About the Author

ELEMENTAL

Amanda Curtin is a writer, book editor, and adjunct lecturer at Edith Cowan University. Her first novel, The Sinkings, was published in 2008 and a short story collection, Inherited, in 2011, both to critical acclaim. She has been granted writing residencies in Australia, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States, and the rest of the time resides in Perth, Western Australia.

Title Page

Dedication

For

Edna Jean

and all grandmothers

Epigraph

If nothing ever changed,

there would be no butterflies

Author unknown

NOTEBOOK 1

Notebook 1

1891–1905

WATER

Brukie’s Sandy

That boy, Brukie’s Sandy, he was a one for plucking the world from the sea. Driftwood, rope, slimy knots of net and weed, bonxie feathers, odd leather slippers, bits of wool, salt sacks, mittens, wax paper, eggshells, Dutchmen’s caps, syrup tins, skeleton fish, the beaks and broken wings of gulls. Once, he scooped from the swell a hank of long yellow hair with the skin still upon it. Gave them gooseflesh, it did, those hard, tough fishermen, but the boy stashed it away in his bundle like it was worth something.

And once, Jeemsie had to stop him from pulling aboard a half firkin of sodden grain wriggling with rats. ‘Ye gaakie lad!’ the old man cried. ‘What have I told ye about the long-tailed fellers on the Lily Maud!’ The kick of Jeemsie’s seaboot busted up the rotting staves and flung the lot into the foam. And that boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he hung his sorry head, for he knew as well as any there were things a fisherman should never even say, let alone bring aboard a boat. But still he kept his eyes on the sea, for what it would toss up next.

So there was none surprised at how it happened. Aye, none at all.

April 1972

April 1972

Do you remember when you were a wee thing, lambsie, and you begged for a story, a story true? Funny bairn you were, never wanting ‘Cinderella’ or ‘The Three Bears’, oh no, not you. You always wanted your grunnie to tell you about Fish Meggie, the Gutting Girl from the Top of the World, and at the end I would have to cross my heart and say, And it happened so, true as the puffin flies or the sealie sings or my name’s not Margaret Duthie Tulloch. Years it was, lambsie, before you guessed that Fish Meggie was me.

I promised, didn’t I, that I would write the stories down for you one day. You were right to be impatient, lambsie, you were right to roll your pretty eyes. One day is what mothers tell daughters, and daughters tell their daughters, and it just never gets to be one day.