OUR GUEST AUTHOR TODAY IS JENNIFER BURKINSHAW. JENNIFER IS SHARING AN EXCERPT FROM HER NOVEL, 'IGLOO' #RWRTeamBlog #ReadWriteRepeat

IGLOO

Grand Prize Winner of the Eyelands International Book Awards, 2023

A coming-of-age-adventure-romance for everyone YA and upwards

Nirvana, aged sixteen, is on a surprise skiing holiday in the French Alps for Christmas with her family, including Mum, step-mum Dominique and little brother, Claude. Disliking school at home, she’s equally fed up with ski school. What she wants to see in the Alps are not the back of the child in front of her or a white out but mountains!

So, on Christmas Eve afternoon, she finds herself cutting ski school, dumping her skies and helmet, and trekking up through a pine forest, where she finds ….an igloo! We join her at the end of Ch 1.

I’ve never seen a real one before.

Its builder has picked a good site - level, with the hope of a panorama from its stubby tunnel, yet still camouflaged till you’re right on top of it. Sheltered by the trees, it’s also not far from where the piste basher shoves the excess snow into a low wall that is a great source of compacted bricks.

Exactly where I’d have built one.

Intrigued to see how it’s been made, I stride towards it. There’s no sign of anyone having been here recently. No footprints other than mine. Maybe kids were on a ski holiday, like me, then had to abandon it. I skim my hand over its snow-clad roof, loving its soft roundedness after the straight metals of skis, poles, lift tugs.

I take my gloves off to pull out my phone; Sab’d love to see this. Stepping back, I try to capture the igloo and its entrance in the middle, with the pines waving behind. But no signal here: I’ll have to send it from the chalet later.

On my knees now, I peek into the tunnel. The aqua tinged light and pure, dry smell make me smile all over again. Dragging my boots behind me, I crawl inside.

Once I’ve turned to face front, I sit upright, my legs straight in front of me.

At once, I’m in a soundproofed cocoon, the world on pause. The snow-whirling wind, clatter of skiing, the fog grey are left far behind. Here, all is still, calm and clear. And it’s amazingly warm for an icehouse! But then, of course, that’s why the Inuit build them. I sweep a layer of flakes off my hair.

Tipping my head back, I inspect the dome. Despite the heavy snow out there, brighter edges define each of the bricks. That says to me they don’t meet as tightly as they could - I might redo them at some point.

I hug myself: another time I’ve followed my instincts instead of any supposed grown-up’s agenda and found something amazing! Here I am, inside but outside. Or the other way around. And utterly private. I close my eyes, taking in my igloo’s fresh smell, its silence, its secrecy.

At last, a space just for me.

A place to be free. “Er…bonjour?”

Two

Are you kidding me?! Is nowhere sacred?

My eyes open to meet a pair of brown ones between a Roman nose and a black beanie. Their head and shoulders are sticking into my space. Those eyes shift up to my hair, and my hands follow, trying to hide it - as if I could.

“Bonjour,” I huff.

Now what?

“This,” he continues in French, casting a glance around the dome, “this is my igloo.”

His igloo?

My brain scrambles for the French to say, Then drag me out cos I really like it in here!

And isn’t there some rule about squatters’ rights and possession?

But not even four years of sharing Claude’s bilingual upbringing help with this situation! I rehearse some French words I can find in my head and clear my throat.

“You can’t own an igloo. Unless it’s in your own garden.”

His eyebrows rise; he looks more amused than convinced.

“I built it,” he counters.

I glance upward. “The roof could be better.”

A dimple pings in his right cheek. “Yet it’s lasted three weeks already. Since the first snow.”

Unlike the blur of sounds since we arrived in France, his French has separate words, so I can understand quite easily.

“Oh! Then you live in the village?” And my own French seems to be flowing fine now, without Dominique on my shoulder.

“Ba oui. Jean-Louis Jaboulay. Seventeen,” he adds.

A jolly-sounding name! I sniff. He looks at me expectantly. “Nirvana Green, on holiday, sixteen.”

“Nirvana!” His mouth shrugs, mock-impressed. And unlike Dominique, he gets the emphasis in the right place. “What a name!”

“Yep” I sigh, “Too much.” Ultimate Bliss, it means. Mum clearly had no idea what I’d turn into.

We look at each other. Stalemate.

I bite my lip. “Er, if you…er…” I nod towards the entrance to suggest he retreats. “I’ll go.”

Maybe I’ll have to build an igloo of my own next time.

“Perhaps…” he starts.

I wait.

“Perhaps…you want to share, Nirvana?”

I look into the space next to me. It’s only a small igloo, no more than his stride, I’d say. Everything Mum’s always drilled into me about being alone with strangers in remote places runs through my head. I twist my mouth to one side, follow my instinct.

“Maybe just for a few minutes.”

