There were two ways to get home to the Whaleback. When they had the boat, they could row back to the hidden cove, no more than a slit in the tidal island’s rocky southern flank, clamber precariously out and drag their small craft up to a little hollow above high water. Then they’d climb farther, till they reached the curving grassy top of the Whaleback, and run downhill to the houses that clustered low at the eastern end, perched on the level ground overlooking the causeway. If you’d gone over to the mainland on foot, there was but a single way to return, and that was over that same causeway, picking a careful path on the weed-draped stones. They knew the tides as they knew the patterns of their own breath. In summer there was time, before and after the lowest ebb, to walk a fair way up or down the coast or inland across the home farms to check on stock or visit neighbors. A journey farther afield meant a longer stay, for once the rising sea came close to washing over that central pathway, there was no crossing over, not unless you fancied a life among the mackerel and the selkies. In times of winter storm, sometimes there was no way over for days on end, for the winds howled fiercely, and the water whipped sideways through the gap between brough and shore, and there was no corner of the Whaleback left untouched by the icy spray of the western sea. The sky was a lowering cloak of darkness; gulls were tossed helpless on the wind. In winter, a stranger might have wondered that the Folk had named their home the Light Isles. Was not this a realm of endless, freezing darkness, visited by hellish winds, pounded by nightmare seas, a stark, empty place where scarcely a tree dared lift its branches from the earth to soften the bleak landscape?

Then spring would come, and if the stranger had waited, he would understand all at once why those who dwelt here knew it for the loveliest place on earth. Here the sky held more colors than there were blades of grass on the hillsides; here the sea was endlessly changing, moody, bountiful, capricious, a shawl of mystery wrapping these fair islands with its fluid touch. Each stone bore its own story, each shell its own pattern, each flower its enchantment. When you sat on the clifftops in springtime, the air was alive with the calls of birds: puffins and gulls jostled for space on the ledges and spread their wings to the wind, soaring and gliding. Ahead of you was an ocean that had no ending. Behind you the low, sweet hills rolled away to shining lakes. To the south, in the distance, was High Island with its twin mountains, a place of hidden valleys and monstrous rock stacks, a realm best fit for fishermen and priests.