On Florence’s wedding day, a white-crowned sparrow in a nearby birch tree sang a tune that sent chills down the spines of those in attendance. She’s a bird witch, they said. They do her bidding.
But it was merely her nightshade that drew the birds to her.
She kept sunflower seeds in her pockets, and she left piles of them on rocks and along the shore of the lake. And when she wore her yellow-apricot dress, seeds spilled out through the hole in her pocket and made little trails wherever she went. She whispered omens to the birds, and in return, they told her the secrets of her enemies.
Later in Florence’s life, the Walker home built in the trees was always filled with the chitter-chatter of house finches and spotted towhees. They flew among the rafters and slept crowded around the bathroom sink.
Florence died at age eighty-seven. A nasty bout of tuberculosis. An owl cried from the footboard of her bed frame all night, until Florence finally let out a little chirp and went still.
In the garden, a crow can still be seen hopping between rows of garlic and geraniums, searching for earthworms. Its eyes are that of a girl.
How to Lure the Crow from the Garden:
One handful birdseed
A wisp of sapphire smoke
Two clovers picked beside the garden gate
Click your tongue andspeak Florence Walker’s name three times. Wear a sun hat.
NORA
Sweat beads from my forehead and I kick back the blankets. Hot and disoriented.
The morning sun is a diffused orb of light through my bedroom window, and Fin is panting beside the stairs, tongue lolling in the heat of the loft. A tiny pulsing spurs at my temples from not enough sleep, and then I remember the boy. Full lips and too-deep eyes.
I climb free from the bed, light-headed, on edge, and Fin follows me down the stairs—both of us needing the cool relief of fresh air. Something to wipe away the fevered dreams still clacking through me. The ones I can’t shake.
But when I reach the bottom step, I stop short.
In the living room, the fire burns low, barely a flicker from inside the stove.
On the couch is a heap of blankets, a pillow rumpled and wrinkled and slept on.
But no Oliver Huntsman.
I yank open the front door and hurry out into the snow—the cold air pouring into my lungs, stinging the tips of my ears. A thin edge of panic worms itself between my shoulder blades. Not because I’m worried about him—but because I can’t be certain he was ever here at all. That I didn’t imagine him: a boy made of snow and dark stars. And once the sun rose in the sky, he turned back into dust and disappeared.
I stand on the deck and scan the trees, looking for footprints in the snow, for some hint that he snuck away in the night. Returned to the Wicker Woods.
And then I see.
An outline appears among the trees, between the house and the frozen lake, and the breath catches in my lungs—a defiant itch crawling up the back of my neck.
It’s him.
He’s wearing his clothes from yesterday, now dry, and perhaps it’s just the morning light—all swimmy and strange and beautiful—but he looks oddly valiant, like a boy about to set off on a journey. Some perilous adventure he surely won’t return from.
Snow skitters down frm the charcoal sky, and he spins around, sensing me watching him. His lean emerald eyes stare back at me—a starkness in them I can’t decipher. And in his hand I see the cotton sack of herbs I placed beside him while he slept.
“Are you okay?” I ask, moving to the edge of the deck, but the words feel useless, sucked dry by the cold air as soon as they leave my lips.
“I needed the fresh air,” he says, shifting his weight in the snow. “I was hoping the sun might be out.” His gaze skips up to the sky, where the dark clouds have snuffed out the blue beyond. And I wonder if he thought the sunlight would warm him, heal him—a balm on his weary mind. That it might return his memories to him in one swift inhale.
His knuckles close around the pouch of herbs and he glances down at it, eyebrows drawn together, like he doesn’t remember holding it.
“I made it for you last night,” I explain, a twinge of embarrassment slicing through me. Witchy herbs gathered by a witchy girl. I am a Walker who has never wanted to be anything else, but I also don’t want him to look at me like the kids at school do, like the other boys at the camp do. Like I am a monster, strange and eerie with wickedness in my heart. I want him to see only a girl. “It will help to warm you,” I add, as if this makes it less odd. As if a sack of herbs were as common as a spoonful of strawberry cold syrup before bed.
But his eyes soften, unafraid, unfettered.
“You need to sleep with it for the next two nights,” I say, although I don’t expect him to really keep it—a strange bag of sharp-smelling herbs.
He nods, and when he speaks, his voice is raw and shredded by the cold. “Thank you.”
Fin plods down the steps and pushes his nose into the snow, trailing some scent through the low morning fog, past Oliver’s legs. “Another storm is coming,” I say just as an icy wind churns up off the lake, nasty and mean. It blows through the trees, stinging my face, and a feeling of déjà vu ripples through me so quickly I almost miss it. As if I’ve been here before, looking out at Oliver standing in the trees, his mouth pinched flat. Or maybe I will again—time slipping just barely forward and then back. I count the seconds, I blink, and when I open my eyes, the feeling is gone.
Oliver lowers his gaze, and I wish I could pull words from his throat—I wish I knew what he was thinking. But he’s as mute as the jackrabbits who sit on the porch in autumn, peering in through the windows, thinking their docile, unknowable thoughts.
When he still doesn’t reply, I clear my throat, preparing myself for the question I need to ask. The one that has simmered inside me all night, burning holes of doubt through my skin. “How did you end up in the Wicker Woods?”
How did you survive in that dark, awful forest for two weeks?
In the cold?
His eyes slide back over me, but this time his mouth is turned down, a puzzled expression forming along his brow. “The Wicker Woods?” he asks.
“That’s where I found you.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t know,” he answers first, and then, “I don’t remember what happened.”
The prick of something tiptoes up my spine—mistrust maybe.
“It’s dangerous in there,” I say. “You could have died. Or gotten lost and never found your way out again.”
“But you went into the Wicker Woods,” he points out.
His expression is calm. While my thoughts turn in circles, round and round without end.
“It was a full moon last night,” I say quickly. “And I’m a Walker.” Everything you’ve heard about me is true, I think but don’t say. All the stories. The rumors passed through the boys’ camp, the word whispered in a hush: witch.
If he had grown up here, he would know the lore of my family. All the tales told about Walkers: of Scarlett Walker, who found her pet pig in the Wicker Woods, where it had turned an ashen shade of white after eating a patch of rare white huckleberries. Of Oona Walker, who could boil water by tapping a spoon against a pan. Or Madeline Walker, who would catch toads in jars to silence people from telling her secrets.