There were gifts to ease the way. The smell of smokies, comforting, warm, and I minded what Ma always told me: What’s in our creel is good an’ honest an’ somethin’ to be proud to sell. All across the moors, the bright autumn yellow of the whins and broom was a lightsome sight. And for most of the way I had the company of other fishwives on their rounds, and then a tinkie wifie and her two quinies with their brass trinkets and armfuls of heather. Ma had never held with the bad feeling some had for tinkies. They have their livin’ to get an’ their way to make, just like all of us, she said. An’ if their wish is to roam in their gurdy vans an’ mind their own ways, what’s the harm of it? One of the wee tinkie lasses chattered all the way, and I thought of Kitta, chattering with her girls far across the sea, all of them with soft white hands wet with guts and blood.

At night we made our wee camp and lit a fire in a circle of stones. Never before, all the times I’d gone tramping with Ma, had it worried me to sleep beneath the stars. I would creep as close to the fire as she would let me go, pull my shawl about my face, tuck my legs under my skirt, and drift to the sounds of wings flurrying and twigs snapping, owlies hooting and calling. Peaceful, and I was never afraid. But the tinkie wifie took it into her head to warn me as we shared a bannock and some strong black tea.

A lass shouldn’t be on her own round here, nor any woman neither.

I thought maybe she didn’t know the Buchan area so well. Oh, we are never alone for long, there’s always other wifies on their rounds. Or travellers. An’ Ma says none will bother us on our way.

She shook her head. Don’t trust there will be none to bother. There are bad men on these moors. Isn’t travellers ye should fear, quinie.

Oh, no, I hurried to say, though I knew most of the fishwives were afraid of the tinkie men, with their colourful clothes, their long hair. We hold no ill will for travellers, no.

Wasn’t a traveller who dragged our Sarie away. She looked at the older of the two quinies, the one who, I now realised, hadn’t spoken at all. Fine, decent farmer loon, that one were, from a family what would say never a word against him.

What the tinkie wifie told me put a different skin on the night. I slept with an eye open, one ear alert to footfall, human breathing.

Keep a sharp gullie knife in your boot, quinie, the tinkie wifie bid me as we parted in the morning, and she fretted when I told her Ma had not given me one.

~