Where the World Ends

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  “I am thinking, if ever I leave here, I’ll travel to the flattest rig of the world where there’s never an uphill or a down and the peat goes six shovels deep and winter’s two days long. And there are bears. I’d like to see bears. If y’ask me, Murdo is an excellent steady man.”

  However honest it was, Quill’s answer apparently left a lot of important things unsaid as far as John was concerned. She looked down at her lap and sniffed.

  Domhnall Don, hoping to get the matter settled quickly, asked John what he hoped were useful questions: “What manner of thing do you like in a man, can you say? A skill with birds? Education? A liking for church and such?”

  “What are you asking her for?” Kenneth interrupted. “We should take her by turns. I’m on her tonight, Calum the morrow.”

  Mr Farriss set off across the floor on hands and knees, dog-like in his ferocity. “You lecherous bullock! I have daughters! John’s no a sheep to be tupped! She’s Angus Gillies’ daughter!”

  But Kenneth was drunk on mischief. “You can watch if you’ve a mind to, Maister, but you canna play – being a married man ’n’ all.”

  John hugged her knees to her body and buried her face, wishing it made her invisible. A hail of bird bones pelted Kenneth but he seemed impervious. While he could talk dirtier than anyone there, he accounted himself the biggest man among them – the manliest of men – and somehow in charge.

  Murdo kicked out at the only part of Kenneth within reach without getting up, but only managed to land a glancing blow to the sole of his boot. To his great satisfaction, Kenneth shrieked like a blackback and went on shrieking, while everyone recoiled from the din, and stared at him, trying to guess what new ploy this was.

  But Kenneth did not stop screaming.

  Quill, through the haze of fever, heard the sound as if from a mile away, but it came with a smell attached. He was intrigued by the fact that drops of sweat and the drizzle from his nose were all rolling down his face and neck, but that the smell was crawling upwards – up his nostrils and into his brain, along with images of Soay sheep, their stumpy tails rotting and wormy. “He’s rotting,” he said. “Kenneth’s rotting in the hoof.” He was dimly aware that it sounded heartless, but he had no reserves of compassion in his head, only that foul smell and the noise of Kenneth screaming in agony. Besides, he had said it too quietly for anyone to hear. “Feet. Feet,” he said more loudly. “’Tis his feet have gone.” Then a bout of coughing stopped him saying anything.

  It was true. Kenneth’s toes had succumbed to frostbite. He fought tooth-and-nail their efforts to take off his boots, calling them thieves (and worse) and sliding himself backwards on his elbows, into the low recesses of the Bothy. But they dragged him out by the ankles and several boys piled on top of him, the younger ones having no idea why, the older ones reminding themselves of old grievances against the bully.

  Neither their ignorance nor their malice lasted long. When the boots were off, they could see the morbose, gangrenous state of Kenneth’s feet. And when Don fetched out his chipped knife and whetted its short blade against the wall, they felt nothing but horror and sympathy. Don held the sharpened blade in the candle-flame where it turned black with oily soot. Then, obliged to work one-handed, he made a start on sawing the toes from Kenneth’s frostbitten feet.

  Euan stood by, gabbling a miscellaneous jumble of prayers, before going outside to be sick.

  But after the first cut, Don dropped the knife, picked up the toe and threw it across the cave at Farriss. “I’ve not hands enough. You’ll have to do it.”

  Farriss uncurled at once, the muscles of his face rigid with nausea. But he spewed up no protest or excuses. “I know it,” he said. He had been wrestling as hard with his conscience as Kenneth had with his tormentors. Farriss crawled across the floor, took the knife from Domhnall Don, and completed the amputation, salt tears helpfully dropping from his top lip onto the grey putrefaction of Kenneth’s feet.

