There is a huge crash. The air in the close is thick and black. Firefighters run out. The ground is rumbling. The yellow crane stops. It hangs over a statue next to St Giles’. Dot can see the sea – away down there at the bottom of the High Street where the view lifts out towards Fife. The Firth of Forth isn’t grey today. On this brand-new morning – it is sparkling. Four police cars pull up and park opposite the cathedral. The entire street is being cordoned off. Police are holding their hands out at the crossroads down at the Tron. Nobody can get into this area now. They still don’t see Dot working quickly, methodically, with precision behind her square barricade. It’s a useful skill. To be unseen. When needs be. To pass without question. All goddesses need it. All girls, all boys, all the devil’s children and all of heaven’s angels and all the ones who never got in – all of the fallen – in whatever guise they appear on this mortal coil.

The right to pass unseen.

She lays out the bones.

Careful!

Dot is finally glad of her anatomy class at art school. Grateful for her time doing drawings every day for a year.

She takes the first skull and places it above the torso. Whoever treated them did it so well – they are preserved as perfectly as if it were only yesterday. Dot places her hand on the skull cheekbone as she meshes it onto its neck bone. She almost drops the next one – her fingers are blue-cold. Slide it carefully into place. Dot lays the arms out. Places them so the lower arms hold hands with each other. She can tell from the hip bones they were both women. She lays outside arm bones – protectively around their child. She lays their legs out below their torso – placed facing forward so they can walk together – into the future.

Spirits have a future too, if we find it in ourselves to honour them.

The feet are fragile.

It takes a held breath and a very steady hand – to place each bone the right way. Carefully, she places the child’s arms so they are folded at the hands and she touches lightly where the child’s heart used to beat and says a prayer to the primordial matriarch, the first mother, the cosmic light source where all things come from – to guide them home.

Her face is wet with tears.

– The last floors are falling!

No. 10 Luckenbooth Close buries its bricks into the ground, piles and piles of them.

Dot turns both of the women’s skull heads.

They look at each other – just like they must have done all those years ago.

– For those who came before us and all who will come after!