Page 30 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
When I search for tea bags and realize I’m out, I take that asa sign. In minutes, my boots are on, my coat shrugged over my shoulders, and I’m setting off, into the gloaming.
My knock is less hesitant than the first time several weeks ago. When Cora opens the door, her surprise is genuine.
“Witchy intuition failing you?” I ask with a smile. She crumples slightly, as though she’d been bracing herself for this.
“Carrie,” she says, relief softening her. She’s aged in a few weeks. Her features are dimpled with deep wrinkles, and her skin is gray as porridge. I blink, hiding my shock, and she reaches for my hand, my arm, grasping me as though she’s drowning. As though this moment is her first gasp of air in a month. “I didn’t know if—I didn’t think—”
“Kettle on?” I ask, moving past her, pulling off my boots to walk through her clinically clean home. “I’m out of tea bags. Figured it was time I stopped by.”
She fusses around me in the kitchen, pulling out mugs and tea and milk. When we settle in the lounge, the loudest sound in the house—just as it’s always been—is the ticking clock on the mantlepiece, marking the steady buildup of seconds. I can’t understand how it doesn’t drive Cora completely mad.
“How is the cottage coming along?” she asks now as she spoons sugar into her mug, even though she doesn’t take sugar anymore. Not usually. She clatters the teaspoon in swift little circles, placing it precisely back on the tray when she’s done.
“Quickly. It’s... there’s not much left to do.” I take a gulp of tea. “I can get it on the market in January or February most likely. Should be ready for photos by then.”
She sighs, taking an efficient sip of tea. “I suppose you’ve had help.”
“Matthieu? Yes, he’s been a great help.” I steady my voice, bracing my hands around the mug. I remember Howard’s words, howhe asked me when Matthieu appeared, how I told him Matthieu seemed to arrive with the frost. I take a sip, then set the mug down on the coffee table. “Couldn’t have done it all without him.”
“Not there today, though, I imagine,” Cora says in clipped tones, turning beady eyes on me. “I expect you haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“How...”
She places her cup on the coffee table and points at the window. It’s dark outside, but she hasn’t drawn the curtains. Still, I know what the window would show. The perfect picture of a thawed driveway, rivulets of water pooling at the edges.
“What happens when the frost thaws, Carrie?”
I shake my head, a tiny puffing laugh escaping me. “Come on, Cora—”
“I’m right, though, aren’t I? You haven’t seen him. I bet he hasn’t messaged, hasn’t called.” She leans toward me. “It’s why you’re really here. You believe because you’re a Morgan. You can’t deny your own blood. It’s who you are. Those stories, the mountains, are what both of us are made from. The stuff of our blood and bones.”
“Cora, please—”
“Could you even tell me his last name?”
I shake my head, pursing my lips.
Cora sips her tea, watching me. “I don’t say it to hurt you, dear one. Quite the opposite.”
“They’re not all real,” I say suddenly, picking up my mug with a jerking swipe that makes the tea slosh out. I stare for a moment at the tea splatters pooling in clouds on the coffee table. “Sometimes—sometimes someone really does go missing, and there are reasonable explanations. A slip from the path, a twisted ankle—”
Cora cackles. “Don’t be so daft, girl. Of course they’re real. Every tale in the book is true, every working, every potion writtendown, passed from hand to hand...” Her eyes soften, growing misty. “It’ll be yours one day. You can pass it down to your granddaughter—”
I stand abruptly and go to the kitchen, where I grab a cloth, hold it under the running tap, then squeeze it out. My breath is coming a little too quick, and my shoulders are hunched around my ears. I’ve had a lifetime of Cora’s warnings, Ivy’s too. She even included one in her will, reminding me to greet the mountains on my return. Her letter now echoes in Cora’s words.
It was Cora who told me on my twelfth birthday that I was about to meet my first love in the orchard. My mum’s eyes darted to her aunt in warning as she quickly lit the candles on my cake, then drew everyone around to sing “Happy Birthday.” I met Tom in the orchard three days later. He was stealing apples from the tree in our garden, five of the best ones my mum had been saving for an autumn pie, letting them ripen up before picking. I knew him from school, but not that well. He was one of the kids who populated the backdrop of my life—or rather, I appeared only in the backdrop of theirs.
I pelted him with conkers that day, and he just winked at me as he took a big, juicy bite. The tartness made him gag, and I doubled over laughing. He spat out the apple bite, and rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth, he started laughing too.
“Cooking apples!” I said, walking over to him. “What was it, Tom Gray? A dare?”
He nodded, dropping the rest of the apples into my hands. “Billy bet me a fiver I wouldn’t even climb the wall. Said you Morgans are all witches who eat your husbands’ hearts.”
“And you didn’t believe him?” I asked, tossing my hair. I had outlined my eyes perfectly that day with a sweep of dark kohl and thickly applied mascara I’d stolen from Mum’s dressing table. I looked the part. “You should see the book.”
“It’s true, then,” he said, his grin lighting him up. My heart skipped as he placed the last apple in my arms, then leaned forward to kiss my cheek. My blush was instant, and scarlet heat flushed my skin. “That was the second bet. That I wouldn’t kiss you.”
Then he was gone, racing for the fence, slipping over it to sprint up the lane. I remember that first kiss every time I smell apple pie. Cora didn’t mean to curse me, but in a way that’s exactly what she did.
