I had a dream 48 years ago. May 1st, 1978. I jotted down a few lines in my five-year diary. It’s been enough to allow me to reenter that dream, just as I had it, in a school bed all those years ago.
I’m on a loch. It just feels like Loch Maree. I’d fished it with Dad the year before, as he had with his father many decades before. The Loch is long and dark – it felt like the outer reaches of earth. The air is cold even though it’s bright, and alive with reflected mountain tops. Everything smells of peat and pine.
There’s a wooden rowing boat, with a gilly, and my dad is in it with me. Dad doesn’t say much. He’s already fishing, like he always has, like he was born knowing how. The way he moves is calm and repetitive. It’s called dabbling. It takes time; it takes forever. His line slips into the water like it belongs there. Mine doesn’t. Not yet.
I’m sitting beside him, holding my rod, trying to do it the same way. I want to get it right. I really do. I cast. Too hard. The line snaps out and lands wrong. I’m trying too hard.
I keep going. Over and over. Adjusting, guessing, hoping. Time stretches out. It’s not slow exactly, just… long like the kind of time where you’re meant to learn something, even if no one explains what. We do this all week. We could go home without a catch.
This requires patience. This takes waiting. This wants to become attuned to the place. Then something changes.
The water isn’t just water anymore. I start to notice movement under it, or maybe just beyond it. Shapes. Faces.
Girls, I recognise like Watersprites. I know them: Cece. India. Donna. Julie-Anne.
They’re somewhere between the water and the land, like they don’t fully belong to either. Like they’re choosing where to be.
Cece looks at me. Like she might be inviting me closer, or maybe testing if I deserve to come.
Donna is there, saying a prayer – and then she’s gone the second I catch her eye.
Julie-Anne stays. She watches me carefully, like she’s waiting for me to do something right. I dip my fingers into the water. Like, there’s a correct way to reach her, and I haven’t figured it out yet. She kisses the tips of my fingers and is gone.
I cast again. But now it’s different. I wonder if I am the fish and one of them hopes to catch me.
The line lands near something. She sees it. There’s a pause, like the whole world is holding its breath. I start to reel it in, but I don’t even know if I’m supposed to.
My dad speaks, finally. Just a few words.
“Too soon.” Or maybe, “Let it run.”
I stop straight away. A face I don’t recognise smiles, even whispers “I love you” and disappears again.
He knows. I can tell he knows exactly what I’m doing wrong. But he’s not going to explain it. I have to learn it myself and make mistakes.
Then suddenly, something pulls.
For real this time.
The rod bends in my hands. There’s weight. It’s alive. It’s fighting me.
This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for.
I pull back, quick, too quick because I don’t want to lose it.
The line goes tight— then slack.
Gone.
Just like that.
I sit there, not moving. My chest feels strange, like something small has broken inside it. Not enough to cry. Just enough to matter. Am I going to be tormented like this?
Dad keeps fishing like nothing happened. Like this is normal. Like this is part of it. He’s seen it all before.
I look out across the water again.
The girls are still there.
But they’re further away now. Harder to reach.
The boat drifts, slow and quiet. And in the distance, I see an island. I know it’s Isle Maree. There’s an old oak tree on it, the Wish Tree of Isle Maree. I know what people do there, Dad had told me.
You leave wishes.
We step onto the island. I take Cece’s school scarf from around my neck, the one she gifted me, and cares about more than anything, and I tie it to a branch. Letting it hang there in the wind, like a promise. She belongs to someone else – if belong is even the right word. It isn’t.
I take a coin and press it into the trunk. I tap it in with a stone.
I wish for my parents to get back together.
The coin falls out almost straight away.
I feel embarrassed, even though no one’s watching.
I’ll try again.
I wish for someone to love. And when it happens, I want it to be real. I want her to feel it too. Not just for a moment, but together forever, if that’s even possible.
I stay in the boat, holding the rod, like maybe I’ll learn how.
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