Murdo counted ten empty houses. The series of stone dykes defending fields from the sea had been chewed by several winters of wind and ice. Ernol stood in the wind of an open ocean, and, without its human numbers, hands whose habit it was to put stones back, it was slowly losing its human shape. Today the sea showed white only at its edge, and Murdo was able to make a quick count of the smoke streaming up from nearly forty houses. Farther off, and more solidly white, he spotted the smoky exhalations of three whales. ‘The house!’ Murdo hailed in Gaelic, stooped, touched the lintel, and led Geordie and Alan in. There was only one cow in the byre that formed half the house. A girl was milking it, her forehead against its flank and her feet clamped to the base of a solid wooden pail. She looked around, scarcely daring to move. Her face was white in the light reflected from the milk. Murdo heard Alan say, ‘That isn’t your cow, is it?’ ‘No.
