I turned at the sound of footsteps on gravel. Dana had made it through the press barricade and was walking towards us. She was wearing jeans and a large shapeless sweater, her hair scraped back in a ponytail. I hadn't seen her since the night we all leaped into the ocean together and she looked smaller and thinner than I remembered. When she reached us, she didn't seem to know what to say.
'Thought you were in Dundee. On sick leave,' I said, because she looked as though she might start crying and I wasn't sure I could handle that. There had been too many tears over the last couple of weeks.
She pulled a wooden folding chair forward and opened it. 'Supposed to be,' she agreed. 'Bored to death. Flew back this morning.' She sat down next to me.
'I think you might be in trouble,' said Duncan, who was looking towards the top of the field. We both followed his eye line. Helen, in a white jumpsuit, had stopped bustling about like a mother hen and was staring down at us.
I turned back to Dana, risked a smile, saw its pale reflection on her face.
'How are you feeling?' she asked, her eyes dropping to my stomach.
'Dreadful,' I replied, because that was close enough, but there really aren't words to describe what a woman goes through in the first trimester. Just as soon as I could talk on the phone without vomiting over it, I was going to contact all my past patients and apologize for not being sufficiently sympathetic.
'And is that… good?'
'No, but it's normal,' I said. We fell silent, watching Helen torn between wanting to come down and lay into Dana for coming back to work and needing to stay where she was and get on with the job. All the while I was thinking that the only remotely normal thing about my pregnancy was the little creature at the centre of it. Jenny had scanned me yesterday. Duncan and I had held hands, tears streaming down both our faces, as we watched a shapeless little blob with a very strong heartbeat, totally oblivious to what had been going on around it.
'And I suppose we're hoping for… a girl?' said Dana tentatively. I heard Duncan give a soft laugh and it seemed like a very good sign.
A sudden noise grabbed my attention. On the fence that ran the length of the field were a group of pale-grey birds with forked tails, black heads and red beaks. They were Arctic terns, come back from their long winter in the southern hemisphere. Hoping to nest in our field, as was their usual custom, they were frustrated at the sudden human invasion. Terns are not placid birds. They jumped around on the fence, circled overhead, yelling down at the police officers to be off and find somewhere else to dig. Didn't they know this was breeding ground?
'I think they've found something,' said Dana.
My attention snapped away from the birds. 'Where?'
'That group near Helen. Tall man with sandy hair. Woman with thick-rimmed glasses. Near the reed bed.'
I watched. The small group Dana was talking about was no longer one team among many, it had become the focus of activity up on the field. One by one, other white-clad officers were stepping closer.
'Oh, they've been doing that for the last hour,' said Duncan. 'I think that team's just more excitable than the rest.'
'They're very close to where I found Melissa,' I said, in a voice I wasn't sure would carry. Nobody spoke. Up in the field four men started digging in earnest.
'We should go inside,' said Duncan. Nobody moved.
The digging went on. Activity around the rest of the field had stopped. All eyes were on the four men with spades. Even the terns seemed to have quietened down.
Clouds began to roll in from the voe. The land, so rich in colour just moments earlier, fell into shadow. No one, either in the field or on the back terrace of the house, seemed able to talk. We listened to the regular thud of spades against damp earth and waited.
When I didn't think I could bear it any longer, the digging stopped. The men with spades stepped back and others strode forward. Cameras began clicking, people were talking into radios, equipment was unloaded from the vans parked in our yard and a surge of excitement ran through the press ranks. Helen started to walk down the hill towards us.
The perfectly preserved, peat-stained bodies of four women were eventually found on our land. The first they dug out of the ground that day was Rachel Gibb; the others have since been identified as Heather Paterson, Caitlin Corrigan and Kirsten Hawick. All were names I knew: I'd seen them on my computer screen the night I met Helen. In the days that followed I learned more about them, where they'd lived, who they'd been, how they were believed to have died. And I spent more time than was good for me imagining their final year. Torn from their lives, cut off from everyone they loved, these women had to face the long, painful drudge of pregnancy and the terrifying ordeal of childbirth alone and in fear. They'd had the best medical attention possible, but no one to hold their hand, give them a reassuring hug, tell them it would all be worth it in the end. Prisoners of their own bodies as much as of the men of Tronal, these women had sat in their pens like pregnant cattle, biding their time until their purpose was served and they were needed no more. And if thinking of this makes you want to howl with rage, then join the club, my friend, join the bloody club.
Each woman brought out of the earth that week had had her heart cut out, just as Melissa's had been. Each had three runic symbols carved into the flesh of her back: Othila, meaning Fertility; Dagaz, the rune for Harvest; and Nauthiz: Sacrifice.
The search has been called off now, much to my dismay, because I know there must be two more bodies buried somewhere; seven KT boys were born a year after these women supposedly died. The police team insist, though, that the fields behind our house have been thoroughly searched; even Duncan and Dana are telling me to leave it now. So these women will stay out there. They may lie in the Shetland earth for all time, along with all the other women who have disappeared without trace on these islands over the centuries. Or they may turn up out of the blue one day when someone, too ignorant to know better, dares to disturb the ground.
The terns have found somewhere else to build their nests now. We don't blame them: we're going to do the same.
Afterword
The stories on which Sacrifice is based are documented, but not extensively; largely because for many years Shetlanders felt no need to write them down. The remote location of the land kept its population stable and for a long time word of mouth was considered enough. I have learned that there was even a certain reluctance amongst the islanders to talk about these strange and supernatural events.
But gradually, over the years, people from outside the islands became interested, then intrigued, and books about Shetland lore began to appear in our bookshops. It was my discovery of the chilling legend of the Kunal Trows (in Aylesbury Public Library of all places) that gave rise to the idea for Sacrifice. I wrote this in the English home counties, not venturing north until it was all but complete.
And so my first real glimpse of Shetland was on a clear, crisp morning in late November. The huge expectations I'd built up over several years of writing about the land were not remotely disappointed; I thought it easily the most beautiful place I'd ever seen.
From Sumburgh airport I drove north up the main island, unable to stop smiling as each bend in the road offered a view more stunning than the last; across Yell, the colour of an autumn leaf, and on to Unst, which truly must be the loveliest and loneliest place on earth.
Throughout the day the people I met were warm and friendly, effortlessly helpful and entirely normal (what, I asked myself, had I really expected?), and I wondered that these marvellous islands could be so little understood, so rarely visited. I began to have misgivings: could I really have written such a grim story about such a warm and wonderful land? And yet…