When Charlotte woke, her left arm was in a splint. She was surrounded and covered by quilts of a familiar pattern, though she could not immediately identify them. Her first reaction was that she had fallen or had some sort of accident at the lighthouse. Yet, though her head felt heavy and her thoughts were slow, something about that explanation rang false.

Charlotte groaned and turned in the bed. No, it was not her own. Much larger, much more comfortable. She sprang up in alarm at the realization. Fragments of her midnight trip to fetch the Rook Tribe’s chemists and subdue grandfather flashed again through her mind.

Yes, she must lie now in the chemists’ dwelling, the house of Mother Ke’a and father Po’ke. The one they had shared, until recently, with their daughter Ai’kalak. She would be married by now, and living with her husband’s family.

The alienating loneliness which Charlotte had previously felt upon hearing the news of her friend’s wedding struck a new blow like that of a sledgehammer to Charlotte’s chest. In a single day, Ai’kalak had taken the long step into a life that would provide her with greater responsibilities and concerns, ones Charlotte simply could not share, while Charlotte’s last remaining family member had fallen into madness.

Grandfather was nowhere near. Not in the house’s living quarters, at least. That could mean only one thing. Either he had perished after Charlotte pierced his flesh with the relic ring, or he had died with the coming of day a few hours later. Whichever was the case, Grandfather was gone.

Charlotte opened her mouth to call for help getting out of bed, but her throat was far too dry, and only a low croaking sound came out.

Neither Ke’a nor Po’ke were in the building, and the cauldron which they used to brew medicine put off no scent from the other room, nothing that might indicate it was in use.

Charlotte lay in the dwelling’s back room, the portion connected by an unblocked entryway to the main front room where all the medicine was prepared, but she could not hear a single sign of life in the house.

Realizing that nothing would happen unless she acted, Charlotte used her uninhibited arm to peel away the quilts one by one, freeing her weak body from their weight. She wore one of her own nightshirts, but it was not torn and dirty and smoky as it would have been were it the one she had worn on that horrible night. Mother Ke’a must have fetched some supplies from the lighthouse and dressed Charlotte in clean clothes. How much time had passed since she fell unconscious?

With great effort, Charlotte pulled herself up to a sitting position and stepped onto the calfskin which was laid over the floor as a rug. The air bit through her thin nightclothes, and no fire burned in the room’s fireplace. Charlotte shivered and took up one of the quilts which had covered her, wrapping it about herself like a cloak.

With quivering feet, only now realizing that a headache pounded through her head as though she had drunk far too much rum the previous night, Charlotte moved hesitantly into the main room of the chemists’ house. Traveling rations lay out on the room’s largest table, though indeed, no medicine bubbled in the pot in the middle of the room and not another human being stood nearby.

Charlotte was not hungry. She looked at the food laid out, the dried fish and salt pork, the pressed apples and the white cheese, the crumbly crackers which would need to be baked again before they were hard enough to be useful for traveling, and her stomach turned.

So she turned away, and, having no other option, opened the door leading outside.

The wind whipped Charlotte’s blond curls and stung her eyes, as did the white glare of the midday sun on the new snow covering everything she could see.

Children in heavy furs hurled snowballs at each other, laughing and running back and forth. The adults of the tribe strode to and fro at their work, some leading sheep, some carrying sacks of supplies. They must have just returned from market, or at least from meeting mainland traders halfway on the open water, as their preferences tended.

Not knowing what to do, Charlotte stood like a simpleton in the open doorway until a child noticed her, Gekki, the same little boy whose big brother Ai’kalak had married.

“Challa” he called, running up and staring at her with concern. “Aren’t you cold? Why aren’t you wearing a coat?”

“I don’t know where my things are,” she said. “Gekki, how long has it been since your brother got married?”

He frowned. “That was the day before yesterday.”

Two days ago. She had slept for an entire day and then half the morning.

Gekki seemed to notice Charlotte’s troubled expression. “Do you want me to go get Ai’kalak to help you?” he asked. “She’s been at our house since yesterday, since she lives there now, and she said she wanted to see you, she keeps saying that, but Mama keeps saying that you need your rest and that she shouldn’t bother you, but now that you’re up she can see you, right?”

A weight lifted from Charlotte’s shoulders. “Yes, thank you. I’d like that very much. Please tell her I’ll be waiting inside her... her old house.”

