Ember held her arms out in despair. “I know what you’re looking for. An explanation for why you’re so alone, why you’ve never fit in. I know because I want one too. But . . . a witch?”
Poppy looked like she was about to cry. “Why won’t you believe me?”
Ember longed to walk away, back to the simple, dreary tasks of laundry and wood collecting, but Poppy’s desperation kept her stuck in her place, unable to move.
“Why?” Poppy cried again.
“Because I don’t want you to be a witch! Not you! Not you too!” Then Ember started to cry—angry, scalding tears.
Poppy took a deep breath. “I can do stuff, Ember. I don’t even know how I do it. It just happens.” She took a finger and lifted a tear from Ember’s cheek. It sat there, a perfect sphere on Poppy’s fingertip, and then magically it lifted and spun like a globe. It turned from white to silver to gold and then fell with a splash onto Poppy’s palm.
Ember blinked in disbelief.
Then Poppy shut her eyes and Ember waited until suddenly a small flame sprung up from the damp grass beside them. Ember sprang back but the fire spread, drawing a pattern around them until they were standing in the middle of a burning heart. Ember started to stamp it out, but Poppy exhaled as though blowing out a candle and the flames disappeared without a speck of a singe.
“I need your help.”
“You’re a witch,” Ember stated, just wanting to feel the words on her tongue.
“Yes,” said Poppy.
Ember thought back to the bird that had rested on her arm in the dell and hated herself for ever thinking she could have summoned it. “It was you,” she sighed, letting the disappointment drift out of her. “You sent the bird to me that day.”
Confusion traveled across Poppy’s face until it finally arrived at the memory. “Oh,” she gasped. “I’m sorry. I’m never really sure what’s me and what isn’t.”
“What are you going to do?” Ember asked, her mind picking up speed as it hurdled over the possibilities.
“I’m going to practice and learn and practice some more.”
“And then what are you going to do?”
Poppy’s mouth twitched unsurely, and as her certainty deserted her, she again looked like the young girl Ember knew.
“I don’t know.”
“Will you still be my friend?” Ember felt the tears welling in her eyes once more, but Poppy grabbed her and hugged her close.
“Always. Don’t ever doubt it.”
Ember clung to Poppy, not wanting to let go. The questions fluttered like an eclipse of moths in her mind, but she batted them away, refusing to let them fly out of her mouth and cloud the moment.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sorrel helped her mother into the hot bath. She had boiled pot after pot of water to fill the wooden tub in the old shack next to their caravan. Raven was stooped, her joints refusing to straighten, and Sorrel could tell by the way her eyelids kept drooping that the pain was worse than usual. She took Raven’s weight as she struggled to raise her leg over the edge of the tub.
“Should I pick you up?” Sorrel asked, wondering if her mother’s leg would ever reach its destination.
Raven tutted, and spurred on by her annoyance, her leg finally made it into the water. Sorrel lifted her mother’s shoulder so the other leg might follow, then helped to lower her down.
“Lie back,” Sorrel said softly, “and I’ll get your tea.”
She watched her mother’s bony, loose-skinned body sink into the water. She heard the relief in her long sigh. Then she turned to leave and nearly stopped in surprise when she heard her mother mutter, “Thank you, child.” And, “I’ll be better tomorrow.”
“I know you will,” Sorrel said kindly as she slipped through the door.
Sorrel had been angry when she’d rubbed arnica onto Raven’s knees and ankles, sullen when she’d laid hot lavender towels across her back. She had ground the fennel seeds for the tea with a desperate vigor so the pestle and mortar scraped painfully together. For when she was called to her mother’s side, she knew Ember would take her chance to leave. She knew too where she would be and whom she would be with. She pictured her cousin in the dell—with him. She saw him touching the sunshine hair, smelling the blossom scent, holding the soft, pale hand. She saw their lips moving toward each other. With that, Sorrel had kicked at the wall, hurting her toe. But now, seeing her mother so diminished, Sorrel felt a sense of self-loathing and guilt at her betrayal. She quickly poured the boiling water over the seeds in the strainer and waited until the tea turned green.
