Page 16 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
“It is. Well observed.” Her mother beams. Her eyes glitter, sharp little chips of blue that always seem to see the best in Ivy, even when Cora can see all her faults in plain sight. Her mother’s approval nettles her, drawing out the sour blood between them. Drawing out the spite in Cora that seems to rise out of nowhere.
“I can look after it, Mother,” she says, licking her lips. “Will you let us read it now? If we’re careful?”
Cora’s mother blinks, her expression shifting. She snaps the book shut, lips tightly pinched. “It passes from grandmother tooldestgranddaughter. Ivy will have the book.”
“What? That’s not fair!” Cora says before she can contain the words. “Ivy doesn’t care about anything, she makes a constant mess, she’ll ruin it, or lose it, it isn’tfair—”
“Sorry, Cora,” Ivy cuts in quietly. She raises her hands slowly, and their mother beams at her as she passes the book into Ivy’s outstretched hands. “Maybe we can read the stories together?”
Cora sits, fuming, as Ivy eyes her quietly like she’s a lit match sparked by every argument, every fight she ever had with Ivy. Cora wonders what would happen if she pushed her, just gave her a good, hardshove—
“Cora, go to the step.”
Cora takes a great trembling breath. The step. The place she has been banished to more times than she can count this week. The back-door step, beside the compost heap, where the chickens peck and cluck in inane, slow circles. Where she will be utterly, horribly alone. And Ivy will have the book all to herself. She hesitates.
“Go to the step.”
Cora lets her eyes rest for one beautiful, full heartbeat on thebook Ivy now clutches in her hands. The book that should be inherhands. TheMorgan Compendium. The collected stories of the mountains, of generation after generation of Morgan women. She heaves a trembling sigh, stands with leaden bones, and drags herself out of the room, toward the back of the house, the lonely part. As she walks, she hears her mother slide off her chair to sit beside Ivy. She hears the excited lilt in the cadence of her voice as she shows Ivy the first story, telling her that it is all real, that every secret revealed in the book should be guarded now by her.
Cora makes a vow while sitting on the back step that day. She stares up at the mountains, looming like God above her, and promises that she will get that book.
It isn’t Ivy’s, it isn’t mother’s. It’shers.
Chapter 14
Cora
She can barely contain it, the thumping in her chest. It rattles her, setting her limbs to twitching, slicking her palms with sweat. She places them flat on the drainboard. Its metallic coolness bites into her skin, reminding her to breathe. To think.
“Easy does it,” she says, thinking about her ticker. About the way her thoughts are leaping around, like the flicker of an old black-and-white film. “Easy now.”
Cora wants to tell Howard. It’s the first thing, the only thing, she thinks as she half runs, half walks, to the front door, beating Kep. But by the time she reaches the familiarity of her kitchen, she’s not sure if she should. She’s not sure if he’ll understand. He has never liked her talking about the book, or the old stories woven through it. Howard’s world is a practical one: You care for the chickens and get eggs out of them. You work a day and get paid a wage. The only thing Howard has ever lost his head over is her. Everyone warned him not to take up with a Morgan woman, especially not the prickly one. But he didn’t listen. Didn’twantto listen.
“Thought I heard you.”
She jumps, a bolt running through her, and turns to find Howard framed by the doorway. His eyes crinkle, and she notes the slippers on his feet, the paper in his hand. He’s been waiting for her.
“Did Kep behave herself?” he asks, bending down to pat thedog’s head, fussing her. All lean, like a small wolf, she’s got one black ear, one white. They thought she was a collie when she was a pup, but now Cora’s not so sure. Especially with the way Kep hunts on their walks, all rangy and focused, and the way she eyes the chickens like she’s ravenous. “Did you do the usual route?”
“Not today,” Cora says carefully, moving to the kettle, her old hands falling into the pattern of routine. “Circled around Ivy’s field.”
“Did you now.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Cora says, filling the kettle from the tap. She bangs the top back on and presses down the switch to start the boil. “I can go that way if I like.”
“Never said you couldn’t.”
She prowls around in uneasy silence, stewing in her own thoughts, her mind a tempest. And he waits, watching her cross back and forth, first for cups, then teaspoons. Then the sugar he hasn’t had in his tea for a good fifteen years. He watches her make the tea, one for her, one for him, loading up both with two teaspoons of sugar. He resigns himself to how wrong it will taste. And still he waits.
“Only...”
“Only?”
Cora bites her lip, indecision giving way like a dam. “I couldn’t help myself. I went up to the house and saw a discarded wildflower by the front door. Like Carrie had chucked it out. Like... like someone had left it there for her. It was yarrow. Only grows on the mountains in secret patches.”
“And...”
“She’s put wardings on the thresholds and the windowsills. She knows something’s up, like that wildflower was a warning. Like—”
