Page 11 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
Cora leaves her, muttering about Evans women, how they always come in one variety: sour. But Helen... Helen’s different. Cora remembers all too well finding her last year, a few feet from the path, her eyes distant, wistful, dazed...
Cora shakes off the memory, knowing she’s doing right by the girl. She’s doing right byallof them. She continues through the town, distributing twists of rock salt, lavender buds, and fennel seeds in the paper packets. Some of the women, especially the mothers, regard her with suspicion. Some are grateful, and some roll their eyes as she retreats from their front door. But all of them listen. None of them turn her away. And by lunchtime every paper packet has been left in the right place, with a warding sprinkled along the threshold of every household she has visited.
“A job well done,” Cora says to herself smugly. Her hip is aching something fierce, making each step an effort as a fresh gust ruffles her headscarf. She collects eggs from the butcher’s—muttering about the laying hens being off-color—and flour from the general store. At the newsagent’s, she selects a new paperback. She walks past the library, but of course Jess and Dawn aren’ton her list. Neither of them is from a wayward family. By the time Cora returns to her car, she almost has a spring in her step. The frost may have arrived early, but she’ll be damned if she sees anyone else disappear up the mountains. Curse or no curse, this winterwillgo well.
Ivy would have tutted. She would have called Cora a fool for interfering and urged her to ignore the signs, to leave the mountains and their meddling well alone. She would have told Cora to close the book, to do no more workings. She would have reminded her sister of what she herself had had to give in return, of the bargains she had made. Of all that they had lost.
But Cora loves the people of Woodsmoke. The sour-faced Evans women, the Simpkins, the Brookes family... She loves the mountains and their magic just as much, but there’s a balance to be maintained, she believes. The mountains have claimed too many lives. With this curse of early frost, this curse she hasn’t quite put her finger on... well. It doesn’t hurt to be careful. To dish out a few reminders of the old ways.
It’s just Carrie she needs to fix now. Just Carrie she needs to check on, and all will be well.
Chapter 9
Carrie
My sister disappeared in the last blush of summer, and there have been no wildflowers left on the doorstep since.
—Clemence Morgan, December 18, 1875
The stranger from before is outside the cottage. He’s carrying wildflowers—a small bunch of yarrow and evening primrose—in his fist. At first, I watch him through the windscreen, gripping the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white. I’ve just gone to pick up a steam wallpaper stripper; it’s sitting in a box on the passenger seat at my side.
The man knocks on the cottage door, once, twice, then shakes his head. He places the wildflowers on the doorstep and thrusts his hands into his pockets. He’s all angles, this stranger. Dark hair curving over his forehead, framing sharp cheekbones, his back curved like a sickle. He turns, walking toward the path that leads up the mountain. My gaze snaps to the yarrow and evening primrose, the haze of white and yellow that I know will wilt within an hour, and then to his retreating back. I get out of the car.
“Wait!” I call, slamming the car door shut. “Wait!”
His footsteps stutter as I hurry over to him, past the wildflowers, past the cottage. He turns, eyebrows raised in a question. And as I get closer to him, I see the true color of his eyes. Blue, a deep midnight blue, the deepest navy I’ve ever seen. Those eyes blink at me now, over his pursed mouth. “Who are you?”
Irritation nettles me. “I’m the woman you’re leaving flowers for. Did you leave a bunch the other day as well? On this doorstep?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t. Do you think I need this? Here? I don’t want these left here, I—”
His forehead bunches, tiny lines creasing his skin. “I left them for Ivy.”
“Ivy...” I blow out a breath, relief pooling in my middle, replacing the irritation, the fear, the superstitious fear that I should be gathering up these flowers. The wildflowers were left by aperson. An actual, living being. Not by the mountains. Not like some folktale that’s been passed from tongue to tongue in Woodsmoke or written in the book. I rub a hand over my face, the tiredness of the last few days catching up with me suddenly. “Ivy passed away. I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” he says. He closes his eyes briefly, as though gathering himself. When he opens them, they’re fixed on me. “Are you her granddaughter?”
“Yes, I am.”
A faint smile ghosts around his lips. “She said you’d return.”
Then he turns on his heel, setting off for the mountains.
“Wait!” I say again, reaching a hand out to him before I can stop myself. I don’t know why I reach out to him. I’m wrung out, fed up with the wallpaper stripping, with this cottage that seems to be crumbling at its core. The more layers I peel back, the more I find. And these wildflowers, these gifts, have been bothering me for a week. Like a distant buzzing I can’t quite tune out. But I can’t ignore them, knowing the tales, the magic of this place. “How did you know her?”
He hesitates, turns partway, and fixes his eyes on the cottage at my back. A shadow passes across his face, but he quickly blinks it away. So quickly that I wonder if I imagined it. “I helped herlast winter. A few repairs, just to keep the place going. I wanted to do more, but she said it wasn’t time.” He shakes his head in confusion.
“Ivy was like that,” I say.
“Mysterious?”
“Cryptic. Stubborn. Even in her own sweet way.”
He shakes his head again. “Sorry I disturbed you.”
“It’s all right,” I say, shrugging. “It’s good to know where the flowers are coming from. Even if they’re not for me. You should have waited the other day, when I called after you. For a minute, I thought I’d imagined you.”
