Morven

Morven is a Kestrel, the newest kind in the cellar: an even, smooth, long-oval tuber with cream skin, cream flesh, and blue-purple splashed only around the eyes and the rose end. The kind was bred in Caithness, in the far north of Scotland, and released in 1992, from Cara crossed with a breeding seedling that carries the wild species Solanum vernei. Morven has heard about the wild one in the family and has asked every elder in the cellar what a wild potato is. Nobody has a good answer, and Morven has asked again anyway.

The personal name is from the same far north. Morven is the highest hill in Caithness (Morven, Caithness), and the newest kind in the cellar took the one high place anyone could tell it about from home.

Kestrel is tough against knocks and internal bruising, so Morven is the cellar's runner, rolling messages from the Bins to the Sacks and back. Morven sleeps in the newest bin at the end of the row, because the newest kind gets the last label.

Morven woke early one night in the Long Dark, alone, with a long white sprout already reaching for nothing (the long pale sprout). Fenna, asleep in the next bin but one, was the only one who did not laugh, mostly because Fenna was asleep. Morven took that for wisdom and has been Fenna's apprentice since. The lessons are in waiting, which Morven is very bad at.

Morven talks all day, about everything, to anyone. Listen long enough and there is one subject Morven steps around every time: the sprout, and the night of the first lamp. Since that night Morven has slept face down. Morven saw something; nobody knows what, and Morven has told no one. Bodil, who never stays, stayed once beside Morven, and that is why Morven and the apple from the Shelf are friends.

The bin next to Morven's, at the foot of the stair, is Netta's. Netta has seen the sun and will not talk about it to Morven at all, which makes Morven want to know more than anything.

Moments for a card or strip

• The first lamp. In the first lamp, everyone holds still and Morven leans right out of the bin to look. Next panel: Morven asleep upside down, face in the slats.
• The moon. Gaute tells Morven the first lamp was the moon. Morven, who saw something on that night that nobody else did, says "Oh," very quietly, and asks nothing else, which has never happened before.
• The long pale sprout. In the long pale sprout, Morven tries to hide a sprout longer than Morven behind Morven.
• Carrots in sand. Morven is the potato who rolls into the sand box in the carrots in the sand box, meets the carrots buried to the neck, and asks them forty questions before anyone can come and fetch Morven back.