I unfurled my curved fingers slowly, one by one—ever the one for drama, me. There, on my palm, a wide feather, white, with a vein of blue running through the shaft.

Kitta smiled. Disappointed, probably, that it was just a feather. But she didn’t yet know how extraordinary it was, this ordinary thing.

Guess where I found it. Go on, guess!

She shrugged. I don’t know, do I?

No, an’ ye’ll never guess, neither. So there, Kitta Duthie.

She ran her finger along the glossy vanes of the feather, then looked up. Well?

Well! When I was walking over the moors, Crusoe chased a baby rabbit to its burrow and I’d to pull him out an’ save the wee thing, an’ when I put my arm in deep, right up past the elbow of my gansey, this is what I found. An albatross feather! An albatross feather in a rabbit hole!

She smiled at me again. An’ is that lucky, then, Ginger Meggie, is it? Will a feather keep me safe?

Still she didn’t see. Just think, I explained, think of it. It’s come all the way across the sea, this feather, an’ blown up to the moors an’ into a place it doesn’t belong, never to be seen again, never to return. But I found it, Kitta, see?

She was looking at me, looking hard, but I still wasn’t sure she understood.

I found it an’ I brought it back, back to be near the sea again. I couldn’t stop beaming. It means ye’ll come back, Kitta. I will always find ye, no mind what stranger-place ye go. Ye’ll always come back to where ye belong because I will find ye, see?

Kitta took the feather and turned away, holding it up to catch a stream of sunlight slanting in from the door.

D’ye see? I asked, anxious I still hadn’t explained it well enough. D’ye not like it?

She nodded, and when she spoke I could barely hear her. Oh aye, our Meggie, I see. I do believe it’s the luckiest feather that anybody’s ever seen.

Kitta crossed to the fire and threw up the lid of the kist, rummaging among the things that Ma had neatly packed, tossing aside clothes, wool, cooking pans, dishes carefully wrapped in bedding. She found a handkerchief to fold around the feather and stowed it safely in the shottle, the neat little compartment that held needles and buttons and her comb and pins.

There now, she said, just the place to keep it safe, in a sea kist that will cross the sea with me.