Time seemed to move faster every day. Before I realized it, spring became summer, and I had been away from Saje for nearly ten months. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I went about my day-to-day activities, what was happening at home with my family, and the rest of the people in Saje.

Perhaps if the Radkkans weren’t there, girls would be swimming in the Dhun Lake while the boys would challenge each other to jump off the Craet cliff and into the azure waters of the ocean. Green grass and trees would be everywhere. Soon the fifteen days would come, and the sun would be in the sky for three hundred and sixty hours. Trade ships and peddlers would bring peaches and patterned cloth and other exotic wonders from different parts of the continent, and everyone would be excited.

My father would be working extra hard to make enough money for us to afford some new treat that could only be bought in the summer, my mother would be tending to the children who poured through our door with everything from cuts and bruises, to illness caused by too much fun; and I would practice my letters on the hearth, or climb trees and collect seashells. Then, in the evening, I would sit with my family in the kitchen, all the doors, and windows open to let in the cool air as we enjoyed each other’s company.

Maybe a friend of mine would run through the door, too joyful to consider formalities, and we would sprint to the beach and stand on the sand as the waves crashed over our feet and soaked the hems of our dresses as we bathed ourselves in the sunset colors.

I could imagine it all so clearly. My town, my house, the beach, the ocean, the sand, the shhh of the waves. I used to think the ocean was just the ocean, and it always sounded the same no matter where you were. But I knew now that this was not true. Every beach owned a special whisper that the waves sang to the sand, the pebbles, the rocks, and to the people who listened to it. It was a song I had long taken for granted, until now, when it no longer belonged to me, and a different song whispered to me at night. I wondered if I would ever come to love this one as I had the other.

I made it my practice every morning when I woke, while I waited to feel awake enough to get up, to keep my eyes shut tight, and picture every detail of my home and my family. I refused to let the curve of the wood of my bed, the familiar shape and length of the walls, the cold but smooth stones of the hearth, and most of all my parents’ faces, become nothing more than silhouettes in my memory. I would always keep them in my thoughts.

My only comfort, when nostalgia and homesickness haloed me in a dark cloud of doom, was Taelon’s friendship, which had blossomed warmly throughout the time we spent together and grew and grew as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months.

Realizing that we truly enjoyed and thrived in each other’s company came as less of a sudden acknowledgment of the fact and more of a steady comprehension that we were spending more and more time together, on purpose.

I might accompany Taelon some days when he went to complete a task or chore in return for whatever we needed at the time, and he might strive to come back earlier so that we could spend the evening together, talking and roaming the cliffside, chasing each other barefoot down the beach, or even just being in each other’s presence and taking part in our singular activities.

The fact that I had a friend, a genuine friend, was the foundation on which I began to build back my happiness, however slowly, and I was grateful in a way that I couldn’t put into words and refused to ruin by trying.

“I’m going down into the village,” I told Taelon one morning after we’d finished breakfast, and I had tied a string around the end of my fresh plait. “The women in the fishmonger’s shop said that they’d have the shellfish ready for me by today. I won’t be long.”

“Wait.” He stood up from the table and pulled his coat off the hook on the wall. “If you wait a moment, I would come with you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why not?”

I couldn’t decide that there was a reason why he shouldn’t, so it was agreed that we would walk down into the village together.

We didn’t speak as we made our way down the dirt path that led from our home down to the others. Taelon’s home was the only house on top of the cliff, and though it wasn’t a treacherously steep path that led away from it, it was very easy to trip and fall, especially if one was wearing a dress, so I paid attention to every step, determined not to make a fool out of myself.

Only a little distance from the village, I realized Taelon wasn’t walking beside me anymore and stopped to turn around, finding him crouched in the grass, searching the ground with his eyes.

“Did you drop something?” I asked, skipping back to him, and he shook his head.

“I’m looking for a Seamrógarl,” he said.

“A what?”

“A clover.”

“Well, you must be blind.” I gestured to the ground. “There is clover everywhere.”

“A special kind.” He brushed a hand through the tiny forest of greenery. “One with four leaves.”

“What for?” I kneeled beside him and threw my own eyes to the ground.

