1

DREAMING

In every dream, I drown.

I’m in the water, struggling, thrashing. Straining to reach the surface, fractured mirror shards splintering over and over into white lines that bisect the blue water and separate me from the world I know.

I push against the current with arms and legs alike. Shoving with all my might and sinking faster than ever. Inexorably down.

And then I realize I’m not alone. Someone has hold of me by the waist. An arm folded around me like a steel bar, towing me down. I scream then, terrified, and the last of my precious air vanishes upward in a stream of dancing silver bubbles.

I can’t see their face, but they are relentless. Tireless. Not like me. My legs are so heavy I can hardly kick. Raising my arm to push down at the water once more feels almost impossible. I’m still trying, even though my limbs are leaden.

The surface is nothing but the faintest hint of blue, far above me. I’m too tired now to fight any more. The light is fading, fading, and deepest midnight blue presses in, contracting my lungs. The abyss is limitless but I can feel it—holding me tight in its grasp.

It always ends the same way. I let it happen; I let it take me. In every dream I drown. I sink, still and silent, into the endless blue beneath.

And when I wake, the feeling is still there. The tightness in my chest, the clawing in my throat. I’m still drowning, just a little, even as I’m pulling in air.

I shoot upright with a gasp so loud that it’s almost a cry.

“Eppie?” Theo sounds very small in the darkness. “Are you alright?”

His voice brings me back to myself, and my hands close on the scratchy wool of my blanket. I’m here. I’m alive.

“I’m alright,” I croak in answer, as raspy as though I really had been drowning.

Dimly, I can see the shine of his eyes as he raises his head to look at me. “Was it another nightmare?”

I think about lying to spare his feelings, but what would be the point? My dramatic awakening has made it obvious exactly what is happening. “Yes,” I say. “A nightmare. Sorry if I woke you.”

There is a soft rustle as he sits up and puts his bare feet down on the cold stone. “Do you need me to hold your hand for a bit?”

His face is so earnest that I feel my heart twist inside me. When he was small and had bad dreams, I’d sit on the edge of his bed, hold his hand, and stroke his hair until he fell back asleep with a smile on his face. That he’s offering the same now touches me to my core.

“No, I’m alright, Theo,” I answer. “But you’d better get back under the covers before you freeze to death.”

He obeys, and then we are quiet for a moment. I’m still trying to slow my racing heart. Breathe deep. It was just a dream.

“I’ll always look after you, Eppie,” Theo says, his words laced with sleepiness now. Another echo, from when we first moved to Hwenfirth: a promise I made to him half a hundred times.

“I know you will.”

I listen as his breathing deepens, slow and steady as it takes on the cadence of sleep once more. I stare at the rafters above me. So dark and distant in the gloom. I wish rest would come as easily to me.

It seems like years that I lie there, awake when I don’t want to be. Waiting for dawn and counting the three beams in the pointed ceiling of our room. One, two, three. One, two, three. I try to time my breaths to Theo’s, hoping that it will lull me.

But nothing changes, and sleep doesn’t come. The threat of that dream dances at the edges of my mind, and I shudder. Perhaps it’s better to stay awake after all.

The sound of Mama’s tuneless singing begins our day, as it always does, followed by Papa’s objections.

“Matilda, darling, please. Beneventi doesn’t deserve to have his arias butchered!”

But I can tell without seeing him that he’ll be smiling as widely as always.

Mama ignores him and sings even louder, mangling the high notes. She’s a much better flautist than she is a singer.

I take my time getting dressed, luxuriating in the little sounds of their happiness. Today is one of Papa’s good days, and I want to savor it. My hair—always too thin and too short to be either any real bother or any real beauty—soon lies in its stubby plait against my neck. My skirts hang loose against my legs, which are safely ensconced in the woollen leggings that everyone wears here, where the sea breeze bites even as summer advances.

Theo is still facing the wall, his soft breaths not quite snores. I consider waking him, but I already did that once this morning. He needs his rest. Knitted socks soundless against the stone floor, I pad into the kitchen, where my parents are still making enough of a racket it’s a miracle Theo is able to sleep through it.

