Last Great Auk,

We were caught by the fog. It seemed to have been conjured up and threw milky cataracts into our eyes. White fulmars watched us from their nests. The air alive. Circling bonxie, cat-gull and coulter-neb in a frenzied bir and scrauch of throaty calls rolled down from rocky balconies, verdant with guano. It nourished vegetation that greened rocks which disappeared from view. I followed step for step the the Gingich’s soft-sealskin footfall, but bird shit smeared our clothing. Imprinted the pungent stain of their oily musk. Birdmen come to harvest their chicks. The deep, resonant percussion of the North Atlantic. Salt water in heavy seas and high winds, breakers moulding the rock and those like us that lived on the rock piles seemed for once muffled—and more dangerous for it.

‘Don’t move, boy,’ he cried and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

He tapped with the noose we waddie-towed over a bird’s head. But his only capture was me. He tugged the lapels of my hand-knitted jacket. The Stac an Amin’s paths were engrained in his memory like wrack-wid as he swung us in a gentle embrace onto a clewch.

The guttural cry was silenced by his club. The fulmar’s body warm and slick in his hands but he hadn’t escaped the spray of its fishy guts. He wiped at his face with the sacks we’d brought, his knotty fingers stained with blood and feathers.

The air was slick with dew. Over the stink of bird droppings and iodine the faint sweetness of crushed thyme was a breather. None of which masked the sprone which stuck to the old man like a sticky burrs, which made me hold a hand over my mouth to stop from adding to bird boak.

‘Mind the layering,’ his voice a notch louder than the wind that grew in strength even as he spoke. He threw me a sack to wrap the bird. ‘Head above. Feather and feet below. Keeps the damp and maggots fae creeping.’

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure he could see me. My fingers trembling with the responsibilty. The rough texture of the sack held residues of salt, peat smoke for preservation, and the faint metallic tang of blood long dried. I placed the bundle carefully back where the bird had nested. The soft thump of meat against stone.

Only the ghostly cries of seabirds echoed in my chest. Our world had shrunk to windswept granite. I tried to keep the hitch of fear out of my throat. ‘Whit dae we dae noo?’

‘We wait.’

He lit a pipe, the tobacco sweet, homely and reassuring.

I felt the old man watching me. My knuckles white from clenching my hands together, knees knocking together.

He tapped his pipe out into the mist. ‘We could be here quite a wee while. Best courie in. Tae keep in the heat.’

His arm reached across and he pulled me in beside his chest. His fingers felt for the soft round flesh. Pressed against the material as if weighing a fulmar chick.  

‘Take aff your trousers and undergarments, boy.’

‘Why?’

I asked because I’d no knowledge of such matters. I wondered if he was worried I’d get them dirty or he wanted to wipe and clean them.

His flesh rose and ripped up inside mine. He grunted, ignoring cries for my mum. But when I went to pull away he pulled me into a sick embrace.

Used me again. Twice more. Before the gulls took up my cry.

Fog cleared in my mind as I pulled on my trousers.

The air sharp and cold. The light like quartz.

‘Och, one mair thing boy,’ he laughed. He wiped his grotty hands on my jumper. Then he kissed me full on the lips. When he grew hard he pushed my head down to his groin. ‘Lick it and put it in yer mouth. Because we had done these things widdershins, yeh can tell no one, or yeh too will be cursed. But yeh tae can pass on the same coin.’

He handed me a thin half-penny.

As the sun climbed, the fog and mist lifted, revealing the jagged outline of Boreray in the distance. Crouched and breathing hard. His sweat carried its sting—sour and hot, mixing with the bird’s oily reek until I felt coated in his spunk.

The older man stood a little apart, staring down. He lit his pipe.  The gulls had quieted, circling higher now, their cries thinner, almost uncertain. For a moment, the island seemed to hold the world apart. Ripped in two land and sea.

His body spat in my mouth as the bird had vomited on his face.

Pulse in my ears again, pounding like surf. It would be easy to let go of the rock and fall, fall, fall. But I imagined my mum, unable to find my body.

‘There’s work to be done, boy.’

He crawled out and climbed higher. Using the noose and the club, he passed the warm bodies of birds back to me, to put in the sacks. Head first, as he’d taught.

I hated that rock.

When the sacks were full, we carried them down. I kept my eyes on the water, calling to me. Every wave brought back the shame, sharper still. The grey horizon fixed and unfocused as if waiting for an answer. The stink of guts and blood and salt.

I almost stumbled into the bird. It was like an inquisitive child. Wings tucked tight, webbed feet slapping damp stone. Peering back at me, unafraid.    

The bird’s cry was like a guttural croak trying to find a start.

 My heart jumped. I heard it again— the sound from its long neck and throat. The drag of voice I recognised, the word that was no word. But this time, clear as the gulls overhead, it came in our mother tongue.

‘Bàs.’

Death.

The old man’s hand shot out, brushing my sleeve. Then, as if struck by that word, he recoiled. His fingers curled back, jerking away from my arm. For a moment, it seemed he would tumble into the water, from the cliff face.

‘Don’t look into its eyes and speak only the English. Cause it can read yer thoughts.’

He brought the club down with a thump against the side of the bird’s head, spit flying from his mouth. His hands a blur, even when the bird was blood and black and white feathers against grey granite.

He handed me the bloodied club as he held a hand out shielding his face from the bird’s gaze. ‘It’s a witch,’ he said.

The old man’s jaw clenched. His boots scraped stones and pebbles tumbling into the void. The bird’s black eye turned, watching them, unblinking.

I stepped closer to get a better look at the dead bird.

The ledge shifted beneath our weight. The strange bird croaked once more — “Bàs” — the word echoing off the cliff faces, carried by the wind, swallowed by the Atlantic roar.

The old man lunged and I held out the club for him to get a grip of. When he got a hand on it, I pushed and let go of the bloody club. His body and the strange birds falling, falling, falling.