  Lachlan thought it might help for the patient to know how the operation was progressing – “That’s three, that’s four…” – so that Kenneth would see an end in sight: “And six and seven and eight…”

  It did not help. Words and noises came from Kenneth like demons from a man possessed – and every bit as haunting. Every boy knew that frostbite might possess him, too, when the Stac was still so often armoured in ice. They too might lose toes, fingers, a nose, an ear…

  Quilliam perceived the whole appalling ritual as through a telescope or down a long, dark corridor, and thought that the sweat streaming from his armpits must surely be blood, for he could smell blood too now. He could hear them discussing whether to use the white cloth for bandages – deciding against, on grounds of the birdshit it had been daubed with and the fact that it was still needed to catch guillies. They settled on using Mr Don’s sling, his arm-bone being as knit as it was ever going to be. Before bandaging, Farriss used their last drop of fulmar oil to disinfect Kenneth’s maimed feet. Euan, returning from the Bothy terrace, saw this and nodded approvingly. “Jesus anointed the feet of his disciples,” he said.

  “Shut yer mouth, Euan,” said John through a bush of greasy hair. “Pick up the bits and throw them out the door.”

  “I coudna!”

  “Then just shut yer mouth,” she said, and did the job herself.

  They did not return to the subject of marriage that day.

  Calum and Murdo continued to know always where John was, and to follow her about, like dogs on heat, but such malnourished, flea-bitten dogs that their pelts itched more than their yearnings. John even felt safe to enjoy the attention. But when, at the next Parliament, the matter was raised again, Domhnall Don cut the discussion short by announcing: “John shall give the matter consideration and deliver us her decision in due course…”

  John gave an angry gasp, kneeled up and began scrubbing her Festival Queen crown off the wall.

  “…when we get back to Hirta,” said Don.

  And John plumped herself down again in a move so decided and final that her thighs slapped loudly together.

  “Where’s Niall?” asked Mr Farriss suddenly.

  It did not cause much of a stir the first time he said it: Niall was sure to be back in time for the one meal of the day because he was perpetually hungry.

  But when, at dusk, Niall was still not back, Don stood outside the Bothy and bellowed his name. Like scavengers contributing finds to the cooking pot, each boy was asked to supply the last time he had seen Niall and where. It did not help much. The sheer labour of getting through each day had stitched them up inside themselves: they had stopped noticing things.

  They searched the ledges and familiar climbs close by Midway Bothy, but when the dark grew too thick, still had not found him. There was nothing they could do but wait till morning.

  The search had begun again for flotsam and driftwood that might be used for a second raft. There was a strong possibility that Niall had gone down to the shoreline looking for flotsam. Or they might find the boy in Lower Bothy. Niall knew the route there and would have known to seek shelter there if…if something had prevented him from returning to Midway. Quill clenched his left fist, stretched his arm over his head. His collarbone only ached now when rain was coming or the wind turned easterly. Injuries can heal. Fevers can be ignored if there’s a need. Not Davie’s kind of injury – not Kenneth’s – but Niall’s lateness did not necessarily mean he was badly hurt, not badly hurt – not permanently, lastingly, irremediably… Tomorrow morning, as soon as it was light, he would begin searching.

  With no more petrel-candles, the night-time cave was pitch black, but Quill had become so familiar with the night sounds that he knew the only person sleeping that night was Kenneth, whose snore was distinctive. Angry, desolate Kenneth: he could sleep now, day upon day, week upon month upon… Perhaps in his dreams he was able to climb again – walk up the hills behind the village – do the deed with every girl on Hirta; Kenneth, who had called Quill Keeper of Stories.


  There were no stories left in Quill’s head – none that would solace Kenneth, none to explain what had become of Niall. Perhaps the lung fever had melted them or they had blown away as steam.

  Where is he, Murdina? Where’s Niall? No one answered.

  They set off next morning – Farriss, Don and five boys with the one and only good rope. Every one of them had come to the same conclusion:

  “I’m for looking down below.”

  “Quill’s Bothy, aye.”

  “That’s where he’ll be.”

  Quill said that, in that case, he would search other coves and stretches of shoreline.

  “Nay, lad you shall stay here,” said Farriss. “The fever is still on you. And you can look to Kenneth if he needs help.”

  So the two sat in the cave and listened to the others descending the Stac, calling Niall’s name.

  Kenneth was lying flat on his back staring up at the roof. Quill thought he was asleep as usual until he said, “They should spread the looking wider.”

  “They should,” Quill agreed. “Could be in Raft Cove. Could be anywhere.”

