Ruby
We follow the course of a small burn, its peat-strained water as brown as tea, climbing the hill to the scattald—the area of common grazing above the croft—so Hanna can show me the lay of the land.
It’s a bright, breezy day, white clouds scudding across the blue of the sky, their shadows scampering after them across the surface of the sea. Pip trots at our heels, then glances up at Hanna questioningly when we spot a ewe and her twins up by the fence line.
“Get up,” she says quietly, pointing with her crook, and Pip moves steadily toward the sheep, trying to herd them away from the boundary. The ewe takes a couple of steps, then hesitates. One of the lambs bleats pitifully, having got itself tangled in the barbed wire.
Hanna is furious. “That bloody man!” she mutters. “Putting up fences where there should be none, then overgrazing the land with his worm-infested flock.” She calls more loudly to the dog. “That’ll do!”
Pip comes straight back to heel, before the lamb can panic and injure itself. We walk calmly over to the fence, approaching at an angle, and the ewe stamps a hoof, warning us. “It’s all right, old girl,” Hanna tells her. “We’re here to help.”
Her injured arm makes it hard for her to disentangle the lamb from the wire, so she nods at me and watches as I carefully free it.
It seems none the worse for wear and skitters off to rejoin its mother and sister.
Hanna reaches into the pocket of her coat and hands me a small plastic jar with a paper label.
“Might as well take the sample here, while it’s fresh. ”
“Sample?” I say.
She gestures toward the scattering of fresh droppings the lamb left behind in its fright. “Use the lid to scoop a few into the jar. We need to get them to the vet for analyzing.”
I crouch and do as I’m told. I sense she’s testing me, this city girl with her soft hands and clean fingernails.
“Analyzing for what?” I ask.
“A fecal egg count. For worms, of course,” she replies, unable to resist a grin as she sees me grimace. But I twist the lid back on and put the sample into my pocket, earning a grudging nod of approval for not handing it straight back to her.
We continue upward to the crest of the hill, following the fence line past the peat bank where this spring’s cut slabs have been stacked into their neat, castellated piles to dry in the wind.
“Geordie and Isobel helped me with the casting a couple of weeks back,” Hanna says. “June peats never burn as well as those stacked before May is out.” She points across the hill. “They have the next croft along.”
When we reach the top, we turn our backs on the overgrazed bleakness of the moorland on the other side of the fence, where the land is deeply incised with the scars of erosion, and Hanna leans on her crook, gazing down to the farmhouse, the hay meadow, and the beach beyond.
“There you go,” she tells me. “You can see the layout of the croft better from here. Igdrasil stretches from the road over there to the edge of that pasture beyond Jamie’s house.”
I nod, taking it all in. I wonder a bit about Jamie.
I’d love to get to know him better, but he remains a little aloof.
I don’t think he’s particularly shy, but he still seems friendlier to Hanna than he is to me.
Only natural, I suppose, since he’s known her far longer.
I wonder what he does for a living. Perhaps he works in the oil industry, like so many people do here, or maybe he just does odd jobs around the islands, helping on the farms and crofts as needed.
I’m about to ask Hanna when, from the marshland at the distant edge of the meadow, there comes a faint sound, like the rasp of a cricket, carried to us on the breeze.
“A corncrake!” says Hanna. “That’s the first I’ve heard this year.”
I cock my head, straining to hear the bird’s call above the blustering of the wind through the heather. “Aren’t they very rare?” I ask.
“They are. But in places where the land is managed correctly, they’re slowly returning. You’ll likely never spot one, though—they’re very shy and extremely well camouflaged.”
The pair of us stand in silence for a while, listening to the ratcheting call and feeling the wind and sun caress our faces.
Then I ask, “Where does the name of the croft come from? I thought Igdrasil was a tree, and there aren’t exactly a lot of those about the place.”
“Not now, perhaps, but thousands of years ago, there would have been forests here. You can still find the trunks and branches preserved in the deepest layers of peat.”
She pauses, choosing the next words with care, as if they might lead her into places she’d rather not go.
