Mrs. Stoney climbed down from the seat at the front of the wagon and Alys curtseyed and kissed her mother-in-law, and as the adults greeted each other, she slid her hand in Richard Stoney’s warm grip.

“I’ll get her things,” Ned said to Alinor. “Are they all ready?”

Alinor and Ned went into the house and brought out a small pile of good linen, the best that Ferry-house had, and a knapsack of Alys’s personal goods. Mrs. Stoney’s eyes flickered over the little bag, but she said nothing. Richard gave Alinor his hand to help her into the back of the cart and lifted Alys in.

“We’ll walk over the mire,” Ned said for him and Rob. “See you at the church door!”

“Don’t delay!” Alys warned him. “Don’t get your shoes muddy—go round by the bank!”

“I shan’t be stolen by mermaids,” Rob teased her. “We’ll get there before you do!”

Mr. Stoney clicked to his pair of horses and they headed south as Ned put the cover over the fire, shut the back door, and walked with Rob on the little paths across the flooded harbor to church.

The whole parish turned out to witness the wedding of the pretty Reekie girl to the wealthy farmer’s son, many of them glad to see Alinor’s daughter doing so well, a few murmuring that it was a shame she was going off the island. Ned was known to everyone in Sealsea Island because of his long service on the ferry, and his father before him, and most of the women had consulted Alinor for their health or for the delivery of a baby. The marriage was an extraordinary upward leap for the family who had worked the ferry on the island for as long as anyone could remember, but everyone conceded that if any girl was likely to marry well for her looks, that would be Alys.

There were a lot of comments about Rob as he took his place in the men’s pews at the back. Some people who had seen him in the summer processing to the front of the church with the Peacheys were glad to see him returned to a lowly place. But the young people, especially the young women, remarked on the difference between Rob their former playmate, son of the missing fisherman Zachary Reekie, and this new Rob, with his command of Latin, his apprenticeship in Chichester, and his well-cut jacket.

Nobody remarked aloud that the two Reekie children had been blessed with extraordinary opportunities, given that they had been born in a fisherman’s cottage to a ferryman’s daughter and a wastrel father who was now missing. Nobody said that their good luck could only be something other than chance, charm, or ability. Nobody repeated the old story that they were faerie born, that their own father had sworn it, and that their good looks and good fortune were the gifts of their mother—a faerie concubine, beloved of the unseen world, and guided by it. But almost everyone thought: how else could the Reekie children be so undeservingly blessed? How else could their mother walk out of a violent marriage with her head high and not a mark on her? How else should Zachary so conveniently disappear? Nobody would say such a thing on Alys’s wedding day, but a number of people thought it, and glanced to each other, and saw that others were thinking it too.