Where the World Ends

by Geraldine McCaughrean

“John thought up doing that,” said Murdo with a little smile, and patted her on the back. His hand lingered. His eyes looked furtively sideways at her in admiration.

  “Sometimes Cane slaps us,” said Calum.

  “Then we don’t go back again,” said Lachlan.

  “And then what does he do to you?” asked Quill. “For not going.”

  “He sends us out to sit in the cold.”

  “And we come here, instead.”

  Everyone laughed. The pain eased in Quill’s chest. Perhaps the tyranny of Col Cane was waning, and they could all soon get back to fowling.

  When Kenneth came down to Lower Bothy a second time, he only sat down at the back of the cave and stared at the floor. Once again, he did not try to incite anyone to stone Quill or to throw him in the sea. He simply sat, then left. Not until later did Quill find a snaky coil of horsehair tied to a bent nail where he had been sitting. The gift of a second fishing line. He expected to put it to good use: banishment had made him an excellent angler. But he did not keep the gift long.

  “That’s just me left, then,” said Davie bravely, when next he visited. Just he who was too small and useless to be Keeper of Anything. So Quill took him outside onto the sea terrace – “Let the blue-green men bear witness to this!” – and made a great show of entrusting Davie with one of the fish-hooks. Two would have been a boon, especially with the garefowl coming for her daily feed. But he could spare a mere fish-hook to make Davie happy.

  “This, Davie, is the Magic Iron Finger of the Sea. I had it off a selkie I saw sitting combing her hair on the rocks. This Iron Finger beckons to the fishes. None can say no to it. Keep it safe, will you? We may need it yet.”

  Davie beamed with delight: “Keeper of the Iron Finger”.

  Quill had not intended to set up in opposition to Col Cane, but he seemed to have done so. One by one, every lad but the pious and obedient Euan had eventually come down to visit Lower Bothy.

  Even holy Euan came at last.

  He ducked in at the Bothy’s entrance, golden hair dark with rain, face pinched with cold. The news he was carrying shamed him almost too much to tell it.

  “Mr Don says y’are to come back up, Quilliam. Minister Cane is gone up top.”

  “Up top? What, Heaven?”

  “Upper Bothy. To keep vigil. And fast. And pray for us all, night and day. You’re to come back up.”

  Driven to holy wrath (Cane said) by the everlasting noise and disobedience of sinful boys, he was decamping to the very peak of the Stac, where he would be closer to God and farther away from their bestial ungodliness. He had taken with him all the egg baskets, most of the remaining sacks, the best knife, and the precious tinderbox.

  “Did the men not try and stop him?”

  “Mr Don woulda, but his arm is broke just now.”

  “What!” The news was catastrophic. Quill turned on the others: “Why did nobody tell me?”

  But Euan was too caught up in his own sorrows to show much concern. As the Minister’s altar boy he had been special. But Cane must surely have seen through to his woeful secret – had somehow found out about Euan’s failure to walk on water… What other explanation could there be? Because, instead of Euan, the Minister had taken John with him to Upper Bothy.

  “He what? He what? He did what?” blared Murdo.

  Quill laid a restraining hand on his friend. “Did John… Was he willing? John? To go?”

  Euan only shrugged. Why (his expression asked) would anyone object to serving God and Minister Cane?

  Murdo and Quill looked at one another, the same dire thought in their heads.

  “Did you…?” they asked each other simultaneously. It should have been funny, the synchronized questions, the identical accusing finger they were pointing. It was not. Each had thought the other capable of betraying John’s secret.

  “Maybe she told him herself,” whispered Quill. “Confessed it, during Confession, maybe?”

  But Murdo was too enraged to keep his voice down. “Shut yer beak. She wouldna! She’d never! Now see what you’ve done!”

  “What’s that, exactly? What have I done?”

  The other boys were instantly unnerved. They did not understand what the row was about, but here in the sea cave, drunk on story, memories and song, they had tasted a respite from worry. They did not want their haven spoiled by noisy fright.

  Back went Quill, up to Midway Bothy, the younger boys squabbling behind him over who would carry the soggy sack of feathers – the “Keepers’ Throne”. In fact they fell into a kind of victory procession – if it is possible to “process” vertically up a slab of tilting rock. Only Murdo outstripped Quilliam.

