From time to time I thought to look around for Kitta, and saw her often enough to be at ease in my mind that she wasn’t likely to be slipping off to Lerwick. Whenever she caught my eye, she’d point at Magnus Tulloch and pull her face into a pantomime of gasping and fainting, and I would pray he hadn’t seen her.

Later, as we sat at the fire again, our hands warming around tin mugs of tea, I became a bit braver. I told Magnus Tulloch about my big trip to the town and the things I’d seen, though I didn’t mention The Queen. I liked the way he listened, head a little on the side, as though he didn’t want to miss anything.

The fishers do say the town’s no place for lassies. He was mock disapproving, waving a finger about. And what do Fish Meggie say ta that?

Someone wanted to hear my opinion! Especially wondrous when the someone was Magnus Tulloch. It made me braver still, or maybe foolish.

I say lassies can make up their own minds about where they should go and where they shouldn’t.

He looked grave, and I thought my boldness not to his liking, just as it would be scandalous to Granda Jeemsie and would give Da a jamaica.

We-e-ll, Fish Meggie, he said slowly, I’ve been wantin’ ta ask ye somethin’. Would ye walk with me ta Clickimin Loch tomorrow? He grinned. An’ I’ll be very pleased ta know the answer—when ye has made up your own mind.

10

Just as I was beginning to feel a wee bit easier about my place on Clementina Slater’s team, a new disaster came along: my hands.

The curers tossed salt into the farlins by the bucketful, and the burning on my hands had turned to infection. Salty holes, they were called, nasty green and yellow sores that itched and burned underneath the clooties. Nothing could stop the brine seeping through the wet calico. Every small movement hurt from the rubbing of skin against coarse fresh salt, the scales and gills and bones of the herring. There was only one cure—keep my hands out of salt. Which meant, for me, there was no cure.

I’d heard about the Mission to Fisherfolk lady deputies, who helped out with carbolic dressings, and bread and sugar poultices. The closest mission hut was at Garthspool, about halfway between Lerwick and Gremista.

Clementina Slater was beside her large self, pacing back and forth outside our hoosie. Garthspool! That’s an hour out of the day if they see ye right up, an’ more if there be a line of ye!

Kitta bit back, unusual for her. She don’t choose to have salty holes, now, do she! She just needs some dressings, is all.

Clementina let fly. She knew exactly how many pence Kitta’s is all was going to cost the three of us.