Jasper stayed silent.
The giant whale laughed, their voice causing lightning to flash beneath them. “A reluctant witch and a tamed wind who thinks he’s a cat. Not to mention a broombranch! You have tamed many things for someone who calls herself a witch.”
“I’m not tamed!” the broombranch squeaked.
“Aren’t you?” The wind blinked, then turned their attention back to Milly. “So then, witch, what is it you desire of me?”
The whale rolled, causing a giant wave of wind to send Milly and the broom soaring upward.
Drifting back down, Milly flattened her wild hair and straightened her clothes. She thought long and hard about her next words, weighing out the consequences of what they’d cost her.
“Can you help us get my sister back?” she asked.
The East Wind quieted, and the air grew still. “The last time a wind trusted a human, that human betrayed us with a domination spell. He brought no small amount of suffering. He shook the very bones of this world, and left Arrett’s heart broken and hurt and afraid.”
“Do you mean Hightop? I thought he ended the war.”
“The war, yes. But the hate? Hate doesn’t end, child. It can only hide, buried in its own shame until some foolhardy witch decides to dig it up again.”
“That’s why I need your help.”
Pools of angry winds circled beneath. Milly tried not to look at them. “What is the difference between you and Hightop? If I help you, what will you do with the magicks I have gifted you?” The rolling of winds increased, some threatening to snatch at Milly’s dangling feet.
Milly hugged her arms to herself. “I just want to save my sister,” she whispered.
The winds ceased. The sky grew silent, and the whale’s mighty head did not reappear.
“You will not need my magicks. Not when you already have this little wind at your side. I will not be able to help you fight Hightop or my brother whom he has tamed. But—” They took a mighty leap from the clouds, higher than hey’d soared before, rising until all of the whale but the tail was visible. “There is one thing I can give you.”
“What do you want in return?” Milly choked.
They stared at Milly for a brief moment, blinked their wild eye, and then crashed down, causing a massive wave of fierce and violent winds to rise.
“I just want to save my brother.”
The winds blew around and through Milly. They sent her spiraling down the storm, past the Needsy Woods, and straight on her way to the terraced cliffs of West Ernost.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, PART ONE
a good witch is nothing without her home
Drops of water rolled across Milly’s face. There he was, St. George’s, hidden in the fog atop its hill by the edge of the cliff. Just the same as he had always been.
The sun hung low in the sky. It peeked out from between the clouds, brushing one last yellow stain across the rice fields.
But Milly also saw the gripes.
They cut deep into the hills, shadows so dark they filled the valleys like rivers. They reached upward, over people’s houses and toward St. George’s. From this height, they had the appearance of one massive creature, hungry and devouring and never satisfied.
How long had they lain hidden, shrunken, beneath the ground?
How long had she been oblivious to their presence?
“Where to, little witch?”
Wordless, she pointed to the foster home, and the broombranch changed direction.
Jasper peeked his head out over her shoulder and shivered. “Lilith is here.”
“How do you know that?”
“The stench. It’s strong.”
“What does she smell like?”
The cat hesitated. “Death.”
Milly’s breath quickened, but she adjusted her grip and thought of Cilla.
The three descended to St. George’s. Milly dismounted the broombranch and untied the blanket around her back to let Jasper out.
The cat shook himself with intense vigor, then sat down and groomed the knots out of his anxious fur.
“Can you guys wait here? I . . . I need to do something first.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t take too long.”
Milly left them there and walked up to the door. She put her muddy hand on the frame and whispered, “Hello, Georgie.”
The door swung open.
It didn’t even surprise her.
Milly slipped her shoes off and walked in. She wasn’t sure what to expect. It felt like such a long time since the last time she’d been in these halls. The wood beneath her feet was so familiar, comforting even though it was cold. Up ahead, she heard rapid footsteps thud against the floor, followed by Nishi and Ikki shouting at the top of their lungs. She passed by one of Abby’s socks lying in the hallway. Mostly, she noticed the smell of Doris’s rice buns drifting in from the kitchen and followed her nose to the source.*
When she entered, she found Doris’s back facing her. The old woman’s shoulders were bent over a chopping board, the knife in her hand a metronome.
Thwick. Thwick. Thwick. Thwick.
Milly knocked on the doorframe.
“Dinner’s not ready yet.” Doris put down the knife and slid the ginger she’d been cutting into a giant pot of boiling water. “If you want a snack, grab something from the cupboard. I don’t want anyone out in the garden tonight. Not with those shadows out there. The whole cliffside’s gone—”
The chopping board fell from the woman’s hand as she turned and caught sight of Milly, her face pale like she was looking at a ghost.
“Hi.” Milly felt her cheeks flush.
“Milly!” Doris practically leaped forward and lifted Milly up into her arms. Her tears smeared against Milly’s cheeks. “My dear, dear child. I thought you were lost forever.”
