My Dearest,

All couples have their secrets. Some marriages are built on them. The truth of the matter, though, the reason for our impending upheaval, is that I have learned yours, but you have yet to learn mine.

Chapter One

Those that lived outside of Griswoeld, the few that knew of its existence, often remarked on the island’s name humorously, as it translated, roughly, to world of gray. Men would stand in their smoking jackets and discuss how, because Griswoeld was an island province and a small one at that, hardly anything of note happened there, and surely not enough for it to be considered a world or even a worldly place. A lady fashionably reclined on a sofa might comment to another that her husband worked at the Hall of Records, and though there were a good deal of overcast days in Griswoeld, sunny days were, in fact, not so scarce. The inhabitants, however, knew Griswoeld to be an apt name, for it was their gray little world. And when the gray days did come, there was something so startlingly oppressive about them. An uncanny eeriness to the winds that seemed to whisper through the thickets. A loathsome odor that smelt of decay and clung to one’s nostrils like barnacles to a boat. A heaviness to the gray clouds slinking across the skies, turning them into shadowy beasts threatening to deluge their torrents on those below. It was enough to send a panicked fear creeping up the spine, alongside a distressing certainty: there would never be a sunny day again.

Today, as it were, was a sunny day. So sunny that the Baroness, Sido Longray, had her hat angled low as she crested the hill overlooking the harbor. The hills of Griswoeld were not like the grassy and green hills of other regions, those with long blades that billowed in the breeze and wildflowers that dotted the cliffsides. No, the grassy hills of Griswoeld were of a dull brown shade, and though the more romantic inhabitants of the island liked to call it a golden brown or a sun-kissed bronze, it was neither. It was simply brown. And the blades did not grow long. Rather, they grew stunted and misshapen, looking quite like a head of hair under the unsteady hands of a drunken barber, bits taken off here and great clumps snipped off there till one was left with a horribly uneven mess. The first time she had seen it, Sido had thought it hideously ugly. Her opinion had not since changed.

Up above, seagulls squawked, and down below, men bellowed loud enough to be heard on the hill. A merchant ship was berthed at Dunator Harbor.

Three women dressed in cotton muslins, their linen bonnets shielding their pretty visages, were huddled on the unsightly hilltop, tittering at the pleasing sight below. They dipped their heads, murmuring quick hellos to the Baroness. She greeted them in kind, allowing them to return their attentions to the goings on at the dock.

It was always a much-anticipated affair for the islanders, watching the sailors as they hauled cargo onto the ships. Undoubtedly, once they’d finished, the girls would head down to the bakery to convene with the baker’s son, Aarl, who, at that very moment, would be sitting in the bakery’s attic window drawing. Located as the bakery was on a slight incline, the attic window offered the loveliest view of the harbor, chiefly the shirtless sailors with their bulging biceps and taunt abdomens, all captured in effortless mimicry through charcoal and paper. After the girls had bought a treat, they’d gather around Aarl, claiming it to be a matter of a purely academic interest in the arts; a claim everyone else knew to be utter rubbish, with some commenting they all were nothing more than lewd creatures. Others were more indulging, laughing off their youthful energy and spirit as they recalled their own juvenescence spent in a similar manner—for there were few pleasures to partake in on the island, such that those that did exist were consumed ravenously.

Sido knew how it would all unfold. One need not be an oracle or prophet to divine the happenings of Griswoeld. It was like the most rehearsed of plays, each day the same as the one before, with all the players playing their part.

Several times a year, the merchant ship Gilvere sailed into port. Twice a year, it came to collect the wool gathered by the island’s farmers, and once a month, it would be loaded up with barrels of the vibrant dye powders produced by the island’s residents. Upon every arrival, the indolent porter would sit on his throne of crates and claim his knee was in a bad way, leaving the rough and gruff Captain Undehill to mutter in umbrage as he marched over to sign the dock log. The porter also made similar claims every three weeks when the mail boat came with letters and weeks old newspapers from the Great Continent’s mainland.

Today, being sunny and bright, meant the young and recently widowed Helna would be strutting along the segway, loudly bemoaning the heat as she lackadaisically waved her fan, waiting for the opportune moment to loosen her grip so it would go tumbling from her hand. And when a sailor stooped to pick it up, if he was handsome, she would stoop a little lower so he might better appreciate her ample cleavage—and if he had good teeth, she would reveal some of her other charms.

Down where the well-maintained dock had long since given over to nature, the widow’s younger brother would be sitting on a rock overlooking the sea and, with the same nimble fingers he’d used to lift a sailor’s spyglass, would be holding it to his eye to wistfully watch the horizon. This he would do all day were it not for the boy’s grandmother, who would inevitably find him and use her own set of deft fingers to pinch the boy’s ear and drag him off to the hills to work the clay for dye minerals.

Up by the stream, the women along Riddle Lane would’ve finished with washing the laundry and, having shared their bits of gossip and many grumblings, returned home to hang their things to dry in the warm sun. Up on Ilgar’s Crest, the milkman would be tossing the burnt bits of lunch his wife had made into his neighbor’s pig pen before tucking into his rocking chair with a pipe, the same pipe his wife would remove when he later fell asleep in the shade.

All this passed like the ticking hands of a fine-tuned watch, one Sido did not need to see to know it moved ever onward, events unfurling just as all the people of this island knew them to, so greatly attuned they were to the patterns and happenings of one another. Those of stronger stuff simply took it as it was.

Sido was not made of stronger stuff, and she found the monotony of Griswoeld to be terribly dull most days and downright stifling others. No more so than in her husband’s absence. He’d been gone for nearly a week, and it seemed like months.

And stood upon the hill, her eyes riveted on the ship’s bound sails, she couldn’t help feeling like those tightly constricted pieces of cloth, wishing for her ties to be undone so she could billow open with the breeze and travel far, far away.

Perhaps, looking back, she could blame the seagull. It cawed and fluttered about carelessly, no thought behind the easy way it flapped its wings and caught the wind, just like a sail. The bird did not ask why it flew. It had been blessed with wings and so it flew. A truth. An inevitability. As indelible as the sea.

Sido looked at that sun-kissed sea. In her pocket, she fingered a string of three smooth pearls. She thought of all that could be, the future tumbling like a coin clattering down a staircase, landing at her feet with a thud that seemed to echo in her ears.

With a subdued goodbye to the girls, she hurried down the hill and headed to the harbor. She offered hellos and smiles to many a people, chattering with a few of the sailors. One of the men on deck caught her gaze and gave her a charming grin, to which she returned a polite nod before hiding her stare under the brim of her hat, lest he see the longing in her eyes. Not for him, no, but for something out in the distance, something far beyond her gaze.

When she greeted Captain Undehill, they spoke at length. The lazy porter listened in for a time but quickly grew bored of their conversation of daffodils and other flowers, the names of which he couldn’t enunciate, slightly surprised the oaf Undehill could.