But who would help me? Who would save me? My father’s hate was heavy and tidal. Just like my mother’s. My flailing hands reached and reached for the land – missing, touching, slipping, losing – and then, not grass, not mud, but something cool and sharp and solid. I saw its eye. The hole where its eye should be. The long black beak, the brown sleek skin. A crow.

Suddenly I had the strength to pull myself up out of the loch and onto the bank, where I lay on my side gasping like a landed fish, until the rain stopped and the thunder drew further away. I sat up, wrestled the bird as gently as I could from the peat bank, carried it home tucked safely inside my coat. Put it under my pillow, directly beneath my head.

I knew that I had found a vándr-varði. Óðinn, the Raven God, had saved me from the fishermen. From my father. The land had saved me from the sea. I opened the drawer of my bedside table. Looked at the grey metal slingshot, its flat band looped inside a knot. I hadn’t used it – hadn’t even looked at it – since that terrible day, that terrible night. But now I could use it for good. I could use it to save myself.

I reached under my bed for the heavy Norse Mythology and Legends II. Turned to chapter 3, ‘The Process of Mummification’. Because I would need more. A lot more.

*

When the first of the big storms finally arrives, I’m not expecting it. Still not ready for it. The skies over the headland have been growing darker for hours, and I’ve watched them as I round up the flock. Waiting for the clouds to turn north or south, to go out to sea or towards Lewis as they have every time before. But instead, they grow only darker and closer, and when the rain starts, the thunder isn’t far behind.

The sheep are spooked, disobedient. For more than a month it’s seemed like they’re less tired and listless than actually sickening for something, even if the vet can find no cause. When Bruce suggested I use a different feed supplier than the one he’d always recommended, his smile was more apologetic than worried. ‘No point trying to save money, Robert, if it ends up costing you more.’ During our now regular end-of-week drams in the blackhouse with Mary, he’s given me much the same advice regarding Thom and Alec’s Ùrbost card game. I value the advice over those drams, though I’d never admit it.

I pretend not to be relieved when I get the sheep back into the barn; pretend not to be dismayed when I notice one is missing. The storm’s fury is louder, wilder as I drive the ATV back towards the grazing land; the tyres’ grip far poorer. When I arrive, I have to turn on my torch – it’s barely three in the afternoon but the world is black as night. And it feels as if there’s no one in it but me.