As she returned with the tea, Sorrel sensed her moment to ask about Ember.
“Shouldn’t I be following Ember, Mother? You’d said to watch her at all times.”
“You can leave that to me now.”
Sorrel’s eyes flickered and she clenched her jaw to stop herself from responding too quickly and revealing how much it mattered.
“What about the girl?” she asked calmly, controlling the shake in her voice.
Her mother turned her head to look at her. “You were right, child. It was the boy who holds Ember’s heart.”
Sorrel looked to her lap, feeling her cheeks heat up, knowing they’d be red.
“You did well, Sorrel,” continued her mother, offering up her praise. “You can leave the matter with me now.”
“She might leave.”
“Let her fly.”
“The girl, though,” Sorrel insisted, trying to keep the panic from her voice. “I know you were concerned about her.”
“I have my eye on her. As of yet, she is nothing for us to fear.” Sorrel looked at the doorway, the tears pricking dangerously at her eyes. “Be pleased, child. Your task is done. You are free.” And with that, Raven took a sip of her tea.
“Yes, Mother,” Sorrel murmured, dispelling the urge to grab the mug of tea and hurl it against the wall. If only she’d had the nerve when preparing that brew to reach into the cabinet beside her and take down the sleeping tonic from the collection of bottles and add a few drops to the liquid. Then she would have run and run to that dell and feasted her eyes on the sight of them, of him.
Now it was too late. Dusk was darkening, and Ember would be skipping merrily home. Once again her cousin had outwitted her.
Later, when night had crept upon the camp and the air had chilled to freezing, Sorrel took her cousin a bowl of sugared nuts. She’d had to forego her best hat for them. She missed that hat already as the cold crawled inside her ears and stole the heat from her head. It would be worth it, though, if her cousin were to confess all about the boy. Sorrel could not let Ember get away with her crimes so easily.
“They’re not poisoned,” she said as Ember looked at the nuts with apprehension. Sorrel turned her mouth upward into a smile to show she was making light, and Ember took the nuts gratefully.
“Thank you, cousin,” she said, offering Sorrel some.
They both munched on the nuts like squirrels, letting the brittle syrup melt and ooze upon their tongues.
“Do you ever wish you could leave this place? Eat as many sweet things as you please?” Sorrel asked in her most wishful tone.
Ember looked at her in surprise, then lowered her head.
Sorrel pressed on. “I heard the chaffs have so many different types of sugared treats, it would make your head spin and your teeth turn black.”
“We’d need money,” Ember at last replied. “You have to buy everything there . . . or so I’ve heard.”
“We’d need to study harder at Sister Brianna’s alchemy class then.” Sorrel was rewarded with a laugh for that. “In earnest, though, do you wonder what life might be beyond the camp? . . . For I do.” She whispered the last words even though no one was about, hoping Ember might feel privy to a deeply held secret and offer up her own to balance the scales of confession. She could feel Ember’s eyes searching for clues in her face and kept her features steady.
“I am content with what I have,” Ember m
uttered, taking the last of the nuts, then dipping her fingers into the sugared crumbs and licking them. “Especially with such gifts as these. Thank you again, cousin, for your kindness.”
Sorrel was seconds away from inflicting a rash of spots across her cousin’s pretty face, but she took a long, deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I thought perhaps you might understand me, Ember. No matter.” She stood up to leave. “Just don’t mention what I said, I beg of you. Not to anyone.”
She turned to walk away and heard a rustle as Ember got to her feet.
“Cousin, wait.” Sorrel turned, and Ember stepped toward her. Sorrel sensed victory within her reach. Then Ember’s hands reached forward. “Don’t forget your bowl.”
The next day Ember was in the storeroom, her pockets full of dried herbs and pickled eyes and claws, searching for a jar of poisonous berries that were in short supply. It was morning lessons, and she had been excused from Sister Ada’s class on account of the toads. Thankfully it was quickly decided that removing the warts that spotted the toads’ rough skin would be more than Ember could cope with.