Mama breaks off mid-crescendo to greet me. “Good morning, Eppie!”

Papa’s softer voice echoes her a heartbeat behind. “Eppie.”

I don’t think the word Euphemia has crossed anyone’s lips since the day the great-aunt who bestowed her clunky name on me passed from this world.

“Good morning, Papa.” Over his head, my eyes meet Mama’s. A silent question passes between us. Is everything alright?

With a little dip of her chin, she confirms what I already knew from the banter I heard through the door. Everything’s fine.

For once.

“Is Theo up yet?” she asks aloud.

Already focused on my boots by the door, I give her a quick smile in passing. “Of course not.”

“Wake him when you get back in.” She shoots me a little smile and turns back to the great stone hearth, where she is grilling a few small slices of bread into toast.

Papa glances up from the sheet music he is turning over in his hands. “Eppie, where are you going?”

“Only to the pump, Papa. Same as always.”

His eyes, pale blue as my own and three times as watery, seem to quiver behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. “Everyone’s always leaving,” he mutters, and Mama looks up sharply from her cooking.

“Now, Barnabas, darling,” she says, deliberately soft, “you know that’s not true.”

He harrumphs, turns over another leaf.

“Really, I’ll only be a minute, Papa.”

“It isn’t fair,” he mutters, sulky as two-year-old Theo once was. “You’re always rushing off.”

“Barnabas,” Mama cajoles him, and he turns to face her. “How would you like to hear me sing another of Beneventi’s arias? Maybe… hmm, I don’t know, ‘All’ombra della Luna’?”

Papa’s face is transformed again as he now fights not to laugh. “Oh, Matilda, please spare us. You play ‘All’ombra’ like an angel—but only when the flute is between you and the audience!”

And there he is, back again. Good-day Papa, not the peevish bad-day version of him, weak as a child and unable to stir out of bed. Unable to do anything but snarl and snap at us as we try our best to help him.

Relief washes through the room as Mama and I relax once more. Papa looks down at his music again, and Mama makes a little gesture with her head to beckon me over.

When she speaks, her voice is low. “I’ll be gone two days, Eppie. A concert at Monticelli’s, and then a woodwind ensemble at a private party the next night.”

“I know.” We already went over this last night. I know that on the shelf in the pantry a salmon wrapped in brown paper waits for tonight’s dinner; I know I’m not to let Theo use up the whole month’s flour supply in one of his baking experiments.

I know, as usual, that I can’t leave Papa’s side till she is back. That his every moment must be carefully managed and manicured into a shape that is palatable to him.

“Will you be alright?” The question is light enough, but there’s an edge of something in her eyes. “Do you think you can keep Theo from burning down the kitchen while I’m gone?”

Papa is still turning over the pages of the music book in front of him, but our eyes flick to him anyway. We both know full well it’s not Theo she’s really worried about.

But the memory of my brother elbow-deep in one of his sporadic attempts to cook brings a smile unbidden. Precious sugar scattered on the floor, batter matting his hair into clumps. Theo is a sweet, sensible boy, but unleash him in a kitchen and somehow he becomes chaos incarnate. I stifle another grin and shake my head. “I’ll do my best, Mama.”

“That’s all I can ask.” Her face crinkles into its habitual folds as she smiles at me. The deep indentation between her eyebrows is still present, scarred into her face by years of worry, but this morning the laughter lines show more clearly.

I think that’s all I can ask, really.

I finish lacing up my boots and slip out the door before Papa gets distracted again. Once the door is shut behind me—a layer of sturdy oak between Papa and anything that could upset him—the tension finally ebbs away. The sky is brightening overhead. Scooping up the bucket from where it waits, faithful as an old hound, I descend the three stone steps, each one big enough that I used to have to lift Theo up them. Across the cobbles of our tiny courtyard to the pump against the stone wall. I put the bucket down beneath it, rest my hand on the pump, but I don’t move it. Not yet. My eyes are directed outward, over the wall. Over the scrubby grass sloping down to the shingle, over the stones that look gray, until you peer close enough to see that they are actually every color that stone can be, and down to the ocean beyond.

