Outside the church, I shivered. The moon seemed to pin the sky to its backdrop of stars and it was still. So still. Even through the rasp of the sea and the chattering of voices, it was as if the Earth had ceased its turning.

Mary slipped her hand into mine. Her eyes in the moonlight were inscrutable. Although she did not speak, I was aware of the avalanche of words that were dammed up behind her lips; they pressed against me and I gained the sense that she knew my thoughts or somehow what I planned.

That evening, all sounds seemed amplified, or perhaps it was the heavy silence behind them that gave that illusion, but during supper I was overly aware of the chink of silver on china and the noise of a glass as it was replaced upon the table, the rustle of skirts and napkins and the clock like a gunshot.

The evening dragged, but finally I was able to take my leave and go to my room where I dressed warmly and waited. From the window, the moon had grown larger. Soon, the sounds of the house abated to the humming eaves and creaks of old boards. In the corridor damp hung about the lamps like a white breath. I stopped and listened – nothing but the night’s hush; I listened deeper for the sound of Hettie but met only silence.

I did not need a lantern and I laced my boots and left by the chapel. Outside, the stillness had grown as if, like me, it too was waiting for what was to happen. Ailsa was at her door, her eyes bright in her face. She carried a sack and handed me a bag, knotted at the opening.

‘Take care with it,’ she said. And as I took the bag, I knew, somehow, that it contained the dolls.

We did not tarry. She led me past her cottage and along a path that banked the north side of the island. Waves rose and roared below us.

The moon was falling behind the ridge but eventually we climbed again to where Stack Mor reared into the sky. Ailsa’s assured step led us through the narrow channel between the rocks and soon we were out of the wind and into the rush of sudden silence.

The Fiaclach lay like a scattering of old bones. And I was afraid – afraid of the strange magic of Skelthsea, of the way the Fiaclach repelled me and of the rattle within the bag at my back, as if the contents had come alive and the dolls had opened their eyes to watch me through the cloth.

In the cold whip of air was the smell of the earth – millennia of leaf mould and seabed – and I imagined the scuttle of prehistoric life along the floor of the ocean in the winking blackness, the strange shapes of never-seen creatures, and felt the energy of something beyond my knowledge.