'Now, how about it, Kara girl? If you enjoy this place then by all means stay, for I quite enjoy having you here.'
Kara sat for some time, trying to consult her own feelings, which, strangely, seemed to have deserted her.
'Let me help you,' the Señora said gently. 'Do you wish to go back?'
Kara shook her head, and spoke a word, though no sound would come.
No.
The Señora smiled, wryly. 'Then silence gives assent, even if the assent was a negative.'
'How does one get to Port Haven from here?' Kara found herself asking. 'Where is the road? I certainly couldn't find it.'
'Isla Fiero is a veritable warren of roads, paths and trails of every sort,' Señora Castellan told her. 'To navigate them requires that you know them first. There is no one direct way to Port Haven. Any one of us could take you there, most assuredly, and I have no doubt that you will one day be able to manage the journey on your own. But the journey is never twice the same. Roads on this island come and go with the time of year, the conditions of weather, the whims of the islands' inhabitants. Be patient, girl. Listen to your heart, for in the end your heart will guide you to Port Haven, if that is where you truly wish to go.'
As Kara soon discovered for herself, Isla Fiero was a complex convoluted place when it came to finding one's way around. It was something of a cross between a Chinese garden and a maze: one had only to travel only a matter of a hundred yards to find one's surroundings completely changed. There were many country lanes that wended seemingly from nowhere to nowhere, most ending in trails that were difficult to follow, some dead-ending in the bush, and many leading to hidden places.
In the latter two instances there were the remnants of stone foundations, which explained the reason for the dead ends; and the hidden places contained interesting curiosities such as roofed stone wells, stone and wrought-iron gazebos, some of which had seen recent use, stone fire-pits with long covered picnic benches, a huge stone chessboard with foot-tall painted wooden pieces that were kept in a nearby wooden chest, a well-tended rose garden covering nearly an acre and centred by a glass tea house, ponds stocked with goldfish and white water-lilies and bordered by cascades of weeping willows . . . to Kara's mind these curiosities suggested that the island had once been a rich estate or country club, and Señora Castellan informed her that she was not far from the mark. Isla Fiero had once been a Spanish colony, made rich because it lay along the trade routes. It's people were once proud, strong and free, and the present generations did what they could to preserve the memory of the island's heritage. Those parts of the island not tamed by its inhabitants were and remained just as strong and free, and together created a blend of dense mountainous forest land dotted with small farms scattered like islands in a sea of verdancy.