The best thing about living here in Hwenfirth is this: the moment every morning that I come out of this door and walk down the three stone steps to look out at the sea for the first time.

Our rooms in Garthisle always showed the same view out both small windows: a gray city carved of gray stone, whitewashed lintels and white-painted doors. Here, the sea and the sky are like a painting, like a whole gallery. Every day, the colors are brand new—pale amber and gold, brilliant cerulean, stormy bottle-green, ominous gray or blazing red.

Today the sky is indigo, deep and mysterious. Almost the same color as Theo’s eyes, so much more decided than my own pale blue. The ocean matches it exactly, and as I watch the waves peacefully lapping the shore, only a faint shadow of my nightmare and the choking water remains.

From the small kitchen window, standing ajar to let in the morning breeze, Mama’s voice picks up the strands of music she let fall.

“All’ombra della luna ti aspetto,” and then for the second line, Papa joins her. “Amore mio, ti aspetto.”

Though Mama sings often, since his collapse Papa does not. How long has it been since I last heard them sing together? Mama’s voice is like mine. Rough, trembling. Weak. Papa has a clear tenor—nothing special, he says, but serviceable enough to provide pitch to students in the Conservatory.

“Nel buio della notte, ti aspetto.”

For Beneventi, the music was the point. The rise and fall of the notes, not the lyrics. But because of the flute solo between the third and fourth stanzas, this one is a favorite of Mama’s, and I know the words well. A lover waiting in the darkness, alone beneath the moon. Ill-suited to the deep blue morning before me, but beautiful anyway.

The notes slide through the window, winding their way across the courtyard toward me before their final flight up into the open sky above.

“Mentre le stelle si spengono, mentre il cielo trema—” Here Papa’s voice quavers and gives out, and Mama releases the final notes alone. “Aspetterò.”

The stars burn out, the sky trembles, but still the lover waits. The song seems to linger for a moment more, waiting in turn. The sky yawns above me and the sea stretches into infinity, until it too finally melts away into the sky, just like Beneventi’s lover.

When we lived in Garthisle, our rooms were always full of music. We were dripping in it. Spent every day submerged up to our necks. At the time, I hated it. Hated that I couldn’t pull the notes from my miniature violin like Papa could, that Mama’s flute would only squeak and whine for me, instead of releasing the nightingale songs it did for her. Hated that I couldn’t even sing. Even the simplest of instruments, my own voice, betrayed me like all the rest.

Now I miss the music. The silence that consumes us for days at a time is louder and more grating than the noise of my unsuccessful efforts ever was.

“I’m getting hungry, Matilda. What’s keeping the children?” The sound of Papa’s plaintive voice breaks the spell, and I bend to my work.

A minute or two of working the pump dredges up enough water to fill the bucket. I lift it with both hands and stagger back to the cottage, water sloshing cold and clear over my fingers with every step.

“Wake your brother up, dear.” Mama’s voice is brisk now. Determined not to let Papa dwell on anything that might tug him back down. “Breakfast is ready.”

There is a scuffling noise from inside our room, and I offer Mama a half-smile. “I think he’s already up.”

Theo comes tumbling out of the door, clutching the undersized violin that was once mine, his eyes alight. “I heard singing!”

I glance at Mama, who gives me a little nod. “Do you want to play for us?”

Theo swells with delight. It’s been weeks since the violin last came out of the alcove beneath his bed, and a dusty cobweb is hanging from the scroll. “I composed a new song,” he says, his eyes on Papa.

And Papa responds—his eyes flash up, bright behind the thick walls of glass. “You composed something, my boy?”

“Yes!” Theo squeaks, thrilled to be noticed. “Just like you, Father.”

Papa nods approval, and Theo trembles with excitement as he raises the instrument to his chin. The violin squawks once and we all freeze, eyes on Papa, but he is still smiling, still expectant, and Theo resumes. The tune is summery: light and dancing, like bubbles breathed out underwater. It flirts and plays, climbing higher and dipping lower, darting like a minnow, and it has all of us grinning like children.

