“How do you know they need the medicine?”
Grete picked up a tangled strand of twine from the counter and began working at the knots. “Notes, mostly. Some send their little ones with a message— ‘the baby has a fever’ and the like. If they have questions, they get word to me. They send an older boy or someone full grown to pick up their packages at night, so as not to get on the wrong side of the village apothecary or the priest. A woman in the woods is always suspicious to them that are in charge.”
“I ain’t met an apothecary worth his salt yet,” Hen said, washing her hands at the sink. “Ours is always giving Mam potions that don’t help a lick. You can do more with a cool cloth and a bit of vinegar than the apothecary can do with his whole store of roots and powders.”
“Perhaps you’ll apprentice to a healer when you’re older,” Grete suggested. “I’d say you have the gift for it.”
Hen reddened, then seemed suddenly fascinated with a speck on her shoe. “Be nice to have a gift for something,” she said after a moment. “But they don’t let girls apprentice, now, do they?”
Grete harrumphed. “A bunch of fools, the lot who came up with that system. You lose half the world’s brainpower that way.”
“It is the way it is, I guess,” Hen replied with a shrug. She picked up a small sack of something and handed it to Isabelle. “This here’s boneset, for them what’s got the fever. I’ll show you what Grete’s taught me so far about measuring and pouring out. Nothing hard about it in the least.”
To her surprise, Isabelle found she enjoyed scooping powders onto squares of brown paper and folding the paper into neat triangles. She liked using a dropper to drip liquids into tiny blue bottles, and found it satisfying to pour the red and purple syrups into jars. She enjoyed it even though Grete hovered over her, counting out drops as they dripped and making her remeasure her scoops.
“Why aren’t you watching Hen?” Isabelle asked. Grete’s breath on the back of her neck as she shadowed Isabelle’s every move was beginning to annoy her. “Hen might make a mistake, you never know.”
“Hen won’t make a mistake. Hen’s careful.”
Hen looked up from the table, where she was grinding leaves into a powder, her eyes wide, as though surprised to hear such a thing said about her.
“If Hen’s careful, then what am I?” Isabelle asked.
Grete laughed. “You, Isabelle, are a dreamer. You always have to keep an eye on the dreamers. My husband was one, now, wasn’t he?”
Isabelle turned around and looked at her. “Your husband? You’re married?”
“Was. I’m a widow, going on fifty years now,” Grete said. “One marriage was enough for me.”
“I won’t ever get married,” said Hen. “Don’t want to get weighed down with babies.”
“A baby’s not a bad thing,” Grete said. “You might find you want one later.”
“Maybe.” Hen sounded doubtful. “But Mam’s got five little ones other than me, and it’s brought me no end of troubles. I’m supposed to take care of ’em, being the oldest, but I’m always losing this one or that one, or getting the brush caught in the other one’s hair. Seems I can make a baby cry faster than any girl in the village.”
“You’ve got other talents,” Grete told her. “How about you, Isabelle?” Grete once again peered over Isabelle’s shoulder as Isabelle poured syrup into a jar. “Do you want a man and a baby someday?”
Isabelle shrugged. “I can’t imagine liking someone enough to marry him.”
“Do you know no nice boys?”
Isabelle pondered this for the briefest of moments. “No,” she said, shaking her head. She didn’t mention that up until Hen, she hadn’t known many nice girls, either.
Grete patted Isabelle on the back. “One will come along. You’ve had hard times, to be sure, but things will get easier for you. You’ll see.”
Isabelle wondered if Grete could tell she’d had hard times just by looking at her. She supposed it was possible. But her deep-down feeling? Grete could see inside of people, into their hearts and minds.
In fact, Isabelle felt that surely Grete was magic.
But what kind of magic did Grete possess?
Ah, a question that deserved an answer if ever one did.
