously onto the coffee table in the living room and the thud-thud of small feet told Winnie that Jessi was doing as she had been told.
"How do you like your tea...?" Winnie let an unspoken question hover behind the verbal one.
Her perceptive visitor answered both. "Without milk, please, Ma'am. And... I guess I should introduce myself properly. My name is Clark Kent." He took a couple of steps forward and held out his hand.
His palm felt warm against hers, and her hand was very small in his. For some reason, his touch made her want to blush, so she withdrew as quickly as she could without seeming rude. Then she busied herself with the tea-pot.
"I'm Winnie Byrne," she said. "And this—" she paused to gesture at Jessi, who had just arrived, "—is my great granddaughter, Jessica."
"Jessi," corrected the child with a slight whine and a scowl.
"Sorry. This is *Jessi*." Winnie looked at Clark, letting their gazes lock over the child's head. "She's only Jessica when her mother is really cross with her. Isn't that right, Jessi?"
Jessi, still scowling, nodded and scrambled into a chair. Perhaps she didn't like the reminder that her parents could ever be angry, or perhaps she didn't like the fact that her great grandmother would reveal that she could be naughty to a visitor.
Clark laughed. It was a rich sound that filled and warmed the kitchen. "Oh, I know just how that works! Most of the time I'm just plain old Clark, but when my folks get mad, I become 'Clark Jerome Kent'!"
Jessi looked up at Clark and her scowl shifted into a shy smile. Winnie was tempted to smile, too, but before she did she wanted some answers from the young man. After making sure that all three of them had everything they needed, Winnie sat down, took a sip of her own tea, and asked, "So, where are you from, Clark?"
He chewed and swallowed his mouthful of bannock, taking slightly longer about it than Winnie thought was strictly necessary. It was as though he was delaying having to answer, though why such a question should be difficult was beyond her... unless, of course, he had something to hide.
Finally he said, "Kansas."
"In the USA?" asked Winnie. She couldn't help being surprised at his answer, even though she had already noted his accent. They rarely got visitors from America on the island. She couldn't remember ever having met one so early in the season. Nor would she have expected to because neither of the bed and breakfasts took bookings before Easter. Yet his answer seemed to be too improbable to be a casual lie.
He nodded. "My parents have a farm there, near to the town of Smallville."
What an odd name! Winnie thought. It seemed almost too mundane to be true, but if it was a lie, it wasn't a very good one. She had never heard of Smallville. Then again, there were many places she had never heard of, so that proved nothing either one way or the other.
She tried again. "And what brought you out here on a day like today?"
"I..." Clark definitely seemed at a loss this time. "I was upset about... something. And I needed time to think, so I got out of the house and started... walking. And before I knew it, I was on your beach."
Winnie eyed him sceptically. She'd raised enough children to recognise an evasion when she heard one. "One thing you should know, young man, is that everyone on this island knows everything about everyone else. And I know that you could no more have walked here than you could have flown!"
The strangest expression flitted across the young man's face. It was a blend of embarrassment and unease, both of which Winnie put down to his being caught in the lie. It crossed her mind, then, to wonder how sensible it had been to invite this man – little more than a boy, really – into her house. It was an uncomfortable feeling; distrust didn't come naturally to Winnie Byrne.
"How *did* you get here, mister?" asked Jessi. Winnie was grateful to her great grandchild for asking the question. She, herself, would have found it difficult to ask for information in quite so direct a fashion. However, coming from a child, the words could never be seen as rude. Jessi didn't sound wary, just openly curious. "I know! You came on the boat, didn't you?"
Winnie shook her head. "He can't have done. The ferry doesn't run on a Sunday. You know that, Jessi." She flicked her eyes at Clark, wanting to see his reaction to that bit of information. However, he was looking down at his hands, so she couldn't see his expression.
"So, how *did* you get here, mister?" demanded Jessi.
He looked up again, and across at the child. There was a strange kind of dismay lingering around his eyes, even as he forced himself to smile. He flicked a glance at Winnie, then began to speak. "I'm a poor shipwrecked sailor, the sole survivor of a ship lost far out to sea."
Not true, thought Winnie, and she wondered at the way the lies flowed with ease from his mouth. She was certain he was lying, not only because of the teasing note he had injected into his tone, but also because his clothes were all wrong for a sailor, just as they had been wrong for taking a stroll in a Shetland storm. What she wasn't certain about, however, was his motive for telling the lies; was he trying to evade, to deceive, to beguile or to entertain? Did he mean them any harm? She wished she could know for sure.
Meanwhile, she saw Jessi's eyes light up at the promise of a story, and she decided to let Clark weave his tissue of lies for a little longer. Maybe she would figure something of the mystery out if she observed him for a while.
*****
Clark had just concluded his story when a grizzled mongrel tottered into the kitchen. The dog moved stiffly and uneasily, and his paws scratched and slid against the vinyl floor.
"Well, look who has woken up at last!" said Winnie fondly. She reached out from her chair and scratched the top of the dog's head.
The dog sniffed the air, then turned curious eyes towards the stranger. He gave a vague wag of his tail and tottered over to investigate Clark more closely.
"Don't mind Haggis. He's as friendly as they come, just a little old and arthritic. He's rather like me, really," chuckled Winnie.
"Hi, there, old fella," said Clark, leaning over, and offering a hand to the dog for him to smell. "Haggis, is it?"
Haggis woofed in lethargic agreement, sniffed Clark's skin, and decided that he approved. Then he rested his chin on Clark's lap and raised soulful eyes at his new acquaintance.
"My grandson – Jessi's uncle, that is – named him," Winnie said.