“There is a story my father told me as a child. The only one he ever did.” He smiled serenely at the grass and clover that mingled together in the earth. “There was a knight who was banished from the Kingdom he served for a sin he did not commit. His boat was dashed to pieces in a storm, and he thought he would be lost in the waves. Then he woke up on a strange island, alive though without anything he had come with.”

Taelon continued, plucking a blade of grass from the ground, and twisting it between his fingertips. “He couldn’t find a place to stay, so at last he collapsed, exhausted in a patch of clover, and fell asleep. The next morning, something caught his eye, and he picked a clover from the ground. It had four leaves.”

“Then what?” I asked when the pause had gone on too long. “Surely the story doesn’t end there. That doesn’t give you a reason to be hunting for strange weeds.”

“Then,” Taelon said presently, “his luck changed. He came upon a woman, sleeping beneath the shade of a tree. He was struck by her beauty and bent down to kiss her. Upon awakening, the maiden found herself struck with love and took him with her back home to her Kingdom where she lived as a Queen, and the Knight never wanted for anything again.”

“He kissed her? Right then, while she was asleep, even before knowing her name?” I wrinkled my nose.

“She was very beautiful,” Taelon said, as though this explained everything.

“So, you want to find a four-leaved clover because you wish to be taken away by a beautiful woman and made into a King?” I asked crookedly.

“No.” He frowned at me. “A man who possesses a four-leaved Seamrógarl is supposed to have good luck for the rest of his life. That is what I want. I search for one every summer, just in case.”

I shook my head. “You keep looking for your luck. I’ll be on my way.”

I was only walking alone for two minutes before he caught up with me, and then at the gate, we went our separate ways. Him, to wherever he was going, and me, to the fishmonger’s shop.

The actual shop was owned by a ruddy-faced man named Abean Harminger, who everyone called Herring. However, it was his wife who did most of the business.

She, her sister, and two nieces arranged and sold the fish Herring caught during the weekends, and out of all the women in Seaggis, they were the only ones I had become properly friendly with thus far.

Pathedra Harminger was a tiny woman, with very smooth black hair and beady black eyes that caught everything that went on in the village. Her sister, Pariena, was tall, with equally black hair but with hazel eyes that were far gentler than Pathedra’s. The two nieces, daughters of Pathedra’s half-brother, were twins: Purity and Verity; both a year younger than I was, with matching heads of burnt red hair and mischievous smiles.

They were, all four of them, without a doubt, the nosiest women I had ever met in my life, but despite this, I liked them, and so I was friendly when they greeted me upon my arrival at their shop.

“It’s Ingrith!” Verity snagged my arm the moment I was within range and dragged me underneath the tent where countless types of seafood were set out in baskets out of the sun’s reach, but in full view of any person who chose to pass by.

“Hello,” I said to the other three women sitting in the shade on packing crates.

“Ingrith!” Pathedra patted the crate beside her for me to sit and I did, grateful to be off my feet and out of the sun.

“What do you think about it?” Purity asked me, her green eyes fixed on me without blinking.

“About what?” I asked.

“Silly.” Verity bludgeoned her sister in the ribs with her elbow. “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ingrith—” Purity pushed away her sister’s offending limb, “—you heard about Angaidhi, of course?”

“No,” I said, completely at a loss.

“We heard—” Purity gestured to her sister and aunts. “That his wife, Anwyn, is having an affair with another man.”

“Oh, if it’s true, then I am sorry for him,” I said earnestly.

“If you say so. But who is the other man?” Pathedra asked, then whipped her head around to grin invitingly at an elderly couple who had stopped to admire the fish.

“They’re fresh!” she called out. “Caught only the other day!”

They smiled at her but didn’t ask to trade anything and were soon on their way.

“Business is excellent as always, is it?” Verity smirked.

“This is your business too, you goose,” Pathedra scolded her niece. “And weren’t we discussing something more important?”

“I don’t know who the man is, but we could find out easily. There aren’t too many good men on this island. At least not good enough to have an affair with.” Purity scraped underneath her nails with a fish knife.

“Who do you think it could be, Ingrith?” Pariena spoke for the first time since I’d entered the tent.

“I’m not sure.”

“She has her own affairs to deal with.” Purity grinned at me.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, squirming under the girl’s gaze.

“Ooh yes indeed.” Verity’s eyes widened, and she shuffled her crate closer to mine. “How are your affairs Ingrith?”

