He looked at his sorry hand and away, and then back at me. It was a look that said he knew what I was about, aye, he knew, true as the tide, true as God, but he would play along so I could get the job done.

He sighed. A mannie be a fool if he’s not afraid of the Witch. Bein’ afraid is bein’ alive. An’ stayin’ that way. Men not afraid are careless. They whistle the wind, wake the Witch from the deep an’ bring their boats to ruin. Tullie’s Mickel wasn’t afraid, an’ he were careless too. An’ old Jockel Buchan, aye … He snapped his head back to me—a strange look it was. Then he stared into the fire again. Well, more of them as can be named or counted in my time. It doesn’t do to dare the Great Mother. Ye can never say when she will turn her other eye on ye. Fishermen know to be canny, an’ how to protect theirselves.

He started fumbling in his vest with his good hand, fishing about inside.

See here, quinie.

He took something from his pocket, from the fold of a bit of paper, and laid it carefully on the arm of the chair. Grey and puckered, it was, something like leather thinned by time and worn down to a waxy nothing. I stopped my cleaning.

Go on, go on, he said, gesturing.

I touched it with the tips of my fingers. Ugghh.

Pah! said Granda. Ye don’t know, quinie. Ye don’t know gold when ye sees it. Purest luck, this. Kept a wee babby safe for nine belly months an’ your granda for near on fifty years. Safe at sea, safe from droonin’.

I snatched my hand back. Now I knew what it was, this charm of Granda’s. How … how did ye come to have it?

His eyes shifted darkly. Purest luck, purest luck … It was a story he was not going to tell me.

I thought about it, lambsie, as I sponged Granda’s hand. Fifty years before, someone—some desperate mother, some greedy howdie wifie—had peeled the caul off a newborn’s face and sold it to a fearful sailor. Purest luck, indeed, but that infant probably never did know about the precious gift they’d been born with. The shrivelled membrane on the arm of Granda’s chair was a robbery from a babe.

~

For days, until Ma came home, it went on like this: me bandaging Granda’s hand, cooking his supper; him glaring at me one moment and, the next, telling me about the sea in his faraway voice.