Ysabel rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. What do you think they like best?” Esther looked at the trees thoughtfully. “Travelling songs, like their hymn. Sea songs. Songs that bring news from away.” “So, Miss Hawthorn,” Ysabel said, raising an eyebrow and deepening her voice into a pitch-perfect mimicry of an insufferable headmaster from their school days, “it is your contention that people must in fact most ardently desire that which they cannot have? You don’t think that songs of travel are liable to sadden those rooted into the earth? Besides”—she smiled, reaching up to touch one’s trunk—“surely
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