The sound of feet tapping emanates from beneath Mama’s skirt, and she begins to move. Just a little skip to the left, then a hop forward with hands outstretched, and she catches hold of me and we begin to dance.

Theo crows with delight and plays faster. There’s a small smile on Papa’s lips, one hand tapping along on the table, the other mimicking Theo’s fingers on the neck as they draw forth the different notes. Theo’s song circles back on itself and begins for a second time. Mama spins me beneath her arm and Papa applauds us. Then Mama begins to sing again, bouncing and jaunty, matching Theo’s tune perfectly.

“Eppie is a pale-eyed girl, fresh-faced from her sleep.” She catches my eye as I duck under her arm, both of us giggling. “Eppie dances with skirts a-swirl, beneath clouds white as sheep.”

Mama’s poems don’t sell for much, not anywhere near the income we get from her participation in the orchestra in Garthisle, but I’ve always loved them. I spin away from her and drag Theo into the dance. He misses a few notes, but he’s laughing more than enough to make up for it.

“See her twist and see her whirl—oh, Eppie, hop! Eppie, leap!” Mama claps her hands, and I obey, skipping from one end of the kitchen to the other, laughter catching at my breath. “Eppie dance for your brother dear, Eppie, the pale-eyed girl.”

And then it loops back around for a third and a fourth time, all of us laughing and breathless, especially Mama, as we spin around the dining table, bumping into everything, tripping over Papa’s feet as he laughs and stamps in time.

But as we are launching into our fifth rendition, something changes—Papa’s face alters, and the light goes out of his eyes. He turns away, just slightly, and ceases clapping, and at once the lyrics skitter to a halt as Mama rushes to his side.

“Barnabas? Barnabas, darling, what is it?”

“Nothing,” he whispers, all the gaiety and the strength suddenly vanished. “Nothing at all. Only…”

“Go on, dear,” Mama encourages him.

The music stutters to a stop, Theo’s bow screeching over the strings as he finally catches up.

“The noise.” Papa’s voice is agonized. “My nerves.”

“Of course, of course, Barnabas.” Mama’s eyes flick to us, and at once the moment is over. Theo’s violin drops from his shoulder; the bow hides guiltily behind his back. “We’ve had enough music for today.”

Theo droops, and both of us gather our uneaten breakfasts and file silently from the kitchen.

“It’s alright,” I say consolingly as we sit on the steps, the stone cold and hard beneath my haunches. The ocean is gray-blue now, the same deep hue as the sky. “We’ll find time for you to play again later. Maybe down on the beach this afternoon?”

He brightens at that. “Will you meet me there after school?”

“Of course I will.” I try to make my voice sound brighter too. It rings a little false, but hopefully Theo’s keen ear is only applicable to musical notes, and not to emotion.

My own schooling ended when I was sixteen. Eight years ago now. If I had showed any musical talent, there might have been correspondence courses with someone who specialized in my favored instrument, or maybe a few years living in the city while I attended Garthisle Conservatory, where Papa once taught. Maybe even a job in an orchestra, like Mama. But I am about as musical as a teaspoon, and in a family like mine, that is where education ends. And in Hwenfirth, there are not many other options. The local girls either follow their parents into the family business, or marry and enter their husband’s trade. Neither option works for me, since my family’s trade is music, and marriage… well, it isn’t in the cards for someone like me.

Theo sighs heavily. “Sometimes I wish…”

The thought remains unfinished, but I understand exactly what he means. “Me too. But it isn’t his fault. He tries his best.”

He bows his head, lowers his eyes. “I know.”

“Come on.” I give his shoulder a little shake. Try to inject some much-needed energy into us both. “You’ll be late for school.”

With an effort, he smiles and gets to his feet. “Will you put these away for me?”

He hands me the battered old violin and its bow. The very same ones that were once Papa’s, back when he was little Barney Wester, child prodigy about to perform for the king. Back when he was Professor Barnabas Wester, the youngest emeritus scholar ever appointed at Garthisle Conservatory. Before the breakdown, before his nerves overwhelmed him and banished us from the city, trapping us here in Hwenfirth, with its clean sea air and rich briny saltwater, famously so good for the sick.

