Page 14 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
But in leaving Carrie the cottage, Ivy had wedged a door open for her granddaughter to return. And Cora knew it wasn’t just about Carrie. Ivy had left Cora something in her will too. Not that Carrie knew about that, or Howard, or anyone. Ivy had left her a quilt, the nine-patch she’d coveted for years. Stitched into the border on the left corner was a note: “Forever your sister.”
Cora gasped when she found it, tracing the tiny stitches with her fingers. It was so Ivy. In life, she had been the one with the granddaughter to pass the book to. But in death, she had ensured that Carrie would have to return to Woodsmoke. Return to Cora, so she wouldn’t be the last Morgan here. This was what caught her in the end, what pressed the grief into her. That careful, stitched note that took Cora right back to when they were girls. When Ivy was just her sister and there wasn’t a whole lifetime of bad decisions and secrets between them. Ivy always seemed to have more—more love in her life, more luck. But with Carrie returned, perhaps Cora would get the chance to feel like a real grandmother. Perhaps now she wouldn’t be the last Morgan woman left in Woodsmoke.
Forever your sister.
Cora sighs as she rounds the curve of the path, picturing those stitches, the hands that made them. Like chalk and cheese, her and Ivy. Ivy may have lured her back, but Cora doesn’t know how to pin Carrie down and make her stay. It won’t do to march over there and insist upon it, or to call in the favors that would bring the tradespeople running to the cottage. If anything, that would speed up Carrie’s departure. She purses her lips and whistles toKep. It will take a more subtle approach. Far more subtle than Cora is suited to.
And she knows that Ivy is most likely watching from afar, having the last laugh.
The trees strangling each side of the path suddenly fall away, revealing the fields glinting with the first frost of winter. Cora halts, eyeing the light trickling over the blades of grass, how it coats everything with a layer of glitter. She loves this time of year. It’s when the mountains are most alive. With the frost come the old tales, the ones about women who lose their hearts. It comes with sighs and longing, wending down the old, ancient paths. It comes with the tale that she rediscovered in the book only yesterday—of a man who appears as the frost shrouds the mountains, then disappears as the frost thaws in the spring.
It’s a tale Cora can’t shake. She’s already reread it three times since yesterday, following the faded loops of Grandmother Tabitha’s handwriting, fascinated not because it’s a love story but because it’s not. The story shows how treacherous these mountains can be. How they can beckon you with a sweet smile, a dark sweeping gaze. Then shred your heart come springtime, when their love melts away.
When she pauses to catch her breath, her eyes return to the mountains. Forever returning. She traces the height of them, the trees clinging to their sides. Then her eyes travel down, down, to the field just east of Woodsmoke. Where Ivy’s old cottage is still stubbornly clinging to the earth. Cora knows she shouldn’t, but what harm is in it, really? She nods, having convinced herself, and hands Kep a treat from her pocket. After handing out the warnings and the salt to all those other young women in town, why not Carrie? Surely she’ll be more cautious than the other women in Woodsmoke, more aware of the mountains and their mischief. But Cora has to be sure.
“Just a small detour is all,” she says to Kep. “Howard won’t miss us.”
Then she steps off the path to make her way across the fields, headed straight to the cottage she hasn’t visited in six years.
Cora means to go in. She really does. But something keeps her feet stuck to the dirt, wedging her boots into the unforgiving ground. She stands rooted, just beyond the threshold, Kep sniffing around her as though it’s just a regular day. But this isn’t a regular day. Not for Cora. This is the day she’s returning to her sister’s cottage, knowing that she won’t find her inside. She’ll never find her again. She gasps suddenly, covering her mouth, and a single tear slips down her cheek.
Forever your sister.Those three little words echo inside her, thrumming in her heart, and she sniffs. Finding a tissue up her sleeve, she quickly wipes away the tear, annoyed with herself. She’s not accustomed to this grief that’s fresh and nimble and quick. It darts in when she least expects it, spilling out of her eyes and bleeding into her thoughts.
“I’m a silly old woman,” she mutters to herself, shoving the tissue deep in her coat pocket. Kep sneezes, and Cora sighs, about to turn away. What’s done is done, she thinks. Ivy’s cold in the ground. We’ll never get those years back now. But... she can see movement in the cottage, just through the window. Someone’s there.