Gekki scurried away, ignoring the children who called after him, and Charlotte moved inside and closed the door behind her. She could not bear to return to the bed, so, minding her arm, Charlotte settled into one of the straight-backed chairs which rested beside the table upon which the traveling rations were being prepared.

Then all she could do was wait.

Within a quarter hour, Ai’kalak burst into the room, strode over to Charlotte, and embraced her tightly.

Charlotte yelped in pain as the hug jostled her broken arm, and Ai’kalak pulled back with a bright smile that was only absently apologetic.

“Sorry, Challa! It’s so good to see you. I can’t believe no one would let me in before now. Papa said there was a danger that you were infected, though he wouldn’t say with what, but just that the danger would have passed if you woke up. Well, you’re awake now, so it’s all good!”

Father Po’ke must have been worried Grandfather’s sickness was blood-borne, which made sense. Yet, if he had carried the ghoul sickness with him for as long as Charlotte had lived with him, there had been many occasions in which both of them had been injured and Grandfather’s blood had likely come into contact with one of Charlotte’s wounds. That was simply an eventuality when you lived in a lighthouse and fished and rowed every day.

Why was it a danger only when she was asleep? Well, she would worry about that later. For now, Charlotte was simply happy to see Ai’kalak again.

Her friend was taller and more muscular than Charlotte, doing harder work and being certainly more active on a daily basis. Her glossy dark hair was tied up in a bun atop her head, for now that she was married, it wasn’t proper for her to go around with long hair falling down her back. Yet another of the social rules of the tribe. She wore very practical clothes, including the skirt that went only down to knee length and which had thick leggings underneath, as was likewise the tradition of the tribe. Perhaps mainland women could get away with dresses that nearly scraped the ground, but there was much more running involved in the daily life of a Rook Tribe woman.

Ai’kalak’s face was covered with tiny scars and scrapes, and yet they seemed to make her even more beautiful than the city-dwelling mainland noblewomen with their carefully applied makeup. Only while in Ai’kalak’s presence did Charlotte feel free of self-consciousness about her marred and unsightly arms. On the mainland, her scars meant that she was an inexperienced laborer who had neither the breeding and propriety to be a lady nor the practical knowledge and wisdom to be a working woman.

But around Ai’kalak, the scars reminded Charlotte that people who did what they needed to for the sake of the people they loved necessarily ended up with a scar here and there, that they were simply the marks that said you were willing to do things you would rather not, even if you did them badly.

“You must be starving,” said Ai’kalak.

Charlotte glanced down at the traveling food with a frown. She began to open her mouth to say she wasn’t hungry, but Ai’kalak cut her off.

“Oh, anyone would feel sick if they had to eat that stuff while recovering! No, let’s get some fish and warm bread into you.”

She rose and bustled around the room, starting the small, portable grill which the family used for the majority of their cooking, then rushed out with a hurried “I’ll be right back!”

She quickly returned with a broad, silver-scaled herring fillet and a loaf of brown bread, and even a small stone dish half-filled with new butter.

In short order, Ai’kalak broiled the fillet and coarse chunks of buttered bread, filling the air with the sizzle and snap of bubbling oil and searing meat. As the scents of fresh food filled the room, Charlotte’s mouth began to water and her stomach to growl. Her nausea seemed to dissipate.

When the food was cooked, Ai’kalak took the fish to the table and handed Charlotte a pair of tweezers, keeping a pair for herself. As they had done many times throughout their youth, the girls silently and methodically pulled the bones from the herring and laid them on a tidy pile beside the plate. Ai’kalak sprinkled the meat with dried dill and shavings of juniper berry and then, after adding a small bit of the butter that remained, the girls used their fingers to crush and flake the steaming meat into a herring salad, which they scooped onto the buttered toast and devoured in huge bites.

The meal was nostalgic for Charlotte, and it provided a sense of comfort which, only a half hour previous, she might have believed she would never feel again.

Even though her friend was married, they still sat at the same old table and devoured a meal they had enjoyed dozens of times in the past.

“Where are your parents?” Charlotte finally asked, trying not to let the strange sense of relief overwhelm her. She needed to get a grip on things.

“They were needed to treat a cow, I think. They’ve been at it since early morning.”

Charlotte nodded. “What do you know about... what happened? Did they tell you anything?”

Ai’kalak looked uncomfortable. She wouldn’t meet Charlotte gaze. “They said it had to do with Memories and that your grandfather passed away. Nothing more than that.”

