If Scotland leaves the union it will take with it 800 islands or more, including the ones at sea and inland, the ones that hold towns and the ones too impermanent to hold anyone, the Viking and Roman places, the islands chained to the mainland by steel bridges, raised roads, or rocky rubble, the ones below water and the ones that stand still beside never-ending whirlpools, islands made of ash and islands just wide enough to contain the stone castles that hold their shores in place, potential islands and hollow rocks with unscalable sides where the sheep graze on seaweed and the swans come to rest, islands named Inch and others given by Macbeth to the priests, some big, some small, and some that are only occasional islands, waiting for the tide to come in to make them whole and grant them independence.