  “Have to get her back,” Murdo kept saying. “Hav’ta!”

  “John’ll not have told Cane that she’s a girl. She never would,” insisted Quill.

  “But some bastard else might’ve.”

  “Well, it wasna me and it wasna you, and none else knows.” Quill was determined not to be infected by Murdo’s panic.

  “Cane’s guessed, then!”

  “G’way, man. That fool? He couldna guess how many ducks make one. Reason he didna take Euan is: Euan puts him in the shade. Euan’s…real.”

  “Real?”

  “Aye. Euan’s the real thing. He’s small fun to be with, but he is a proper wee saint. Cane, he’s a charlatan. Wants to be top man, like the Reverend Buchan. But for why? ’Cos he wants to order us about; tell us: ‘Tuesdays are Sundays now.’ ‘Night’s day.’ ‘The moon’s made o’ cheese.’ But he’s no sincere, get me? Reckon Euan makes him feel small… So he didna take Euan up top; he took someone useful is all. To fetch and carry for him.”

  “But he’ll notice now! When there’s just the two of them. And her so pretty.”

  “Nah, man. If John was a pony, that noddy would think she was a sheep.”

  Quill was, in part, persuading himself, trying to lessen the unease clamping his heart. The idea of Col Cane knowingly carrying a girl off to his stac-top “lair” was… His mind swerved away from it so sharply that his head spun. He told himself that John would simply return to Midway if she felt in danger.

  He called a halt, took a rest, shut his eyes, breathed deep, allowing his heart rate to slow. If exile had taught him one thing, it was not to dwell on the unbearable: it only gives you stomach ache.

  Not so Murdo. He was so atwitch with rage and outrage that he was climbing too fast, missing handholds on the rock. “I’ll get her back. I will. I’ll go up there; get her back.”

  “‘Him’. ‘Him’ not ‘her’,” breathed Quill, looking round to see who was within earshot. “And slow down, will ya?”

  “’S alright for you, man. She’s no your girl.”

  “Nor yours, neither,” said Quill, taken aback, “…is she?”

  It was startling news to learn that Murdo was destined to marry John.

  “Does she know?” asked Quill.

  “Not yet. But I have her in my head, y’mind? Like you have Miss Galloway. I built a wall round her. So she’s mine now. And I mean to have her back.” And all of a sudden, Murdo wilted, from vengeful anger to simple sadness. John had been carried away and, along with her, a great many fondly cherished hopes.

  No hail of pebbles greeted Quilliam’s return to Midway Bothy. No one covered their nose against the stink of his wickedness. Though only two bird-candles were burning, Midway Bothy was delectably warm in comparison with the water’s edge: he could only stand still and enjoy the glimmer of heat on his cheeks. “So how is there fire without the tinderbox?” he asked.

  “Good luck, for a time,” said Domhnall Don. “And then Lachlan.”

  For a while, they had kept two flames alive, passing them from the stump of one burned petrel to the wick of the next, with a spare kept alight against mishap. But inevitably, some vandal wind would burst into Midway and, ransacking it for signs of life, blow out both lanterns.

  So Lachlan had made it his job to climb to Top Bothy, two petrel-candles l
ooped through his belt, ready-threaded with horsehair wicks. Once there, he begged a light from the “Minister” and fetched it down within the shelter of his jacket.

  “Like Prometheus stealing fire from heaven,” said Mr Farriss to the wall.

  Despite the hardships of the climb, there were others who wished they could take Lachlan’s place.

  Murdo was so desperate to rescue John that he spoiled his own chances. “Next time, let me go, Maister!” he pleaded. “I’ll get the tinderbox if I have to kill yon piddock!”

  Mr Don, after weeks of holding his own volatile temper in check, was not about to tolerate temper among the boys. “You shall not, boy. Lay a-hold on yourself and keep a clean tongue in you.”

  “What is it like up there?” Euan asked Lachlan. “Is there an altar? Do they pray all day?”

  Lachlan only shrugged. “He comes out to me. I’m no allowed inta his den.”

