Where the World Ends: Chapters 1–4

The fathers and uncles, wives and aunts, shoved them off. And no, the pebbles did not claw at the boat’s keel. No lugworms squirmed out of their holes to lug it back ashore.

The old men back home talked about the stacs as if they were just larders crammed with fowl put there by God expressly to feed the people on Hirta.

Mr. Don, barefoot and with a rope tied round his body (to fetch him back aboard if he fell) and the boat’s mooring rope wrapped around his wrist, balanced precariously on the bow and steeled himself for the jump.

He was shabby as a molting sheep, and twice as cheerful as he ever looked back home on Hirta.

Once the fowling party reached Lower Bothy, they stood about, drying in the wind, like cormorants, and watched the boat tacking away into the wind: homeward.

Calling it “Bothy” made the place sound homely, like a hut or a cottage, when it was only really a dark, dank chink in the great wall of rock.

He probably had favorites, but if he did, he never let it show. A scrupulously fair man.

The canny old ones walk over the backs of their neighbors, pairs sit contentedly side by side staring out to sea, the airborne home-comers crash-land on their fellow birds, crops full of fish.

So, soon Quill was planning every move, holding still when the wind blustered, resting when cramp flickered in his calves.

In the same movement, he took hold of its wings and pinioned them behind its back, then freed one hand to wring its neck.

"Fair. Fair,” said Calum laconically afterward.

A single drop of water fell from the lip of the cave mouth, and he found himself waiting for the next to fall and the next and the next...Determined not to succumb to homesickness, he steered his thoughts, like a boat, toward pleasanter things.

The prow bumped gently against the rocks. Many a boat had splintered planks against Hirta’s cliffs; their wrecks had provided useful wood for doors and benches—there were no trees on Hirta.

The Minister spoke of “glories ineffable” awaiting them in Heaven: it was his favorite phrase, “glories ineffable,” but since Quill had no idea what “ineffable” meant or what a “glory” consisted of, he had never quite got to grips with the idea.

Feelings scrabbled about in him like a mouse inside an owl. She might be a niece of Mrs. Farriss, come to help at the Minister’s school, but she was nothing akin to anyone Quill had ever met.

Hirta boys might chatter and giggle as they vied to see who could piss farthest.

She sang, too: lullabies and laments and love songs,
“The water is wide; I cannot cross o’er
And neither have I wings to fly...”

Her laughter struck him like the clapper hitting a bell, and the reverberations shook their way through him.

Euan: soulful, solemn little Euan, whose voice had not broken yet, and who said colors had tastes, and that holy words were magic.

He called himself “the Minister’s Right Hand,” though in fact he was only the sexton, employed to dig graves, tend the manse vegetable plot, mend the roof and clean the barn, which served as a kirk.

Guga meat would fetch top prices on the mainland, and make for a sumptuous feast back on Hirta.

So, every day the older boys and men went out to catch guga. The babies sat, like fluffy dumplings, on narrow ledges of the steepest cliffs. It seemed extraordinary that they did not roll off and plummet flightless into the sea or bounce-bounce-bounce down the escarpments.

Murdo’s father had made and owned the finest rope on Hirta—plaited horsehair hand-sewn into a sheepskin sheath.

One day it would belong to Murdo, bequeathed to him, as lords and gentlemen bequeath their houses and lands and swords to the firstborn son.

Even Mr. Don—a stolid, implacable man—began to grunt and mutter to himself that he needed to get back to mending his roof while the weather was good.

Even Mr. Don—a stolid, implacable man—began to grunt and mutter to himself that he needed to get back to mending his roof while the weather was good.

“What if it’s pirates?” blurted Niall: the words rushed out of him as if brigands were after them.

His lower teeth naturally overlapped the top ones so that his jaw was always jutted, belligerent -looking, like a hog’s.

How he knew this was anyone’s guess, since he had never traveled farther afield than the sea stacs.

Like God, he never visited the isles in person—only sent his Steward once a year to collect the rent from his tenants.

Mr. Cane intoning down his nose every five minutes, “What cannot be altered must be endured,” made Mr. Don writhe with annoyance.

Blood trickled furtively from Euan’s hairline, like an unthinkable thought escaping into the open.

He did not like the boy, Euan, who showed a tendency to mysticism and prettiness that was none too Presbyterian.

Whenever Col Cane put on his sanctimonious voice and pretended to know the mind of God, they always rolled their eyes and growled.

The boys were variously crying, calling for their mothers, asking questions or simply rocking on their haunches, arms over their heads.