“I’m afraid I cannot answer that,” I told her, “as I haven’t any idea what you’re speaking of.”

“Haven’t you?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“Let her play innocent if she wants.” Pathedra waved her hand at the two girls and smiled at me. “You can’t fool us, Ingrith. We know almost everything about everyone here. So tell me, have you fallen into it yet?”

“Fallen into what?” Well and truly bewildered, I looked around for an excuse to escape, but to my dismay found that there was none. I liked gossip. But only harmless, general gossip about people I barely knew. Not gossip about me.

“That’s a match if ever I saw one.”

“Oh, I remember when I was young. I had a trail of men after me. It was wonderful. One of them was the son of the Lord if I remember correctly. Éibhear, his name was.” Pathedra patted her hair, a misty look in her eyes. “I know handsome men are useless, but he was lovely. And so devoted to me. They all were.”

“But they all left you when you got old and fat?” Purity chided her aunt.

“I am not old, and I am certainly not fat.”

“Fat as a goose,” Purity sang.

“You’re the one with feathers inside your head.” Pariena cuffed the girl’s ears and give me a knowing smile. “They speak of you and Taelon, Ingrith. Has he admitted to being in love with you yet?”

My heart gave a strange, uncomfortable jolt in my chest and then settled somewhere higher up than it was supposed to be.

“What—What did you ask?” I stuttered.

“Will you four hens stop sticking your beaks into everyone’s business?”

Grieda stood outside the tent, a basket on her arm and a fierce expression on her face. “And I’ll have six fresh mackerel.”

Pathedra moved off her crate, none too quickly, and went to select six of her fish to place in the waiting basket. Grieda waited with her eyes fixed anywhere but me, one foot tapping impatiently on the ground.

“What do you want for them?” she asked in a snappy voice when the fish were wrapped, tied with string, and placed safely in her care.

“Two dozen eggs would do,” Pathedra told her pleasantly.

“Two dozen is too much.”

Grieda was an intimidating woman, not only for me, I was sure, but for everyone who knew her. I could also sense that Pathedra Harminger was likely the only one who was not intimidated by her at all. While her sister and nieces hung back with their eyes cast to the ground, silent as stones, Pathedra’s head was held high and she met the wild-haired woman’s hawk gaze without a hint of apprehension in her eyes.

“You have twelve laying chickens, Grieda, and more hatching every year.”

“I’ll give you half a dozen.”

“For six of my fresh mackerel? A dozen. Take it or leave it.” Pathedra put her hands on her hips and glared up at her customer.

“One dozen it is. I’ll have them sent up to you later this afternoon.”

Though both women were glaring at each other, I felt somehow as though they were both perfectly satisfied, and it dawned on me that they had both intended the six fish to be traded for twelve eggs the whole time.

The argument was only for show. They both wanted the same thing, and both got it. They respect each other.

“Ingrith.”

I snapped my head up when Grieda said my name. She still refused to look at me but jerked her head in the direction she was turned to go in. “Will you join me?”

The tone of her voice clarified that this was not, as her words pretended, an invitation, but a command. A command that I knew was not in my best interests to ignore.

“I will,” I answered, pretending that I couldn’t read the demand in her voice. I also pretended that I didn’t know that she could see right through me.

“Take your shellfish with you.” Pathedra shoved a clay pot into my hands. “You can pay me for it later,” she whispered in my ear.

“With what?” I whispered back.

“Information.”

“What sort of information?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” She winked at me. “Come again, Ingrith, we enjoy your company.”

She gave me a friendly shove out of the tent, and suddenly I was walking through the village side by side with Grieda. I had to walk twice as fast as she did, being at least a head shorter, and under the blistering heat of the sun, I was quickly growing tired, hot, and irritable.

“Was there something you wanted to say to me?” I asked irritably; stopping, planting my feet firmly on the road, and crossing my arms.

Grieda didn’t stop walking, and this was infuriating because then I had no choice but to start up again or be left behind, and I would not be left behind.

“I overheard your conversation,” she said after I had caught up to her.

“It wasn’t my conversation,” I grumbled. “It was theirs. They were speaking to me.”

“That may be so, but the conversation was not about them, was it? It was about you. You and someone else.”

