When you discover something so shocking you canna even name it, you shut down, lambsie, you shut it out and yourself in. You walk through your days like a person asleep.

That was me in April 1905, when I left Roanhaven.

And then I found myself on the sea.

It was not as I had imagined it—the sea, when it was all around me. From the boatie shore, it had seemed, for all its restlessness, something fixed—a space to cross, with the wide world beyond it. I could never have guessed that the sky grows ever further away instead of closer and nothing is fixed at all. It was then I began to wake. Here I was, between one life and another. Between a girl of fourteen and in school, working at whatever her family said she must, and a girl of fourteen and about to earn money in her own right. Between a place of grim restraint and a place, I hoped, of freedom. I had been warned about the ruthless sea the whole of my life, but even at fourteen it seemed to me that nothing the sea could throw up could be as ruthless as what I had left behind. Kitta and I would have to return at the end of the season, but we would never go back there in our hearts. We didn’t say those words out loud to each other, but it was a decision made, just the same, to close that door. Perhaps Roanhaven had taught us that. To believe that things could be made to disappear, simply through silence.

My leaving was not like Kitta’s the year before, bundled off and away in disgrace. I could have stayed. But Ma saw how it was and would always be. Still, she gave me the chance to change my mind. Are ye sure, Meggie, sure this be what ye want? To leave school an’ go to the fish?

I hugged her for my answer. I didn’t want to leave school, no, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave her, either.

She looked defeated, helpless, not like Ma. I know, quinie, I know it be hard …

Hard? Hard would have been easy, lambsie. But I couldn’t stay, not when there was a chance to escape what had happened, and all those faces not really forgiving, not really forgetting, but pretending for the sake of loyalty to some dark past. Here I stumble with memory, numb to all but the fact that it was unbearable. And how could I say the word unbearable to Ma? She was giving me her reluctant blessing to leave, while she had no choice but to stay and bear everything.

~

Will your anchor hold in the storms of life

When the clouds unfold their wings of strife?

When the strong tides lift and the cables strain

Will your anchor drift or firm remain?