a familiar friend to every crofting family and to the men who fished the treacherous waters of the Minch. And when she was wee, her father had shown her how the hunter, Orion, would appear over the hills to the south in the winter, searching for the Seven Sisters who had been placed in the sky for safety by the king of the gods.
‘Tell me a story about the stars,’ she said softly.
Alec settled himself more comfortably, drawing her into the crook of his arm. He pointed out one of the constellations to the north. ‘You see that W shape of bright stars? It’s one of my favourite constellations – Cassiopeia’s Chair.’
‘Who was Cassiopeia?’ Flora asked, tracing the line of his cheekbone with her finger. His eyes were as dark as the night sky.
‘She was a very beautiful queen, the mother of Andromeda. But she boasted to the god of the seas, Poseidon, that her daughter was more lovely than his sea nymphs. He flew into a rage and cast her up into the sky on her throne, sentencing her to spin around the North Star for eternity.’
‘Poor thing, she must have to hang upside down half the time.’ Flora smiled.
‘Well, now that you’re acquainted with her, when I’m away at sea we can each look up at her and know that the light from her stars is shining on us both. The distance between us is nothing when you think how far off those stars are. I shall like that thought when I’m on watch up there in the Arctic seas. It’ll help me to know you are never really far away.’ He braided her fingers with his own, binding their hands together.
As they watched, more and more stars emerged until it seemed that they lay under a blanket of black velvet that had captured a million sparkling dewdrops in its folds. And as those stars wheeled above them, describing a vast whirlpool of light across the night sky, they drew even closer until there was no distance at all between the beating of their hearts, and they melted together to become one.
Lexie, 1978
Daisy’s in her bed, tucked up under her shell-pattern blanket, and Davy and I are sitting on the steps in front of Keeper’s Cottage finishing off the bottle of wine we’ve shared over supper. I lean my head on his shoulder and watch the stars materialise as the autumn night draws its own blanket of darkness over the loch.
There’s a comfortable sense of companionship between us, as if we’ve always known one another. Which, in a way, we have. It’s a new sensation for me, this feeling of contentment, and I realise that I have never felt at home like this before.
‘Tell me the names of the stars,’ I say.
He points out the Plough. ‘Everyone knows that, and it’s a good one when you’re out at sea. It always points to the Pole Star, one of the few fixed points in the night sky. Once you know where true north is, you can navigate more easily.’
‘What’s that one?’ I ask, tracing a zigzagging line in the sky above us.
‘The one shaped like a W? That’s Cassiopeia’s Chair. It’s usually easy to spot with those five bright stars. And that one over there is Sirius, the dog star. It’s the brightest one in the sky. If you spot anything brighter, it’s probably a planet.’
He leans forward to look towards the south. ‘At this time of year, you can just see my favourite constellation on clear nights. Aquila, the eagle. It’s harder to make out, but that brighter star just on the edge of the Milky Way is Altair and that’s the eagle’s head. Its wings spread out in a V shape from Altair, see?’ His hand describes the sweep of the eagle’s wings, sketching the shape in the darkness. ‘One night, when it’s flat calm like this, I’ll take you out on the boat. Out on the water, away from the lights of the cottages, you can see the stars even more clearly.’
I imagine being out there, picturing the deep, black water beneath the boat that swallows the light of the moon and the stars. The thought makes me shiver a little.
‘Come on,’ says Davy, ‘you’re getting chilled. Time to go in.’
I shake my head, resisting, not wanting to break the spell of our closeness by moving.
He stands anyway. ‘Well, at least let me bring out a rug.’