If I loved him any less, I might resent him for it.

“Of course,” I tell Theo, and I touch him gently on the cheek. “I’ll bring them this afternoon. Meet you there.”

2

DARKLING

The basket swings empty in my hand as I climb the hill toward the village. Our cottage lies behind me, the sea rippling beyond, and on the other side of the narrow peninsula is Hwenfirth.

“Go outside for a while, Eppie,” Mama said, prying the scrubbing brush from my hand and replacing it with a few copper coins. “Get some fresh air and pick out some dinner for tomorrow.”

Take a break while you still can, she was saying, and I could see in her face that she is desperately, guiltily looking forward to stepping onto that stagecoach this evening. Mama still has what the rest of us do not: brief reprieves from the monotony that is Hwenfirth, passage back into the city where there are people and work and opportunities. My only chance is the stolen moments like these. A minute to watch the sky while I pump the water, a second to breathe while I’m walking over the hill.

I’ll need to be back to meet Theo before the church bell tolls three and then have both of us back in the house for four when Mama leaves. Well, perhaps I should encourage Theo to stay out on the beach for a while. It’ll give him a chance to play, and perhaps it will make Papa rest a little easier. He’ll be sensitive after Mama leaves, and the last thing I want to do is predetermine tomorrow as a bad day. If I can get him asleep before Theo comes back, we’ll all be happier.

The walk is slipping by faster than I want it to, and I try to center myself. To focus. I breathe in, tasting the ever-present salty tang in the air. The grass on either side of the road rustles, and the fields roll away beyond them. No hedges, no fences, not here. The occasional hump of what might have been a stone wall, once, but has been so piled over with dirt and vegetation that it’s now just another part of the field. Cattle and sheep roam freely, one farmer’s stock distinguished from another by bells and numbered tags instead of location.

I crest the hill and look down at the huddle of houses on the other side of the peninsula, at the lesser group on the far side of the estuary, the harbor thronged as always with little fishing boats. This is Hwenfirth. A little hamlet split down the middle by the River Hwen, flowing sluggish beneath the old stone bridge, slow and sleepy as the village itself.

The journey downhill is faster, of course, and far sooner than I’d like I’m past Theo’s school and onto Hwenfirth’s main—only, if I’m being honest—street.

Pick out some dinner, Mama said. We have salmon for this evening but tomorrow is a blank slate. I remember in Garthisle, when we still had Papa’s salary as well as Mama’s, that sometimes I’d come home from school to find him and Mama waiting with cakes, or pastries filled with cream, or potatoes sliced so thinly that they almost crunched in the mouth. Things they’d bought from the food stalls at the market, just for us to sample. Things that weren’t practical, or economical, or filling. Just… fun. I don’t think Theo can remember any of those occasions. He was still in swaddling clothes when we left Garthisle.

What I really want is to do something like that for him. To present him with something he’s never eaten before, to show him something out of the ordinary. But all I have in my pocket is a few pennies. Enough for another fish, which are plentiful here. Maybe a handful of greens to go with it. Not enough for an apple pie or a honeycake—words so alien to me now that they might as well be another language altogether.

I look at the fishmongers, wares arranged in their window with scales shining. A sigh slips out between my lips, and I glance over the road. The red shopfront stands out against the gray of the stone, the yellow lettering spelling out Craig’s Grocery bright and bold. And inside, a flash of a gray-green dress, topped with a cloud of fluffy red hair, the exact color of a midsummer sunset over the waves. Something twists in my chest, and before I fully know what I’m doing, I’m moving toward the door. Toward her.

Usually, I try not to think of Lucy Craig. I focus on my family, on the task at hand. On anything else. And it works, most of the time. We were only friends for a few weeks, after all. A single halcyon summer, the first year we came to Hwenfirth.

