The Shadow Isle Read Online Free Page A

casket and held it up to the light, twisting it this way and that as if he were looking for a maker’s mark. “It’s too filthy to see anything.” He set the book down on the bench. “Put that book back in, lad, and we’ll hide it under some straw for the morrow.”
    “Well and good, then. Do you think this belongs to Haen Marn?”
    “I do. The night he saved me, Evandar told me that he needed a messenger, and it was going to be my son, when I had one. I’m supposing he meant someone to bring them this.”
    “And why couldn’t he have taken it over himself?”
    “Witches can’t travel across water, nor the Folk of the Seelie Host, either, or so I’ve always heard.”
    “So he needed a man to do his ferrying for him. I suppose that makes sense of a sort.”
    “Naught about Haen Marn makes sense.” Domnal smiled with a bare twitch of his mouth. “I think me it might be dangerous to forget that.”
    Dougie went back to bed. He woke just before sunrise, got up and dressed for the second time, then went out to the barn in the cold gray light to feed the cows. His brother Ian arrived soon after with his milking stool and pails. Dougie fed the horses, turned them out into pasture, then returned to the house to talk with Jehan. He found her in the kitchen, kneading a massive lump of bread dough.
    Over the years she’d borne eight children and done plenty of farm work as well. She was stout and her hands were a mass of calluses, but despite the gray in her red hair and the lines around her green eyes, Dougie could see how beautiful she must have been when his father had won her.
    “I was thinking of going back out to Haen Marn today,” Dougie said. “Will you be needing me for aught?”
    “Not truly,” Jehan said. “But you know, it’s time you married your Berwynna and brought her home.”
    “I’d like naught better, Mother. Berwynna says she wants to marry me as well. It’s Lady Angmar who’s dead set against it. She doesn’t want Berwynna to ever leave the island, not for a single day. She keeps saying it’s too dangerous.”
    “Is it the local folk she fears? Once you two were married by Father Colm in the chapel, then all this stupid talk about witches would stop.”
    “It’s not that. She won’t explain why.”
    “You’re sure she has a real reason, then?” Jehan frowned at him. “Or does she look upon us with scorn?”
    Dougie shrugged to show that he didn’t know. He was suddenly afraid, wondering if his Wynni was a witch, after all. His father had told him that witches couldn’t cross water, hadn’t he? Jehan paused to push a stray lock of gray hair back behind her ear with her little finger.
    “I’ll tell you what,” Dougie said. “This very day, I’ll ask Lady Angmar about claiming my Berwynna. If she says me nay again, I’ll keep after her and see if I can find out if she truly doesn’t want the lass to leave the island or if she thinks I’m not worthy or suchlike.”
    “Well and good, then.” Jehan looked up from the kneading. “You might as well know the truth.”
    Before he left, Dougie put a clean shirt on under his plaid, then fetched the mysterious book from the barn. Since he was going to Haen Marn anyway, he figured, he might as well run Evandar’s errand for him.
    Toward noon, Lon brought a bucket of fish into the kitchen hut behind the manse. Berwynna put on her oldest tunic, wrapped a fragment of stained, fraying plaid around her for a skirt, and set to work cleaning the catch. Marnmara’s six cats rubbed round her ankles and whined. The orange brindle leaped up onto the workbench with its usual dirty paws. When she yelled and swatted the animal, it jumped down again. Berwynna chopped off the fish heads and tails with efficient strokes of her long knife, then tossed them down at varying distances to give every cat a chance at this bounty. She gutted the fish, then threw the innards to the mewling horde as well.
    Feeding the island took hard work. Despite the