It didn’t take long for Milly to cry, too. She grasped the back of Doris’s clothes and held tightly. “I missed you,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“I’m a wi-witch,” she tried to say, sobbing through the words tumbling out of her. “I understand if you don’t want me anymore, but I thought you should know.”
“It’s okay.” Doris put Milly down and wiped the corners of her eyes.
Milly swallowed. A question burned inside of her. She thought she knew the answer, hoped it was the answer she needed to hear, but she was too scared to ask out loud. Instead she said, “I’m sorry I left.”
Doris shook her head. “No, no. It’s okay. Are you hungry? Do you want food?”
Milly shook her head and looked around the house. “I’m sorry you got stuck with me. I’m sorry you got stuck being a mother.”
“I’m not stuck.” Doris stared at her with wet eyes. “I chose to be a mother. Just like I also chose to be a carpenter.” She took Milly’s hand in hers and traced the mark on Milly’s palm. “And if I had to do it all again, I’d do it all exactly the same.”
Milly stared at her feet.
“Milly, are you sure you’re a witch?”
“I’m sorry,” Milly said again, even though she wasn’t sure what she was sorry for.
“Do you want to be one?”
Milly nodded.
Doris smiled. “You’re a good witch,” she said, and squeezed Milly once more. “I have leftovers if you want them.”
Milly shook her head. “I—I have to do one last thing. And then I’ll be back. Promise.”
“You’re not going to tell me what it is, are you?”
Milly shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Is it about Cilla?”
Milly didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. She knew her face must have given it away.
Doris sniffed and straightened her lips. “I trust you. Do what you must. And whe
n you come back, you’ll have a warm meal and a clean bed waiting for you.”
“What about the others?” Milly asked. “They don’t know what I am yet. What if they don’t want me to stay here?”
“You’re their sister, Milly. Witch or not, this is your home.”
“Doriiiiiiiis.” It sounded like Nishi. “I can’t find Junebug anywhere!”
Milly felt her heart leap.
“You’re not ready to see them, are you?”
Milly shook her head.
Doris struggled to open the wall’s wooden slat, a sneaky exit through the kitchen. The outside storm was gathering its strength. She nodded at Milly. “Go ahead. We’ll be here waiting.”
Milly nodded and jumped out of the house. Like before, she fell to her knees, catching herself with her hands on the grass.
“And, Milly?”
She turned around.
“Please, be safe.” Doris closed the slat.
Milly looked at her hand and saw that it no longer glowed. All that was left was the familiar outline of a silver moon. She snuck back round to the front of the house, where she saw Jasper and Ash hovering in the air, trying to get away from the stubby fingers of the gripes reaching for them. The shadows surrounded the front door, just inches away from the thin crack of light leaking out from St. George’s.
“Get away from my house!” she shouted. As soon as she did, the shadows turned toward her.
“Look out!” Ash exclaimed.
Milly glanced down and saw a hand reach out of the ground for her ankle. She jumped back and held out her hand. “Please, little light, I need your help again.”
Nothing happened.
“Milly! Look up!”
The broombranch came flying toward her, and she jumped off the ground, away from the gripe. Ash caught her backward in the air.
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t anything happen?”
“Some magicks are scared of the dark,” Jasper said.
“Are you scared?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where are we going?”
Milly scrambled around on the broombranch until she was facing the right direction. “We need to find Lilith.”
“Can you smell her?”
Jasper poked his nose up into the air, then shook his head. “This storm is making things difficult.”
Milly looked down at the landscape. With the sun gone, the gripes and gobblers were bolder. They stampeded through the gardens and devoured whole rows of vegetables. They sloshed through the rice farms, stuck their dirty hands in, and tore up the earth. It was almost like they were looking for something.
“Hightop said the witch was looking for the Rift . . . somewhere East Ernost used to be . . . Oh! I know where they are.”
“Where to, little witch?”
Milly pointed toward the sea. “Follow the cliff until you find a white tree.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, PART TWO
a good witch is nothing without her temper
Elma’s outline glowed against a moonless canvas. Though the winds howled and the little lights in her branches had hidden away, though all the stars had abandoned the sky to the curling wind above, though her white bark could only barely be made out, Elma didn’t bend an inch.
Milly studied her palm, searching for the mark that had been part torment and part comfort, but the darkness overwhelmed the moon on her hand.
A total eclipse.
Milly squinted against the black to see a figure across the clearing. Lilith. The old witch stood just past the tree, watching the waves in the distance, oblivious to the gripes and gobblers reaching their claws up the cliffside.
Ash drifted down to the tree and Milly dismounted. She put a hand on Elma and muttered a short prayer under her breath. (It was so quiet that not even I could hear it.) Then she stepped forward.
“It’s about time you showed up,” the witch said without turning her head. “How was the weather on your way here? Bad, I hope?”
Milly squared her shoulders, determined to not let Lilith get to her. “Where is she?”
