At every possible moment, she stole a glance at her friend. Never in their two years together had she ever seen Mabena Moon with her hair in anything but a tight bun, her clothes anything but the expected high-collared, long-sleeved grey dress. Even over the past week, she’d never caught her with more than a few stray curls blowing in the breeze.

Today though . . . today, Mabena Moon looked like someone altogether different. She wore a white blouse, its sleeves loose to the point of being billowy, and a simple brown skirt that looked soft and comfortable from endless washings. And her hair—she wore it in a braid much like Libby’s, but with pieces slipping out in wild surrender to the tug of the wind.

Other animals underwent transformations, to be sure. The permanent metamorphosis of the caterpillar to butterfly; crustaceans molting old shells and growing or finding new; the shifting colors of the chameleon. There was always a purpose to such change.

Mabena had said that her purpose was simply being able to man the small sailboat in which her father was sending them back to St. Mary’s. Her usual dress, she said, was too restrictive to allow her to manage the sails.

No doubt true. But something about the way her neighbors were calling out to her through the morning mist made Libby quite certain that this Mabena Moon was the one they all recognized. And that the other—the one Libby had thought she’d known—was the imposter.

“There she is!” a deep voice boomed even now, not seeming at all concerned with waking any of the neighbors not currently trekking to the water at the crack of dawn. “Benna girl! I scarcely believed it when they said you’d come home. Tresco isn’t the same without you, dearover.”

It was an older man who sidled up to them, arms outstretched and grin spread just as wide.

Chuckling, Mabena stepped to his side and let him enfold her in what looked like a bear of a hug. “Looks just the same to me.”

“An imitation, that’s all. You’re the soul of us.”

Mabena snorted at that and pulled away again. But her lips were curled up in a smile. She motioned to Libby. “Have you met Lady Elizabeth yet?”