  “Go on, then. Look.”

  And Quill did. He was so afraid for Niall that he reefed in his fever like a sail, and stowed it somewhere under his ribcage where it would warm him as he searched. “You be alright?”

  “Just go, will you?”

  Outside the cave door he turned the opposite way from the others. Certain ledges offered a wider view of the Stac’s flank. So he stayed at a height, resolving to circle the Warrior as far as it was possible to go – look up, look down, be systematic. Still, he expected every minute to hear the sound of rejoicing when the others found Niall safe and well.

  The sea quickly washed out any noise but its own. The wind was contrary to the tide, so that the air was full of spray off the wave-tops. As high up as he was, it was raining salt water. Even so, Quill could clearly see the dark shapes of three basking sharks cruising southwards past Stac Lee. His vision blurred before coming back into focus.

  What became of sailors washed off the decks of ships, fishermen snatched from shoreline rocks, the bodies of children given into the waves’ keeping? Were they swallowed down by such monsters as those sharks down there? Or cast up on foreign shores? Dissolved like salt to savour the oceans? Or were they just rolling in the waves, trodden on by seabirds resting from flight?

  With wings of his own, Quill could have circled the Stac in half an hour and seen, with gimlet-sharp birdy eyes, every nook and cranny of every rock face. Where’s Niall, Davie? Is he with you?

  But in the end, it was the garefowl once again who came to his rescue. Down at the waterline, the same solitary shape slip-slapped over a semi-submerged platelet of rock, a live fish flapping in her enormous beak. She swayed from side to side like a drunken sailor, and paused each time a wave showered her with spray. The freakish sight drew him irresistibly down towards the shoreline, though he had not worked this rock face before. (It might not be climbable all the way down.) His hands felt like hand-me-downs that did not fit him properly and did not have much wear left in them. He was instantly tired. Though he wanted to keep the garefowl within eyesight, he had to concentrate fiercely on finding hand and footholds. The next time he paused in climbing and turned back to face the sea, the garefowl had disappeared.

  But there was Niall.

  He appeared to be simply standing talking to himself. On closer inspection, the lower parts of his legs were sunk in a crack between two flat rocks. Every wave that came ashore welled up through the crevice to bubble around his hips. The biggest waves all but smothered him. One whole day and all night he had stood wedged, like a candle in a bottle, thrashed by the sea every few seconds, watched by a pitiless moon.

  He seemed neither surprised nor relieved to see Quill, but then he had been visited by a great many other sights during the course of a day and a night.

  “Soon have you out,” said Quill.

  Niall’s hair and clothing were clogged with what looked like congealing food. Perhaps so much salt water had forced its way down Niall’s throat that he had retched up a week’s meals – though he must have eaten gluttonously if that was true.

  “Have you out in the shake of a sheep’s tail.”

  “She wants ma head,” said Niall. His voice, though shredded by shouting for help, sounded casual now.

  “Well tell her she canna have it… Who does?”

  “The witch.”

  “Witch? What witch? D’you mean Murdina?”

  A big wave broke over them both and, though Quill tried to shield Niall, he too was all but knocked off his feet. The boy’s skin was as icy cold as Davie’s corpse had been, and indeed there was something about Niall that smacked of the Other World. The all-pervading stink though was of fish, not decay.

  “Let’s have you out of there, shall we?”

  “The blue-green men came,” said Niall, matter-of-fact for all his teeth were chattering uncontrollably.

  “Is that so?”

  “I asked would they help me. But they only laughed. Horrible faces, they have, Dadda. Horrible faces up close.”

  The wave, in subsiding through the cleft, gave a derisive chuckle.

  “Were you looking for driftwood, man?” asked Quill, trying to lift the boy bodily out of the cleft. It was like trying to uproot a gravestone: both feet were wedged tight.

  “There’s a conger lives under the Stac. He wants ma toes, but I have ma boots, don’t I? Dadda? I have ma boots. This conger – he got the taste of Kenneth’s toes, see, and he liked them so he come back for more, but he’ll no have mine, will he? He won’t, ’cos I have ma boots.” Between gabbled nonsense, Niall’s face froze into a rictus grin, lips drawn back off bared white teeth.

