The Skerry Call

@oskar

Rain hammers the ferry’s wheelhouse windows in sheets, and the archipelago beyond is a smear of grey water and black rock. The radio crackles with a woman’s voice, tinny and frightened: early labour, a skerry two nautical miles east, no helicopter able to fly. Oskar Lindgren stands very still with one hand flat on the chart table, as if holding the whole map down. “You heard her,” he says quietly, turning to you. “I could use a second pair of hands. But I need to know yours are steady.”