19
I know, I know. What about the witch? Will Isabelle find the witch? Is she still looking for the witch? Or has Isabelle’s search come to an end? But if it has, then what? Do we leave Isabelle and Hen happily ever after in the woods with Grete, picking berries? Do they grow up there, tending to Grete in her old age, taking over her “business” when she passes into the Great Unknown?
That could be a good story, don’t you think? Lacking in excitement, admittedly. Perhaps more the thing your grandmother would read with her First Monday of the Month book group. Remember that time you had to go with her? How the hostess’s house smelled like a hundred cats lived there, but it turned out she didn’t have any cats at all, just one shivering Chihuahua? The book they discussed that night was something like A Rosebush for Rosemary, and you vowed that even when you were old as the ancient hills, you wouldn’t read books like that. No, only adventure books for you.
So, should you stop reading this book? I mean, you thought you were getting a witch, and so far all you’ve gotten is two girls and an old woman herb doctor. I don’t blame you for wanting your money back. You saved your receipt, right? Let’s march right back to the bookstore and demand—
Wait a minute.
I thought I saw something.
Yes, I’m pretty sure I saw something over—over—over—
There.
It’s a piece of paper falling out of a book.
I wonder what it says.
20
A few days later, when Isabelle was on the porch reading, a piece of paper slipped out of the book and fell to the floor.
It was a folded sheet of thick drawing paper, yellowing around the edges, crumbling at the corners. Isabelle leaned down and picked it up. Read: For Isabelle. She carefully unfolded it to reveal a nighttime picture drawn in blue-black ink—stars along the top, a full moon, a clearing in the woods, a patch of grass lit by the moon’s pale light. The trees that stood around the clearing had a friendly look to Isabelle, as though they were glad it was finally spring. Something was strung between the two trees in the foreground— was it a blanket? No, Isabelle thought, a hammock.
A hammock. And in the hammock—Isabelle didn’t even have to look. She did look, though, and so she saw the baby, round and glowing, so small. She could tell the baby wasn’t at all scared to be outside in the middle of the night. She could tell just by looking—just by feeling the feelings the picture made her feel as she looked at it.
But as she sat gazing at the picture, another feeling gathered at the edges of the paper where her fingers grasped it. Fear. The trees had felt it first. The trees had heard the children coming through the woods. They’d heard the whispering voices, the hands reaching down to the ground to scoop up rocks and stones. The trees knew who was coming—
21
—and they knew what the children would do next.
22
Isabelle was still sitting in the chair, the book still on her lap, when Grete came out from the kitchen to the porch. Did Grete look different to Isabelle now? Isabelle squinted her eyes, opened them wide, tilted her head left, then right, as she watched Grete walk out to the front yard to check on a patch of silverweed she was cultivating by the woodpile. Does someone’s face look meaner when you’ve discovered their darkest secret? Sadder? The lines around their eyes and the corners of their mouth deeper now, more full of grief, rage, terror, horror?
Even at a distance, Grete looked like Grete, older than Isabelle’s mother, younger than the old ladies she saw riding to the store on the bus, their hands folded carefully atop their purses. Her eyes still looked kind, the skin of her cheeks still looked downy and soft. She didn’t appear the least bit like a—well, Isabelle could barely brin
g herself to think it.
Isabelle looked up to the tops of the trees. She looked for the bones of children dangling from the branches, but saw none. She felt foolish.
And then Isabelle looked at the picture she held in her hands. The trees no longer appeared happy, the moon no longer glowed.
The hammock was empty.
“I see you’ve been reading,” Grete said, remounting the steps to the porch. “Those stories of mine probably aren’t as exciting as the stories you’re used to, but you might learn something, you never know.”
“You don’t ever know,” Isabelle agreed, shutting the book. She reached into her lap to slip the picture back between the book’s pages—
But the picture was gone.
Grete leaned her face next to Isabelle’s and whispered, “Don’t be afraid. But don’t say anything to Hen. She’s a good girl, but she’s lived in fear a long time, and there’s no telling what she’ll do if she finds out.”
Isabelle nodded.
