Leo stayed put at the station, fearful of coming across them if he set out again. He sat in the dingy waiting room, reading a discarded section of a newspaper, trying to act like he had a ticket in his pocket and a train to catch. After a couple of hours a woman entered. Leo was used to keeping his head down, eyes averted, but this woman caught his attention. He couldn’t help but steal a look at her. She was similarly dressed to Ember. Long skirt and cape with knitted fingerless gloves on her hands and a fur hat around her head. The hat looked like fox, Leo thought to himself. And her face—it was broad and smooth with a wide forehead, dark thick brows, and the most arresting yellow, oval eyes like a cat’s. She was utterly strange, like a person from a distant land or time.
“I like your scarf,” she said suddenly, and Leo’s hand reached up to touch it.
“Thank you,” he said shyly. “It was a gift.”
Then he realized the wool was the very same yarn as the scarf tied around her neck. They matched. Leo felt his eyes widen. The woman’s pale, full lips turned upward into a smile. Disconcerted, Leo quickly looked down.
“What are you named?”
It took a moment for Leo to work out what she was asking him.
“My name?” he said. “Leo.”
“Leo,” she repeated, trying it out, seeming satisfied.
The woman didn’t speak again. She shut her eyes and sat there, upright and still. After a while Leo felt tired. He tried to keep awake but he kept nodding off, his chin dropping to his chest, until he’d jolt and lift his head and rub his eyes. Before long he’d doze off again, but each time he stirred he was aware of the woman still sitting there, so perfectly peaceful. At last Leo fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When he awoke, he was alone. Outside the woman was standing on the platform, awaiting the train that was pulling into the station. Only a few people got off the train. Among them were Poppy and Ember.
Poppy had left her mother in the hands of the nurses, all struggling to restrain her like she was a wild animal needing to be leashed. The howling had started when Ember ran from the room and did not return. Each anguished cry seared Poppy’s heart. She had thought there was nothing more her mother could ever say that would hurt her, but here she was, once again, having to hold in the tears and bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying out.
Her mother was crazy. If she wasn’t when Poppy was a baby, she certainly had become so. Poppy knew she should do as the doctors and nurses advised and pay no attention to what her mother said when she took one of her turns. And yet her mother’s claims had been proved right. Poppy was unlike other daughters. She was strange and she did possess magical powers.
But what happened today with Ember was beyond even Poppy’s comprehension. It made her head whirl so fast that she struggled to keep her balance and had to walk down the hallway with one hand on the wall, fearing that without it, she might fall.
She found Ember outside, wiping the tears from her reddened eyes and swollen face.
“That didn’t go quite as I planned,” she said, and Ember attempted a smile that quickly slumped back into sorrow. “I guess it’s just what happens when your mom is crazy.”
The tears welled up in Ember’s eyes again while Poppy’s remained dry.
“Why do you think? . . .” Ember tailed off.
“She’s insane, Ember,” Poppy said bitterly. “That’s all there is to it.”
The trip home felt so much longer without the urgency and excitement of the outward journey. Even the train seemed to be traveling more slowly now that the girls felt so subdued. They both sat in quiet contemplation until Ember finally broke the silence.
“I used to think I had another mother out there, in the real world, far away from the coven. One just like me but with soft hands and feet and white teeth and colorful clothes.” Ember spoke so quietly that Poppy had to lean forward to hear. “I’m sorry I ran off like that.”
“No,” said Poppy firmly. “I should never have brought you. It wasn’t fair.”
Ember gave Poppy’s hand a squeeze so Poppy spoke again. “You know . . . my mom . . . she’s never been angry with me for going out. She never even cared where I was.”
When they arrived, Ember’s mother was waiting for her on the platform, just as Poppy felt she would be. Ember ran into her mother’s arms and Poppy hung back on the edge of the platform. The air beneath the train rushed past her legs as it rumbled on its way, but she hardly noticed as her eyes were fixed on Charlock—how she pulled Ember to her, laying her cheek on her hair, how she looked at her daughter, talking earnestly, shaking Ember’s shoulders, then hugging her again.
The contrast between this mother-and-child scene and her own almost made Poppy want to laugh out loud. But she stayed quiet, watching, fascinated. Charlock was the first grown-up witch Poppy had ever laid eyes on. She wanted so badly for Charlock to notice her, to recognize her as one of her kind, to beckon her over and take her under her wing. But Poppy’s legs wouldn’t move, and she stayed back and watched as Charlock set off, her arm around Ember’s shoulders, keeping her close.
Poppy watched them until they disappeared. Ember turned at the last moment and gave a tiny wave and then they were gone. Poppy stood there for a while. She felt so very tired and lost. Then she heard his voice and immediately she felt found.
“Poppy!?” Leo called again.
Poppy turned and saw him and her heart filled like a balloon, lifting her spirits instantly. Slowly he walked toward her and gently put his arms around her. Poppy laid her head against his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
No recriminations or anger. None of what happened before seemed to matter. Only this.
They took the bus back to her house. Poppy paid and Leo said nothing, just climbed on board behind her. They sat close, legs and sides touching, hands enclosed together. Poppy shut her eyes and allowed herself to feel contented, just for this short while.
