ISLAND LORE
Karigan’s aunts had always been of the opinion that
applying food to a problem usually solved it. They placed before
her a bowl of goose and leek soup from the kettle simmering over
the fire, as well as peach preserves, tarts, and
muffins.
Aunt Tory uncorked a
bottle of pear brandy. Tea, she declared, just wasn’t efficacious
enough to succor the distress caused by her brother, and after
splashing a dram into a goblet for Karigan, she poured herself a
cup near to overflowing. Then she took a long, hard draught of the
stuff, ending with a satisfied sigh. She refilled her cup while her
sisters looked on in astonishment and severe
disapproval.
For Karigan’s part,
she sat at the kitchen table with head in hands, the fire warming
her back. She had no appetite whatsoever and sat mute while Aunt
Stace recounted her confrontation with their brother.
“We should sit on
him,” Aunt Tory said.
“I’m not sure that
would help Karigan,” Aunt Stace replied.
“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.”
“Which of course,”
Aunt Gretta said, “did not stop Stevic one jot. One evening our
father spotted Stevic carrying some burden for Kariny from the
village mercantile. The whipping he received—it was ferocious.
That’s when he left the island.”
“He promised to come
back for Kariny,” Aunt Tory said, “as soon as he found work, made
his way in the world. We had no hope of ever seeing him again, but
his love for Kariny made him true. He came back and sailed away
with her. We soon followed.”
“Kariny never
doubted him,” Aunt Gretta mused, and the others murmured in
agreement.
And that brings us
back to you,” Aunt Stace said. “Taking
into consideration your own touch of magic, it is our belief that
the lore about Kariny’s bloodline wasn’t just stories as she
claimed. That uncanny touch has come down to you.”
Karigan had already
arrived at the same conclusion. It only made sense. How else could
she explain the Rider call and her minor ability with magic? Where
else would it have come from?
She wondered how
powerful her ancestors were, but she was sure her aunts would have
told her if they knew; if there was anything of note from the
island lore. Perhaps, just like Karigan, their abilities were
minor, remained buried just below the surface, dormant until
awakened. Karigan’s own surfaced because of the Rider call. The
Green Rider brooch she wore, a winged horse, augmented her ability
to fade from sight, seemingly to vanish.
She brushed her
fingers over her brooch, the gold smooth and cool. Her aunts
probably saw some other piece of jewelry, or maybe nothing at all,
for a spell of concealment had been placed on the brooches long ago
allowing only Riders to perceive them properly.
“Your father,” Aunt
Stace said, “loves you. Loves you deeply. He was not thinking when
he spoke out earlier.”
Despite her aunt’s
reassurance, her father’s words still hurt. Karigan’s hand went to
the moonstone in her pocket. She believed her father was very much
in denial about her mother. Perfect, he
had called her. Pure from the taint of magic.
Karigan shook her
head, thinking she should just pack up her scant belongings and
begin the journey back to Sacor City. Coming home had been a
mistake, though she wasn’t sure how she could have gotten out of an
errand assigned her directly by the captain. All she had done was
stir up turmoil. The brothel and her father’s pirate past no longer
seemed to matter.
Then she remembered
she couldn’t leave without her father’s reply to the captain’s
message. That meant having to face him, but at least it would be as
a king’s messenger, not as his daughter.
Just as Karigan
resolved to leave as soon as she could, the kitchen door opened and
her father entered, cold air drafting around him. “I have hitched
up the sleigh,” he told her. “Grab a coat. We are going into
town.”