Outside the class the camp had been quiet, and it was easy for her to wait for a safe moment to slip inside the storeroom. She had dragged a step over to the shelves and was standing on her tiptoes trying to reach the highest ledge.
“Can I help you, cousin?” came the voice. Ember turned and saw Sorrel standing there, a crooked smile upon her face. Sorrel couldn’t seem to show happiness without her face contorting so, and this made it impossible for Ember to ever know whether she was sincere. Ember glanced at Sorrel’s eyes but they were hooded, the gray pupils two tiny, dull pebbles lost in the shade of her brows.
“My mother sent me to fetch some supplies,” Ember hurriedly explained, hoping against hope Sorrel would not investigate further. She wobbled as she stepped down, and Sorrel took her arm. “Thank you, cousin.”
Sorrel hopped onto the step and looked down at Ember. “What was it that Aunt Charlock requires?”
Ember’s mind whirled. No witch would need the berries unless for an emergency. “Erm, arrowroot,” she mumbled.
Sorrel scanned the shelves. “It’s right in front of you, you dunce.”
Ember rolled her eyes in fake embarrassment. She took the arrowroot and placed it in her pocket, feeling the other secret ingredients brush against her fingertips. She glanced guiltily at Sorrel and felt her cousin’s suspicion fall upon her shoulders like a cloak.
“Is there anything else I can find for you?” Sorrel asked neutrally.
Ember’s mind whirled with what on earth to say and how to say it. Then it came to her. “I’ve thought about what you said last night. And I do understand what it was you were speaking of.” Sorrel blinked in surprise, and Ember, encouraged, continued on. “Wondering of another life, or a different world from ours.”
“Sometimes,” said Sorrel, “I wish I could meet a chaff, just to know, to ask them what it’s like, out there.”
Ember held her breath and clocked how extraordinary it felt, such a moment as this. A bond of true friendship with any of her fellow sisters was something she had long since stopped dreaming of. But now the moment was here and the seconds were ticking away, taking it further from her.
Unless she spoke. Now.
She opened her mouth to tell her cousin something true, something secret. Sorrel leaned forward just a fraction in anticipation, so as not to miss a word.
“Ember!” came the call. Then again, more urgently, “Ember!”
Sorrel’s face twisted with frustration. Ember’s mouth closed. The moment was lost, and she doubted it would ever be refound.
“My mother,” Ember whispered as Charlock’s head peered around the storeroom door.
“There you are, girl. I was wondering where you had got to.”
Ember looked dazed. She’d never been very good at lying to her mother.
“She was just bringing you the goods you asked for. I’m afraid I delayed her, Aunt Charlock.”
Her mother’s eyes flicked from Sorrel, who was smiling that misshapen smile of hers again, to Ember. Ember couldn’t bear to meet her mother’s gaze so let her eyes fall shut for a moment.
“Well, let’s not dawdle any longer. I’m sure your cousin has better things she could be doing.”
Ember heard her cue and hurried to the door, glancing in apology to Sorrel, who stood there stiff and unyielding as a post.
“Thank you, Sorrel,” Ember heard her mother say as she stepped into the bright winter light and her lungs gulped down the sharp, cold air.
Ember and Charlock’s feet tapped quickly over the hard ground. It was only when they were back inside the caravan, the door firmly shut and the windows checked for eavesdroppers, that Charlock spoke. Ember was grateful for the sound as the silence had been so heavy, she had felt it pressing upon her brain.
“Speak,” was all her mother said.
And this was how Ember found herself confessing to most, but not all, of what had happened that autumn. She made no mention of Leo—that she didn’t dare—or of any names. She just talked of meeting a girl one day in the dell, a girl who was kind and understanding, a girl who now believed herself—no, knew herself—to be a witch.
“Are you sure?” Charlock asked.
Ember nodded. “She can do things, things even the girls here can’t do, and that’s without knowing how or why.”
Charlock’s brow furrowed, and she moved to the kitchen and busied herself heating water on the stove. “And the things from the storeroom? They are for her?”
“She just wants to learn. To practice,” Ember said, marveling at her mother’s quiet response to this news. “She is one of us, Mother.”
