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gloved fingers holding tight to the reins, she made the sign of the cross over her chest.
    Guiding her mare along the rutted road, she considered for the hundredth time if she were slowly but surely going out of her mind. As Alabaster raced easily past a fallow field where the earth was already turned, she wondered why she was haunted by such vivid nightmares of dark omens and jeweled daggers.
    “Bother and broomsticks,” she muttered, angling northwest at a fork in the road, where two runny-nosed boys in woolen caps were throwing punches at each other as their pregnant mother tugged on the leather rein of a tired donkey carrying bundles of sticks.
    This curse, as she thought of it, had been with her for as long as she could remember, an oddity that set her apart from others, especially her siblings. Though she’d never actually heard words issued from the grave before, she’d experienced more than her share of premonitions. As a child she had played with friends only she had seen, people and animals she was certain were as real as those visible to others.
    Her brothers, older and ready to tease at a moment’s notice, had chided her mercilessly when she’d spoken of the friends they couldn’t see. Tadd and Kelan had taken great pleasure in taunting her and embarrassing her to the point that she’d been near tears but smart enough to staunch their flow rather than suffer another onslaught of laughter.
    Her sisters had been no better. Daylynn, the baby, had giggled, though Bryanna suspected the younger girl hadn’t really understood the joke. But Morwenna, the eldest daughter, had made Bryanna regret confiding in any of her siblings.
    “That’s such rot,” Morwenna had admonished as they’d been walking their horses through the orchard and plucking a few forgotten winter apples still dangling from a tree devoid of leaves. They’d been in the outer bailey of Penbrooke Keep. The winter sky had been the color of steel, the air crisp but smelling of smoke and horse dung. The farrier’s forge had burned bright, his hammer clanging loudly through the bailey as he’d shaped horseshoes upon his anvil. A stable boy had been sweating as he pushed a cart piled high with dirty straw and manure toward the gates.
    “Is anyone near you now?” Morwenna had asked from astride her larger gelding, a big brown beast with a single white stocking. “I mean, any of those friends you were talking about?”
    Bryanna, slowly realizing that her sister, too, might mock her, had nodded slowly. “Aye,” she’d said, lifting her chin defiantly. “A few.”
    “Really?” The older girl had taken a bite from her apple, then wrinkled her nose and spit out a wormy piece. “Well, I can’t see her or him or them, so they aren’t there.” Morwenna’s eyes had narrowed as a crow had fluttered onto one of the bare branches. “You’re not teasing me, are you? Not making this up for your own amusement at my expense?”
    Bryanna had swallowed hard under her older sister’s steady glare, but shook her head, her reddish curls bobbing defiantly. “They are here with me. With us.”
    One of Morwenna’s dark eyebrows had arched in disbelief.
    “Here? Where?” Morwenna had asked. “On the horse with you?”
    “Of course not,” Bryanna had scoffed. “Why would they be on my horse?”
    “Well, I don’t know, goose. Why don’t you tell me?”
    Bryanna had sighed in long-suffering boredom. “Wolf . . . she’s there, peering out from behind the bole of that tree. No, not that one . . . over there, by the sheep pen.” She’d pointed to the gnarled trunk of a tree. “And then there’s Lil. She’s shy and hiding over there, near the well.”
    When Morwenna had turned her gaze to the well near the stables, Bryanna was certain that Lil, her silent friend, would show herself. Instead she peered shyly from behind the wooden bucket that dangled from a thick rod and creaked as it swayed in the wind.
    “Lil?” Morwenna repeated, her voice