“I renamed it when my husband and I took over the croft from his parents, although we used the British spelling, because otherwise no one would ever be able to pronounce it. My father used to tell Liv and me stories about Yggdrasil, the great sacred ash tree of Norse mythology. Its branches reach to the heavens, and its roots anchor it deep into the underworld. And in its shelter live all the creatures of the earth, alongside trolls and giants and dragons. It seemed to me the croft could become a place like that—a place that could nurture life and be a haven for all creatures.”
I smile. “Even a corncrake. And the storm petrels.”
Hanna nods. “But when the great last battle of Ragnarok arrives—the end of the world, wrought by the gods and by mankind—it’s said the tree of life will shake, spreading fear in Heaven and on Earth.
And no one knows whether the tree will survive the onslaught.
” She speaks as if she’s quoting the words from a book.
Instinctively, I glance back toward the desolate, scarred moorland beyond the fence line. “Sometimes, these days, it does feel as if the tree is shaking. As if our planet is involved in some great battle.”
I see Hanna notice the direction of my glance.
“Exactly,” she says. “Our world is undergoing a great bombardment, mostly because of our actions. What a crazy place it is when we invest millions in developing treatments to fight cancer, for example, and at the same time multinational corporations spread pesticides across the land, which we know cause those very diseases.”
I flinch at the word “cancer,” and perhaps Hanna notices, because when she goes on, it’s a bit more gently. “There have always been these battles. We never know whether the next might be our last, whether mankind can survive. Nature is resilient, though. So far, at least.”
“Why do the croft lands look so very different from the land over there?” I ask, jabbing a thumb toward the moorland beyond the fence behind us.
Her answer is brusque. “That is what happens if you don’t respect the fragile balance of this place. Especially if you’re greedy and buy up vast tracts of the land, then put too many sheep there.” She’s silent for a moment, then says, “Disrespect the land, and you’ll live to regret it.”
She turns away abruptly, the conversation clearly over. She calls Pip to heel, and we walk back down the hill, collecting a few more samples as we go. “You can take those to the vet’s surgery this afternoon,” she tells me.
As we reach the farmhouse door, I’m surprised by the sight of a gleaming black Range Rover pulling up.
Hanna glowers as a man climbs out, his long legs encased in a pair of pristine green Wellies that appear to have encountered neither mud nor sheep droppings.
He wears a tweed cap and a waxed jacket, and he looks a bit like a model from a country-clothing catalogue, with his chiseled features and neatly trimmed beard, good-looking in a rather pretentious way.
“Good morning, Mrs. Williamson,” he says. “Isn’t it a fine day? I was just passing, so I thought I’d drop by and see that you’re managing okay. I heard from my housekeeper that you’d had an accident. And who is your lovely companion? Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
Despite her icy silence, I take the hand he’s offering and tell him my name. Hanna glares even harder, as if I’ve just committed an act of treachery.
“Donald Kilgour,” he says. “It’s a delight to meet you, Ruby. And how long will we have the pleasure of your company here?”
He fixes me with his gaze, and I smile. “As long as Hanna is prepared to put up with me.”
“Well, it’s good you’re lending a hand about the place. I shall be seeing you around then, Ruby, since we’re neighbors. I’m over at Greystane House. Do call in, if you’re passing.”
I nod and feel a flush creep over my cheeks, which has nothing to do with the blustering of the wind. “Thanks. That’d be great.”
Hanna says sharply, “Don’t hang around there, Ruby. You need to get those samples to the vet while they’re still fresh. There are far too many worms about for my liking.” Perhaps she’s referring to the sheep, but her barb could equally be aimed at him.
It’s his turn to flush then, his face reddening with annoyance at her blatant rudeness. Then she turns on her heel and disappears into the house.
I’d thought she’d said the samples could wait until the afternoon, but she’s clearly changed her mind. “Well,” I say, shrugging at Donald apologetically, “must be getting on.”
He grins, smoothly regaining his composure, and I sense he’d been enjoying Hanna’s annoyance at his visit. She’d seemed overly rattled, when he was just being neighborly. But there’s clearly no love lost between them, I think, as, with a revving of the engine, his car disappears away down the road.