I duck as a cormorant swoops low over my head and then lands on an outcrop of granite a few paces away. It holds out its glossy black wings, the scallop-shaped feathers iridescent in the pale light, and then turns and repositions itself, its webbed feet slapping against the wet rock. Its face is covered with bare scaly skin and surrounded by pale feathers, its green eye watching me. With its flat forehead and cruelly curved bill, it’s a strange reptilian-looking thing. It makes a gulping noise and I step closer, wondering if it’s trying to communicate.

A hand grips my shoulder and I gasp and spin around. A woman in a tattered black dress stands before me, her long dark hair plastered to her forehead. Her skin is so pale it’s almost translucent and her eyes are pure white. Unlike Morgan, she’s tall and broad-shouldered with generous womanly curves. She smiles, revealing a flash of sharp teeth, and then glances over my head and frowns.

A cormorant is heading straight for me. As it gets closer, I see its face. A woman’s face: small and pinched, with a furrowed brow and sharp, angry eyes. It flickers and changes, the image becoming one thing and then another. A cormorant’s face. A woman’s. Cormorant.

Its vicious beak opens like I’m a fish it’s about to swallow and I lift my arm, sure it’s going to crash into me, when the bird somersaults and turns into a woman. She lands with a thud, her bare feet skidding into the pebbles. She wears the same clothing as the first woman and has the same long dark hair and white eyes, but is much shorter – and angrier. She shoves the bigger lady, who shrugs as if they’ve had this argument before.

Another of the birds lands as a woman to my right, her feet thumping into the shingle. A moment later, a different one appears to my left and then another behind me. I turn and look in every direction. Seven women stand around me, their huge, feathered wings fluttering in the breeze. Some of them laugh with joy, a few regard me in seeming disbelief, and the smallest one glares at me like I owed her money in my previous life.

They pace around me. There’s something unnerving about the way their bare feet step effortlessly across the pebbles, their movements synchronised. Every now and then they talk amongst themselves, their honks and grunts so strange that I begin to feel light-headed. The short one breaks the circle as if she’s going to talk to me, but the women on either side pull her back.