That night, before the lantern was doused, I took the precious book down from the dresser and opened it up to the list of names at the front. Some I knew already—Walter Scott, Robert Burns, John Keats, Mary Shelley. But there were many stories and poems whose authors remained a mystery: ‘by the Eltrick Shepherd’, ‘by the author of The Legend of Genevieve’, ‘by the Sylvan Voice’, ‘by the Lily of Lorn’. I turned the thick pages, shiny like the inside of a shell, admired the flowery patterns around the edges. I stopped to read lines here, lines there. I memorised words I did not know, to ask Miss Birnie their meaning. Sanctity. Melancholy. Indelible. I whispered them to myself, like a spell.

A heather bough cracked in the fireplace. Sparks shot out.

I looked up. Granda’s eyes, red like coals, were watching me.

7

When Kitta came home for Hogmanay, she would see how things were. That everything had changed. That’s what I thought as I counted down the days.

Da and the boys were back already and would not be leaving again until the new season, in March. They brought home money for Ma—and something else, I don’t know what to call it. Restlessness? No, it was more than that, and less. I couldn’t have explained it back then, and even now I canna be sure. At times they seemed glad to be home. They would glance around, blooming, the warmth of fire and family on their ruddy faces. But other times, well, they were bleak, and only when they took out the Lily Maud would their mood change. I would catch a shadow passing their faces as they came up from the boatie shore, and when I see that look in my mind now I think I do recognise it. Something like that was on the face of the child I was when I stood on the boatie shore and resigned myself that this was to be my life.

The lighter in spirits Da and the boys were, the more Granda Jeemsie seemed to hunker down, shrivelled and sour. His leg still pained him when he walked, but the wound on his hand had healed into a raised, shiny scar—just tender enough to remind him he was getting frail, he couldn’t do all he once could do. But while bone and skin were mending, not so Granda’s dark rage about being the old one left behind. Oh no, not one bit. In truth, he probably didn’t want to leave Roanhaven, nor be a hired hand on a drifter instead of master of the Lily Maud—it wasn’t that, no. It was finding himself outside the centre of the family’s breathing that drew out his misery and pasted it onto all who were sorry enough to look his way.