  So Euan went on envisaging some holy sanctuary, and begged to be the one to go up there, next time. He asked as eagerly as if the climb to Upper Bothy was the ladder up to Heaven itself. Clearly he was missing the “Minister” like a lamb separated from its mother. But that gave Don grave doubts that Euan would actually return from Upper Bothy if he went there, so he brushed aside the offer, insisting Lachlan was the only man for the job: “He is ‘Keeper of the Flame’ now,” murmured Mr Farriss, and glanced in Quill’s direction. It was a look that said nothing remained secret on Warrior Stac.

  When Quill asked about the broken arm, Domhnall Don made light of it. “Ach, ’twill mend,” was all he said. “The raft is finished at least.” Still, since Quill had last seen him, Don’s face had fallen into unfamiliar creases – channels down which all optimism seemed to have trickled away. While putting the final touches to his raft, he had stepped back onto a clump of seaweed and lost his footing. A simple fall against the jagged hide of the Stac was all it took to snap a bone in his forearm and leave him unable even to make it back unaided to the Bothy, let alone launch and sail the raft.

  Mr Farriss was forever checking Don’s pulse, the colour of his nails, adjusting the sacking sling… If he had knocked Don down and broken his bones deliberately, he could not have looked more eaten up with guilt. If only he had been there when Don slipped! He might have caught him or scraped away the seaweed!

  But Mr Don was not a man who knew what to do with pity. He knew as well as Farriss that if his injury cankered, he would die of gangrene. He was fairly sure that, even if the arm healed, he would never carve another spoon, mend another boat, or knit another tunic. Only by putting such things out of his mind could a man like Domhnall Don survive. So he was not grateful for Farriss’s fussing.

  The friendship which had united the two men against Col Cane had become less while Quill was gone.

  Now, when Don pictured a signal fire burning on Boreray’s green mound, he did not picture himself lighting it. Someone else would have to go in his place – aboard his raft. “How would you like the job, Quilliam McKinnon?” said Don. “I’ve had no volunteers for it so far. But someone of us must go – and soon. Good weather will be rare from here on.”

  It was true. Living at the sea’s edge, Quill knew better than most the changing mood of the sea. On most days now the wind swerved and veered continuously, the waves ran in several directions at once, clashing and smashing together into chimneys of spray. Making a crossing – however short – was a fearful prospect. Quill did not leap at the offer, despite the beseeching look in Don’s face.

  The look on Euan’s face was plain as writing. He should have gone to Boreray when he had the chance: should have walked there over a flat, calm sea. Any fool with a half pint of faith could have done that, and then the Minister would not have cast him aside…

  Quill shifted the battered, moulting Keepers’ Throne into the centre of the room. Let it serve its purpose one last time. Let Story come to the rescue one last time. Let Story rescue Euan from the pointless treadmill of self-loathing. After all, Cane was no longer there to damn him or stone him for it.

  “There was once – listen up, men, this is true; I had it off my father. This one time the Owner’s Steward was on his way to Hirta to collect his rent money, and his boat ran into a shoal of herring – big like no man ever saw before. Herring: slithering on and over each other they were, and so close-packed that the boat stopped dead in the water. The gannets were all about, feasting on the plenty – such a flock as blotted out the sun – diving and skewering and gorging theirselves in the water all around…picture it! Then one gannet – the biggest of ’em all – it misses its fishy mark and plunges into the boat and its beak drills clear through the boards and the boat is suddenly full of bird. The wings stretch from side to side like a sail fallen down into the boat. There’s men on one side of the beast and there’s men on the other, and all of them in fear of their lives ’case the hole lets in water and they sink. But to the joy of all, the gannet’s head was stuck so tight in the hole that there was no leak, and it stopped there stuck, all the way to Hirta… After the herring shoal parted, y’mind? Men talked of it their whole lives long. So many herring that a man could walk across them like he was walking a causeway!” Quill leaned back on his elbows. “To my way of thinking, that’s what happened with Jesus and his fisherman friends.”

  Domhnall Don, who had been tasting the greasy cooking water in the pot, gave a splutter that spattered the floor round his feet. The boys urged Quill to go on.

