He frowns, but closes his eyes. Bryn slips behind her screen to change into her nightshirt. In the pocket of my jacket are three daisies plucked from the hillside. They are soggy and most of the petals have fallen away. I set them out gently under my pillow.

My sister steps out from behind the screen, her brow crinkling. “What are you doing?”

“You put flowers under your pillow on Midsummer’s Eve to dream about the one you love,” I explain.

“You can’t do that, Kaspar.”

My sister and her rules. So bossy. “Why not?”

“Only girls put flowers under their pillows at Midsummer.”

“What do boys put under pillows?”

“They don’t,” she says with a huff. “It’s not natural.”

“I’m doing it, anyway.”

I lay the pillow over the soggy daisies and climb into bed. Pip is already asleep and singing his sea shanties. This one is about a sailor who falls in love with an oyster and loses his pizzle on his wedding night.

I watch my sister take something from the pocket of her apron and arrange it under her pillow.

“Daisies?” I ask. “To dream about Calder?”

She holds an object up to the light. A fishhook.

I’m confused. “What kind of dreams do fishhooks bring?”

“No dreams,” she says as she lays her head down. “Fishhooks snare wedding vows, killing them.”

Her intended marriage to the great oaf, Sligo. I have not heard of this fishhook trick to spoil a marriage, but I admire my sister’s craftiness.

I blow out the candle. “I hope it works.”

“Goodnight, Kaspar.”

Pip sings his shanty, getting to the part where the severed manhood is polished into a pearl inside the oyster’s shell. When he finally dozes off, I hear my sister crying herself to sleep.

***

The storm is a rough one, with a wind that keeps us awake as it clatters the door and whistles down the chimney. The shutters hold, the windows survive. By morning, it is all over and the sun rises strong on the rain-drenched village. A boat moored on the pier has capsized and some of the cottages have lost a window or swaths of thatch from their roofs. Fish have been swept up out of the sea and flung right into the town square. I watch a crab scuttling over the roof of the blacksmith’s shop.

The three of us are clearing storm debris from our yard, when Pip finds a starfish under the hedge. Bryndis tells him to toss it back into the sea, but Pip wants to keep it for a pet.

“Don’t be stupid,” I tell him. “You can’t make a pet out of that.”

“Why not? A starfish would be the perfect pet. I’m going to name him Goblin.”

Pip runs to fill a pail from the rain barrel and places the creature in it. Freshwater, not sea water. The thing is dead within the hour.