The house of the naturalist Milone family rests on the outskirts of the village of Wolf Spring. It is an agrarian land, some residents with more of a gift than others, but the strongest magic in the region bears a naturalist slant. Crops and livestock grow well, and fish are plentiful in the waters outside Sealhead Cove, named not for its shape but for the propensity of seals to bob up and down in the waves.
Joseph’s family lives on the cove. His father builds ships and occasionally sails them, though most of his crafts run along the coast to the richer families of Prynn and Beckett. Neither he nor the three Sandrin sons have any gift, though Matthew insists he can charm the fish and dolphins like his mother, and Joseph claims to have the sight. Little Jonah is not likely to show a gift either, though he is only a toddler and it is too early to say.
Juillenne and Joseph bob in the water alongside the seals in the warm waves. From the tip of the dock, the landmass of the island stretches out in both directions. Fennbirn Island. Called so by the outsiders who find their way across the sea and through the mists. To its inhabitants, it is only the island, and Grandpa Ellis says that its true name is guarded on the tongues of the eldest women. They bite down on it, angry that the young cannot even pronounce it, let alone understand what it means. Their anger will swallow the word whole, and in a generation or two, the island’s true name will be forgotten entirely.
Juillenne doubts that the island cares, one way or the other, what it is called. To her it is only home, vast and unending, dotted with mountains and inland lakes, streams and cities of varied people of varied gifts. Caragh says that Jules’s mother, Madrigal, ran away from the island for bigger things. But Jules does not understand how anyone could want something more than the island and its Goddess.
On the dock, nearer to shore, Caragh sits with Matthew, with their legs dangling in the water, pant legs rolled to their knees. Beneath the surface, Joseph tugs on one of Jules’s ankles, and she tries very hard to keep from kicking him in the face.
He comes up and spits water.
“Race you to the dock,” he says. Jules shakes her head. She is in no mood to be beaten today. Today she would wish she had a shark for her familiar, to drag Joseph under and give her time to pass, and she has heard a hundred times from the old folk of Wolf Spring that such wishes are dangerous, for the Goddess might grant them true.
Jules presses her finger to her lips and nods toward Matthew and Caragh, ripe for splashing. She and Joseph skim side by side through the cove, smooth and silent as water striders. Then they hang off the dock wood and wait for their moment.
“Is that what it’s like every time, do you think?” asks Matthew. “The lightning. The crying. Pulling them apart. I know I said so to Jules, but I really did think that was only a story.”
“I don’t know,” Caragh replies. “Goddess willing, it will be the only claiming we ever have to see.”
“Maybe it was the Midwife’s fault. Maybe she didn’t prepare them right.”
“How do you prepare a child for something like this? How will we prepare her now? Queen Arsinoe’s been with us a week, and all she does is stare out toward Rolanth. In case her sister sends up a bolt.” Caragh nods down the dock, where Arsinoe stands scanning the sky.
“Let her have those lightning bolts. Because one day they’ll stop. Then Arsinoe won’t see her lightning again until the Ascension, and it will be for a totally different reason.”
Jules grasps Joseph’s shoulder, and he looks at her, brows creased. She pulls them both under the cover of the dock.
“Three dark sisters, all fair to be seen,” says Matthew.
“The way it’s always been,” says Caragh. “And it never seemed cruel until I saw it firsthand.”
“It isn’t cruel. It’s in their nature. Always three, always in December, conceived at Beltane, always daughters. A queen isn’t like us. They aren’t normal people with normal gifts. It’s just how it is.”
“Not always,” Caragh whispers. “Sometimes there is a fourth. A Blue Queen. Do you remember the year of the birth? Some of the oracles spoke of that. They thought the lack of omens meant something special.”
Matthew throws something into the water. It splashes beside Joseph, and he and Jules retreat farther along the dock.
“Something special,” Matthew mocks. “Now the lack of omens is an omen in itself?”
Caragh’s expression is distracted, lost in some memory. Then she shakes her head, hard. “You’re right. It’s foolish. Omens and oracles. Means nothing.”
“It would have been better if it had. But there hasn’t been a Blue Queen since . . .”
“Queen Illiann,” says Caragh. “Born ten generations of queens ago. Reigned in harmony until the birth of her triplets forty-six years later. A long reign. I asked Dad.”
“What’s a Blue Queen?”
Arsinoe’s low voice is a surprise to all. Jules had not heard her footsteps even from underneath the wood.
