The Lighthouse Witches

Three timelines interweave across centuries on Lòn Haven, a remote Scottish island scarred by 17th-century witch trials. In 1998, Olivia "Liv" Stay, a single mother and artist, arrives with her three daughters, Sapphire (Saffy), 15; Luna, 9; and Clover, 7, at a small stone cottage called the bothy. She has been commissioned by Patrick Roberts, a man away at sea, to paint a mural inside the Longing, a decommissioned lighthouse nearby. His housekeeper, Isla Kissick, greets them and provides a cryptic sketch of the mural design featuring ancient symbols.

Saffy, furious at being uprooted from home and separated from her boyfriend, Jack, clashes with Liv. Their argument ends when Liv slaps her, an act she immediately regrets. Saffy flees to the forest, where she finds an abandoned hut and begins reading a grimoire bearing the name Patrick Roberts. The grimoire describes Patrick's childhood on Lòn Haven in the 1660s and his friendship with Amy Hyndman, whose mother, Finwell, was a renowned midwife. Amy possessed inherited healing gifts, using rune-inscribed stones from Iceland to perform magic.

In 2021, Luna Stay is 32, pregnant, and living in Coventry with her partner, Ethan Singh. She has spent decades searching for her missing sisters, maintaining Facebook pages in their names. A police constable calls to say Clover has been found in a hospital in Inverness. Luna rushes north expecting a 29-year-old but finds a child of about seven, Clover's age when she vanished. The girl recognizes Clover's toy giraffe by name and bears a wound on her hip: a burn with the digits "2021" carved into the skin.

Back in 1998, Liv settles into island life and grows close to Finn McAllen, a plasterer who once owned the Longing and sold it to pay for cancer treatment for his daughter, Cassie McAllen. Liv hides a devastating secret: She fled to Scotland after learning she may have cervical cancer, the disease that killed her mother, aunt, and grandmother.

Isla reveals the island's dark history. Centuries ago, 12 women accused of witchcraft were imprisoned beneath the broch, a fortified stone tower on which the Longing was built, and burned at the stake. Before dying, Finwell cursed the island. Isla explains that creatures called wildlings, said to be faeries in human children's form, began appearing afterward. The community believes these creatures bear numbered burns on their skin and must be killed to protect families. Isla confesses her own mother killed her baby brother after he reappeared with such a mark. Liv is horrified and recognizes the belief as dangerous superstition responsible for the murder of children. When a mysterious pale-haired boy appears at the bothy one night, shivering and unable to speak English, the police dismiss Liv's report.

The grimoire reveals the history behind the curse. After a church elder assaulted Patrick's mother, Amy cursed the man with a fatal illness, triggering witch accusations against Patrick's mother Agnes, Finwell, Amy's sister Jenny, and nine others. All 12 confessed under torture and were burned. Amy screamed that the islanders would one day burn their own children.

Saffy begins a secret relationship with Brodie, a 17-year-old already dating Isla's daughter, Rowan. Brodie pressures Saffy into unwanted sexual encounters and persuades her to give him nude Polaroid photographs. When Saffy learns that Brodie never left Rowan and has been distributing copies of the photographs, she is devastated. Rowan lures Saffy into Witches Hide, the cave beneath the Longing, and stabs her in the shoulder. Saffy plunges into the sea at the cave's far end and emerges not in 1998 but in 2020.

Patrick Roberts arrives at the bothy, not the older man Liv expected but a young man in his late twenties who becomes emotional upon seeing Liv, calling her "Amy." Under UV light in the lantern room, Liv discovers the word "AMY" written obsessively across the walls alongside columns of numbers.

Liv's world unravels. Saffy has been missing for days without Liv noticing. Then Clover vanishes. A child appears at the bothy, identical to Luna but bearing a numbered burn. Isla declares the child a wildling and presses Liv to kill it. Surrounded by vigilantes at the burning trees, Liv raises a knife but cannot do it. She cuts the girl free and tells her to run.

Fleeing the mob, Liv is captured by Patrick inside the Longing. He explains he misinterpreted a word in an old Icelandic spell: What he read as "living" actually means "human." He removes three of Liv's ribs to complete the spell and sets the lighthouse ablaze. Liv falls through the floor into Witches Hide and, following the ghostly pale-haired boy, plunges into the sea. She surfaces in 2021 and is found by Finn, who has returned to visit Cassie.

In 2021, Luna takes the child she believes is Clover back to Lòn Haven, where the Longing has been destroyed. Glass is hidden in Clover's food at a hotel. Brodie, now older, warns Luna to leave within 24 hours. Luna finds refuge with Cassie, who reveals Isla is in prison for murdering a child.

Luna's memories return. She recalls entering Witches Hide as a child to search for Saffy. The cave sent her back one day in time; she knows this because a beached shark that had died was alive again when she emerged. She encountered her own double, the child her mother nearly killed. The other Luna told her they needed to hold hands to merge into one person. Luna clasped her double's hand and became whole.

Luna understands the truth. The wildlings were never supernatural. They were children who wandered into Witches Hide and were displaced in time, branded with the year of arrival. The islanders, trapped in centuries of mythology, murdered their own children. Clover fell into the cave while searching for Saffy, traveled to 2021, and emerged still seven years old.

The grimoire's final entries complete Patrick's story. He returned to Lòn Haven, married Amy, and learned the cave enables time travel. When the community discovered marks on Amy's skin and seized her, Patrick escaped through the cave to 1994. He used his father's buried treasure to buy land and the Longing, then returned through the cave to 1667 to save Amy from execution. Together they sealed the cave entrance to protect future children. Patrick wrote the grimoire to record the truth: The "wildlings" were time-displaced children.

Saffy, found on Lòn Haven in 2020 and placed with a foster family, discovers Luna's Facebook page and travels to find her. At the Cromarty ferry port, Luna spots a teenage girl and shouts Saffy's name. The girl turns and runs toward her.

Liv, hospitalized with cancer that has spread, writes her daughters a letter explaining everything. She writes that forgiveness is "a kind of time travel" (335). When Luna arrives at Cassie's home with Clover, Saffy, and her newborn son Charlie, she finds her mother bald from chemotherapy but unmistakable. The family reunites. Before Liv dies three months later, she and Finn hold a small ceremony, and Finn adopts Clover and Saffy.

In an epilogue set several years later, Luna lives near Stratford-upon-Avon with Ethan and Charlie. Clover is 11; Saffy is 19, studying history at Glasgow University and podcasting about Scotland's executed witches. Luna and Saffy have hired a contractor to destroy Witches Hide permanently. "The past belongs in the past" (342).