It was my turn to make griddle cakes—our hoosie’s offering for the ceilidh. By the time I’d washed my face and hands, and changed into my pinafore-for-best, all the girls were there. I was praying Kitta was with them.

~

I had just about given up on Magnus Tulloch, thinking he must have returned to Scalloway or gone to Lerwick this Saturday night. I could have asked my cooper friend, Old Boy Jackie, but I did not want to seem overly eager. Or give the men cause to laugh at me. Or for word to get back to Magnus Tulloch and turn his head.

My mind was not on dancing, though I didn’t refuse when the girls pulled me to my feet. All the time I was watching for Kitta. It seemed that she was sometimes here and sometimes not, and when I went looking I couldn’t find her in the hoosie, or at tea by the fishers’ fire. And then suddenly there she was, dancing with Clementina or Kipper’s Tommy Buchan or Old Boy Jackie’s mate Muckle Tam, and I thought: It’s addled I am, she has been here all along.

I took a break from dancing to catch my breath and watch that Bella Strahan. She was standing in an empty farlin, calling a round of lancers, loudest voice on the station for sure. And then I heard from behind me:

I did not take ye for a wallflower, Fish Meggie!

It wasn’t the same, dancing, when it was Magnus Tulloch’s hand spanning my back. Warm, but a different kind of warm, and at first I looked at my boots to widen the space between us. When he spun me away to Kipper’s Tommy, I gulped at the air, suddenly aware I’d been holding my breath all the while. Magnus Tulloch’s hand caught mine and he twirled me back to him, closer, warmer, and when I chanced to look up—ach, those blue eyes.

He was a good dancer, light on his feet for a boy so tall. It got so I wished the coopers would stop swapping partners back and forth, but each time he reeled me back to him, there it was again, that smile.

Where have ye been all this night? I blurted once the polka was over. So much for me not giving him cause for airs.

Working still, lass, but all for good! Mr Sinclair bid me off into Lerwick for tea an’ sugar. Canna be running out on ceilidh night, eh?

Aye. And I looked up at him, wondering how it was he had got taller since last I saw him.

Such crowds in the town! Could scarcely find a space ta put a foot down and then the other!

The fiddlers started up again, and Magnus Tulloch held out his hand.

For the rest of the night, I forgot my worries about Kitta. I forgot everything and danced.

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