Poppy ran her fingers over his head, feeling Leo’s skull under her hands.
“I like it,” she said.
He had been waiting for her outside her school, leaning against the wall in a tracksuit and sneakers. The other kids stared at them as they passed.
Kelly Fletcher’s jaw dropped when she caught sight of them together, her eyes lingering on Leo. “Weirdo,” she barbed at Poppy under her breath, and the girls who linked arms with her whispered and giggled, managing to make the sound of laughter grating and nasty.
Mark Shaw spotted Poppy and Leo out of the corner of his eye. He kept his distance but spat on the ground, then looked the other way.
“They don’t like you much,” Leo said matter-of-factly.
“They think I’m weird.” Poppy shrugged, and Leo laughed, so she added, “I am weird, I guess.”
“Who isn’t?” Leo retorted, and Poppy felt like hugging him but didn’t.
Instead, she said, “Let’s get out of here,” and they walked side by side down the road, past all the other kids, like they were a regular couple and she, Poppy Hooper, wasn’t a freak but the cool girl with the handsome boyfriend.
“How did you get out of school so early?” Poppy suddenly thought to ask.
“I have my ways,” he said enigmatically and then took her hand in his so she only thought of that.
They went to the back of the churchyard, treading carefully between the graves and past the headstones, through a small door hidden in an ivy-clad wall. It opened onto a wild garden where the long grasses reached their knees and the brambles and blackthorns, hawthorns and holly bushes grew unfettered. The meadow sloped down to a stream that reflected the dappled sky. All sound of distant traffic was drowned out by the trickling of the water as it hurried on its journey. If Poppy listened hard, she could hear the birds and the squirrels in the trees, the insects in the air, the croak of a frog, and the imperceptible sound of duck legs paddling below the surface of the water. She could tell this was Leo’s place, his find that no one else he knew strayed upon.
Leo got two apples from his pocket and they crunched away in silence, looking out across the water to the fields beyond. The road that circled the town was just visible in the distance. From where they sat, it looked like another stream, a concrete one reminding them they were still within the confines of society. They threw their cores into the water and watched them bob away. Then the church bell rang, its chimes reverberating across the town, reminding Poppy of the time.
“I should go,” she said apologetically, causing Leo’s face to fall. “I’m sorry,” she went on. “It’s just I promised I’d meet a friend.”
“It’s okay,” he told her, but he looked so crestfallen that Poppy couldn’t bring herself to get to her feet.
“I want to stay,” she murmured, and he looked up at her with eyes so urgent that they held her there, fixed in that spot.
“Don’t go then,” he said gruffly.
Poppy thought of Ember waiting at the dell as they had promised and all that she must be wondering. Grimacing with guilt, she looked at her watch. She was already late. Even if she rushed, by the time she made it there, Ember would have to leave soon after anyway.
“I’ll see her tomorrow. She’ll understand,” Poppy resolved, and she was rewarded with the sincerest smile from Leo.
“You’ll stay?”
Poppy nodded, consoling herself with the thought of how much Ember would love to hear her news and how she’d hang on every word of her description of Leo and make her tell their conversation over again.
Poppy lay back on the grassy bank and Leo did the same, their eyes looking upward to the limitless sky, and Leo talked, this time about himself. He sounded like he was joking when he confessed he didn’t know where he came from. And he laughed when he told her that he didn’t think much of parents, having been abandoned twice, first by his father, then by his mother. But he turned serious when he said he never missed them because he had never known them and, besides, he had had Jocelyn, and she loved him enough for both of them.
“The tarot card reader?” Poppy remembered.
“Yeah, not sure how good she was at reading them. But she was the best mother to me. You’d have liked her. She was a strange one too.”
“Oy,” objected Poppy, elbowing him in the ribs. “I thought you said everyone was weird.”
“Everyone I know. But you and her—you’re in a different league.”
Glad to be paired with someone Leo loved, Poppy decided to take that as a compliment.
