She hands me a bunch of tarragon tied up with twine. I reach into my pocket and she leans over and slaps my hand. Her rings sting but I know she didn’t mean them to. “No, ma’am, not today you don’t pay. Not for one thing, ya hear?”

“Thanks, Rose. Really.”

“You’re welcome, Small-fry. See you around sunset.”

* * *

Someone’s ringing the chapel bell. Every once in a while there’ll be talk about buying a thing you could set to make the bell ring on the hour, which seems like it would be really nice actually. But a lot of the Wrinklies thought it would be dodgy having a machine keeping time, and I can see their point, too. But leaving it up to the Swans was a massive fail. When they tried to work out a system of people coming and ringing the bell themselves it fell apart pretty quickly. That’s what Rose told me. Wrinklies would show up late or miss a shift altogether and people kept getting confused about what time it was. After a couple of days no one was using it to tell the time anyway, so they decided it was pointless to try, and let it drop. Since everyone likes the bell, people just ring it whenever they feel like it. And they ring it before island meetings, but they’re not having one today, they’re having one tomorrow—the meeting to talk about the Duchess—so right now it’s just someone ringing the bell for the hell of it. It doesn’t mean anything.

I listen to it anyway. I wish I’d started counting the tolls right away. Probably six so far. I head for the center and climb the rocky path that leads up to the chapel and keep counting. Seven more. The grass brushes my legs and as I approach the chapel it feels like I’m walking up to a big, friendly, sleepy animal. Maybe it appeals to me so much because it’s right in the middle of the island. If you’re looking at the chapel, you can’t see the ocean. It’s the one exception, the one place where you can feel safe from the sea. But if I corrected the Swans every time they pulled their whole “Have you noticed that you can see the ocean from every point in the island?” routine, I’d seem like a smart-ass. Or, what’s that thing Rose is always calling me? Contrary.

There are people inside talking so I don’t go in. I think it’s the quilting group. I decide to go to the Oceanic for a bit.