“She could sit on him, too. The more of us, the better.”

Aunt Gretta snickered, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

“He believes I’m cursed,” Karigan said plaintively.

“Do not take it to heart, Kari girl,” Aunt Stace said. “He’s just angry the Rider magic took you away from him. He fears for your well-being, for he knows your work can be dangerous.”

When Karigan finally succumbed to the Rider call, she had to explain to them why she had to leave to be a king’s messenger, why she must go to Sacor City. She had to explain why she could not be a proper merchant’s daughter, working with her father and marrying to produce heirs that would carry on the line and clan. Her announcement predictably upset her family, especially her father.

“I know he doesn’t like magic,” Karigan said, “but I’ve never seen him like that.”

“It was very much part of our upbringing to regard magic as evil,” Aunt Stace replied. “Our father was strict on the matter and every rest day we had to listen to the moon priest rail against the evil of the old days. He preached that if it were ever born upon the Earth again, it ought to be destroyed, along with anyone with the ability to use it.”

Green Riders kept silent about even their minor abilities because of this sort of irrational fear and intolerance. What would her fellow citizens think if they learned magic users served the king? How could they trust the king or his messengers?

“Our father,” Aunt Stace continued, “was particularly fervent in his beliefs and used a switch liberally if any one of us even uttered the word magic. All we knew was that it was vile and corrupt.”

“And of course,” Aunt Brini said, her gaze focused on her needlework, “Stevic was smitten with Kariny Gray.”

“What does she have to do with it?” Karigan demanded, turning to Aunt Stace. “You were telling father to talk to me about her.”

“Yes, so I was. And since he’s seen fit to run off into the snow again, I daresay we’ll do the telling for him.” Her sisters murmured in assent.

“Your mother’s line,” Aunt Brini said, “has always been known on the island to be a trifle ...” And here she whispered, “fey.”

“Uncanny,” Aunt Tory added.

“Just a touch,” Aunt Stace emphasized. “You see, there was not so much written history on Black Island, but quite a lot of spoken lore that has been passed down through the generations and discussed as if something that happened a century ago happened only yesterday. Your thrice-great grandmother, for instance, is said to have had conversations with fishermen who never returned from the sea.”

“Their spirits,” Aunt Tory interjected, features animated, “would come to shore on foggy nights, it is said, smelling of brine and moaning like the wind, seaweed dragging at their feet!”

“Tory!” Aunt Stace snapped, and her sister subsided. She turned back to Karigan with an annoyed expression. “You see how these stories get embellished?”

After Karigan’s own experiences with the spirits of the dead, she could not discount Aunt Tory’s description, but she simply nodded.

“There were others in your mother’s line,” Aunt Stace said, “who were held to be uncommonly knowing.”

“Uncommonly knowing?”

All four aunts nodded.

“Knew things beyond normal ken,” Aunt Gretta explained. “About the weather, the fishing, and peoples’ lives. The future.”

“Your mother,” Aunt Brini said, glancing up from her needlework, “laughed when she heard such talk, and said they were just stories. She was a very practical woman with her feet planted squarely on the ground, except for her penchant for riding out at night as Stace already told you. Of course, we all have some odd habits, like Gretta who must make her bed at least three times before she is satisfied.”

“I do not!”

“Hah! You do, too! I’ve counted.”

“Well, you only eat one thing on your plate at a time,” Aunt Gretta said.

Aunt Brini sniffed and punched her needle through cloth. “It’s a texture thing.”

Aunt Stace rolled her eyes. “Your mother’s family,” she told Karigan, “was mostly well-regarded on the island, for not all held as harsh a view toward magic as our father did. There were a few, certainly, who might smile to your grandmother Gray’s face, then make the sign of the crescent moon when she looked away, and some whispered of witches in the family and other rubbish. But on the whole? They were considered law-abiding, productive members of the village who followed the traditional ways. They even endured the rantings of the moon priest on rest days.”

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me this?” Karigan asked. Magic in her mother’s line? The brandy was beginning to look good.

“You never asked,” Aunt Stace replied. “And no doubt our own antipathy for our past on the island made us reluctant to discuss it. But getting back to your father, he was so smitten by Kariny, he’d defend her and her family’s honor if he heard someone make a remark about their more uncanny side. This usually led to fights.”

“Black eyes and bloody noses,” Aunt Brini intoned, nodding.

“Not to mention an additional beating from our father,” Aunt Stace said, “who believed all the lore about the Grays and did not approve of Stevic’s interest in the youngest girl. If he spoke her name, or even glanced her way, out came the switch.”