“We were happy when it was just me and her. But then she met Evan.” Leo gave a bitter laugh. “The joke of it is that I think she thought it’d be good for me. Having a father figure.”
“What did he do to you?” Poppy’s voice dropped to almost a whisper.
“It wasn’t just him. He had his boys. Two sons. The spitting image of him. Heads like potatoes, all of them. But their fists . . .”
Poppy’s finger went to the scar that ran through Leo’s left eyebrow, but she flinched as the sensation she got from it was fiery like a burn.
“Ashtray, that one.”
“How many are there?” Poppy asked.
Leo pointed to each of the scars they’d given him over the years, like they were props to a good story—on his forehead, his chest, his hand, his arm—his mementos of family life. Poppy hid the pity from her face, though it had caught inside of her and she couldn’t dislodge it.
“There was no escaping them. Our apartment was tiny. Three growing boys, I guess, with no room to grow. I get why they were violent, but him . . . he would goad them into it. He’d enjoy it.”
“What about Jocelyn?”
“She used to shout and pull them off me. But then she got sick. She just faded away. Every week there seemed to be just a little bit less of her. After she died, that’s when I got the knife.” Leo kept his eyes gazing long into the distance, as though looking back in time before he spoke again. “She saw her death in the cards. She knew it was cancer before the doctors told her, but she thought all her herbs and crystals might buy her more time.” Leo gave a short and bitter laugh, like a fist hitting wood. “She didn’t stand a chance.” He hung his head then and picked at the grass. “She kept telling me it was going to be okay. Even when she couldn’t sit up anymore, she still kept saying so.” Then Leo looked at Poppy and tried to smile. “That’s optimism for you.”
He gazed back out across the field and went quiet. It felt like prying to look at him, so Poppy stared ahead too, wishing she could think of something to say that didn’t sound empty and trite. She sensed Leo retreating inside of himself and very gently she prompted, “What happened after? With them?”
“You don’t want to know.”
His voice had changed, like he couldn’t keep the lightness in it any longer and the words were too heavy to trip off the tongue. Poppy turned and looked, despite herself. His features were so very still. He sensed her looking and finally turned his head, and she caught a flash of what he’d suffered in his eyes. Then he blinked and it was gone and a stranger’s eyes were looking back at her.
“Leo?” Poppy whispered.
“Forget about all that,” he said. “We’re here . . . now . . . alone.” He looked at her flirtatiously, like it was all a bit of fun, but it felt like an act and Poppy didn’t buy it. He reached out and touched her hair, twisting his finger around a strand that fell on her cheek. “You’re gorgeous, you know that?”
He leaned forward to kiss her and Poppy put her arm out to stop him. The words—they sounded wrong. They sounded empty, like a lie, like they belonged to someone else. Poppy rapidly replayed them in her mind, but no matter which way she phrased them, they jarred. Why did he have to say gorgeous? It wasn’t him. And it certainly wasn’t her. Leo was looking at her warily. She pulled away, just out of his reach.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“C’mon,” he coaxed, trying to pull her back in. Poppy resisted and he s
aid harshly, “What? You want me to tell the rest of my sob story first? Is that it?”
“First?” Poppy flashed fiercely.
Leo froze, and Poppy instantly felt ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, but Leo shook his head angrily. “What are you sorry for? Me? Them? Yourself?”
Poppy didn’t answer and sat there for a moment. She knew she should try to hold him, kiss him, and make him feel better. But she just didn’t know how to start. Instead, she got to her feet.
“You’re going?” Leo said to her without looking up. It was more of a statement than a question.
“My friend. She’ll be worried.”
She wished he’d look at her, just for a moment, but he kept staring at the ground.
“Haven’t you got things you don’t talk about?” he said accusingly.
Poppy wanted to sit back down and tell him the things were so endless she wouldn’t know where to begin. But then she heard him say, “Just go then,” and so she did the easiest thing and started walking away.