Clark scratched Haggis behind the ears, prompting the dog to push his greying head even further across Clark's lap in appreciation. Then the dog lifted his chin a little, tilted his head to one side and whined, his eyes flicking from the remains of Clark's bannock, which lay abandoned on his plate, to Clark's face and back again.
"Now, don't go believing any of that dog's nonsense," warned Winnie. "He's no more starving than I am!"
Winnie and Jessi watched Clark pet the dog. After a while, Jessi slid off her chair and moved to crouch next to the pair and wrapped her arms possessively around Haggis's chest. Clearly she had reached the limits of her eight year old ability to share. If Winnie were not careful, Jessi's famous temper might begin to fray.
"If we're all done," she suggested, "perhaps we might move into the living room. The chairs in here are a little hard, don't you think?" It wasn't entirely an excuse, made to defuse any tantrums that might be coming her way, either. If Winnie stayed in one place for too long, she could feel her joints begin to stiffen in process. She would feel more comfortable if she moved around a little bit.
She braced her right hand on the table top to increase her leverage as she tried to stand. She could have managed perfectly adequately on her own, but she didn't need to. She felt a warm hand brace her elbow and heard Clark murmur, "Here, let me help you, ma'am."
"Thank you," she said, and she meant it. His was a tiny act of kindness, but it showed an unusual degree of empathy, she thought. Not many strangers would have thought to help her in that way. Indeed, only the closest of her family knew to do it.
She felt herself soften towards the stranger just a little bit more, then struggled to resurrect her guard. She didn't want to let it slip just yet.
*****
As Clark looked around, Winnie saw her living room anew. It was a small room as befitted such a small house. The walls were covered with a pink floral wall-paper, the pattern faded with age. Two framed prints of landscapes faced each other from opposite walls.
Jessi's colouring pad and felt-tip pens lay scattered across the coffee table and floor, and Winnie's abandoned knitting was resting in a bundle in the old wing chair closest to the fire. The fire, itself, was currently blocked from view by the clothes horse upon which Clark's clothes had been set out to dry.
Beyond that day's disorganised mess was the more ordered clutter of a lifetime's accumulated knickknacks. There were delicate china boxes and figurines along the window sills and framed photographs aplenty atop every available surface. There were pictures of weddings, christenings and parties, and there were portraits of smiling gap-toothed children in school uniforms and self-conscious looking adults in their Sunday best. There was at least one picture for every member of Winnie's large family.
Most prominent of all, on the mantelpiece, stood two black and white photographs, one on each side of the wheezing clock. The one on the left was a wedding photograph. By modern standards, it was of poor quality, grainy, poorly focused and sepia with age. The couple within appeared stiff as they stared sternly into the camera's lens.
Winnie had still been slim when that picture had been taken and, according to Arthur, she had been beautiful. Winnie didn't know about that; all she knew was that Arthur had been the most handsome of men and that no picture could ever have done him justice.
The photograph on the right came close, however. It was a head and shoulders portrait that one of Winnie's children had taken on Arthur's fiftieth birthday. Whereas she had widened and lost her looks as she had aged, Arthur had merely become more distinguished. His hair had greyed and the lines on his face had become more deeply carved as the years had passed, but he had never gained weight or lost his hair. And, somehow, the picture had managed to capture the twinkle in his bright blue eyes and the hint of his trademark smile that was playing around his lips.
For some reason, Clark seemed drawn to the photograph. He walked over, stopping a couple of paces short of the mantel, and gestured towards it. "Is this your husband?"
Winnie nodded. "Yes. That's my Arthur. He's dead now, though."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
It was nice of him to say so, Winnie thought grudgingly. She still had her concerns about him, but she had to admit that he had good manners. Someone, somewhere, had taught him well.
Since he was next to the fire, he fingered his clothes and said, "I think they're dry now."
Winnie did not believe him – how could they have dried already? – so she checked for herself. Her eyebrows rose a fraction. Surprised, she said, "And so they are. But you can't leave until the storm eases. Otherwise you'll be right back where you started."
Clark nodded, then turned to look at the window. He seemed to stare out into the impenetrable darkness. Then he said, "I think the rain's stopped. I should be fine." He glanced sheepishly down at the blankets he was wearing. "In any case, I think I'd like to get changed."
Winnie thought his discomforted embarrassment was rather endearing. "Very well. You know where the bathroom is."
While he changed, Winnie took a look out of the front door. Clark was right: the rain *had* stopped. How had he known that? She shook her head, perplexed.
*****
The wind had veered around to the north and had dropped down to a stiff breeze. There was a noticeable bite to the air that had not been there earlier. Above them, broken clouds scudded past, revealing glimpses of the glittering stars and crescent moon beyond.
"Good-bye, Mrs Byrne. Thank you for everything."
Winnie didn't say "You're welcome." She wasn't entirely sure that he was. Certainly, he was a likeable boy, but... She stopped herself from shaking her head. She still had so many unanswered questions!
Clark held out his hand, just as he had done earlier in the kitchen.
Winnie took his hand and shook, and was pleased that the darkness hid her blush.
Then Clark turned away and began to walk. Winnie watched for a minute before retreating inside. When she looked out through the living room window, he was nowhere to be seen.
She pondered for a moment on his disappearance, then turned her attention back towards a more immediate problem. Jessi's parents would be coming by soon to collect her, and the child's belongings had somehow managed to scatter themselves throughout the house. She stiffly bent over and began to gather the various bits and pieces together even as she called Jessi to come and help.
Winnie's thoughts lingered on Clark as she and Jessi tidied. She was sure that she would never see him again.
She was wrong.
TBC