“We’ve things to talk about, you and I,” Grete said, and headed inside just as Hen came bounding into the yard, waving a bundle of leaves at Isabelle. “Goldenseal! It heals everything!”
Hen went on for a few minutes about the miraculous properties of goldenseal, and while she did, Isabelle’s mind raced over possibilities and probabilities and practicalities. Grete, in her way, had just told Isabelle, Yes, I am. She had just told Isabelle, Don’t tell. Was that a threat? It hadn’t sounded like a threat, but now Isabelle wondered.
She looked at Hen. Would Hen even believe her? Well, Hen did believe there was a witch, Isabelle reasoned, so it wouldn’t be like trying to make someone like Charley Bender believe. Charley Bender—who for all Isabelle knew was still standing at the door of the nurse’s office, waiting for Isabelle to pop back up—probably pooh-poohed the very idea of witches, but Hen’s whole life had been lived in the shadow of one.
Hen. At dinner the night before, a savory pumpkin pie seasoned with acorn shavings and lilyweed, she’d reminisced about the pumpkin soup her mother made on cold winter days. It was Hen who was sent to the root cellar to select two or three of the small, round pumpkins they’d stored there after the autumn harvest, because Hen knew from a look which pumpkins were best for soup and which were best for throwing out to the pigs.
“You knew Mam had a mind set on pumpkin soup when she told Jacob to skim the cream off the top of the milk and bring it into the kitchen first thing instead of taking it to market to sell of a morning,” Hen told them, spooning a bite of pie into her mouth. “Cream and a dash of nutmeg is what gives Mam’s soup its flavor. Of course, there’s hours of stewing and stirring to be done first, to get the pumpkin meat soft as it can be. Sugar, she’s the one you give the spoon to. Four years old, but right sensible. Not like Artemis, who’s six but without a straight thought in his head. That one’s topsyturvy.”
Hen had four brothers and one sister: Jacob, Callou, Artemis, Sugar, and Pip. Hen was in charge of the whole brigade, as her mother was always busy cooking and baking and laundering and fixing and patching and cooking and cooking and cooking. Her father was rarely home. “Da is a peddler on the road, selling his wares across the Five Villages and beyond. He’s home in the coldest of the winter months, but rarely elsewise. Ah, but it’s lovely when he’s there. He reads us stories and tells us tales and lets us lie in bed of a morning while he milks the cows.”
“I’d think it be nice to have such a large family,” Grete commented as she poured herself some more tea. “Someone to play with at all hours of the day.”
“It’s not my job to play with ’em, it’s my job to mind ’em, and I’d do a better job of it if there were only one or two,” Hen said with a sigh. “I wish I was the youngest and not the oldest. If I were youngest, then I could run about and play Wallop the Dragon with all the rest. Instead I’m chasing the little ones around in circles, and I’m no good at it. I try to be good at it, I do. But they’re always running away from me.”
“Where are all those brothers and sisters of yours now?” Grete asked. “Back home?”
Hen picked worriedly at a hangnail. “Off at the camps outside of Greenan, I suppose. They got away from me when we were heading up that way, and then I took up with this one.” She nodded toward Isabelle. “I guess I let them get away on purpose. Thought it might be fun to have an adventure on my own.”
If Hen was worried about her brothers and sisters, she didn’t say. Would she be more worried or less, Isabelle wondered now, if she found out the witch was ten feet away from where she sat? Maybe it was best not to find out. Remembering Hen’s desire to wrap her hands around the witch’s neck when she set sights on her, Isabelle shivered. Who knew what Hen would do?
And who knew what Grete had planned for them?
Maybe, Isabelle thought, it was time for a change of venue. For everyone’s sake.
“Hen,” she said in a quiet voice, sure that Grete couldn’t hear them from the kitchen. “Do you think we should be going soon?”
Hen, who had not finished reporting on the joys of goldenseal, stopped short. “But why? Grete is happy to have us, and there’s no place else for me to go. I’d wonder if there were any place else for you to go either.”
