But there had to be some way to release all this...rage. It wasn’t an emotion Leelo had a lot of experience with, but now that she’d identified it, there was no denying that’s what it was. She was full of seething, burning rage. Tate was gone, her mother was going to die, and what would she have then? Her bitter aunt and her prickly cousin, who was being slowly poisoned by Ketty, just like the lake.

What had happened to Ketty? she wondered for the thousandth time. A loveless marriage was bad, but surely not so bad that it could permanently alter a woman’s heart. After all, her husband was long dead. She was free to marry again if she wanted, or not; she could choose happiness. But Ketty didn’t seem interested in being happy. It was almost as if she relished her spite. And Sage was following right in her mother’s footsteps.

Fiona would tell Leelo to be calm, to let her anger pass like a storm, to sit removed and watch it dissipate into the ether until she found acceptance. Her rage was of no use to anyone, certainly not Tate. And it wasn’t as if Leelo would be stuck with her aunt forever. Mama would make sure Leelo found a suitable husband, someone she liked, if not loved. Leelo could start her own household with Fiona. Let Ketty and Sage keep the house. It wasn’t important where they lived, if they had each other. Perhaps if Fiona was away from Ketty and her constant criticism, her health would improve and she’d be able to weave again.

But the rage wasn’t fading. If anything, it was building. The more she thought about Tate out there on his own, away from the loving arms of his mother and sister, the angrier she got. And the more she thought about Ketty’s indifference to her sister’s pain, never mind her nephew’s, the more she wanted to hurt someone herself.

Once again, the song—Leelo wasn’t sure what it was, not the hunting song or the drowning song, but something new and insistent—pressed against her throat. She felt almost mad with the need to release it. And so, without really thinking it through, but feeling that it was the only thing she could do to punish everyone and everything that had stolen her brother from her, she pulled her little knife out of her pocket. And, choking on her own music, she drove it into the pine tree she had fed her entire life, with sacrifices and prey and even her own blood. She drove it in again and again until her arm ached from the motion and the knife lodged so deep into the wood that she couldn’t draw it out again.