Cora dithers, wondering if she should knock on the door. Whether she should turn away, stop her meddling, her prying. She sees a single discarded yarrow flower, its stem sliced as though with a pocketknife. She knows yarrow was one of Ivy’s favorites, but she can’t imagine Carrie finding the secret patches on the mountains. Cora remembers the page in the book. The note Clemence Morgan left, about wildflowers and about the disappearance of her sister, Abigail. Cora hisses through her teeth, wondering as her eyes dart to the mountains, to the path at the edge of the field, whether she should intervene. Then she remembers the tale of Sylba. The young woman who met a man with eyes the color of an inky night...
Cora finds the remnants of salt and dried lavender sprinkled across the threshold and relaxes a little. At least Carrie hasn’t forgotten. At least she knows how to protect herself, unlike those other young women in town. But wildflowers in October, and with an early frost...
Cora wonders if Carrie is indeed safe in Woodsmoke, or if she is the one unbalancing everything.
Cora wonders if it’s already too late.
Chapter 12
Jess
Jess shakes her umbrella out as she crosses the threshold of the library. It’s hailing again, and the snap of cold in the air has chilled her exposed skin. She shakes out a shiver as she closes the door behind her.
Dawn levels her with a look, and Jess shrugs. “Tom was late back. What was I meant to do?”
Dawn rolls her eyes as she picks up a bowl of popcorn (salted, not sweet) and indicates a bottle of nonalcoholic bubbly on the desk. “Bring that through, would you? We’ve got five minutes before Betty arrives. She’s always early.”
It’s nearly seven o’ clock on the fourth Thursday of the month, and on this Thursday, without fail, Woodsmoke library holds a book club. This month they’ve been readingThe Night Circusby Erin Morgenstern, which has felt particularly apt for this time of year. Jess fell into the book the first week of October, inhaled it, and turned the final page five days later. She even ordered a hardback copy, deciding it was one of those books she wanted to keep around, like a favorite sweater or the family cat.
“I’ve written the questions down this time, made ten photocopies,” Jess says to Dawn as she unscrews the lid on the bubbly and pours a few inches into ten plastic cups. “There. We’re ready for them.”
They always take over the crime section of the fiction area,dragging the comfiest armchairs and low tables over to form a haphazard oval. There’s been a book club night at the library for as long as Jess can remember. Her mother used to attend when Jess was a little girl, and now she still comes with her quietly gossipy circle. These four of the original group—her mother, Sylvia, Hayley, Annie, and Greta—are all hanging on to middle age. Greta is the only one of the four to have given in to gray hair; the rest have embraced varying shades of auburn hair dye, liberally applied once a month at the hairdressers off the main square. The four friends have been thick as thieves since primary school.
The book club was one of the reasons why Jess so desperately wanted to work at the library one day. She had watched her mother’s car leave the drive, the headlights dipping as she turned off toward that side of town. Jess would wait up, clinging to the railings of the banister on the landing, waiting for her mother to get home from the meeting. Waiting for her mother to tuck her into bed so she could hear her thoughts on the book the group was reading. One day Jess wanted to choose the books and host this club. She wanted to be a part of the life of the library, which as a child seemed like pure magic to her.
Newer members of the book group include Betty, with her thick green-and-red wool hat and truckload of opinions; Rashid and Diane, the couple who insist on bringing their aging black Labrador, Lucy; and Gregory, who Jess is fairly sure just turns up for the free snacks. Gillian, with her flyaway hair and absent-mindedness, is an occasional member who turns up so she can catch Jess at the end to gossip. Jess and Dawn make ten (occasionally eleven, with Gillian). The group hasn’t welcomed a new member in years.
Betty shambles in first, slapping her dog-eared paperback copyof the book on a side table next to her favorite armchair. “I havethoughts,” she announces, polishing her glasses with the edge of her cardigan. As Betty launches into a long-winded moan about circuses, Jess wonders if she should have shirked the library rules and brought along a bottle of wine.
Then Rashid walks in, Lucy rambling at his side before collapsing at his feet for a snooze. “Diane couldn’t make it.” He shrugs apologetically. “Got the sniffles, and she wants to be better before our ten nights in Fuerteventura.”
Jess’s mother, Sylvia, wanders in with Hayley, Annie, and Greta. They clutch matching Kindles with aubergine-polished nails and take small sips of the bubbly while reminding Jess of what a “very good job” she does keeping up the book club each month.
