Page 33 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
Cora’s eyes shift to Jess’s basket, all pale pinks and yellows and creams. She frowns, looking back at Carrie’s. Her basket holds a mishmash, with no clear color or texture, no clear pattern, to any of her choices. Now, that wouldnotdo.
“Run back to the garden, girls,” Cora says softly, dragging the baskets toward her across the kitchen table. “I need an apple from each of you. Either plucked from the tallest branch or foraged from the ground. Still whole and perfect.”
Jess nods solemnly, then races after Carrie, who lets out a long holler as she sprints for the walled orchard at the far end of the garden. Watching them run, Cora tuts. Carrie is barefoot and covered in grass stains, with wild hair and a tear in the back of her dress. Jess is a whole different story. Neat hair, neat dress, little Mary Jane pumps still clean as a whistle on her dainty feet. “Chalk and cheese,” Cora murmurs with a sigh.
She pulls two saucepans out of the cupboard, sparks up the stovetop, and places one pan at each end of the range cooker. The sprawling, farmhouse-style kitchen has cream-colored cupboards, worktops made of thick slabs of wood, and knickknacks covering the windowsill. Most of them are Carrie’s creations. Tiny paintings in heart-shaped frames, a Mother’s Day card from three years ago, and quirky egg cups and porcelain thimbles. It’s a lived-in kitchen. Scarred and scratched and well used. Looking around this kitchen, listening to the shrieks of the girls as they balance ladders against the trunks of the old apple trees, Cora can’t understand why Lillian is considering leaving when Carrie is older.Why would sheeverwant to leave Woodsmoke and this magical, homey life?
Cora splits the potion between the two saucepans, sets both burners to a gentle simmer, and then turns each pan a quarter anticlockwise before tipping the contents of each basket into each saucepan. This potion is a recipe from the book, a harmless way to coax out Carrie’s curiosity. Jess’s potion glows pink momentarily before dulling to a rosy tint. Carrie’s potion, however, gleams as green as a forest. Cora stirs them both, watching as the petals dissolve and the leaves curl and vanish. Then she turns off the heat and steps away from the stovetop.
The girls run in again, out of breath, carrying an apple each. Carrie’s is green, of course, one of her favorites with a tangy crunch. Jess’s is a rosy red, too small to be ripe, but it fits perfectly into her palm.
“All right then, Jess, you place your apple in the saucepan on the left, and Carrie, yours goes on the right,” Cora says, washing her hands in the sink and watching out of the corner of her eye as the girls drop the apples in. Carrie’s, she’s sure, flashes, while Jess’s doesn’t even wink. Cora dries her hands and inspects the saucepans. “Very good. Now you must leave these saucepans in a patch of moonlight. Tomorrow you’ll pluck the apple out with your own hand, not with a spoon, or a fork, or any other implement.”
“And then?” Carrie asks eagerly, already picking up the saucepan off the stove.
“Then you eat the apple and make a wish to fall in love.”
Carrie’s nose wrinkles. “What if I don’t want to fall in love?”
“Everyone wants to fall in love,” Jess says quietly, eyeing her rosy red apple. “You just don’t know it yet.”
Carrie shrugs, turning to Jess. “Let’s leave them on the garden table. Mum says it’s a full moon tonight.”
Jess nods eagerly and carries her saucepan carefully down the back steps. Carrie has already rushed to the trestle table, her potion spilling out over the sides of the pan. Cora smiles and then begins clearing up the kitchen.
Lillian feels the same way as Ivy about the book, about the magic, about all of it. But Cora needs Carrie to feel differently. She needs her to see the whimsy in it first, the charming nature of potions and moonlight. Not just the warnings, the rules, the curses, and the cost of the sometimes necessary bargains.
There are two sides to the mountains, and Cora wants Carrie to know the joy, the freedom, thebeautyof such a wild, ancient place. She reaches down to pick up a fallen rose petal, then rubs the silky sunshine blush between her thumb and forefinger. She looks out of the window and sees the girls practicing their cartwheels. She hopes, desperately, that Carrie’s life will always be like this. That she’ll spend her life in Woodsmoke, a little life surrounded by love and hope and magic.
