All those pages filled up in my wee book and I’m not yet past 1903! At this rate I’ll not be finished in time for your birthday, lambsie. But I’m finding as I think and remember, and try to write what I think and remember, that it’s a funny thing about stories that are real and not fairytales. They are more than just the things that happened, aye. You think about one thing, and what came first, what next, and then you’re off in another time and thinking of that. And then it takes you by surprise to see so many threads between them, looping in and out and all around—everything connected. Stories can’t just tumble out like buttons from a box, clattering and random. You have to think of the order of things. What to tell. And what to leave out.

The family routine turned a little, weaved a little, to gather in the changes of that year and stitch them into the pattern of what had always been. But then things came among us, new things, and they pulled the pattern out of shape, this way and that. I used to think it began the day Granda came home with his leg busted and the poison in the palm of his hand, but that’s not right, I can see that now. I have to go back a few paces to find the shift in the world.

And there it is, right in front of me.

5

Elspet grabs hold of my gansey elbow and pulls me to the lean-to between our but-and-ben and Unty Jinna’s. Pointing frantically, she is gulping at the air. Such a meekling, Elspet, as scaredy as a cradle bairn, seeing fairies everywhere.

The shed smells of tarred rope and the must from old murlins that Ma won’t toss away.

There, Ginger Meggie, there! Can ye see?

I drop to my knees beside a stack of rope, turn my head sideways to the ground. No fairies, no. But something. A shivering mass of wet fur.

Hello, wee doggie, I whisper, crawling forward quietly, my hand out.

Ooh, Meggie! Elspet squeals. Ye shouldn’t. Ye’ll get yourself bit!

The pup is as scrawny as a sick hen, matted up and ragged round the snout. It tries a growl that comes out all wrong, like the wheeze of Ma’s bellows before she mended the split in the concertina bit. I reach again, I brace myself, for, much as it pains me to admit it, Elspet might be right. But the wee thing whines and slumps with its snout to the ground. Dead, I think. And then the twitch of an eye.

I cradle it close, willing the beating of my own heart to manage for us both, but at the door, I stop. I need food for the dog. I need a place by the fire to keep it warm. I need my mother’s blessing.