Lucy skipped up to me my very first day in the tiny village school. From the bustling classrooms of Garthisle to this drafty building containing a scant twenty-four children—less girls than boys, of course, especially those closer to my age. They had all grown up together, knew each other inside and out, and the result was that they all huddled at one end of the small schoolyard while I sat miserably at the other. Theo was still too young to attend, and I had no one.

Until one undersized girl smattered with brilliant orange freckles came darting over the no-man’s land, her halo of feathery ginger hair seeming to float behind her. I remember being fascinated by that hair. The way each individual corkscrew curl spiralled round on itself, combining with a thousand others to create a rustling, living cloud tumbling down her back.

I was still staring at her—there had been no one with hair like that in Garthisle—when she stuck a hand out, almost close enough to poke me in the nose with one of her stubby nails.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Lucy Craig. What’s your name?”

Cautiously, I accepted the proffered hand. “Eppie Wester.”

But instead of shaking my hand as I had expected, Lucy simply clasped hold of it and yanked me to my feet. I stumbled and almost went down again, then froze like a deer cornered by the hounds, rigid as I waited to see what my fate would be.

“Well, come on, then.” Lucy set her hands on her hips. “Let’s go.”

“Go?” I echoed, staring blankly up at her. I was taller, but I was still hunched over in a crouch. Her eyes were pale cornflower-blue like mine, but instead of weak I decided hers looked fierce.

She gave an impatient little sigh. “Don’t they play king-by-your-leave where you come from?”

And just like that, this terrifying girl morphed from an attacker into an ally. I smiled in sheer relief and stood up straighter. “They do.”

And she snatched up my hand again and towed me away. The rest of the summer was like that. Lucy Craig wasn’t slow and dreamy, wasn’t given to maudlin fits of abstraction about her lack of musical talent. Lucy Craig was as self-assured and fiery as her hair. With the will to lead and an imagination that could take us anywhere.

She guided me down one winding country lane after another, down rocky slopes to secret coves, down narrow forest paths where the trees reached out from either side to embrace overhead.

We were brigands that summer. Highwaymen and monsters, princesses and elvish minstrels. Lucy didn’t care that my fingers stumbled over violin chords and that my voice was too weak to hold a tune. Lucy only cared that I could run fast enough to keep up with her, that I could see the worlds she described to me.

“Today we’re going to play King Arthur,” she said sternly.

Papa, sitting sedately in his new invalid’s chair, was our sovereign. He delivered the lines Lucy gave him in a hesitant whisper, amazing her with his lack of a Hwenfirth accent.

“Just like a real king,” she whispered to me. “Though he is a bit too old to be Arthur, really.”

I just nodded, not wanting to interrupt him. Only two months since his collapse, and I was already learning how fine the line between his good days and his bad days could be.

Having received our quest from King Arthur, we clattered down the slope to the beach. The wind tossed our hair as we ran: mine fine and thin, too sandy to even be called brown, and hers like fire as it crackled and moved.

The game lasted the whole afternoon. Lucy’s sky-blue eyes were alight as she shaped the scene and brought it to life for us both. She was Queen Guinevere, trapped in a tower by the wicked Morgana, with only her wits to rely on. I was Sir Lancelot, battling his way bravely through endless forest and perilous mountains to reach her. We alternated between scenes; I was Morgana when I needed to be, hunched and sinister, and Lucy hissed and arched her back as the monstrous Cath Paluc.

It was sunset by the time Guinevere finally trapped Morgana in her own dungeon and emerged trembling onto the mountaintop to find her knight staggering up to meet her, wounded terribly in the battle with Morgana’s beast, his steed slain. The ocean lapped at the shores of our mountain plateau, reflecting the fading orange light in a splintered mosaic.

“Lancelot!” Lucy cried, and sprinted across the beach into my arms.

I caught her, feeling the weight of her, the feather-light touch of her curls against my cheek as she wept into my neck.

“It was terrible,” she sobbed, and I tightened the arm around her shoulders. The sun caught the edges of her hair, limning her in pure gold.

“It’s alright now, Your Majesty,” I promised her. “I’m here, and I’ll take you home to Camelot.”