Given he has half the space I had to turn in and he’s a fair bit bigger than me, it takes an awkward manoeuvre for him to get in and face forward. Now he’s the one who gets to stretch out his legs, also in padded trousers but walking boots rather than plastic ski boots. His legs are so long, his feet are almost at the entrance.

He removes his hat and shakes off the snow between us, revealing very dark, slightly wavy hair - far more restful than my ‘maple-leaf magenta’ as Grandad calls it, like my nana’s. Mum says people pay good money to have the hair shade I’m stuck with.

As he turns to me, I catch a trace of outdoors, the mountains. “So, Nirvana, why do you need an igloo?”

Sounds like an interview for igloo rights! And need one? But I get what he means: even though I didn’t know it was going to be here, it was - is - exactly what I needed.

I point to my boots. “I’m avoiding my ski lesson.” The simpler answer.

His dimple deepens. “I don’t like skiing either.”

“But you live in a ski resort!”

“I can ski. Most French children have to learn. But far too much hassle for me.”

“Me too!” I agree. I’ve always loved being outdoors but to see my surroundings, never sport for the sake of it. “But my parents insist on it. So, you’ll understand, why I need this igloo to escape it.”

He nods, still smiling.

“And you? Why did you build this igloo?” Since you live locally, I think.

“This imperfect igloo?” he teases whilst rifling inside his padded jacket and extracting a paperback, which he brandishes like a magician. “For reading.”

His tone implies this is the most obvious place for it - some sort of minuscule outside-inside library. His book cover features a mediaeval-looking guy with a ruff, a beard and a black hat.

Essais de Michel de Montaigne

“You know this philosopher?” he asks.

Who’s he kidding? As if I’d know any philosophers! That familiar feeling creeps in, of inferiority, being on the outside of things I should know.

Then I remember. “No, but I know Ruskin. He was an English philosopher and painter.” It’s because of my Art GCSE unit on Ruskin that I’m so eager to see the mountains, including Mont Blanc and the glaciers he drew so vividly.

“I don’t know any English philosophers,” he says, “because I study German instead of English. So, it’s really lucky you speak French!”

My heart grows. For the first time ever, I’m not ashamed of my French. Even though I’ll never sound like Claude, without it, we wouldn’t be speaking at all. And when I don’t get something quite right, he manages to f ind a natural way to say it back to me as it should be.

“Ruskin,” I start, trying to find the words, “he thought beauty is for everyone, and…essential?”

“Essentielle, oui,” he confirms.

“What is the philosophy of Montaigne, then?” I ask him.

“He’s got loads of themes. In the essay I’ve just read…”

I find I’m watching his lips as his French, soft and light, dances off them. His dimple operates like a punctuation mark, flickering every time he likes what he’s talking about.

“…Montaigne says, ‘When I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, I bring my thoughts always back to the orchard, to the sweetness of it… When I dance, I dance. When I sleep, I sleep.’”

Sounds like this Montaigne lad, from way back when, was ahead of the mindfulness wave. Dead easy in an orchard, anyway.

I smile at him over the top of his paperback. “When we’re in the igloo, we bring our thoughts always back to the igloo.”

“Exactly, Nirvana,” he says, putting his book back in his pocket. He uses my name pretty often, I notice. And I’m finding I like my name better than I ever have, feel less like insisting he calls me Niv instead. But I feel shy, for some reason, about using his.

I close my eyes again and try to refocus my mind on the igloo. It’s no longer silent because of the soft breathing of this lad - Jean-Louis -right next to me.

Yet somehow, I’ve still got more room than since we arrived in the Alps.

Yikes! How long did I zone out? I don’t want to overstay my welcome, but when I open my eyes, Jean Louis smiles at me. He is very smiley in general. Upbeat.

“I should go,” I say reluctantly. “Ski school’ll be finishing soon, and my parents will be meeting me.”

He shoves his hat back on.

“Does it ever stop snowing here?” I ask him as we stand for a moment in front of the igloo, gazing into the murkiness. “I came up hoping for a view of the mountains.”

“Of course it stops! Tonight, the skies will be clear, I promise you.”

I catch my breath. “For Christmas Eve night.”

He opens his mouth, hesitates, opens it again.

“If you can come back later, Nirvana, I could introduce the mountains to you.” He says it as if they are his old friends.

I bite my bottom lip to rein in a smile.

“What time?” I ask.

**********

AUTHOR BIO

Jennifer Burkinshaw grew up in Lancashire and taught English, Classics and Drama for twenty years including in Bradford, Paris and Derbyshire. She later completed an MA in Creative Writing for Children at Manchester Metropolitan University and is also an alumna of the Golden Egg Academy.

Now retired, at least from teaching, Jennifer splits her time between two places at opposite ends of England. She enjoys being by the sea, the mountains and, most of all, with her growing family.

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https://mybook.to/Igloo

COMING SOON: On Monday, 1st December, we have our team member, author Eva Bielby sharing an in depth look at her character, lawyer, Simon Banks.