“Which is precisely why we send them away,” Ketty said. “It’s a kindness, not a punishment. Pieter knew the consequences of coming back.”

“What about the consequences of harboring an incantu?” Sage asked.

Ketty cleaned her daughter’s hair out of the comb and tossed it into the fire, where it was quickly reduced to ash. “Isola’s family will be shunned. For a time, anyhow. I’ll speak with the council on Rosalie and Gant’s behalf. They are too much a part of this community to be outcasts forever, and it doesn’t seem as if they knew about Pieter until today.”

“And Isola herself?” Sage pressed.

“That poor girl will be dealing with the consequences for the rest of her life,” Fiona said quietly.

Sage rolled her eyes, unsatisfied with this response. “No one will marry her now, I bet.”

“Isola is ruined,” Ketty agreed. “If her parents are smart, they’ll turn her out sooner rather than later. There’s no reason they have to be pulled down by her mistake.”

Leelo’s heart ached for Isola. She couldn’t imagine being turned out by her own family. “But Pieter was one of us, and he wasn’t harming anyone. We didn’t even know he was here until today.”

Ketty scowled. “Once an incantu leaves, they’re an outsider, and outsiders are forbidden on Endla. Why must we go over this a thousand times, Leelo?”

“Not all outsiders are evil, Ketty.”

Leelo turned to look at her mother. She rarely spoke, and when she did, it was usually to agree with her sister. But tonight, it seemed, she wasn’t in the mood to placate.

Ketty responded to her sister’s comment with a look that could cut flesh.

“I’m tired,” Fiona sighed, rising from her chair. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

Taking their cue from Fiona, Leelo and Sage headed upstairs to their shared room, leaving Ketty to smolder in the dark along with the embers.

Sage and Leelo prepared for bed in silence, but Fiona’s words played over and over in Leelo’s mind as she climbed into bed, toying with one of the balls of bright felted wool she had made and strung into garlands. They hung from the headboard, the windowsill, the little bookcase they shared. The only other decoration was a pink-and-red circular woven rug that took up most of the floor. Their grandmother had woven it, before she died. It told Endla’s story, if you knew how to read the colors and patterns.

When she was younger, Leelo had asked her mother about it. “I know we came here to protect the Forest and ourselves,” she’d said. “But what happened out there in the world that was so terrible we had to leave?”