Page 9 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
Of course she winces, though she quickly looks away so I don’t see. I catch the look she shoots off into the corner of her conservatory, wait for the ripple of admonishments poised on the tip of her tongue. Before she retired, Mum was a beauty therapist and an at-home Body Shop consultant. She would set up little parties in our lounge, invite all the mums around Woodsmoke in a bid to make friends with the gossipy mothers of the girls I went to school with. She would use me as a model to peddle the Body Shop makeup and skin care products, which I always wiped off at the first opportunity, feeling like an oily clown.
But it was the home beauty and health treatments she created that I loved. The ones she poured into little cork-stoppered glass bottles with labels tied around the necks with twine. Her own collection of recipes that Cora has carefully copied into theMorgan Compendium. These were what the mothers all secretly wanted and would stash in their bags and coat pockets before leaving her parties.
“The house is... going,” I say with a laugh, glad that they can’t actually see Ivy’s cottage, or the lack of progress I’ve made. “More work than I thought, but I should be done by the end of the winter, as planned.”
“Are you sure you don’t need help? I can drive up for the weekend, bring a few of the lads—”
“Dad!” I say, shaking my head. “You promised!”
He runs a hand over his forehead, his tell for all the nerves building under his skin. He’s just worried about me.
“You should drive up in the spring,” I tell him, “after the snow’s cleared.” I fix a smile on my face. So Dad won’t worry. So he won’t try to rescue me. “You know I want you to see the place when it’s in good shape. You’ll spoil the surprise.”
He nods uncomfortably, glancing over at Mum. I’m not convinced she’ll join him. I doubt she’ll ever set foot in Woodsmoke again unless it’s absolutely unavoidable.
“What is it?”
“Your great-aunt phoned.”
“And?” I ask, shifting my weight to the other foot as a breeze ruffles my collar, sending a trickle of chill down the back of my neck.
“Cora’s... worried. She said you haven’t called round since you first arrived last week, and she mentioned the early frost—”
“I greeted the mountains, Mum. You don’t need to worry. It was the first thing I did.”
Mum blinks, and Dad shifts away from the screen. Mum has only admitted once that, after she left Woodsmoke, she finally felt like she could breathe. When you accept the magic of Woodsmoke and the mountains, either you embrace it, as Cora did, or likeMum and Ivy, you fear it. There’s no in-between place. Most of the folks of Woodsmoke are like Mum.
“Nothing else has happened? You know how I feel about Woodsmoke. I don’t like to think of you there all alone. Don’t meddle in anything, will you? Don’t stray from the path—”
“Mum—”
“We both know what can happen,” she says quietly. “We both know all the stories are true.”
I think of the wildflowers left on the doorstep of Ivy’s cottage and wonder if I should tell her. And should I confess that I felt like someone followed me down the mountain that first night and tapped at the caravan window? Should I mention the man I’ve seen? Or worse, admit that I’m not sure he’s human? But I don’t say anything. My mum left Woodsmoke for a reason. The magic of this place overwhelmed Lillian, frightened her with its enormity, its greed. After I left, there wasn’t a weighty enough anchor to keep her here. She doesn’t want to revisit the place or the stories woven through it. There is no wonder embedded in them for her, only fear.
“The man in the hardware store, he said Ivy had a good send-off. Cora made a spread and... I should have come back for it, shouldn’t I? I should have just booked a ticket and come back for a couple of nights.”
Mum frowns at the screen. “Ivy knew you loved her. Eating cake and avoiding talk of the book with Cora at her wake wouldn’t have made a difference to her passing. She knew.”
“Cora talked about the book?”
“She talked enough. We only stayed the one night, at Cora’s,” Mum says, looking away from the screen. “That was plenty. That my mother even kept the book for as long as she did... Better that it stays with Cora. Better it’s buried with her whenshepasses.”
“Still, I should have... I don’t know.” I blow out a breath.
“Everything all right, love? Really?”
“Everything’s fine. I’ll go and see Cora again. I’ve just been busy.”
Mum nods uneasily. “Sure, love. Sure.”
I capture her eyes with mine across the miles and miles that divide us, trying to pour reassurance over this thread of a connection. “You know why I’m here, why I had to do this.” I glance away, at the field surrounding me, then farther still, my gaze traveling past the trees to the three mountain peaks dominating the skyline. “After all these years, I have to find out if I truly belong here. It’s haunted me. I have to know if this is just the town where I grew up... or if it’s home.”
Chapter 8
Cora
The story goes like this. Sylba Morgan met a trapper as the frost glittered on the grass, on an ordinary Wednesday in October. The sky was the color of dirty laundry water, and Sylba was avoiding washday. No one else met him, this man who walked down the mountain path before vanishing after, back into the wild.
