Sirius waltzed into the family kitchen, singing in a tuneful and cheerful manner. A contrast to the words of the song he sung. He was a tall and muscular built man, who owned a deep voice. One that carried in it a lot of power, and yet, he sang his song soft and sweet, in a way that made the listener hush so they could hear the words. The echos filled the kitchen of their multi-story farmhouse and his red-headed wife paused to watch him dance his way in.

“While the murderers are murderin,’

While the plunderer’s are plunderin,’

The bowman sings his song.

Through storms that shake,

Cross river’s that quake,

The bowman sings his song.

Over the waves,

In the darkest of caves,

The bowman sings his song.

A cursed thing it was to sing,

While all was going wrong,

Though his love was gone,

His voice lived on,

Forever a cherry tune.

While the drinker’s are tumblin,’

The rhythm keeps rumblin,’

Throughout the bloody land,

Over red-soaked hills and under,

Where all must finally end,

Except,

The rover’s are rovin,’

The pirates are piratin,’

And the bowman must go on.

They fill his purse,

But they can’t lift the curse,

Of the bowman’s merry tune.

For while the murderers are murderin,’

While the plunderer’s are plunderin,’

The bowman sings his song."

“You’re in a cheerful mood,” Amanda mused, as she smiled at her husband over her afternoon tumbler of whiskey. She’d poured a small dash in celebration. His happiness was catching but she had good news of her own too.

Sharing of any news would have to wait however, as at that moment, their 12 year old son poked his dark-haired, green-eyed, face into the kitchen. He was the spitting image of his father, right down the black, shaggy, uncut hair, which he constantly refused to get trimmed. The only difference was, the lack of unruly stubble that constantly clamored across his father’s face.

“Who’s the bowman?” Salem asked, ever the inquisitive mind.

“A pirate who was cursed to sing forever.” Sirius took a seat at the kitchen table next to his wife.

“Forever?” Salem’s green eyes widened.

“He stole from a powerful sorcerer and she cursed him. Took both his love and his voice.” Sirius spoke with that powerful hush, giving the story a mystic spooky feel.

Amanda smiled warmly as she watched him with a long-kindled affection. “I think you’ve got some of the lyrics wrong,” she teased.

“I do not.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Oh and you know this song do you?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

“I do.”

“Well, go ahead, sing it then.”

Amanda opened her mouth and was about reply or perhaps even sing, when a voice called from somewhere else in the house.

“Muuuummm!”

Amanda shut her mouth, shared an old knowing glance with Sirius, then got up and went to see what her other children wanted.

Salem grabbed a seat and leaned forward with sparkling interest. “So what happened to the bowman?”

Sirius replied with a wicked grin and continued in his rough hushed voice. “He stole a ring to give to his wife on their wedding day. But it was cursed and she died. I think he did too eventually, after wandering alone for many years. Some say his ghost still searches across the ocean, stuck singing forever more, and always looking for his lost love. Some say he drags other sailors down to sea just so he shall have some company and an audience. So, if you’re ever at sea and you hear a tune on the wind it may just be the bowman luring you in with his song.”

Salem shivered and grinned. “Cool!”

“Daaadd.” A new voice encroached on their conversation. 13 year old Katrina stood in the doorway. The only other of their five children that looked anything like Sirius. She was equally as soft-spoken, although not shy, and a little too clever for her own good sometimes.

He glanced up with a questioning look.

“Mum wants you.”

Sirius made his way upstairs to where he could hear voices coming from. When he got to the landing he noticed scorch marks on the wooden floor further along the hall to his left. Nearby, Amanda was standing with her hands on her hips. Their two eldest children, Gemma, and Bobby, stood before her.

At 15 years old, Gemma was already close to her mother’s height and would probably overshoot her in a year or two. Her red hair was as vibrant as her mother’s. Her eyes were green like her father’s, although she lacked his calm nature. Gemma was fierce and often full of fire. A temperament ill-suited to the magic she had been born with.

“Gemma set my music player on fire,” Bobby cried. A year younger than Gemma, and usually a gentle soul, Bobby was easily roused by his sister’s stubborn argumentative nature. He had his mother’s brown eyes and his grandfather’s brown hair. His powers too were like his grandfather’s, of a healing nature, and better suited to his own temperament than his sister’s were to hers.

