She’d taken a stand, only to tuck herself away where no one might find her for the next several months. She hadn’t left the Islands, not really. But she had been away from the Peak, and swept up in the tattered remnants of her past, plagued by memories she could neither patch together nor destroy completely. Impa had passed through the Forest and traveled Luthien, moving on to Atlantis and the Crossing as she searched for a place that would bring order and sense to her life.

The heavy mare told herself she was not looking for her father, that she had not spent the past year away from her post as Prime Minister —admit it, Impa, you abandoned the Peak at the worst time possible— in a futile search for her mother, Mazurka, or anyone else from her life as a filly. Her half-siblings were lost, and it had been months since she’d seen the speckled hide of her brother. She’d never actually seen her younger sister and had to give her up as lost. Maybe she’d never existed in the first place.

Impa had found nothing and no one in her journey across the islands. There had been horses around, but she had not engaged them and they seemed content enough to leave her, a distant wanderer, alone. It was time to return home, and the white-dappled black mare found her wide hooves once more pressing into the hard, stony ground of the Peak. Up, up, and up she went until the wide vista of the Crossing spread out far and below her. Home. Did she need answers? Mazurka was dead, taken by the very real, very natural threat of childbirth. Her father was gone, as was her brother, and she was no longer surprised by the abandonment of men. Her siblings, if they did indeed exist, were not in the Forest. Kisei’s family was gone. There was only Impazienza now, and her family was here on the mountain that sheltered the Meadow and gave life to the Falls.

With a small smile, Impa turned from the view and scanned the gentle incline she stood on with her right eye. There was no one in sight, but when she lifted her nose to the sky to scent the wind, she caught the whiff of a horse she’d never smelled before. Following the trail and picking her way carefully over the uneven ground, Impa rounded the slope of the mountain and came across a young mare staring out across the island. She wasn’t spotted the same way Impa was, but her mane and tail were bold and contrasted one another while a band of white slipped up past her hip like a reverse waterfall. Impa’s eye skipped over the stranger and took all of it in within seconds before she joined the mare in looking out over the Crossing.

“Brilliant, isn’t it? You should see it when the sun sets,” she said, offering the younger mare a smile and then her nose for a casual introduction.