Leelo waited with her mother after that, until everyone who was coming had assembled. Ketty had been speaking with the other council members, each of whom represented roughly thirty islanders, but she approached the girls now.

“The ceremony is about to start,” she said to Sage and Leelo, squeezing their shoulders. “You should go down by the water.”

Leelo obeyed her aunt, treading carefully to keep her boots clean. The banks here were muddy from snowmelt, though shoots of green grass were valiantly poking their way through. Soon, the entire island would be verdant with spring. Leelo would still be a Watcher, and, unless a miracle occurred, Tate would be leaving.

“Watchers,” one of the council members said, clapping her hands. “The ceremony is beginning. Please take your lily from Councilwoman Ketty.”

Ketty was standing in front of a metal basin filled with water. Floating along the top were twelve white water lilies, one for each Watcher. They were grown by the council in a pond that Endlans were forbidden to visit before their year as Watchers was over.

Ketty smiled proudly at Leelo and Sage as they took their flowers. When they had all gathered at the shore, the rest of the islanders began to sing, a beautiful melody that was as uplifting as the drowning song was mournful. For the first time that day, Leelo felt some of the excitement she imagined the other Watchers must be feeling. She would be an adult by the time this year was over. She would be able to make her own decisions.

But of course, she couldn’t really. She couldn’t give Tate magic or make her mother well again. And she couldn’t keep her own heart from breaking. She remembered how her mother had told her once that heartache and grief are their own strange kind of gift because they remind you that you still have a heart to break.

When you stop caring, when you stop grieving, that’s when you know you’re really lost, Fiona said. Leelo understood even then that she was talking about Aunt Ketty, who never once spoke of loss. Hers or Fiona’s.

The Watchers knelt down and set their lilies in the water, where they floated like tiny ice floes on the surface. Slowly, the lilies drifted out into the lake. They would eventually take root, until finally the poison in the lake dissolved them. They lasted longer than birds or people or anything else that went into the water. But eventually the magic consumed everything it touched, like a beast that devoured every scrap of its prey, leaving nothing behind.

Not even bones.

Chapter Six