Again, my heart did something it should not have, and the world tilted around me. I swallowed and stood still. This time Grieda stopped as well.

“You are frightened,” she noted with amusement. “Not the general reaction of a girl who has been told that a man may love her.”

“You do not ask why.”

“I don’t need to. I know why.” She began walking again, and I did the same. This time it was easier to match her stride, either because panic had given me a burst of energy or because Grieda had deliberately slowed for my benefit.

“What’s the reason then? If you’re so sure you know,” I asked, and the question was for both of us, but only she was expected to answer.

“Because you were in love once, with a person whom you grew to see as the only possible partner for you in life, but then he died, left, or married another woman, and though you know he’s gone, you’re unwilling to, as you see it, be untrue to him, which is—” she snorted, “—a mistake. Though Sunah knows that it’s a common one.”

“I don’t see what it is you’re trying to tell me,” I said.

“No,” she agreed. “Because you obstinately chose not to. So, I’ll tell you again, in a way that you will understand, at some point or another.”

She cleared her throat. “When I was seventeen, I met a man I loved more than anything in the world, and he loved me. It was as though I were under a witch’s spell. He filled my mind, my heart, and my soul constantly, so that I was thinking of him at all times. Even when I wasn’t aware of it, he was in my thoughts. We were married and lived for a year in happiness. But then he fell ill. He died within three months, and I was left alone in a life that was meant for two, with a shadow of grief and anger where there should have been love and compassion. Two years later, I met another man who claimed to love me. He showered me with gifts, kindness, and the promise of security and joy for the rest of my days if only I would consent to take him as my husband. But I refused him.”

Grieda brushed an errant strand of hair out of her eyes and continued, and though I searched, I could not find any sign of emotion on her face.

“Every year, on the same day, he asked me again if I would marry him, and every year I refused, not because I disliked his affections or didn’t want them, but because there was a part of me that said that my first love would be hurt. Though gone from this world as he was, he would see me and hate me, and this kept me alone for many years until finally that man relented and married the woman his parents wanted him to marry, and it was then, when he was taken away from me forever, that I realized he had been what I needed and wanted all along. While I was telling him to leave, I wished for him to stay, and when he did, I chased him away again until finally, he listened, and I was alone. Truly alone. You cannot know how I regretted this; how I still regret it. Women here rarely get more than two chances at love, and I wasted my last one.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. Now it was I who was avoiding her eyes. I kept mine steadily on the ground below me, staring as though what I saw was more than dirt and grass, and trying to convince myself of it as well.

“For your benefit.”

“Why?” When I lifted my head, I saw that we stood in front of Grieda’s shop and I wiped my sleeve across my brow to gather the perspiration that soaked my skin, though I was no longer hot. In fact, I shivered in the shadow that the roof cast over the ground.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because you dislike me. I can sense it every time we speak. There is something about me that you do not care for, and though I don’t yet know what it is, I can still feel it.”

“I do not dislike you.” She scoffed. “I do not like you either, but I do not dislike you.”

“If you don’t like something, then you dislike it. That is how I see it.”

“Well, you see it how you want, I dare say you will, whatever anyone else tells you. I meant only that though I do not like you now, I feel no animosity toward you, and may very well grow to like you at some point in the future. Really, you should consider it an achievement. I have very few friends on this island, and fewer still people whom I could consider adding to them.”

“And this is enough to make you feel you ought to instruct me in my ways of finding happiness?” I asked, and we both sat down to rest our backs against the wall of the house. I took the chance to place my pot of shellfish on the ground and knead my hands together to bring the feeling back into them.

“I did it for him, too.”

“Taelon said you were like a mother to him.”

“I was. I am.”

“Is this perhaps a reason why you don’t yet like me?”

“Perhaps it is.” She eyed me narrowly. “Taelon is a kind person, with a giving and openhearted disposition. The sort who loves and feels things deeply. I would have you know this and caution you not to play with him.”

I folded my hands over my knees and leaned my head back, letting it thump against the stone wall behind me.

“When we met, properly, you told me not to make any trouble. Why?”

Grieda shrugged and flicked a piece of grass off her skirt. “This island isn’t full of pretty young girls. At least it didn’t use to be. If one of them lets the attention she’ll no doubt receive go to her head, she could cause a good load of trouble indeed.”

