Uncertainty about the future is understandable as we continue to welcome strangers to our beloved isle (just as the righteous welcomed Jesus, not knowing that He was the Son of God). The strangers come in person but also in words and images, in publications and in films, and in the shape of their physical items. The foundations of our principles will be tested by these strangers and their objects, but we must not hide from this challenge. We shall not shirk our responsibilities. We will face them and be strong.

If you require answers, turn only to Him, keeping with you the understanding that some things are not for us to know. He is your one true God, your one true guide in this life and the next.

Do not be swayed towards forgiveness or complicity, dear elders of the island. The burden is on you to reject this voodoo and necromancy, or else the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the generations that follow. Steer our young towards good. As Jesus tells us in the Book of St Matthew: Any person allowing a child to slip from the path of righteousness may as well have a millstone hanged about their neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea.

I leave this to your morals.

Mr J. R. K. CRANE

The congregation extracted the letter from their hymn books and grew pale. The parents who had pulled the missive from their children’s satchels the previous day, nodded at the familiar words, grim-lipped. Not a one of them was without sin. They had all told tales of giants, feared seven-yearly sacrifices to the sea or petted the black hair of a virgin for luck. Each person assumed the letter was meant for them alone and, at the same time, knew absolutely it was written about everybody else. Guilt was strong in this congregation, but indignation at the misdeeds of others was stronger.

Surely, the letter had the Eldest Girls in its crosshairs, designed to reprimand them in the most public way for their behaviour at the Sisters’ Stones. Though, if this was so, it didn’t seem to be having the intended effect. Britta, Anna and Jade-Marie sat together at mass, dressed demurely in chapel best, displaying no outward signs of mortification. Their mothers carried no extra visible burdens either. Did these women not know that the image of the millstone had been included for them, a reminder of the consequences of not keeping their offspring in check?

Perhaps not. Gossip on Lark spread rapidly but strategically, and never near the subjects or their kin. It was quite possible that these women were ignorant of what their daughters were getting up to, and saw no reason to feel any disgrace.

Theories shifted.