“Nothing,” Caragh answers quickly. “Only a very lucky and rare queen.”
“Only one of my sisters or I will be the real queen,” says Arsinoe. “So if she is so lucky, is it always her?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happens to her sisters?”
Above the wood, Caragh clears her throat. “Why don’t you go into the market? The catch should be cleaned and the stalls frying them up for sandwiches by now.”
Arsinoe says nothing. She walks away, back down the dock, and Jules and Joseph swim along in her shadow. By the time she stops, they are in such shallow water that they can almost touch the bottom.
She is so sad, Jules thinks, and Joseph frowns, as if he can read her mind. He takes a breath and dives down with a great splash, loud enough that Arsinoe must know they are there, so Jules swims out a few strokes and smiles at her, squinting into the sun.
It has been strange, sharing the house with the sullen, black-haired little girl. She spends most of her time staring out the window for Mirabella’s lightning, or whispering Katharine’s name over and over under her breath, like a spell they do not know. But she eats (a lot), and she sleeps, and she is always polite. And to think that Jules feared the young queen would be constantly underfoot, hanging on her sleeve and getting in the way of her and Joseph’s fun.
Joseph surfaces and surges up and out onto land like a seal, grabbing the dock and rolling onto the wood beside Arsinoe without much grace. Still, he does it in one try. It takes Jules a lot longer, scrambling and huffing. Then they sit on either side of Arsinoe, and Joseph spreads out the things he has carried up from the bottom of the cove: three curved shells, black and white and speckled brown. He taps the shell in the middle, and a hermit crab’s legs poke out of its oversize home. He prods it again, and it waves its tiny antennae.
Jules taps one of the other shells, and the crab inside scuttles back. Joseph pulls Arsinoe to her knee. It takes a moment, but finally she gets curious enough to tap the last crab. For the next few minutes at least, her sister’s lightning is forgotten as the three children prod their crabs to see whose will be first to make it back into the water.
Six weeks after the Milones took the young queen into their house, Caragh lies on her back in the meadow beside Dogwood Pond, with her head on Matthew Sandrin’s stomach. Her familiar, Juniper, rests her brown snout in the crook of her arm, the hound’s back covered with yellow and white wildflower petals that Matthew shook over them both. The day is warm and lazy, and Caragh traces patterns along Matthew’s forearm, wrapped around her chest. It is not often that she gets a day to herself. Usually, she is too busy raising her younger sister’s daughter.
Jules is Madrigal’s child, but it has been years since Caragh has thought of her as anything but her own. Caragh watches her every day as she walks through the flowers and vegetables in the garden, coaxing their stalks and stems to grow up straight, urging their roots to run deep. She sees her love for the island, and for the Goddess who runs like water through the heart of it all. Jules is hers. The Goddess’s and Caragh’s. Jules is nothing like Madrigal.
“What are you thinking about?” Matthew asks.
“Nothing.”
He smiles, that rakish smile that Caragh worries will someday get Juillenne into the same kind of trouble with Joseph that she is in with Matthew.
“Nothing,” he repeats, and pulls her farther into his arms. “Liar.”
Caragh kisses him, pressed against his chest, and it is not long before Matthew’s hands change from gentle to searching. Juniper growls and grabs Matthew’s shirt, but before she stalks off, she licks his hand. Juniper is Caragh’s familiar, and because Caragh loves Matthew, so does she.
“Caragh Milone,” he says against her lips, and again as he kisses her neck, as she arches to meet his hands, fumbling at the buttons of her shirt. “Marry me.”
Caragh’s heart pounds between them. She slips her arm around his back and holds him fast when she says no.
He is not surprised. He has asked before and heard the same. His hand slides down, along her leg, and she holds her breath.
Afterward, when they lie entwined, half dozing in the late-afternoon sun, he asks why she said no this time.
“Because you don’t mean it,” she says quietly. “You’re only seventeen, Matt. And I have five years on you.”
“I don’t know why you keep telling me that. Like you think I haven’t heard. Or can’t count.”
Caragh smiles. Matthew thinks their ages are just right. Strong-gifted naturalists live long lives, so she will be one hundred and he will be ninety-five, and they will die together in their bed, on the same day. Caragh touches his face.
“If you can count, then count to three. And ask again then.”
“Three days?”
“Matthew.”
“Three months?”
She shakes her head.
“Three years, Caragh,” he says, “is forever to wait.”
“To you it is. And that’s why I’m saying no.”