Sheep scattered ahead of Moira like tufts of wool on the wind, their fleeces bright against the darkening moor. She trailed behind them, staff tapping against the stones of the track, boots damp with evening dew. The wind carried the sharp scent of lanolin, mingling with sweet heather and herbs. At the edges of the path, the last blooms of summer clung stubbornly to the season.

 

As Moira noted the bright lances of rosebay willowherb in the long grass, her mother’s voice echoed in her head: “A healer born where ruin lies, from ashen ground her petals rise.” She had been full of those little rhymes, always pressing herbs into Moira’s hands, braiding flowers into her hair. Folks in the village claimed there wasn’t an ailment Moira’s mother couldn’t find a hedgerow cure for. That was, until the sickness that took her.

 

Moira shook off the unwelcome thought and fixed her mind on something brighter: the camera her cousin had shown her years ago in its polished wooden case, its brass fittings gleaming. He’d left for Edinburgh to apprentice with a photographer, and Moira had longed to follow. She dreamed of trading the wool and wild weather of the glen for city streets and faces frozen in silver nitrate. But dreams were luxuries for a shepherd’s daughter, and besides, who would look after her father now?

 

She whistled the dogs to gather the stragglers and pushed open the sheepfold gate, watching the animals file inside. As she leaned against the drystone wall, the weight of her body dislodged a stone, sending it tumbling to the ground. She cursed under her breath and bent to replace it—then froze. Something gleamed in the gap left behind.

 

Moira prised out a rusted tin box, her heart quickening. A buried keepsake? Some long-forgotten fortune? Perhaps money enough to buy her a way out. She shook it gently, and something rattled inside. Hands fumbling with excitement, she prised it open.

 

Her hopes sank. No coins, no heirlooms. Just a bundle of fabric and paper tied with a twist of wool, a crooked wooden frame, and two brown glass bottles. She almost tossed it aside, but curiosity held her. She untied the bundle, the string coarse against her fingers. As she unfolded the first scrap, her breath caught.

 

The paper showed a delicate frond, ghostly white against a deep blue background. Not drawn, not pressed—something else. A memory caught in light. Entranced she turned the pages, finding more leaves and petals, each rendered in that same spectral contrast, alongside neat notes on their names and uses.

 

“The plants hold the memories of this land,” read one scrap. With a jolt Moira thought of her mother’s rhymes - plant lore passed down through generations so as not to be forgotten. Another note bore tidy instructions for making the prints.

​

Cyanotype, they called it. Photography without a camera. Her fingers tightened around the paper. She had thought she needed an expensive camera and a new beginning to capture something real. But here, hidden among the stones, was proof that someone before her had found another way. Her heart pounded as she tucked the tin under her arm and hurried home.

​

 

By lantern light, she let the notes guide her. The bottles contained the chemicals she needed, though she didn’t know if they had spoiled. Carefully, she mixed them and soaked strips of wool fabric in the solution. They dried to a pale blue, just as the instructions described. The next morning, she picked a sprig of cranesbill, pressing it against the fabric in the cracked wooden frame, then lay it out in the morning sun.

​

 

When she came back from the sheepfold that evening and rinsed the cloth in the icy burn, the image bloomed to life—white petals stark against a wash of indigo. She pegged it to the washing line, watching it flutter in the wind like a fragment of summer sky. A slow smile spread across her face.

 

Days turned to weeks, and her fascination only deepened. She no longer dreamt solely of escape, but of the ghostly blue memories of a land she had longed to leave. Her hands moved with the careful precision of a shearer, foraging ferns, grasses and wildflowers like the ones her mother had pressed into her palms. She murmured the old rhymes as she worked, the words no longer weighted with sorrow but with purpose.

​

 

“The plants hold the memories of this land,” the mysterious printmaker had said. Moira had pushed those memories away for a time - memories of her mother, so linked to the glen and its growth - but now, somewhere between sunglight and shadow, she had found a way to bear them forward.