Chapter 1
One
I was a son of the Distant Isles. Or so I believed. When I was young they told me that my father died in battle, my mother in childbirth. Viviana rescued me, and raised me as her own. I was the lone boy on her Isle of Women.
For the first years of my life, I had no name. I was “Prince,” or “Boy,” or “Little One.” Now I long for the simplicity of that time. A time before the legends were burnished.
“Don’t swim out too far, Little One,” Viviana called while I rode the waves.
“I’ll stay close,” I shouted, chest scraping the sand.
But of course she worried. She knew what was coming.
Time moved differently on the Isle of Women. Over the span of a few nights my pudgy limbs elongated. My muscles emerged, sinewy and lean. My face became hard and angled, like the sharp curves of a ship.
I went about my chores and studies, unaware that I was experiencing the passing of years in a different manner than most. A day could last for months, but weeks compressed into hours.
I aged rapidly, and I began to feel things.
Inklings at first. Itches I couldn’t scratch.
I did not understand, until I met Galehaut, that time was both venom and its antidote.
Or maybe time was a snake eating itself.
Viviana and I lived in one of seven large wooden dwellings on the island.
Ours was a good-sized home, modern, with a hall for eating and visiting, a library and two sleeping chambers.
Behind this structure stood a kitchen and stable.
We had the luxury of windows, and we kept them open to let in the ocean breeze.
Wisps of salt air cut through the humid days and carried sounds of the waves as we fell asleep.
We lived in perpetual summer on the Isle of Women. Hot days, cooler nights, and storms that seemed to arise without warning. Every morning was fog-swept, wet. The haze is what I remember most.
I was a quiet child, with an accepting nature and sun-bleached curls.
Accepting, that is, until my emotions took over.
One day I found a clear pool in the woods and made a game with my reflection.
I pretended my mirror image was another boy, and that together we would save the island from invading Saxons.
Each day, after my chores, I slipped to the woods and communed with the boy in the pool.
I told him about my studies in numbers and histories, and my dreams of becoming a knight.
He, of course, had all the same ideas, aspirations and complaints.
But over a span of a few hot days the pool dried up. One afternoon I returned and the boy was gone. All that was left was leaf muck.
I knew I shouldn’t have cared. It was just my reflection, just a silly game.
I was often left to my own devices and had an active imagination.
But even as I tried to dismiss it, I felt my body reacting.
My skin went hot. My chest became a vise.
Amid the wet mud my eyes roved frantically, half expecting my aqueous reflection to materialize, fully embodied, from behind a tree.
The foolishness of this thought was a blade on flint, and suddenly it became hard to breathe.
A great sadness filled my lungs like smoke.
I sensed that if I didn’t move, I’d suffocate.
I sprinted through the woods until I reached the temple.
The tension within me continued to intensify, and I released a guttural yell.
Around me the sacred objects of the sisterhood—oil vessels, statues, a gold-leaf harp—seemed to buzz and quiver.
I kept trying to close my eyes, willing the whole afternoon to revert or shift.
But each time I opened them, I was greeted with the same pathetic truth. Even my reflection had abandoned me.
Pathetic. That’s how I felt. I fought the urge to smash the sacred items on their plinths.
Just then the temple door swung open. Two of the island’s women glowered from the archway.
“What has gotten into you?” demanded Ganieda, her frizzy hair like a cloud of gnats.
I grabbed my throat, cords sore from wailing. In my frenzied state, I couldn’t think up a lie. I heard my own tale of the mirror boy echoing off the temple walls, heard the piteous strains of the telling, and my cheeks flushed with shame.
Ganieda trembled with disturbed recognition. But Glitonea’s eyes were cold marble.
“Next time, take your tears to Viviana,” she said, with a dismissive wave that jangled her ruby bracelet.
There were rules, I sensed, rules rumbling beneath us like the earth’s vibrations.
The seven women who lived permanently on the island—Ganieda, Glitonea and my adoptive mother, Viviana, among them—comprised the sisterhood.
They were descendants of the island’s original inhabitants, the priestesses who had settled there, generations ago, to protect their power from the outside world.
Others came and went, staying in the smaller huts that lined the shore.
Men were permitted to stay for up to three days (I was an anomaly), but women could reside as long as they liked.
Some were outcasts, widows, accused witches, delivered to the island to begin a process of renewal that I, as a boy, could never access.
Many women came with nothing but the hope of what the island could offer them, and left with a bit of the magic that Viviana and the others wielded.
And the island, for its part, offered all things in abundance. Rivers flush with fish, and forests teeming with deer, boar and other wild beasts. Strutting peacocks, their opalescent plumage blinding in the sun.
The profusion, at times, could be overwhelming.
The air carried an ancient wildness that permeated my dreams. Asleep, I had visions of gods and goddesses, of gold clouds and swirling storms and monstrous creatures that still resided at the edges of our world.
I’d wake up, bathed in sweat, and peer out the window.
The mountain at the center of the island was covered in mist.
Only one of the descendants, Elinor, indulged my games and stories. She lived in a hut raised on stilts and wedged between beech trees. To get inside, she climbed a ladder through a hatch in the floor.
“Why do the other women ignore me?” I asked her one day over a table game.
She was stick thin and spry, with a plait of silver hair—the eldest of the sisterhood. She grabbed my hands across the game board.
