When Ma got back from her rounds, she could see at once how it was with Granda and me. But she was sick, too sick to press, too sick to scold me as she normally would do. Her throat was coughed raw, a rattle in the ribs, the curve of her spine worse than ever.

I wasn’t talking to Granda, not since the day he called our Kitta a limmer. But our usual conversation was only ever thready, so the fact that I was ignoring him likely passed him by. So much for me taking a stand, lambsie. In any case, there was much to do with Ma sick, and I was too worried for her to let much else bother me. Even school had to wait. Unty Jinna had me scurrying into the moors, looking for roots and special leaves, and then I had to clean them just so and steep them in boiling water over the fire and strain decoctions for Ma to drink. And there were meals to be cooked, the house kept spotless, the clothes washed, and all that had to be done to get Granda away to sea. Good riddance was what I said under my breath, an’ don’t come back—soundless words that shamed me, for it was a terrible thing to wish of a fisher whose life was always at the mercy of the sea. I didn’t mean it, not really, I told God. I will be better, an’ not complain. I will talk to Granda if I must.

Ma regained a little strength. The racking cough eased to a dry scratching. But there was no question of her taking up the creel again, not for a good while to come.

We need neeps, quinie, neeps an’ eggs, an’ ye’re ready now, aye?

How impressed I was, impressed with myself, to be given the responsibility of taking on Ma’s rounds, even though it meant more time from school.

Ma suggested a short tramp. Just to the near farms, quinie. Two days is all.

~

The creel Ma gave me was smaller than hers by far and my weight of fish only a portion of what she carried on her rounds, but the load on my back, the drag of the straps on my shoulders, my blistered feet—aye, it was a sore experience. However did Ma manage?

There were gifts to ease the way. The smell of smokies, comforting, warm, and I minded what Ma always told me: What’s in our creel is good an’ honest an’ somethin’ to be proud to sell. All across the moors, the bright autumn yellow of the whins and broom was a lightsome sight. And for most of the way I had the company of other fishwives on their rounds, and then a tinkie wifie and her two quinies with their brass trinkets and armfuls of heather. Ma had never held with the bad feeling some had for tinkies. They have their livin’ to get an’ their way to make, just like all of us, she said. An’ if their wish is to roam in their gurdy vans an’ mind their own ways, what’s the harm of it? One of the wee tinkie lasses chattered all the way, and I thought of Kitta, chattering with her girls far across the sea, all of them with soft white hands wet with guts and blood.

At night we made our wee camp and lit a fire in a circle of stones. Never before, all the times I’d gone tramping with Ma, had it worried me to sleep beneath the stars. I would creep as close to the fire as she would let me go, pull my shawl about my face, tuck my legs under my skirt, and drift to the sounds of wings flurrying and twigs snapping, owlies hooting and calling. Peaceful, and I was never afraid. But the tinkie wifie took it into her head to warn me as we shared a bannock and some strong black tea.

A lass shouldn’t be on her own round here, nor any woman neither.

I thought maybe she didn’t know the Buchan area so well. Oh, we are never alone for long, there’s always other wifies on their rounds. Or travellers. An’ Ma says none will bother us on our way.

She shook her head. Don’t trust there will be none to bother. There are bad men on these moors. Isn’t travellers ye should fear, quinie.

Oh, no, I hurried to say, though I knew most of the fishwives were afraid of the tinkie men, with their colourful clothes, their long hair. We hold no ill will for travellers, no.

Wasn’t a traveller who dragged our Sarie away. She looked at the older of the two quinies, the one who, I now realised, hadn’t spoken at all. Fine, decent farmer loon, that one were, from a family what would say never a word against him.

What the tinkie wifie told me put a different skin on the night. I slept with an eye open, one ear alert to footfall, human breathing.

Keep a sharp gullie knife in your boot, quinie, the tinkie wifie bid me as we parted in the morning, and she fretted when I told her Ma had not given me one.

~

I was not so good at haggling with the farmer wifies who bought our smokies. I had watched Ma do it, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked, no.

Smaller than afore, said the wifie at Peterslie Farm, looking down her nose and setting her fists on her hips.

I frowned. I don’t think so …

Canna give ye more than four dozen, an’ ye can tell your ma so from Lochie’s Katie. And she took a step back as though to put an end to the bargaining and I could go if I wished.

Aye, I said, knowing she’d not be budging an inch when she had one so green as me to deal with.

They had this way about them, those wily women, and I wasn’t their match, not even near to it. How Kitta would laugh and call me plucked like a chuckney.

All the way home, I feared Ma would look at my load and think it less than it ought to be, but she unpacked it all on the table, the neeps and tatties, the butter, the eggs padded in straw, and pulled me to her, wheezing. Ye’ve done well, Ginger Meggie, aye. Well enough for your first time out. She reached over and smoothed my tangled hair. Ye’re our Fish Meggie now.

It was the finest praise she could give me, and I couldn’t speak for pride. I tried it on myself for the feel of it. Fish Meggie. And I wondered would it stick, this new name that spoke of what I had managed to do instead of the curse I was born with?

~

I couldn’t find Crusoe that night. Ma had not seen him nor heard his bark for more than a day, and she’d been cross that I might have taken him with me to the farms when she’d warned me never to.

We searched all along the boatie shore for him, Elspet, Liza and me. We called his name, we clapped our hands, but we dared not whistle so close to the boats because of what the fishers always said: Whistle an’ ye never know what will answer!

Nothing.

I stood up above the scaur where you could see right along the boatie shore and across to Tiller Street, and the other way up to the moors beyond. There was Elspet on her hands and knees, peering under a barnacled hull. Liza, kicking along the shore, her feet bare and her long skirt and apron tucked up into her drawers, calling for Crusoe from time to time when she remembered. A figure out on the water, on the Lily Maud, scrubbing the timbers with a stiff brush: Brukie’s Sandy. Over there, Unty Leebie, spreading ganseys and seaboot stockings over the gorse to dry.

No Crusoe.

On the walk back home, I passed Granda. It was foolish to ask but I did it anyway.

Granda, have ye seen where the fulpie be?

It was in my head that maybe he’d kicked Crusoe again, but he wasn’t likely to say so, now, was he? But I’d asked everyone else in the village, and none had a thing to tell me.

Granda spat on the sand. Pah! he said, folding his thick arms across his chest. I don’t know where your wretched beastie be. A long way from here if God be good!

I didn’t like what I saw in his face. Something mean, it was. Something satisfied.