“Yes. He was jovial and loving around others, but alone, he could be very different. He yelled at my sister and sometimes at Sage. He even hit Ketty from time to time.”

Leelo gasped. She couldn’t imagine anyone striking Aunt Ketty. She was the fiercest woman Leelo knew. “Why?”

“There was never a reason for it. Of course, what reason could there have been? He had a temper, and he never learned to control it. Some men on Endla think a woman should be obedient to their husband.”

Leelo’s stomach soured. “Was Father like that?”

“No, of course not. Your father was a good man. A bit too agreeable, some would say. He listened to your uncle more than anyone. They were friends, you see, long before your aunt and I married them. Kellan and Hugo had Watcher duty together, during a particularly challenging year. A group of outsiders decided to cross the ice the winter they had just started duty. They came bearing axes and hatchets, determined to chop down the Wandering Forest.”

Leelo hung on her mother’s words. A group of outsiders? A planned assault on the island? Why had she never heard of this before? “What happened?”

“Your father and uncle were the first men—well, boys, really—to discover the outsiders. They managed to take a couple down with their arrows, but they were vastly outnumbered and made a run for it. The Forest helped in its way. One man was crushed by a tree he himself had felled; another plummeted into a pit and broke his neck. More Watchers joined the fight, and eventually three outsiders were captured.”

Leelo stared wide-eyed at her mother. “And then? The lake or the Forest?”

Fiona sighed. “It was something else, something we don’t need to speak of. All you need to know is that they died.”

Leelo steadied herself on the counter next to her mother. “And Father and Uncle?”

“They became inseparable after that. And when Ketty and Hugo married, it seemed inevitable that your father and I would do the same.”

Leelo couldn’t help but notice that Fiona hadn’t said anything about love. “What did Aunt Ketty sacrifice for you, Mama?”

Fiona’s hazel eyes were damp with tears when she turned to her daughter and said, “Everything.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Leelo had been tromping around the middle of the island for what felt like hours, and she’d found nothing resembling a boat. She had never seen the pond where the flowers for the ceremony were grown, and she had no idea where the council members even met once a month. It didn’t make sense. It was a small island, and she knew it like the back of her hand.

She tried to think of anywhere the adults had discouraged Endla’s children from visiting. The only place she could think of was a small grotto northwest of the pine grove.