“The other women love you in their way,” she consoled me. “But they are devoted to our goddess. The protector of the island. The goddess Danu.”
Elinor had coltish blue eyes and long eyelashes. Normally I could relax into the warmth of her smile, but that day my thoughts battered about. I knew of Danu. But when I tried to pray to her, she did not respond.
“Why are you and Viviana the exception?” I asked. “Why do you take so kindly to me?”
“Viviana brought you here.” She laughed. “Of course she takes kindly to you. And as for me, how could I not?”
I shook the bone dice, let them clatter.
“So I don’t scare you?” I asked.
“Three and one. Good roll. Of course you don’t scare me, fair foundling.”
I didn’t know what Elinor saw in me, at least not then. Perhaps she was simply more benevolent than the others. Or maybe Danu had gifted her a larger wedge of kindness. But I worried the answer was far more obvious: she just felt bad for me. I wondered if they all did.
A few nights later I was in Viviana’s library, struggling through my Latin transcriptions, when out the window I caught a flash of auburn.
In the clearing behind our cottage sat a fox.
Despite the island’s fecundity, I had never seen a fox before. He was small, with a snowy chest, attentive ears and an upturned mouth. His legs were dark, as if dipped in ink, save for one white paw, which extended neatly in front of him. I ran out the back door.
He sat dead still, his liquid-gold eyes piercing the twilight. Did he take me for prey or predator? I could not tell, but his stillness unnerved me. I wondered if he was lost.
I stepped closer and he darted towards the forest path. Then he turned back and stared.
Was he beckoning me to follow? I looked around, unsure what to do. I was not permitted to explore the island alone after sunset. But something about this fox—the tilt of his snout? The blue-black depth of his pupils?—compelled me in a way no creature had before.
I followed him into the woods, but he did not abide by the path. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I struggled to keep up. Thorns clung to my tunic and scratched at my hair. I navigated a tangle of branches and brambles, swiped through a spiderweb, afraid to lose him.
When he skidded to a stop on a sharp ledge, I looked down. Twenty feet below stood a grove illuminated by torchlight.
In the center, a vase-shaped hazel tree hulked out of the earth. Under its branches, the sisterhood gathered in a circle. They wore matching blue robes and all manner of jewels, their gold sandals incandescent in the firelight.
They seemed to be in the middle of a heated discussion. A heated discussion, I quickly realized—about me.
“… that’s what I’ve been saying all along.” Elinor’s voice caromed off the granite. “He needs to get a sense of the world. To interact with others his age.”
Glitonea spoke up. “Perhaps if he spent time as a page for a noble family…”
“A page?” Viviana let out a crazed laugh. “That’s absolutely out of the question. He is too young.”
“He’s not too young.” Elinor spoke in an even tone. “He’s just the right age. But—”
“But you’ve seen him,” Viviana cut in. “He’s gentlehearted. He just needs to learn to control his emotions. He needs nurturing. He needs—”
“Nurturing? Is that what he gets here?” Elinor turned to the other descendants. “I see the way the rest of you dismiss him, the coldness in your gaze.”
“He lives here at the pleasure of the sisterhood,” said Mazoe, whose cottage sat on the north shore. “But we are not his caretakers. Viviana is. This is what we agreed to.”
“We can’t risk him gleaning our ways,” added Sebile, the youngest of the seven. “A man with magic is too dangerous. Remember the last time?”
“I don’t disagree,” said Elinor. “But you won’t even let the poor boy have a name. How do you expect him to become a knight—”
“Is he not learning the skills that will aid his knighthood?” Viviana’s voice was nearly hysterical. “Do you think me a terrible mother?”
“No, dear one.” Elinor softened. “You have provided a great life for the boy, and unlike Mazoe, I am not suggesting he become a page. But I think we need a plan for his training.” She turned to Sebile. “One that still protects our magic.”
My blood thrummed with nervous excitement. I’d read of knightly training—of swordcraft and horsemanship and courtly etiquette. I’d always longed for such experiences. But could I, a nameless boy on a strange island, really rise to that rank?
“I’ve had a plan all along.” Viviana grew defensive. “He’s learning his letters and numbers. He’s already begun archery…”
A resigned silence filled the grove. Though they had no hierarchy, Viviana was the implicit leader of the seven. No one, it seemed, wanted to challenge her.
“You set sail for Sorelois soon, don’t you, Viviana?” said Elinor.
“After the next half moon.”
Once a month, Viviana visited Sorelois, another island in our archipelago. There she sold her potions and elixirs and offered guidance to those who sought her counsel.
“Take him with you,” said Elinor. “It is only for a day, and he has never left the island.”
“It’s too unsafe,” replied Viviana.
“With your power?” Lotta’s laughter shook her emerald neck-ring. “He will be fine.”
“But what if people talk—”
“People will talk no matter what,” Elinor cut in. “Please, for the love of Danu. Bring him along. We can figure out the rest at another time.”
Viviana folded her arms.
“Fine. He can come with me. But if anything happens…”
“Relax, Viviana,” Glitonea said. “Nothing will happen. He is not a dog to be kept on a leash.”
The sisterhood moved on to other matters, but I could no longer hear them. My heart was pounding too loudly in my ears.
I was going to Sorelois.
One day, I would become a knight.
I looked down, but the fox was gone. He would not return for some time.