“To Camelot!” Her voice dripping with scorn, she broke away from me. Instinctively I caught at her skirts and she stopped, hovering at the boundary of my embrace. “You’re so loyal, Sir Lancelot. So loyal to my husband.”

“And to you, my queen.”

She turned her face aside. “My loyal knight. So good, so true. So blind.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Not blind, Your Majesty. Guinevere.”

Her eyes flashed fire as she swung back to face me. “Lancelot, are you—?”

“I feel it too,” I choked out, years of longing flowing out of me with the words. Years of watching from afar. Of wanting yet never able to have.

The wind made her dress billow, the skirt of it tangling with my own as her hair floated like liquid flame in the dying light.

“I love you,” she whispered, a woman broken. Cursed by the same desperate desires as me.

She loved me. She was here and she was perfect and she loved me. Hers was the hand that had pulled me from my isolation into the raw sunlight of her presence. Hers was the voice that filled my hours, both waking and sleeping.

Hers was the only music that mattered.

The impulse rose in me, too powerful to be resisted. What else could I do? She was Guinevere, queen of the world, and I was only her poor faithful Lancelot.

I kissed her. I leaned forward and I kissed Lucy Craig right there on the beach, with my heart hammering in my ears and my hands in her beautiful ruby-bright hair.

It lasted forever. The taste of her lips, the scent of her skin. It lasted forever, but there was only a second before she knocked my hands away and shoved me in the chest. My eyes had slipped shut—unprepared, I staggered back and landed with bruising force among the stones.

I cowered there and stared up at her. Guinevere dropped away like a discarded cloak as Lucy stared down at me, fists balled at her sides, her ribcage heaving. Her hair danced like a candleflame in the wind rolling off the sea.

“What,” she snarled, “was that?”

My heart constricted as the floor fell out from beneath me. Oh no. “Lucy, I—”

“You’re a freak,” she hissed. “We were playing.”

“I was—acting,” I stammered, my voice too high. “Lucy, you were Guinevere, and I was Lancelot—it was part of the game. I-I’m sorry!”

For one endless moment she glared down at me. I had never seen such hatred on her face. Not when she was the heretic witch Jeanne d’Arc and I was Bishop Cauchon, attempting to bring her to justice. Not on the one occasion when I was Robin Hood and she had taken my usual role as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Not ever.

And then she turned away from me. Lucy—my best friend, my only friend—stalked away, pebbles clattering in her wake. Left me exactly where she had found me two months before, huddled on the floor, hoping for rescue.

“Lucy!” I called. “Lucy, it was an accident! It wasn’t—it wasn’t real!”

She kept walking, and my voice rose into a howl.

“Lucy!”

The sun slipped below the horizon and dusk crowded in, freezing the ocean black. Her hair shimmered and dwindled into the distance, the last embers of a dying fire. I had never felt so cold.

Just like that, Lucy was gone. And I only had to wait three hours, stewing in the bottomless pit of my own misery and guilt, before there was a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Papa asked waspishly. “It’s late. My nerves can’t—”

“Of course not, darling,” Mama soothed. “I’ll only be a minute.”

I hid in Theo’s bed, huddled behind his small sleeping form. Still able to hear every word.

“Father Rafferty?” Mama’s tone shifted to surprise. “What brings you out here so late?”

“I’m sorry for the hour, Mistress Wester.” He sounded uncomfortable, and dread twisted deep in my belly as I realized what he would say next. “Widow Craig’s just been by the vicarage, and she’s told me something I think I need to discuss with you.”

“Who is it, Matilda?” Papa demanded. “Tell them I need my rest.”

“Perhaps we’d better talk outside?” suggested Father Rafferty, and the latch of the front door clicked back into place behind them.

After that day my remaining years at the school were passed in perfect isolation. Lucy Craig never spoke to me again, and there were enough looks and whispers to make it clear that everyone else knew exactly what I had done.

I only wished for death for the first few weeks. After that I limited myself to wishing that the earth would open up and swallow me every time Lucy walked into the classroom.