Ember noticed a look of hurt cross her mother’s features before she quickly blinked it away. The water was beginning to rumble in the pan, the bubbles rising, but neither of them paid attention to it. Instead, Ember watched as her mother reached into her cabinet of supplies, picking deftly and swiftly at different bottles and jars to make a small packet of ingredients. When Charlock was done, she went to the shelves and took down a book, placed the packet upon it, and handed both to Ember.
“Take her these,” she said. “And tell her I expect the book back in the state she found it.”
Ember hugged Charlock tight. “Thank you, Mother. I am the luckiest of daughters.”
Charlock pulled her roughly away. “You are not to speak of this to anyone.”
“I know,” Ember quickly reassured.
“Not even Sorrel.”
Ember flushed under her mother’s hot look. “Not even Sorrel,” she promised. “Nor Raven,” she added for good measure.
“Especially not Raven,” her mother said, and then she turned, at last, to the water, burbling so fiercely now that it was foaming up and spilling out over the confines of the pot.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Poppy had intended to look for Leo before now. She had intended to find him, thank him, hold him so he knew how much his help with Minx meant to her. But yesterday had disappeared so quickly. She had awoken late in the afternoon, dazed and distressed. Then her meeting with Ember had left her even further drained, and she had returned to her bed and cried for Minx some more. As she sunk back into sleep, she promised to herself that she would get up early to find Leo before school, but she had overslept and only woke when her father was banging on her door, shouting that she was late.
Poppy spent classtime memorizing spells. She became so lost in them that she didn’t hear Mr. Reed ask her a question, then ask if she was listening, then ask if she’d listened to a single word he’d said all class. In fact, she didn’t hear a thing until Mr. Reed was right in front of her, hands on her desk and leaning forward until his face was only a few inches from her own. Only then did she hear the class snickering and Mr. Reed furiously ordering her out of his classroom to the principal’s office.
After that, Poppy heard everything. The scribble of Mr. Jeffries’s pen on paper, the bell ringing
, the chairs grating on the floor, the doors opening, and the gossip chiming down each and every corridor, rippling into every room. Each time her name was mentioned, Poppy felt it like a little pinch. It actually made the task of eliciting Mr. Jeffries’s sympathy easier as, while Poppy talked of her grief for her pet cat, the constant sting of the pinches caused her to shift in her seat, her breath to catch in her throat, and finally her eyes to actually tear up.
Mr. Jeffries offered up a conciliatory box of tissues, and as Poppy went to take them, their hands touched for the briefest of seconds. Suddenly Poppy knew Mr. Jeffries was a dog lover. She had no idea how she knew. She just did. So as she sniffed into one of the tissues, Poppy talked of her hope that she could now persuade her father to get a puppy . . . a black Lab . . . her favorite breed.
“I have one!” Mr. Jeffries declared proudly, as Poppy knew he would.
In the end Poppy was awarded the rest of the day off so she could mourn in peace, for “A death of a pet is a death in the family.”
As soon as she left school Poppy went not to the dell but to the stream behind the graveyard. Calling Leo’s name, she searched the garden, and when she didn’t find him, she ignored the urge to go and sit by Minx’s burial spot. Instead of lingering there, she hurried back through the hidden door, down the church path, and through the gate. Heading directly into town, she scoured the streets for all the spots her eyes usually wouldn’t think to stray upon—doorways, benches, under bridges, by the trash cans down the backstreets, along the railroad tracks. There she found an invisible community of old men with beer cans and bottles in paper bags, kids tucked into ratty, old sleeping bags, and a lady with newspapers tied around her feet, pulling a shopping cart stacked high with all her worldly possessions. But no Leo.
Her feet aching, Poppy rode the bus home. She pressed her face up against the window, her breath steaming a small, oval patch onto the glass as she stared out in hopes of spotting him. When she got inside the house she sat cross-legged on the floor and tried to meditate. She thought it might help her reach that place in her mind that could fathom information, impossible information like about Mr. Jeffries’s dog. How was it she could know that trivial, useless fact and not know the things that really mattered to her?
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