He didn’t call after her. He didn’t try to stop her from leaving. He just let her disappear.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ember waited for Poppy until the bugs filled the dusky air and the moon appeared in a chalk-blue sky that was yet to darken. Waiting time was slow time. The seconds stretched to minutes, stretched to hours, Ember’s mind pulling, twisting, and pummeling them like dough. Hope played tricks on her. The crack of a twig and Ember’s spirits rose, the rustle of leaves and she turned her head expectantly, the flutter of a bird and she jumped to her feet, each time to be left disappointed. The dell had lost its magic now that Poppy wasn’t there. Instead of emblems of a better life, Ember looked around her and just saw broken pieces of wood and rusting lumps of metal. Nature had tried to claim these bits of junk for its own. Ivy trailed over an old fridge, weeds poked through bicycle wheels, woodlice and beetles lived beneath old boxes, and a family of mice nested inside an old washing machine. It was how Ember imagined all the world would be in the end. One giant dell.
Lingering in this lost and lonely place, Ember felt herself begin to languish. No longer certain of Poppy’s arrival, other doubts scratched at the scabs in her mind, scraping at her newfound optimism, exposing her old insecurities. Without Poppy, Ember was nobody again. She shivered, not from the cold but from the fear. It could happen so quickly, joy to sorrow, love to loss. Worse still, she had trusted Poppy with the coven’s secret. She had confided in a chaff, believing she would never tell. She had been rash and foolhardy, putting herself and the clan in danger, and all for the sake of friendship.
Ember shook her head to try to rid herself of such thoughts. Poppy would never betray her. Surely there was a simple explanation for her absence. Something important must be keeping her away—her school, her family, her health. Ember gasped as another idea took hold: What if some disaster had befallen her friend? What if she was trapped or injured, in need of Ember’s help? Ember felt the panic begin to drum a beat inside of her, faster and faster, louder and louder. She looked past the dell, wishing with all her might that she could see beyond the here and now like some of the other girls. For the first time, Ember truly wished she was like them. As herself, she was powerless. Even if she stepped out beyond the dell into the unknown and headed—without permission—toward the town, she had no way of finding Poppy. The extent of her plight hit Ember harder now than it had ever done before. She wanted to run into the town and knock on every door and ask every chaff if they knew her friend, Poppy, with the short hair and the big coat and one eye of turquoise and the other of jade. Instead, Ember waited and hoped until she could wait and hope no longer.
Before she had to leave, Ember left a book for Poppy, tucking it under the sofa, the corner just peeking out so Poppy would see it if by chance she made it to the dell that night. Ember had chosen this book carefully. Poppy had asked to be taught magic, and this had seemed the best place to start. She had imagined that they would read it together, sitting side by side, Poppy listening as she explained the different chapters. Instead, the book lay hidden under damp cushions with no reader to be had, all alone like she was.
Reaching the top of the slope, Ember had one last look back, hoping she would hear Poppy’s voice echoing to her and see her arm outstretched, waving through the shadowy light. But the place was still and quiet, only the mist moving, rising from the ground like steam from a cauldron, giving the dell and all its belongings a ghostly hue. Her spirits sinking once again, Ember wandered home with a heavy feeling in her legs, dragging her feet, delaying her arrival when she would have to face another night within the camp without the memories of an afternoon with Poppy to carry her through.
Sorrel followed her cousin from a safe distance. After hours of sitting silently, it was tedious to have to creep along so slowly. She longed to break into a run and catch up with Ember. She wanted to let her limbs stretch, let the bubbling, boiling energy inside her burst out. She wanted to give Ember a shake and a slap and demand to know who it was she’d been waiting for all that time. It irritated her that her mother had been right and her feeble, unadventurous cousin actually had a secret. A big one.
Sorrel and the other sisters had Ember neatly bottled away like one of their potions, labeled as useless and utterly predictable. But Ember had popped the cork and slipped out without them noticing. Only Raven, always Raven, had spotted her evasion. Now Sorrel would have to face her mother and tell her that, despite waiting so long and suffering hours of pins and needles, she knew nothing that Raven didn’t already know herself.