The house was dark and Poppy guessed her father wasn’t home but checked anyway before gesturing to Leo to come in off the street.
“What happened to the window?” Leo asked once inside the cold living room.
“Trick-or-treaters,” Poppy said.
Leo took a moment before speaking again. “You all right?” His voice sounded tight with anger.
“I went to see my mother today.”
It was Poppy’s way of saying she wasn’t all right, and he seemed to understand that.
“I saw a picture of her,” he said. “That time in your room.”
Poppy saw the blush appear on his cheeks and it made her flush too, guessing what he was thinking of. She went to the sideboard, really to avoid the awkwardness between them, and got out an old photograph album. She opened it up and saw the snapshots of her past. Putting it on the table, she looked down at the pictures and Leo came and stood next to her. The images were so familiar, and yet Poppy struggled to recall the time and place.
Leo touched a finger to a shot of Poppy’s face. She was about five, alone in a garden.
“You don’t look very happy,” Leo said softly.
“Neither does she,” Poppy said.
On the opposite page was her mother, so very young yet somehow aged by sadness, her shoulders slightly stooped as if she were carrying the weight of the world upon them. Poppy turned the page and suddenly there was her mother, smiling.
“A different woman,” Leo remarked.
“It was before she had me,” Poppy stated, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
Melanie’s golden hair had been blown by the wind so it fanned the air and a strand swept across her face. She was laughing, her eyes crinkled as her hand tried to hold back her hair.
“She looks like Ember,” Leo commented casually.
Poppy blinked and then she saw it too. It wasn’t just the shade of the hair and the eyes and the skin, though they were identical. It was the expression that clinched it, a look Poppy had seen on Embe
r’s face countless times before, that she had thought was unique, yet here it was captured in a photograph from twenty years ago.
Headlights swept the room and Leo took a step back, panicked.
“Out the back,” Poppy told him, and she ran to open the back door, her fingers fumbling with the key in the lock. The door finally opened and Leo leapt out. Then he turned back.
“Meet me later. In our place.”
She nodded, more because he said “our” than in agreement to the plan.
He kissed her so quickly she hardly had time to feel it, and then he was gone and Poppy was shutting and locking the door just as her father was walking into the hallway.
“You skipped school today,” he said.
Poppy realized then she hadn’t given school a second’s thought.
“Can’t say I blame you,” her father continued. “After last night.” He went into the front room and looked at the boards on the window. “They’ll be coming to fix that tomorrow.” He blew on his hands. “It’s like a freezer in here.”
As he turned, he saw the album opened on the table. He looked anxiously at Poppy but didn’t say anything, just walked toward it and looked at the photographs.
“Another lifetime,” he murmured. Then he shook his head and closed the album. “It’s no good looking back.”
Poppy wasn’t sure if he was telling her or himself.
“Isn’t it?” she questioned.
It was agonizing having to wait, to watch the minutes tick by so slowly, powerless to do anything but sit there and stare at the photograph in her hands. Poppy had pulled it free of the sticky backing before returning the album to the cabinet. She searched her mother’s face over and over again for confirmation. The truth was in Poppy’s head, shouting out at her, but it felt too big and loud for her brain to cope with. And the doubts kept crowding in, making her temples throb. She had to be sure.
Finally her father slept and Poppy slipped out of the house with the few items she’d collected. She traveled fast, crossing streets and then fields to reach the spot she was looking for. There she gathered branches and sticks, stacking them to make a bonfire. It took longer than she thought to light it. She struck match after match, but their tiny flames were snuffed out the moment they touched the damp wood. Poppy smiled foolishly when she remembered she didn’t need the matches after all. She had the power within her. Summoning a spell, she proclaimed it out loud, raising her hands so the fire ignited in a sudden burst, and soon the bonfire crackled and roared like it was a living, breathing creature. Poppy felt the heat of it without and within.
She opened Ember’s book of magic and read the words by the glow of the flames. Chanting, slowly at first then faster and faster, she threw in the items she had carried with her.
Something of hers—a book.
Something of Ember’s—a white handkerchief Ember had given her.
Something of her mother’s—a pair of red high-heeled shoes Poppy had smuggled into her bag when they came up north.
Poppy hesitated before hurling those in. They were all she had of her mother. Life with Melanie might have been harrowing at times, but it was the life she knew. Maybe a crazy mother was better than no mother at all. The fire gave a hungry snap and Poppy released the shoes into its flaming jaws. Finally she took the photograph from her pocket, took a last look at the stranger smiling back at her, and threw that in too.
Shutting her eyes, she cast the spell. When she opened them, pictures began to flicker across the flames. In them Poppy saw a story unfold, the story of her birth. Two mothers, their bellies round and full. One rushing to a hospital, the other kneeling on a wooden floor. Two babies born on the same hour of the same night. Poppy one, the other Ember. Twinned, not biologically—but magically. Melanie Hooper holding Poppy in her arms, looking so tenderly at her newborn. Charlock Hawkweed cradling Ember, inhaling the scent of her. The images spun in the heat, the two girls growing up as they turned—infant, crawling; toddler, walking; child, running; teen, leaping. Around and around they spiraled until the two figures met in the heart of the fire, clasped hands, then melted away so it was just the bright hot light of the flames again, devouring the wood, licking the air.
