It was a place called Birch Hill, a place on the northern coast, a distance from the Broch. An institution. Will said they took her there wrapped in a sail so she could not hurt herself.

23

Magnus Tulloch and I talked. Long into the night we talked. Mostly he just listened and murmured things as a comfort as I raged against Granda and Unty Jinna and everyone else, all of them who had given up on Kitta. They had let her believe she was lost inside and could not come back. Deranged, Will had said, the word thick and sludgy in his mouth like old porridge.

Why? I kept saying, over and over. I could not understand what they had done. Always there had been those in the village who had lost their wits for a time, or for always, or were born like that, and they had been let to find their way, care given when care was needed. They had not been a bother. No-one ever talked of locking them away. God’s own, Ma always said. Like Brukie’s Sandy.

Brukie’s Sandy?

Brukie’s Sandy was the something I could not yet tell Magnus Tulloch.

I shook my head.

He went to speak, stopped. I looked up at him.

But could it be … he stammered, do ye not think … could it be that Kitta is safer there? Safer in Birch Hill?

Safe! How can it make her safe, bein’ locked up with people who are witless, Lord bless them?

He shrugged, helpless. Aye. But I just thought … maybe there is someone could help her there? A doctor. Someone?

Only people can help her are her own, who love her, an’ they have turned away. I’ve to bring her back, I promised her I would. I said no matter where she went, I would find her, I would bring her back.

I looked at him fiercely, daring him to say the obvious thing. That I was a fifteen-year-old girl: what could I do?

But Magnus Tulloch surprised me. He thought for a while. He shook the ringing from his head. And then he spoke of a plan.

~

I loved Magnus Tulloch, of that I had no doubt. But I could never be certain whether I married him so soon, in my fifteenth year on the way to sixteen, because I loved him or because, as a married woman, I might have more chance of making a home for Kitta. Or because I wanted it settled, for good and all, that I would never go back to Roanhaven.

24

At the close of the season, I sent to Da, by Liza, a letter and my year’s wages from Nicol & Mair. It was the last the family would get from me.