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“I did not! It was the dragon he had hidden in his closet,” Gemma replied angrily, mimicking her mother’s stance of hands-on-hips.

“There’s no dragon,” Bobby hissed at her, not for the first time, but it was obvious to his mother, given the expression on his face, that he was lying.

Amanda gave her son a firm look. “Bobby, where’s the dragon?”

Gemma answered for him. “It went into Sasha’s room.”

Amanda turned, saw Sirius standing at the top of the stairs, and she motioned toward their youngest daughter’s room at the other end of the hallway. “Can you..?”

He nodded and went to go find the dragon.

Amanda turned back to her children. She was well practiced at reading expressions, especially those of her own children, and it was clear as day to her, that it wasn’t just Bobby who was lying.

“And the burnt music player?” she asked gently, knowing control over her powers was a touchy subject for Gemma.

Gemma dropped her gaze. Her expression was answer enough.

Amanda decided not to press it for now. Instead, she asked Bobby, with another fixed look, “Where did you get a dragon?”

“It’s just a baby. I found it. In the woods.”

Amanda frowned at that. A dragon near Little Rock, even a small one was cause for concern, but the speed at which Bobby dropped his eyes made her reconsider the truth of what he had told her. She sighed audibly. “Where did you really get it?”

Bobby glanced up, and seeing that he was caught again, admitted, “A friend at school had some eggs.”

While Amanda questioned Bobby for more information about the dragon’s origins and any other potential dragons that had been handed out, Sirius cautiously poked his head around the corner of Sasha’s room. There he found his youngest daughter sitting on the floor creating an ice circle with her magic. Inside the circle was a tiny dragon with shimmering indigo scales. Little breaths of flame flared out from it’s mouth occasionally, melting the little ice wall Sasha was continuously re-creating. From the looks of it the dragon seemed to be enjoying itself and was showing much fascination with the ice. Sasha too, seemed equally entertained.

She looked up from her game. She had a round face with big round eyes, similar to her mother. Her hair was fair, an almost icy blonde, if not for the slight hint of golden warmth to it. It was a colour shared with her grandmother. She held a finger to her lips, warning Sirius not to startle the creature.

He nodded and glanced back down the hall. It was probably better to let Amanda handle this one. Dragons could be temperamental and only his wife could control the flames they produced with any safe measure of accuracy. Sirius’s own power lay not in fire, but in strength. Besides, quiet, gentle, Sasha, with her ice powers, seemed to have things under control for now.

Once Amanda had garnered enough information from Bobby regarding the source of the dragon, she called up a friend who was a dragon handler, and who happened to be in town. By the time that problem was sorted it was time for dinner. It wasn’t until after dinner, while they were doing the dishes that she finally got a chance to talk to Sirius again.

Amanda dropped another plate in the sink. “So what were you so cheerful about earlier?” She asked Sirius, who was drying the dishes next to her.

“Oh, I secured a new shipment. A whole bunch of pipes to be shipped to the Rambandit Isles.”

“Pipes?” Amanda paused in her washing to glance at him.

He grinned, and from the size of his smile she could see it must be a good deal.

“They’re infused,” he replied. “With animal mind magic. Very expensive. Play a tune on them and they’ll make any animal you have in mind follow you.”

Amanda’s mouth hung open. Her mind wandered. She couldn’t help thinking of how useful something like that would be in the yearly musters, when locals competed to bring in new stocks of wild pegasi and mustangs for breeding and taming. There were limits on the total number that could be brought in and it was a first caught first kept sort of an affair. Mustang numbers tended to soar during the off season so that wasn’t such a competition, although finding a good one was. But the pegasi, they were a real prize.

Seeing his wife was lost in thought, Sirius gently extracted the half cleaned plate from her hands and took over at the sink. “Yeah, seems the Rambandits have a bit of a rat problem.”

Amanda frowned. “Must be a pretty big rat problem for them to bring in infused instruments.”

Sirius chuckled. “No, but they’re rich as fuck.” He turned to her with a grin and added, “And I get to ship them.”

She smiled, crossed her arms, and leaned against the table. “Pays well huh?”

He didn’t even try to hide his grin.