Poppy’s cheeks glowed red. Her childhood memories lay in ashes inside of her, choking her. She wanted to cough them up and out of her but she couldn’t bear to let them go. After all she had discovered, she still couldn’t say good-bye. Instead, Poppy reached her arm straight into the fire and retrieved the photograph. Her arm was ablaze. She watched it curiously for a moment. Then she blew on it, just gently, and the flames died away.
Poppy looked at the photograph of Melanie Hooper—she couldn’t call her “mother” any longer. It wasn’t even singed.
When Leo saw her, he felt the shock so hard he couldn’t breathe. The happiness cracked open inside of him and his heart split into jagged fragments. He couldn’t quite believe Poppy was here, running toward him. Good things didn’t happen to someone like him. He was so unused to feeling such a high that he didn’t know what to do or what to say. He was in uncharted territory with no idea which way to steer. His face wanted to smile but he had to breathe first. Before he could question any further, there she was, in his arms, and all Leo’s thoughts disappeared. It was just about feeling. Feeling her against him. Touching her face, her arms, her body. Smelling her neck, her hair. Tasting her mouth, her skin, her tears.
“What’s happened?” he asked her, his voice as breathless as he knew it would be.
Poppy looked up at him, her two eyes shining with emotion, the contrasting colors glittering even more brightly through her tears. Then she put her small, cold hands on his cheeks and kissed him so deeply, he felt he had the whole of her. He picked her up—so light, she was—and lay her down beneath the willow where his blankets were. Their limbs entangled, fitting together like they were part of the same being. All night they embraced and talked and finally slept behind the leafy curtain of the branches, and if Leo had stopped to notice for a moment, he would have sworn the winter air around them was midsummer mild and filled with the scent of jasmine and that wafting past on a balmy breeze came the sweet serenade of a nightingale’s song.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Poppy didn’t want to wake. She felt so safe and contented, and even through the haze of sleep she sensed this feeling might end the moment her eyes opened. So she kept them shut and tried to drift in her dreams for a while longer. Leo’s arms and legs were heavy and warm around her. His breath was soft and steady on her hair. Poppy guessed he was awake too but didn’t want to disturb her. Part of her wanted to turn around and kiss him, hear her voice saying his name, and listen to his reply. But instead she lay still and quiet. Leo’s embrace felt like home and she didn’t want to leave. She thought of him, the details of him, how he’d kissed her and touched her, and then she made herself stop or she’d have to turn around and make him do it all over again.
The dawn light peeked through the leaves and onto Poppy’s closed eyelids, but still she didn’t open them, just let the morning rays flicker on her face. Her mind was less obedient. Gently stirring, it took its own course away from Leo, and meandering this way and that, it settled on Charlock. Poppy couldn’t bear to think of that. Not now. So then it traveled to Ember, and there it stuck and wouldn’t shift.
Poppy’s eyes blinked open. Ember. In front of Poppy’s face, a cluster of aconite had sprouted, a lone patch of yellow brightness on the winter grass, the petals the same sunshine shade as Ember’s hair. The flowers trembled before Poppy’s eyes and closed their petals tightly shut. Suddenly Poppy felt cold. The warm glow of her happiness evaporated and she shivered from the chill. The air that had caressed her skin only moments before now nipped at it painfully, and the ground that had cushioned her all night became a hard and frosty bed. Rather than offering shelter, Leo’s limbs felt like they were imprisoning her. Poppy wanted to itch at where his breath hit her hair. She wanted to push his arms away. She wanted to break f
ree and run.
She gave another shiver and Leo kissed her neck.
“Morning,” he murmured.
Poppy sat up.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gruffly.
“I have to go and tell Ember. About us.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said without an instant’s hesitation, and Poppy felt her heart pang.
She turned and looked at him for the first time since they had awoken. Leo put his arms around her, and after a moment, she reached across to hold him back. “I have to tell her myself.”
“Can you wait a while longer?” Leo asked. Poppy rested her forehead on his so their faces were an inch apart. “Just a while . . . ” he entreated.
“She’s my only friend.”
“Not only.” Their lips were so close she could feel his moving.
“I’ve broken her heart.” She sighed and her mouth brushed the edges of his.
“We both have.”
The jealousy was instant. A fraction of a second and Poppy was pulling away. She had caught the look of guilt in Leo’s face and hated him for it. Not wanting him to know, she looked around for the rest of her clothes and started pulling them on.
“It’s only ever been you,” he said, knowing everything already. From his pocket Leo took a small, pink, translucent stone. “Jocelyn gave me this. Her favorite one.”
He handed it to Poppy and she felt it cool and silky on her fingers, despite its rough edges.
“It’s rose quartz,” he told her. “The heart stone.” Poppy glanced up at Leo and he looked embarrassed and then added a little skeptically, “The crystal of unconditional love—or so she said.”
Poppy held it up to the light and saw it glow pink and warm inside.
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