“It must be a boy,” she told her mother when she got home. “They had arranged a time and place and he didn’t attend. Otherwise why would she look so desperate and lovestruck?”
“What did she do?” Raven asked as she rubbed Sorrel’s feet in almond oil.
“Nothing.”
The grip on her foot tightened. “Tell me everything.”
“She paced, she sat, she picked at the grass and tore a fallen leaf into a thousand pieces. She paced some more. On occasion she would jump to her feet and stare, believing that she’d heard a sign of his arrival. Then, when she realized it was not so, her face would fall and she would sit back down and fidget once again. Finally she gave up hoping for his appearance, and came home.” Sorrel didn’t add that, for sport, she’d caused a stirring in the grass and trees just to see Ember’s eyes light up, then cloud again.
“What else?” Sorrel felt her mother’s nails dig into her soles. “What else?”
Sorrel was on the verge of making something up just to satisfy her mother when suddenly the memory came to her.
“She left him a book.”
“A book?” The claws retracted and the grip lessened.
“She put it under the cushion of the sofa there.”
“She left a boy one of our books. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Sorrel replied nervously. “Should I have retrieved it?”
Raven’s hands were still and cold as they waited upon Sorrel’s feet. Finally the answer came. “No,” Raven muttered. “Let’s bide our time for now and let this little mystery reveal itself.” She shut her eyes to think some more, then spoke again. “What would some chaff boy want with a book?”
Sorrel realized that this question wasn’t for her. Raven was asking herself. Her mother’s fingers started to move again, rubbing and pressing, working in time with her mind as it delved, deliberated, and determined.
Sorrel’s foot was only released when Charlock knocked on their door and called Raven away. Sister Bridget had heard the Eastern clan was on the move. They hadn’t traveled so far in over a hundred years. Sorrel caught a trace of apprehension in her aunt’s eyes, and her mother, who usually berated such interruptions, got to her feet instantly and without complaint.
“Get yourself to bed, child,” she ordered.
Sorrel watched them slip away, gathering with the other elders by the fire. Long into the night they conferred,
and Sorrel felt her ears burn and knew they were talking about her. The prophecy again, she thought gloomily. All alone, under the cover of darkness and with her mother preoccupied elsewhere, she allowed herself to wish that Ember was more of a witch so she could share the deadening weight of expectation with her. Sorrel wondered, not for the first time, what her life would have been like if three hundred and three years ago those witches had not looked into the future of the Hawkweed sisters. She would not know the path her life would take; instead, she would meander this way and that until she found the avenue that suited her.
Her mother would love her for the child she was, not for the woman she’d become. Her friends would treat her as an equal, feeling free to tease and tittle-tattle as well as joke and play. Her teachers would not require perfection. They’d commend her for what she could do and not castigate her for what she could not.
As Sorrel dreamed, her eyes shut and she eased into a sleep where her fantasy of anonymity and mediocrity could come true. Her face mellowed, and for the next few hours, she became that other girl—young, carefree, and content.
When at last Poppy reached the dell it was dark and Ember had gone. She found a book tucked under the sofa, sticking out of the cushion. It was old and heavy like the others. Poppy held it in her hands and thought of the generations of women before her who’d held it too. The thought comforted her and she hugged the book to her, wishing she could hug her friend, her life raft, who never made her feel like she was out of her depth, like she was drowning. She left Ember a note saying she was sorry for being late and she’d be there tomorrow. With it, she left her geography book. It hardly seemed a fair exchange, but they’d been studying Africa at school. Ember would like that.
Lying in bed that night, Poppy read Ember’s book until her hands grew stiff with cold and her eyes itched from tiredness. She read all night, the house silent but for the faint crackle of thumb on paper as she turned the pages. She read until the dawn broke. This book told of witches through the centuries. Young women who were outsiders; who knew how to heal; who had a sixth sense; who could create storms and make things happen at will, things that couldn’t be explained or understood or believed; women whom people were instinctively scared of. Anything bad that happened, they were to blame.
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