Hen had a point. Where would Isabelle wander off to if she left? She had already reached her destination, hadn’t she? She’d set out to find the witch, and apparently she’d found her. A disappointment of a witch, to be honest, not the least bit scary, no evil fumes steaming off her skin, a house filled with sunlight and healing plants, but a witch nonetheless.
“Well, sooner or later, we’ll have to go, won’t we?” Isabelle asked.
“Surely,” Hen replied. “But not during the season. We’ve come to a safe place, and we might as well stay until we wear out our welcome.”
But was this a safe place? Isabelle wondered. Was it safe for Hen, safe for Grete? For the rest of the day she peeked around corners, slinked through the yard, looked up and down and all around, watching and waiting for something to—to what? Jump out at her? Catch her in a trap? Reveal itself? Oh, here we are, a pile of bones, just as you’ve been told.
That night after dinner, when it was time to sit on the porch and read, Grete pulled a thin volume from the bookshelf and blew the dust from its cover. She sat in the middle rocking chair, and Hen and Isabelle sat on either side of her, Hen happily, Isabelle warily.
“Once upon a time,” Grete began, “there was a woman who lived in the woods with her husband and child, and they were very happy.”
23
But then the husband died.
The wife did what she could to make a life for herself and her baby. She hunted the woods for mushrooms and roots and healing plants, anything she could sell to the villagers to survive. The villagers bought the woman’s goods, but did not welcome her into their homes. She and her husband had moved to the woods from another place, and so were strangers, and unwelcome. After her husband’s death, the woman was no more welcome than she had been before, though from time to time a good-hearted villager left her a basket of potatoes or apples on her back porch, a loaf or two of bread, so she and the child wouldn’t starve.
How did the stories start? A woman alone in the woods, I suppose, is always suspicious. So it was no surprise that the village children spied on her and told tales about the baby, that horns grew out of the baby’s forehead, that she had a forked tongue.
The woman had always possessed certain gifts. From the time she was small she knew people’s names without being told, could peer into their minds, see their stories. She had the healing touch, could make words and pictures dance on the page. As a child, her family had moved many times, to keep her safe. Once her gifts were discovered, people tended to start terrible rumors about her, call her names, whisper how it would be better if she were burned at the stake, send the devil running. But because she heard the whispers in her sleep, her family always escaped in time.
The night her life changed forever, sh
e’d heard the whispers in the trees, but the moon was full, its light bright, which confused the leaves and tangled the words and made them impossible to understand. What were the trees saying? She didn’t know, so she went about her evening chores with a heavy feeling and not a thing she could do about it.
When a rock hit the side of the house, she ran into the yard and found the baby already abloom in bruises, a trickle of blood staining her forehead. The woman ran with the baby into the house, then ran out again, a jagged rock in her hand, but no one was there.
And when she went back inside, the baby was gone as well.
24
“So did you ever kill anyone?” Isabelle asked later, when Hen had gone inside to bed.
“Only one,” Grete replied.
25
“That’s an awful story!” Hen cried, thinking Grete was finished. “She found the baby again, didn’t she?”
Grete shook her head. “The baby was gone for good, I’m afraid. Listen to what the story says.” She held up the book. “’And the woman knew the fairies had taken the baby for a changeling, and that the baby would be sent to another world, and would, most likely, not return.’”
Hen reddened. “A changeling! Only a newborn can be a changeling! Besides, if the baby had been taken for a changeling, what did the fairies leave in exchange?”
“A note, it says here,” Grete replied, running her finger down the page. “’No baby will ever be safe in these woods,’ the note read, ‘and so we shall not leave another in this one’s place.’”
“This story should be tossed onto the rubbish heap!” Hen stood, looked indignant, held out her hand. “I’ll do the job myself, if you’d like.”
Grete handed her the book. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said with a sigh. “It’s a story that doesn’t bear retelling.”
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