“I have let nothing get to my head,” I defended indignantly.

“That you immediately assumed that I was talking about you, proves you wrong.”

I glared at the woman beside me, hating the embarrassed red that loved my face and neck.

“That’s not fair. You were clearly speaking about me.”

“You see it that way if it gives you comfort.”

“Do you think Taelon is in love with me?”

She didn’t answer immediately, and when she did, her reply was less than satisfactory. Much less.

“If he isn’t, he’s well on his way to being.”

“But he can’t be,” I protested. “Love cannot simply happen. Not when there is nothing to urge it along. We’ve had no tragedy together. No sorrow. Nothing in which love grows. Only friendship.”

“You will learn,” Grieda said pityingly, “that love grows just as well, if not better, in the nurturing soil of friendship, rather than in the dry dust of tragedy and sorrow.”

She stood up and told me to come inside, thus putting an end to our conversation, and I couldn’t say that I was sorry.

I was led again into the yard out back where I saw two things at once. The first was a healthy, clucking gathering of cheerful chickens, and the other was Taelon.

He was kneeling at the side of a small brown dog, speaking to it in a voice that was low and gentle. I couldn’t hear the words that were being said, but I knew at once that they were kind.

Then he looked up, saw me, and smiled, and the smile set off a strange tumble of emotion inside my heart; so unusual that I found I could not smile back.

It was a beautiful smile, wide, genuine, sweet, and bright. A smile that concealed nothing and did not try to. So, I looked away, firmly refusing to see what the smile wanted me to see, and I could tell immediately that I confused him, even if he made an excellent show of hiding it.

“I did not know you would be here.” Taelon didn’t stand up.

“I didn’t know that you would either,” I told him and felt that there was a change. Things were different from how they were this morning. There was an awkwardness that should not have been there, and I wished he would not feel it, though I knew he did, just as I knew that the awkwardness was mine, not his.

Taelon stroked the dog’s furry head. “Grieda told me that her dog was hurt and asked me to help him.”

Grieda nodded in confirmation.

There was something accusing in the way I looked at him, and he caught it; the relaxed slope in his shoulder straightening into a stiff, uncomfortable posture.

“What did you come here for?” he asked.

“I brought her along to show her the chickens,” Grieda told him before I had the chance to answer, and I felt exceptionally grateful because I wouldn’t have known what to say if she hadn’t.

“They’re those six right over there,” Grieda pointed them out to me and the three of us made our way over toward them.

“Hello,” I told the chickens, and they blatantly ignored me, so I reached into a bucket of grain that sat up out of their reach and held out a handful in my palm.

Now they were very interested in me, or at least they were interested in the food I offered. Either or, I enjoyed the feel of their blunt little beaks hitting my fingers as they bobbed their heads up and down in a frenzy to gobble up everything as soon as possible in a ridiculous competition.

“I shall call you Hawk,” I told one of the six. “And you four are King, Heretic, Princely, and Knight.” Then I stroked the glossy feathers of the last hen; red, large, and smooth. “You must be Dragon,” I told her. “Could any names be less suitable for a group of well-mannered hens? Take these names to heart, dears. Because they defy your inevitable futures.”

A few steps behind me I heard Taelon tell Grieda that I was very fond of talking to things that couldn’t answer me back and that she should watch her vegetables, or I might cast them under a spell; to which she answered with a question: Whether this warning came from personal experience. When he said yes, she wondered aloud whether he meant himself, and then he quickly changed the subject.

On the way back home, I felt awkwardness settle over us once again and was uncomfortably bothered by this. It wasn’t how things were supposed to be between us.

Taelon asked me whether I wanted him to carry my package, when I appeared to be struggling with it, to which I snapped that I could very well do it by myself, and he fell into a sulky, cold silence that no matter how hard I tried with my various apologies and excuses, could not thaw before we got back to the house, and he disappeared into his room without saying anything to me.

I lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, with a mountain of indescribable worries and feelings piled on top of my chest. Only two I could properly discern, and they were guilt and anger. Anger at myself, for being so stubborn and immature and cruel. Guilt for punishing him. I was punishing him because there was a part of me that believed those who said he loved me. I was punishing him because I could not punish myself. I was punishing him for even daring to try and love me, and pushing me to wonder if I could do the same for him.