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Lyra knows she’s always done everything expected of her. She’d worked hard at school and at the farm, she’d learnt how to fish and hunt and all in all been a model island citizen. She’d gone to Orkney College at 16 to study Agriculture and been top of her class. She even ran the family farm now while her mum ran the local council. She’s the model daughter and yet she doesn’t feel satisfied in the slightest.
Lyra can still remember the day Dacey announced she’d joined the army, that they were going to pay for her to go to university. She was twelve and it seemed impossibly brave of her sister to volunteer to die. They’d never been close before she went to university but Lyra would go and visit her in Aberdeen and write her long rambling letters late at night. When Dacey joined the army proper and rarely came home she’d write longer letters still with messy postscripts from Lyanna. Lyra still has the box of letters Dacey wrote back kept secret and protected under her bed.
Dacey never told anyone who the father of her babe, all she ever said was that they’d decided that they were better apart. Lyra is sure she knows still, she remembers when Dacey mentioned a Robin Flint who took her out to dinner before he went abroad in one of her letters and she’s sure that he’s the father of baby Jon even if she never asks. Jon’s two when Dacey goes to Afghanistan and three when they get the call.
They all travel to Wootton Bassett together; one mother, four sisters, one niece, one nephew and one son. Lyra knows that everyone there was lovely to them but really she can’t remember a single thing about the day and she can’t remember the funeral either. Sometimes she wonders whether if Dacey had known she was going to die would she have still joined the army or even if she would have told them who Jon’s father was but Lyra isn’t sure whether she wants to know the answer.
Jon’s six now and he calls her mama but she tries to make sure he doesn’t forget Dacey. But to him she’s just a story and Lyra’s the person who makes his lunch and tells him bedtime stories so she kisses him goodnight and hopes that one day she won’t feel so guilty when he looks up at her with his innocent eyes and calls her mama.
Aly had always been a younger version of their mother in every way, from personality to being almost identical in looks. It was a family joke in a way that she was going to have five daughters of her own, no husband and rule the roast in every way. Lyra was pretty sure that the family joke was never actually meant to happen.
She was fifteen when she got pregnant and they tried to keep it a secret but Lyra was ten and not stupid. It wasn’t hard to overhear her mother and sister’s serious conversations about what Aly was going to do and whether the boy would step up and take responsibility. She can still remember the way Aly laughed and said there was no boy and she was keeping the babe. They only told Lyra and Jorelle when only a fool would have failed to notice her growing stomach. Stronsay was small and there were maybe five possible fathers for the child but they never found out who it was, she guessed that Aly had scared him into keeping quiet. Jora was born six months after Lyanna and she loved them both with all her heart.
She still hates Aly slightly for moving away, for going to university and taking Jora with her. Glasgow was a long way away and when she starts college and working on the farm properly there’s no way of visiting her. And when Dace is born Lyra wishes with all her heart that Aly would come home and bring her children with her but she stays. She doesn’t blame her for being happy in that alien world, but she can’t help but be resentful.
She’s always been closest to Jorelle because on the island two years is nothing when there are only a handful of people near your age. But while Lyra always loved the land, Jorelle loved the sea and while she helped on the farm her sister would learn to sail and collect shells. She had always assumed that this was the sister that she had no chance of losing, especially when she left school after her Highers to work with one of the few fishermen left on the island.
Jorelle was 18 when Smalljon Umber comes to the island to conduct some sort of research and it only takes a couple of months for them to get engaged. Lyra has always wished that he wasn’t such a nice person so that she could hate him for taking her sister away but she can’t find it in her to do so. At least they visit often on their rackety old boat they sail all over the islands bringing their infectious laughter with them.
Lyanna is ten years younger than her and she’s always babied her, so when she asks whether she can go and live with Jorah and Dany in Edinburgh she can’t believe their mum agrees. Perhaps Jon is running around still but she can’t believe that her mum is letting Lyanna go so easily when Dacey has only just gone to Afghanistan. She feels an irrational anger towards the last of her sisters to abandon her and it’s only when her mum hugs her and tells her that as much as she wishes she could keep all of her daughters with her she learnt a long time ago that when she lets them go willingly they always come back.
When Dacey dies Lyanna comes back to Stronsay for a year but it’s clear that she misses the city and their cousin and his pretty young wife who want her back too. She’s more passionate and outspoken than any of them and Lyra knows her baby sister is going to eventually change the world once she settles on a cause.
Lyanna is sixteen when she brings Rickon Stark to visit, he’s unpolished and headstrong but Lyra’s not sure who is a worse influence on the other. And when Aly comes to visit Jora is swept up with them and together the three of them cause all sorts of trouble on the island. She loses Jon to Dace as they try to form a rival gang but instead Lyra feels as if she’s just spending more time cleaning grazed knees. It’s not too bad though because Jorelle visits at the same time and she gets quality sister time, especially when she announces that her and Smalljon have brought a house on the island in preparation for the babies.
When Smalljon asks if one of his friends can come and stay at the farm for a while Lyra automatically agrees knowing that once her sister all leave again it’s going to feel lonely. Alys Karstark is nothing like she expected especially when she throws herself into farm life wholeheartedly but Lyra knows that’s not why she feels as if Alys is what she’s been waiting for. Perhaps she’s her ticket to feeling something more than her duty.