Island of Wings Read Free

not worth mentioning. The thought was comforting and he felt encouraged by his own reasoning. There was nothing I could do to stop it.
    But he had felt strange that morning last April at Lamlash quay, hiding from his own kin. As the Caledonia was towed out of harbour he had said a prayer in the old language. He had prayed for the land of his ancestors, for his family, for Will who had been young and fair when he died with all his life ahead of him, and at last he had prayed for his own redemption, but by then the words stalled in his swollen throat.
    It was shortly after that day that he decided to marry Miss Elizabeth Crawford. He was pleased with his choice of wife. She had grown up in a town and understood the mechanisms of society, and he was sure she would understand his mission. She had enough schooling for people to believe she was intelligent, this he was sure of, and she had a strong and healthy figure – he liked the way her dresses fitted her well. Her older sister Annie was probably prettier, he thought, but the giggle which often rippled over Annie’s face was unsettling, and Lizzie had seemed to be the more serious of the two. There was something quite remarkable about her eyes, although he could not yet put it into words. She was not above his status, nor would she pull him down. Once her folks would have been above his; as tradesmen they had made some money while he had grown up a miller’s boy. But he had his wits and his determination, and these faculties had brought him to education and into the society of a different class of men. His family was gone, he had no past, and while her kin remained tradespeople he had risen as a respected minister of the Church of Scotland.
    He had explained his mission and the nature of his new parish to her and to her father, a decent man – not an intellectual of course, but hard-working and moral. Mr Crawford, who was a builder in Paisley, was proud and delighted that his daughter would be marrying such a prominent man, he had said, and although he could not offer much in terms of a dowry, he was sure that his daughter would be a good wife in whatever climate and on any barren island – Mr Crawford had winked at this point – and she seemed to like the minister well enough so who was he to oppose the match?
    After Will’s accident, Neil MacKenzie, who was still a young man, knew he needed to engage in something that was bigger than himself. The years at university had changed him; he was different, and better, and he had found a mission at last. He was a confident student, fired on by his many, often private, aspirations and after his ordination he had told the Presbytery that he would like to preach the Gospels in the most godforsaken place they could offer – he had suggested Newfoundland, where he was sure he could do a world of good. In the end, the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge had asked him to go to St Kilda – the furthest inhabited islands in Britannia.
    His mentor, the Rev. Dr John MacDonald, who had visited the islands on previous occasions, had been so horrified by the low level of religiosity amongst the St Kildans that he had travelled, preaching, all around the Highlands and Islands in order to raise money for building the new church and manse. The starving Highlanders, generous as ever to their own kin, had been more than willing to offer what support they could for the spiritual salvation of their cousins on St Kilda.
    The islands had become a near obsession to Neil MacKenzie over the last year. St Kilda ! – he had repeated the name like a charm to himself over and over again. This is where I will be tested, he thought. His mind often travelled ahead of him to the islands and endowed them with the sublime grace of a Utopia. He had been chosen to relieve the islanders of their backward ways and show them the rightful path as drawn out by God and paved by the Church of Scotland. On other