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accomplish some of their ill-wishing.
    â€˜Our fathers believed it, right enough,’ maintained Anna Vic.
    â€˜Aye, an’ our grandfathers an’ before them their grandfathers too, I daresay,’ conceded Peggy. ‘But to my mind the only way the otters could injure the whelkin’ would be by eatin’ them all before we got to them.’ She chuckled. ‘There’s no sense in them old tales, at all,’ she assured Anna Vic.
    Fiona and Kirsty shipped their oars as the dinghy slid on to the tangle and the women got out and dispersed along the shore eager to begin gathering.
    Fiona chose her spot and set to work. At first it was fun turning over the boulders; watching the sparks fly as they crashed against one another; smelling the sharp whiffs of brimstone; seeing the instant panic of the writhing catfish; the eruption of the newly exposed colonies of seething sandlice; the sleekly smug anemones; the spotted gunnels and the tiny green crabs scuttling for new sanctuaries, but as the limpet-encrusted rocks grated the skin from her fingers it became harsh, exacting work and she began to realize why her mother’s hands were rough and insensitive as blocks of dry peat. For the first hour the whelks were scarce but as she shuffled with icy feet in pursuit of the ebbing tide they became more abundant so that instead of rattling thinly on the bottom of her pail when she threw them in she had the comfort of hearing them plop on to what had become a satisfying half pailful. But she was disappointed with her speed of picking. At this rate it was going to take the whole period of low tides to gather the five pailfuls needed to fill a hundredweight sack. Crouched down among the rocks she was effectively isolated from the other women so that she could not compare her progress with theirs and even when she straightened up to flap her arms across her chest in an effort to generate some warmth into her chilled body she could see no sign of them. No doubt they were too absorbed in their whelk gathering to be conscious of the cold, she thought, and aiming to become similarly immune she hunched down, hearing nothing above the crashing of the rocks and the booming of the swell; seeing nothing but the mosaic of shingle and smashed shell uncovered by the boulders. The frosty wind burned her cheeks and glazed her eyes so that she had to blink constantly so as to distinguish the blue-black whelk shells she sought from the grey shells of dog-whelks which they so closely resembled and which, she had been told, being poisonous must be avoided at all costs. She picked on doggedly, probing beneath boulders that were too big for her to move and trying not to think of the conger eels that might be lurking beneath them ready to fasten their strong teeth into her fingers should they stray too near; trying to ignore the gripping cold; her bruised and bleeding fingers; her nails already worn down to the tender quick by the coarse shell sand among which she had to scramble for the whelks; the sea water stinging her grazes so that she was almost grateful for the desensitizing effect of the bleak wind.
    She began to feel hungry but she made herself continue picking until she had a pailful of whelks before she paused to eat the damp crumbs of oatcake which were all that remained of the crisp wedge of fresh bannock she had stuffed into her pocket that morning, and as she ate she saw with concern that the tide was already beginning to creep back, licking at the shore with foaming lips and alerting the anemones to unfold their greedy fronds. Cramming the last few crumbs of oatcake into her mouth she began with renewed determination to heave over bigger and bigger boulders, scrabbling urgently for the whelks beneath as she retreated from the flowing tide and she realized with elation that her eyes, having become accustomed to the selectivity of her task, were quicker at spotting the clusters of whelks among the rocks so that her pail