But that terrible afternoon was a decade ago. Surely the memory has faded from everyone’s minds, if not from my own. Surely Lucy has at least forgotten, if not forgiven. Surely I can go into Craig’s Grocery without the need of Mama or Theo as a buffer.

My mouth still feels dry as a bone as I walk inside. The little bell over the door jingles merrily, as though all is well with the world. Lucy’s back is to me. She’s halfway up a ladder, stowing something away on one of the many shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling on every wall of Craig’s.

“Well met,” she calls. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

She has twisted round enough to face me, and for a second I can almost fool myself into thinking no time at all has passed. That she’s still the same as she was that summer, freckles scattered over her milky skin like stars across the night sky. Hair like an inferno, barely contained by the scarf she uses to bind it back. I am fourteen years old again: in a second she’ll give me a perfunctory good morning, Eppie and then tell me who we’re going to be today.

But then recognition sparks in her eyes, and the open expression on her face snaps shut like a book. Not forgotten, then. Too late now to wish I hadn’t come; the only choice is to brazen it out.

“Hello,” I say in a tone of false, brittle brightness. “Miss Craig.”

“Miss Wester,” she answers, cold as winter. “What can I get for you?”

An icy finger of dread trails down my spine. Ah. I didn’t get quite that far when I was planning this.

“Some… some bread?” I say weakly.

She eyes me narrowly, then her gaze flicks to the small pyramid of bread on the counter. Different shapes and colors leer back at me, and as her lip begins to curl I feel sweat break out on my forehead. God above, she thinks I only came in to see her!

The cold fear of that thought is followed almost immediately by a rush of anger. It was years ago. We were only even friends for a few weeks! If she’s still angry, the problem lies with her, not with me.

I finally manage a decision. “The seedy kind, please. And some marchpane.”

I can’t get past the almond-gravel texture myself, but Theo has always loved it. Mama sometimes manages to sneak a crumb or two away from the feasts and parties she performs at, and Theo savors them like manna from heaven.

“Of course.”

With one hand she snags a loaf from the pyramid; with the other she produces a coarse linen cloth. Her movements are quick and deft, and in less than a heartbeat the bread is wrapped and shoved across the counter toward me. A glass jar clinks, and two pink sticks of rosewater marchpane slap down on top of it. My brief flash of courage is ebbing, and I try not to wince at the sound. I’ve been in here enough times with Mama to know that Lucy usually laughs with her customers, turning the full force of that electrifying smile on everyone in her orbit. Never at me, though.

“Tuppence and half,” she says, hand out. Adds, after a pause just long enough to be disrespectful, “Miss Wester.”

With a sigh, I drop the coins into her hand. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t thank me for my custom. Doesn’t tell me to come again. Just stands in stony silence as I gather my purchases and flee. The bell tinkles just as cheerily on my way out as it did on my way in.

I stand for a second or two outside the door, almost stunned by the bustle of the street after the frozen civility of the shop. Lucy always was a master of her craft—she should be an actress, not a shopkeeper. She can make her audience feel anything she wants. And right now I feel small and wrong and alone, exactly as she wanted me to. A seagull floating by itself in the middle of an empty ocean.

My eyes are suddenly prickling. Are people looking at me? Did they see?

A quick glance around me reveals only people intent on their own business, trading and selling their wares, hurrying down the street, arms laden with parcels like the ones in my arms. No one is watching me, but I can’t shake the feeling that they know. They know what I did, all those years ago. They know who I am, why I’m different, and they… they will never, ever forgive me.

Hwenfirth is beautiful, but sometimes I long for the anonymous crowds of Garthisle so much that it’s like a physical pain. It was difficult to be mute there among the music that formed my parents’ world—but maybe it would have been better than this.

I glance back over my shoulder, see Lucy watching me through the window with narrow eyes, and my feet start moving without me giving the command to do so. I need to get out of here.

More than that, I need to go home. I need the silence of the pebbledash beach and the cold of the stones beneath my hands. I need to sit and let the waves wash over my bare feet until I can’t feel them anymore, while the clouds roll uncaring across the vast open sky above.

I clutch the bread with both hands and begin to run.