  Quill lay on his face on the rock shelf and reached down into the cleft to try and free Niall’s feet. He had to hold his breath whenever a wave swamped him. Each dousing left a whistling in his ears as if his mended collarbone was a fife playing piercing loud. His own teeth were chattering now. His fingers fumbled upon the bootlaces, but they were tied in a dozen knots that had compacted into stone-hard pellets.

  “Are you going?” asked Niall vaguely. It was as if Quill was no more real than the other monsters that had come to jeer and hurl things at this snared boy.

  “I’m going nowhere, but I have to find something sharp…” said Quill crawling across the rock shelf in search of some sharp-edged stone. But there was no comprehension in Niall’s face. Thoughts and horrors broke over the boy as randomly as the waves.

  “Do I have ma head still?” he asked.

  What did it mean? The question brought tears to Quill’s eyes. Did Niall know, then, that he was mad?

  “You have it square on your shoulders, man.”

  “Yeah! Ma neck’s made of iron, see, so she canna get it off me. She canna!”

  Niall looked out to sea and Quill followed the line of his gaze. The garefowl was there again, swimming offshore, its beak held high, its mask looking landwards as if anxious to see things end well. He waved his hand – could not help but wave to the bird who had kept him company during his banishment. “Look, Niall. Look! It’s my garefowl. You didna believe me when I said she called on me.”

  And Niall did hear this time, and did look. But his vacant stare into the middle distance was suddenly fearful and focused on the garefowl. “She wants ma head! Keep her off me, Dadda! She wants ma head! Witch! Go off, ya witch!” And he began spitting and crossing himself and rocking to and fro as he struggled yet again to heave his feet free. His shins and calves were scraped raw by the rock clamping them.

  Quill’s fist closed so tightly around the shard he was holding that it cut into his palm. Even if he could get the boy free, how was he going to get Niall back to Midway? He scanned the rock face beetling high above him, in the futile hope of seeing help on its way. All he saw were guillemots mating precariously on a nearby ledge. The Stac itself seemed to sway, as Niall was swaying, to and fro, to and fro. Was
it trying to free its feet from the ocean bed? Dizziness and nausea washed through Quilliam.

  As he lay on his face and sawed away at the laces of two boots he could not see and could barely even reach, Niall beat on his back with both fists. “Dunna cut off ma toes! The conger will have ya for it! Dunna! I need ma toes! Stop! I hope the conger gets ya! Hope it takes off yer hands, ye meirleach!”

  To reach the boots, Quill had to stretch so far into the crevice that his face was pressed to the rock. Was there really a conger eel down there? The thready sensations that wrapped themselves around his hands might be boot laces or seaweed, eels or the fingers of the blue-green men tying still more knots. Quill wondered if madness was infectious.

  “Soon have ye out. Soon have ye loose,” he insisted as the abuse and the waves broke over him.

  At last a sharp crack – two! – and a sagging of leather. Rising to his knees through a hail of punches, he wrapped both arms round Niall, pinning the boy’s hands to his sides, and pulled him upwards just as a seventh wave broke with prodigious force against them both. They were spilled on to the rock shelf and, as the wave withdrew, Niall broke free using both feet to push the boot-stealer away. Quill slid, on a sheen of water, over the rim of the shelf and into the sea.

  Despite the shock of the cold, he somehow kept hold of the ledge with one hand, but as he struggled to pull himself ashore again, Niall lay on his side howling and kicking out at Quill’s face. “You took ma boots! You stole ma boots, ye mearleach! Lachlan gived me those boots!”

  “Niall, let me up. You’re free, look! You’re out. You’re safe, y’donkey. Let me up!”

  But somehow, Quill had become the cause of every evil, from the horror of Kenneth’s amputation to the number of monsters in the sea. He was a thief, a demon, a cannibal, a blue-green man come to claw Niall out of the breathing world and into deep water. Quill pulled himself to and fro along the rim of the ledge, but Niall was not to be outflanked by a blue-green man. He slapped at Quill’s fingers, kicked at his face.