Deep Winter
December–January
Chapter 27
Carrie
But when he didn’t reappear for three weeks, everyone thought he had broken off the courtship. Everyone except Edith. She was sure he was lost somewhere, that he just needed to find his way back.
—Nora Morgan, May 20, 1918
Ileave for the mountain trail as dawn whispers through the fields. Tendrils of breeze stir the exposed grass, stinging my skin where my hat doesn’t quite meet the collar of my coat. It’s cold enough to snow again. I can smell it on the air. But on this cool December day, the sky is lightening to a deep blue without a cloud to mar it. My breath hangs in foggy clouds as I hit the trail that will take me away, up the mountain.
If he is there, what will I say to him? That I believed Cora when she suggested that he might not be quite real? Perhaps I can say that I was concerned. When he didn’t turn up and never called back, it made sense to check on him. Yes, that’s what I’ll say. I reason it out, turning over different scenarios as I round the mountain path and the lookout over Woodsmoke. I pause for a moment, catching my breath, and brace my hands on the straps of my rucksack. Woodsmoke is peaceful today, a tapestry of brown and gray, the square in the center full of fidgeting little forms.
My eyes track right, away from the center of town to follow the winding road to Cora’s. She will be drinking her morning coffeeand pestering Howard about some minor detail of their lives, and he’ll be indulging her. Am I doing this to prove to her that she’s wrong? There’s always been a bit of tug-of-war to our relationship, as though she is forever pulling at my loose threads, wanting to unravel me. Yesterday I prickled with it. She’s so sure that all those stories, all those tales passed down in theMorgan Compendium, are facts. I want to believe they are no more than fairy tales. Fables spun from thin air to explain away something unexplainable. But now, being back here and in the thick of it, it’s hard to hold on to that idea. The stories in the book feel all too real.
Guilt needles me suddenly. I should be spending more time with Cora. That’s all she’s ever wanted from me—justmore. More of my time, more of my love. And I’ve always been so hesitant to give it. That’s why she’s so focused on collating the past, collecting these tales and hoarding them like jewels. She uses them to lure me in, I’m sure of it, and it might have worked when I was a child. But now I am older, and the mysteries of this place no longer thrill me or fill me with wonder. I’m no longer interested in exploring every inch of the mountains, taking field notes, and marveling at the heady freedom of such an ancient place. The hidden mysteries of the mountains used to fill me with wonder, but now I am older, I fear their sinister edge.
I turn to the rest of the world, with my back to the view, and consider the three trails that branch out from this lookout. I know which cabin Matthieu is staying in; there are only a few scattered throughout this mountain range. The ones that are known of, anyway. And the one he is renting from the Vickers is the closest; he can reach it quickly with his long strides each day. I pull my bottle out of the side pocket of the rucksack, sip on the water, and let it wash my uncertainty away. He will be there. He will be there in the cabin, and maybe he hasn’t been well. Maybe he will appreciate someone reaching out when he’s so alone up herein the vast, cold nothing. Cora has just unsettled me in her usual tug-of-war with me, and I’m off balance. I allowed her into my head, and for the briefest moment she made me question if the frost tale is real.
That’s all.
The walk takes longer than I thought it would. The path sometimes peters out into nothing but stones. The only way I know I’m on the right trail is from the broken branches on either side, where the encroaching wild has been pushed back. I picture Matthieu shoving back branches as he walks, keeping this path through the mountains his own. But there are patches where the wild has begun to steal pieces of the path, where no one seems to have passed in a while.
I remember when I used to tread this path with Tom and Jess. We would walk and walk, exploring the trails trickling like veins down the mountainside, marking them on our map and imagining we were the first explorers. Like sunlight on ice, the flashes of those moments dazzle me now, again and again. With every curve in the path, every place where the trees dip and sway, showing the view of the landscape far below, I remember.
The last time was a month before I was meant to marry Tom, a few days before I was turning eighteen. The three of us walked up to where the trees part, where we could see for miles and miles, far beyond the edges of Woodsmoke. We stood shoulder to shoulder and gazed out over the world.