Lilith ignored the question. “Cilla doesn’t belong here, and neither do you.” The old witch let out a long, haggard breath. “This is the only way to send the gripes back. I was too afraid to do it once. I’m not afraid anymore.”
Milly was close to her now, close enough she could see the glint in the witch’s eyes.
“We talked, your sister and I, and Cilla understood this is what a hero has to do. Sometimes . . . we get our hands dirty. Sometimes sacrifices need to be made.”
Lilith finally turned toward Milly.
“I almost tried to stop her at the last second. I wanted to tell her she wasn’t what they wanted, that they wanted you. But . . .”
Milly stared at the witch’s crooked nose, at her tired frown, into her gray eyes. She remembered the photograph she’d found. The soft smile on the young Lilith’s lips. The gentle way she put her hand on the child’s shoulders. This Lilith seemed miles away from the witch she’d seen in the picture.
Something, she wasn’t yet sure what, was starting to click into place.
“A real witch wouldn’t do the things you have done,” Milly said.
“Oh?” The witch looked taken aback but smiled. “And you think you’re a real witch? I’m not the only here who’s tamed a wind, am I? I thought you would understand better than anyone, witchling. Desperation drives you, and yet”—the witch shook her head—“guilt keeps you back. You don’t even fathom the power at your fingertips, what that wind you keep dressed as a cat can do with just the right encouragement.”
Above them, the curls of winds stretched and collided. Clouds shifted and formed. The North Wind howled amid the thunder rolling above.
Milly looked over at Jasper, who was crouched next to Elma with his ears flattened against his head.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to use him.”
“Not even to save your sister?”
Milly felt her hand burn. Could she? She had tamed the wind. That meant she could demand Jasper’s help without asking, didn’t it? The more she thought about it, the more the mark on her hand flickered.
Jasper’s fur started to glow, ripples whipping through it like wind currents. Then she looked into his eyes and saw terror.
“No.” Milly clenched her fist and looked straight into the witch’s eyes. “I can’t. I won’t.”
“Then you won’t fight back.” The witch closed her eyes. “You know what must be done, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
The witch looked upward. “Makisuyo, make sure the witch’s little friends don’t come any closer.”
“She can’t tell me what to do!”
“Milly, what are you doing?!”
The North Wind roared and a cold wind blew past Lilith and Milly, pinning Ash and Jasper to the ground.
Milly gulped. “You want me to sacrifice myself to the Rift because you think this is how to make the shadows leave Arrett.”
“Yes.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t.”
“What will I find there?” She looked out over the cliff.
“No one knows. No one except Cilla.”
Milly looked over at the others, being pressed to the ground by the anger of the North Wind. “Promise you won’t hurt them.”
“Of course.”
“No. Promise.” Milly locked eyes with the witch. “Swear it on something you can’t back down from.”*
“I swear it on the North Wind.”
Milly didn’t stop staring. She knew this witch was not who she claimed to be. She didn’t know how, or why, but the witch, too, was only a disguise. Inside was someone too scared, too unwilling to show their true face. “Swear it on something tha
t matters to you”—Milly lowered her voice, sure of the witch’s true identity now—“Hightop.”
The witch’s gray eyes widened, and for a moment Milly could see Hightop’s own gray eyes staring back at her.
“O-okay,” the fake Lilith said, “I . . . I swear it on my own mother.”
Milly turned toward the sea, toward the gripes and the winds, toward the Rift, toward the heart of Arrett, toward East Ernost, her old home.
She felt the wizard’s eyes staring at her. For a brief second, his composure fell away and he ran a hand over his face. “Can it even work?” he whispered. Then he pulled his hand away, and his eyes were hard and emotionless. The mask had been put back on. “You know what has to happen, don’t you? You could be lost forever.”
“I’m not going in there to help you,” Milly said. “I’m not going to fix your shadow problem. I’m not going to be a hero or save your neck or please the High Council or prove that witches are good.”
Milly let her hand burn bright. She stared into the waves below her.
“I’m only going in there to get my sister back.”
She jumped off the cliff.
Briefly, she wondered what it must have been like when Cilla fell off the cliff. If her little sister thought she was going to die. Milly wasn’t sure if she wanted to keep her eyes open or closed. There was no wind whistling past her ears. No light from the moon showing where the ocean’s surface lay. No Ash whipping past her head to catch her.
The fall began slow and ended fierce.
Milly barely had time to make out the white caps of the waves before she crashed into them, her mouth still open in a half scream. The waters hit the back of her throat hard. Wicked, icy fingers cracked against her teeth and stung against her skin; it felt as if her lungs had collapsed inward from the impact.
And then, the entire world disappeared.
AN INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
a west wind, who quit her job
A wet nose nuzzled its way through Milly’s hair until it found her forehead. Whatever the creature was licked her face until she blinked her eyes open. Milly sputtered and turned to the side to avoid the barrage. She squinted her eyes open and saw a fuzzy face come into view. It had a pink nose and blue fur and round ears.
The Hungry Ghosts Page 19