As he turned back to clean the last plate she asked, “So when are you shipping them?”

“Leaving tomorrow.”

“Rambandit Isles are the south east right?”

Hearing a frown in her tone he put the last plate to the side in the dry pile and turned to face her. “That’s right. Something wrong?”

She shook her head then wriggled her nose in thought as if trying to come to a decision.

He waited patiently for her reply.

Eventually she raised her eyes to meet his. Big brown, round eyes, that always made him want to lean down and kiss her, even after all these years.

“I got an offer from an old friend, a pegasus breeder in the north-east, just up from the tundras. He’s got a bunch of pegasi foals he wants to sell to a trainer for a heavily discounted price. He’d get to buy one or two back, his choice of the lot, but we’d get to do what we want with the rest. Sell em, compete with them, or add to our own breeding stock.”

“That’s good news then isn’t it?”

Amanda gave a slow nod. “He want’s me to pick them up end of next week or no deal.”

Sirius frowned. “Oh.” He saw the problem now, as he considered the distance between the two places they each needed to go, and the normal routes that didn’t suit the timeframes. But as he thought about it more, an idea started to form. “It could work. We could sail directly north from Rambandit.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I thought no one sailed there, everyone goes around?”

He continued slowly, thinking through the plan. “They do, it’s a bit uncharted, but I don’t think there’s any specific reason. I think it’s just wariness. It’s beyond the elemental seas so the weather’s no worse than anywhere else I think, no eternal storms, but people still worry about them. There’s probably sirens and krakens but you get those near Rambandit anyway. Honestly, I think it’s more that most people aren’t sailing from Rambandit directly north. They’d almost always come here first then go around the other side of the elemental seas.”

“You’re sure?”

“No, but I don’t see any other way to make it up there by the end of next week. The only other option is sail back around the other side of the elemental seas and that adds too much time.”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “We’d both have to go. It’s school holidays. I don’t really want to leave the kids on their own with that much free time. The animals are easy, the pasture is in good form, and I can get Jack to come by.”

“Why don’t we take the kids with us?” Sirius suggested. “They’ve each been before at some point, and Gemma loves the sea. What’s the worst that can happen?”

A few hours later, their son, Salem sat perched by the window in his room. From there, looking out, he could see the glow from the kitchen window spread out on the lawn in front of the porch. This light gave him information. It let him know if his parents were still awake.

While he waited he looked out across the front paddocks where horses and pegasi alike roamed. Each of the pegasi had their wings bound with a soft leather belt, to keep them from flying off. In the far left paddock stood a smattering of unicorns, their coats had a shimmer, similar to that of the Akhal Teke breed of horse, and they sparkled lightly in the moonlight.

Eventually the kitchen light blinked out. Salem didn’t immediately leave his room, but waited a little longer until he was sure they wouldn't hear him sneaking downstairs. Salem tip-toed silently down the stairs and switched the sound on the computer speakers right down low, just to be safe. Then he plugged in his headphones and booted up his game. They pressed against his ears and he thought that he ought to get some new ones, ones that went right over. But that kind were expensive and he was certain his parents would never splurge for those, not for the purpose of playing computer games anyway. Soon he was lost in the game. Sword in hand his character marched through the darkened wood, looking for enemy goblins.

Salem jumped when he heard a howl. Thinking, at first, that it had come from the game he continued playing. Then another sounded, closer and different. He took off the headphones and listened to the night.

Somewhere outside the house, a light wind caused the trees to rustle. There was another howl. Further away this time. He listened as more howls filled the night. They weren’t so far from the woods here. The wolves and the werewolves were probably out hunting the small deer and enjoying the large moon. Did they like the large moon? Or did it make it harder to hunt? Harder to hide too, Salem supposed. He had a friend who was a werewolf. Perhaps he should ask him. Technically, he was more Katrina’s friend.

Salem listened awhile longer to the howls. They almost sounded like singing and he was reminded of his father’s song from earlier about the bowman. He wondered what sort of song might a ghost play?

The howls echoed for ages on the air but came no closer to the house. Eventually Salem grew bored of listening to them, and returned to his game. His parents had told all of them they’d be setting sail tomorrow. Still, he had hours before dawn. He would play for a just a little while.