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An iceberg wouldn’t do my heart justice. I’m not a fainter but the ground far below swims to meet me and swings back again. Spindrift rolls the sea into a ball. Spray flings from the waves as if invisible jet-skiers race across them.

The instructor radios from the wind turbine’s cockpit.

“Anne, check the harness, the carabiners. Remember, the last check is the life-saver.”

My fingers fumble on the carabiner. Yank. It holds. Yank. The harness holds too.

“Go, girl,” he shouts, “Red alert Emergency. Keep your eyes focussed on the cockpit.”

My eyes keep contact with the tall shadow in the cockpit, the turbine blade’s cold alloy under my knees. My feet feel their way behind as I shuffle out towards the tip of the extended blade.

Stepping backwards into the void is always the worst. And I can’t. I just can’t. But if I don’t pass this Rescue and Safety test, that’s it, no more managing of Carnsore Point Windfarm. Professor O’Neill will be proved right that it’s no job for a ‘girl’.  

Though Mother was having none of it and let him know. A shiver runs through me. If I fail I’ll be letting her down and all those generations of Tottenham women.

This isn’t the place, for mother’s ancestral stories, with the wind whipping my face. No, it isn’t the place for Lady Anne’s story to flip through my mind, but it does. Lady Anne, of Loftus Hall – mother’s warning story and battle cry.

The wind veering from the North West, all the way from Iceland. I duck low to the blade, hunkering into myself. Snatches of Mother’s bed-time voice insistent in my head:

“A stormy night… out on The Hook … Sheep hunched…desolate fields … trees groaned … a sea gale … The strange young man begging for shelter. Lord Tottenham … his daughter, Lady Anne, …

Lady Ann …his honeyed skin…

Lady Anne… the playing card on the floor… your man’s cloven hoof. Those emerald eyes… he shot through the ceiling…

Lady Anne … searching…. searching … Lord Tottenham…the key… locked up … only her silk threads, her loom… her longing … “

Panic in the instructor’s voice.

“Anne, can you hear me? Anne, it’s okay. Edge forward. Do the test another day. Anne, can you hear me?”

My knuckles are white mushrooms, shining through the gaps of the non-slip gloves. “Go, get what you long for … step into the void.” I shake myself away from mother’s taunting voice.

“All right, all right,” I mutter.

The instructor’s voice raises a pitch. “What’s that you said, Anne?”

“It’s okay,” I say.

Fear grips my gut. My muscles strain as I lower myself into nothing but air. Steadying my body against the wind, I reach out to the swaying male dummy. My carabiner hooks into his harness, every fibre in me tensing as I reel him in. Wind slams him into my body.

The biggest mistake? I look down. My legs run to hot water, blood thunders in my ears. Shore and sea swirl. Quick, close my eyes. Breathe in. Deep.

“Go get what you long for… ”

My hands steady, just enough. Up and under, pull –  I lasso the dummy to me. Waving up at the cockpit, the instructor nods.

The winch whirs and we dance a wild tango until at last the heat of the cockpit swarms around me and the floor closes beneath me and the dummy.

How the tale came to me:

Into the Void is based on a snippet, or as I think of it, a golden nugget, from a conversation I had in The Trewern Arms, Pembrokeshire, where a woman told me of her daughter who had to abseil off a wind turbine as manager of a wind farm. I then combined this with the old legend of Loftus Hall, told to me so often as a child and which I was reminded of as we passed the mansion on County Wexford’s Hook Peninsula.  Half the pleasure of campervan rambling are the sights, sounds and stories that we come across.

Loftus Hall – Wexford’s Hook Peninsula

If you want to have a go:

• Take a golden nugget from a conversation either overheard or shared with you.
• Take a legend or myth.
• Set the piece of flash fiction in a place which resonates for you.
• Meld the pieces into a flash fiction (flash fiction is usually under 1,000 words and tends to focus on a snapshot rather than a sweeping tale.)