Charlotte nodded slowly. It was true, then. Grandfather was really gone. She hadn’t so much as been able to say goodbye. The last Charlotte had seen of him before he became a truly inhuman monster was still when he had been half-mad.

Yet, he had spoken coherently while brutally assaulting Father Po’ke. She had sworn he had in fact torn out one of Po’ke eyes and lacerated his face. Charlotte was surprised that the man wasn’t also convalescing in that back room, that he was apparently well enough to attend to a sick cow.

Grandfather’s words had been so full of bitter hatred. He had accused Po’ke of condescending to him, had seemed to accuse the whole tribe of laughing at Grandfather behind his back. Had he really carried such resentment for so many years? The people of the tribe had always been so kind and loving to them. If what Ke’a said was true, that her sister had sent Grandfather to the area with the intention of him living with the tribe, then had Grandfather held this resentment in his heart long since Charlotte was even born?

Had Grandfather sulked on the train ride to the coastal village near Lighthouse Island, staring at the place where his leg used to be, and thinking of nothing other than how other people were going to try to take care of him for the rest of his life?

But that had not been the case. Grandfather had made a good life for himself on Lighthouse Island. He might have made a better life for himself on Rook Island or on the mainland, but he had certainly succeeded if his goal had been to live by his own power. Moreover, he had raised Charlotte with love and care. Even if his heart had filled with bitterness at the idea that she would leave him one day, Grandfather had truly loved her.

Charlotte decided to remember the moments before his madness and fix those in her heart. Yes, she had older memories also, better ones, but they were all faded now. Years of bitterness had come between them, and all Charlotte could fix upon now was how he had smiled and asked kindly for his medicine before returning to bed. That was a grandfatherly thing to do. She chose to believe he was even then trying to fight off the ghoul sickness as best as he could.

“If he’s gone,” said Charlotte, “what do I do now?”

She could see the obvious answer in Ai’kalak’s face. “Stay with us!” it said. Yet was there a place for Charlotte here? She could become like a second daughter to the chemists, perhaps. This was something Charlotte had dreamed of many times in her childhood, living with her best friend as though she were a sister instead of on a stony island with nothing but an ancient tower and Grandfather to keep her company. Granted, she had always imagined Grandfather living with the chemists also. But it was different now, for Ai’kalak herself had joined a new family.

Or perhaps Charlotte could go to the mainland and make that life for herself that she had always desired. Yet, at the thought of this, the memory of that vitriolic conversation with Grandfather made her wilt. The snappish conversation about how she knew nothing, about how the that boy she could only barely remember from the festival, could remember only because of the arguments which followed, had tricked Charlotte into thinking he had any measure of chivalry or grace.

If Charlotte moved to the mainland, could she find any other life aside from a continuation of the hard work she did to afford oil for the lighthouse? The work in the kitchen which she was so unaccustomed to, which turned her skin a scraped, raw red and covered her arms even more thoroughly with scars which would be no longer even for the sake of Grandfather, but only for her own survival?

Aside from all that, something else bothered Charlotte. Grandfather carried secrets to his grave which he had never shared with her. She had to imagine they concerned the order of Memories. If nothing else, that was a part of Charlotte’s legacy, and she needed to unravel the secrets before determining her next step in life.

Charlotte had been quiet for a long time now, and Ai’kalak patted her on the hand. “Let me brew us some tea,” she said. “If you want to talk about anything, talk about it. Doesn’t have to be important, or have anything to do with the last few days.”

Charlotte looked up as Ai’kalak moved away to prepare the tea. “Why on Earth did you marry him?”

Ai’kalak paused, sighed, and her giddy sense of control seemed to leave her. She continued preparing the tea and then returned to the table. “It was either that,” she said, “or run away and leave everything behind.”

“You’ve always seemed like the kind of person who would do the latter,” said Charlotte. “You’ve always seemed like the kind of person who would ask me to join you on such a crazy adventure as that, in fact.”

Ai’kalak shrugged. She put one hand on her belly, which did not yet show any signs of growth, and with her other took a long drink of tea. “Yeah, that’s how I’ve always thought of myself. I guess now we know.”

Charlotte sipped the thick brew, a heady mixture of peppermint, rosemary, and licorice root. Yes. No matter what you thought you knew about a person, you could never tell exactly what they might do in a given situation until it came time to do it.