  “Jesus made all the herring in the world, am I right? So the herring surely came when He whistled? So when He was on the shore and His friends were out on the sea, He whistled up this huge shoal of herring and walked over the water on their backs – to reach the disciples, yes? (They couldn’t see the fish, so they were rare impressed.) And Jesus told Saint Peter to try it too…which Peter did – and managed it, of course! Then the herring said enough was enough and stopped cooperating and Peter started sinking. That would explain why no one else in the world has ever been able to walk on water. Not without herring anyway. Or coracles on their feet. Not one saint, even, ever.”

  A handful of younger faces turned to look at Euan, eager with delight. Of course he had not been able to walk to Boreray over the waves! There had not been enough herring!

  Quill could feel Euan’s eyes on him, but did not look round (just in case Euan guessed that the story had been invented especially for his benefit).

  Col Cane would have screamed “Blasphemy!” and pitched stones at Quilliam for sprinkling a sacred Bible story with Scottish herrings. But the “Minister” had let go the reins of power, hadn’t he, and been supplanted by the Storyteller.

  “Welcome back, Quilliam,” said Domhnall Don wryly.

  “I say Quill should be ‘Keeper of Stories’.” It was the first thing Kenneth had said since the Outcast had returned to Midway Bothy. And it pleased Quill more than he could quite understand.

  “I could’ve fair walked on water when he said that,” he told Murdina Galloway as he fell asleep in her imaginary arms that night.

  Next day, the wind again blew out the candles. So Lachlan climbed the Stac to buy a light from the “Minister”. He took with him a string of sand eels Quill had caught in Lower Bothy but been too revolted to eat. As usual, Cane heard him scrambling up the last scarp, and met him on the broad terrace in front of the cave. Cane took the putrefying eels, with a look of disgust, and dropped them on the ground. “You can pay me in labour. Fetch me more rocks to the windbreak.”

  Piling lumps and shards of rock in front of the cave mouth was bruising and back-breaking work. John helped Lachlan, but spoke not a word – shot him no glances – pulled no conspiratorial faces. Perhaps she had been forbidden to speak to anyone from Lower Down.

  On the downward climb, Lachlan’s arms were doubly weary from heaving rocks. He needed one hand to nurse the two lit birds inside his jacket. So when a roll of thunder startled him, a twinge of pain went through the muscles of his back, and he fumbled his grip on the bi
rds. Feeling the petrel-candles sliding out of his grasp, he instinctively snatched them close. The belly-oil from one squirted out of its neck and met with the flame glimmering there. A searing heat caught Lachlan under the jaw, then trickled down his chest, riding on droplets of burning oil. His jacket, too, caught fire. He screamed, and, high above, some seabird screamed in reply.

  A moment later, teeming rain burst from the sky. It doused him almost immediately, but he was left with a pain, from jaw to navel, that felt as if a strip of skin had been torn off him. He half expected his insides to fall out. What distressed him almost as much was having no lit candle to show for it.

  Awkwardly, clumsily, hampered by his broken arm, Mr Don splashed fulmar oil onto the shiny burn: his answer to every ailment, from toothache to coughs and constipation. “I would give you whisky, man, but your ma would skin me for it, so it’s as well I have none,” he said.

  Seizing his chance, Murdo tried volunteering to make the climb in place of Lachlan to beg another light. But he was not quite quick enough with his offer. Little Euan was ahead of him, oddly eager for the perilous climb and for the chance of falling to his death.

  With his red-gold hair, blue eyes and patched, feathery clothes, he looked, as he climbed, very like an angel ascending. Lachlan had instructed him in how to carry a lit bird-candle in the lee of his jacket on the way down. But someone should have asked what it was that Euan wanted from the “Minister’s” hermitage.

  Euan was after forgiveness for his sins and to be taken back as Col Cane’s altar boy. He was quite ready (he planned to tell the holy man) to face all the privations of a hermit’s life: to fast and pray and freeze and keep silent…

  All Euan’s well-rehearsed words dropped away as he finally stood in the doorway of Cane’s Hermitage.

  A shamelessly extravagant number of petrel-candles lit the cave. The remains of a dozen guga meals strewed the floor, along with the best knife the company possessed. There was no altar, unless it was the pile of rocks keeping out the easterly wind. A pair of stuffed, patched and filthy trousers hung from the roof. The Reverend Col Cane lay, asleep and snoring, on a crushed mound of straw egg-carriers and two sacks of feathers. Sharing his body warmth, spine against spine, John lay on the same bed.