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THREESISTERSISLAND
SEPTEMBER1699
She called the storm
The gales of wind, the bolts of lightning, the rage of the sea that was both prison and protection She called the forces, those that lived within her, those that dwelled without The bright and the dark
Slender, with her cloak streas, she stood alone on the hipped beach Alone but for her rage and her grief And her power It was that power that filled her now, rushed inside her in wild, pounding strokes like a lover gone mad
And so, perhaps, it was
She had left husband and children to come to this place, left them under a spell-sleep that would keep them safe and unaware Once she had done what she had coain hold their much-loved faces in her hands
Her husband would grieve for her, and her children weep But she could not go back to them And she could not, would not, turn from the path she had chosen
Payh, would be met at last
She stood, ar in the tempest she had conjured Her hair flew free and wild, dark ribbons that slashed at the night like whips
“You ”
A woht in the storm as the fire after which she was naht have been fear
“It is already begun”
“Stop it now Sister, stop before it is too late You have no right”
“Right?” She as called Earth whirled, her eyes glowing fierce “Who has better right? When they murdered the innocents in Sale to stop it”
“Stop one flood, cause another You know this We made this place” Fire stretched out her arms, as if to encompass the island that rocked in the sea “For our safety and our survival, for our Craft”
“Safety? You can speak of safety, of survival, now? Our sister isdead ”
“And I grieve for her, as you do” Pleading, she crossed her hands between her breasts “My heart weeps as yours weeps Her children are in our keeping now Will you abandon them as well as your own?”
There was aat her heart as the wind tore at her hair Even recognizing it, she could not defeat it “He will not go unpunished He will not live while she does not”
“If you cause harm, you’ll have broken your vows You will have corrupted your power, and what you send out in the night will come back to you threefold”
“Justice has a price”
“Not this Never this Your husband will lose a wife, your children a mother And I another beloved sister More, even more than that, you break faith e are She would not have wanted this This would not have been her answer”
“She died rather than protect herself Died for what she is, for e are Our sister abjured power for what she called love And it killed her”
“Her choice” One that stayed bitter in the throat long after it ed “And still she harift in this dark way, and you doom yourself You doom us all”
“I cannot live, hidden here” There were tears in her eyes now, and in the storht, they burned red as blood “I cannot turn from this My choice My destiny I take his life for hers, and damn him for all time”
And calling for vengeance, shooting it like a bright and deadly arrow from a bow, she as known as Earth sacrificed her soul
One
THREESISTERSISLAND
JANUARY2002
Sand, frosted withcold, crunched under her feet as she ran along the curving shore Inco on the crusted surface like tattered lace Overhead, the gulls called, relentlessly
Her ears in the secondrun Her pace was a fast and disciplined jog, and her breath rushed out in white plumes And rushed in, sharp and cold as shards of ice
She felt fabulous
The wintry beach held no footprints but her own, and hers were staentle sweep of winter beach
If she’d chosen to do her three ht line, she could have crossed Three Sisters from side to side at its widest point
The idea of that always pleased her
The little clump of land off the coast of Massachusetts was hers, every hill, every street, every cliff and inlet Deputy Ripley Todd felt e, its residents, its well-being She felt responsibility
She could see the rising sun glint against the s of storefronts on High Street In a couple of hours, the shops would open, people would walk along the streets going about the day’s business