Falling In (6 page)

In the morning the two girls continued south, and Hen made no complaint.
She must know we’re getting closer to the witch, not farther away,
Isabelle thought,
so why doesn’t she turn around?
Maybe Isabelle should offer to turn around herself, take Hen to the camps. It would be almost a day’s walk, but what was that to Isabelle? When they reached the camps, she could get more bread, maybe a jar of peanut butter—no, no, they wouldn’t have that—a handful of dried apples, then, enough to survive on as she made her way back south after making sure Hen was safe in the camps.

Isabelle’s eyes felt hot and scratchy, her legs as though they’d been cast in lead. She didn’t have half
a day’s walk in her, that was the problem with her plan. Besides, there was that look on Hen’s face, serious and slightly grim, as if she’d been setting her own plans in concrete all morning.

“Is this the path you walked on yesterday?” Isabelle asked, trying to make conversation. Hen’s silence was beginning to worry her. “I mean, as you headed north from Corrin.”

“No, miss,” Hen replied. “We went through the woods. Didn’t want to be out in the open, ripe for the picking, especially with a shadow moon overhead. Even a half-masked moon sheds light if it’s full.”

It was the sort of morning that made Isabelle happy not to be in school, the sky a soft blue, the sun warm on her shoulders but not burning. Although it hadn’t rained in the night, everything around her looked freshly washed. The dirt beneath her feet was as fine as powder; in fact, Isabelle could imagine mixing it with boiling water to make hot chocolate, throwing in a few choice white pebbles for marshmallows.

There had been dirt like this at Isabelle’s elementary school. She could almost feel it sifting through her fingers as she remembered all those recesses she’d spent digging and stirring, adding water, creating a world out of the milky brown muck. She’d dug a hole six inches deep and twelve inches across in a spot behind the cafeteria Dumpster and lined it with small rocks to make a sort of mixing bowl. She’d used sticks for spoons, sometimes brought a plastic knife from home, sometimes a handful of marbles to decorate the cakes and pies she made.

Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade. Each year she’d rediscovered the dirt, some years in September, other years not until spring. In second grade a new girl had joined her, and for the first time Isabelle had known the pleasure of companionship, the two girls murmuring to each other as they stirred the batter for muffins or fashioned dolls from sticks and clay. A few words here and there. They hadn’t needed many.

Angel Fisher. Isabelle had thought that was the most wonderful name in the world, had drawn
picture after picture of a girl sitting by the edge of a stream with a net strung from silk, pulling angels out of the water. She’d mailed them to Angel using Christmas stamps. Angel had loved the dirt as much as Isabelle, had understood that it had magical properties, had understood without being told that you should never use a word like “mud” when you had the word “clay” at your disposal. Angel with her dark hair always captured in a braid, her fingernails bitten to the quick.

They’d stolen her, of course. Isabelle saw it happening. The day Angel had arrived at the dirt with a foil-wrapped chocolate kiss in her hand, her eyes wide with surprise, Isabelle knew it was only a matter of time.
April gave this to
me, Angel had said.
Right out of the clear blue sky, she gave it to
me. April Hennessey, with her yellow hair and pink skin, her nose turned up like a pig’s. April, who did not want Angel’s friendship, only Isabelle’s misery.

“I’m going to kill her, miss.”

Isabelle stopped short, scattering pebbles to the edges of the path. “Going to kill who, Hen?”

“The witch, miss,” Hen replied without breaking step. “I think God sent you to lead me to her. Could it be more clear, you there waiting for me on a rock in the middle of the path? Like the Lord himself had set you down.”

“How old are you, Hen?” Isabelle scrambled to catch up with the girl.

“Nine, miss. Ten in three months’ time.”

“Do you really think you could kill a witch? You don’t have any weapons, any magic.”

Hen came to a halt. “I’ve got strong hands, miss, strong enough to choke an old hag,” she said, squeezing one hand around the other wrist as if to prove her strength. “The witch must be ancient by now, nothing more than a bundle of twigs wrapped in skin. It came to me last night, as I was falling asleep. I was thinking how weary I am of being frightened. Now it’s the witch’s season in Corrin, and then she’ll hunt the children in Stoneybatter, and it will go on like that, village by village, round and round, until she dies. A witch can live two hundred years or more. So there’s years left of it, unless she’s stopped.”

Hen turned and looked at Isabelle. She was quiet a moment before she spoke again. “You could help me, miss.”

“Help?” Isabelle blinked several times.

“Yes, miss. You could hold her while I have my hands around her neck.”

Isabelle started down the path again. The sun flared above the trees, and a squirrel perched on a tree stump chattered angrily at the acorn in its hands. Isabelle’s hands began to sweat. She shoved them in her pockets.

“I didn’t mean to offend, miss,” Hen called breathlessly as she ran to catch up. “We’ll say no more about it.”

“I’m thirsty,” Isabelle said. “Are you thirsty? Are we far from the creek?”

Hen looked toward the woods, her head cocked. “I don’t hear the water, miss, but it can’t be more than half a mile in, I wouldn’t think. The creek twists and turns, but these woods aren’t wide, and its course runs through the middle.”

The shade of the trees cooled Isabelle’s skin. As
she followed Hen, she tried to calm down. No one was going to get killed, she repeated to herself, not if she had anything to do about it. She concentrated on her breathing, thought about the way her toes flattened against the soles of her boots as she walked, how her knees bent slightly, then straightened with every step, and her arms swung loosely from her shoulders. She could feel the air finding its way between her fingers, could feel her ears holding on to her head for dear life. Every part of her hung together just so. She’d never known this about herself before. It was, well, comforting.

When a second later her foot got caught under a tree’s exposed roots and Isabelle went flying, it was, well, less comforting.
Just when you’re starting to get used to yourself,
Isabelle thought as she tumbled to the earth, small rocks and twigs making themselves at home in her palms, her ankle throbbing with sharp little bleats of pain.

Hen was beside her in an instant, unlacing Isabelle’s red boot, pulling it from her foot. Her cool fingers felt the tender swelling. “I don’t think it’s
broken, miss, but it might be sprained. The creek’s not but a hundred yards away. You’d do well to soak your ankle in it, see if the swelling won’t go down.”

Isabelle leaned against Hen as she hopped on one foot toward the edge of the creek. She lay back against the mossy bank, her eyes closed, and gingerly lowered her foot into the cold water.

“You’ll need to wrap that before you put your weight on it again,” a voice announced from behind her. “Else you’ll stretch out farther what holds it together, and it won’t heal for an age and a half.”

Hen was fast on her feet, scanning between the trees. “Who said that?” She leaned down to grab a large stick from the ground. “Ya best show yourself.”

“You’ve nothing to be afraid of,” a woman’s voice said, and a second later, the woman herself stood in front of them, a basket dangling from her arm. “It’s my woods you’re in, so you are the trespassers here. But you’re welcome nevertheless.”

She turned to Isabelle. “Shall I take a look, then?” She nodded toward Isabelle’s ankle. “I might be able to help.”

Isabelle nodded. The woman had a pleasant face, lightly lined, crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, which were blue, as in cornflower blue, as in the blue of a midsummer sky. When she leaned down to examine Isabelle, Isabelle could hear her knees crack, and thought of her mom, who seemed to crack and pop with every twist and turn of her body.

The woman held Isabelle’s foot with one hand and with the other pushed it a little to the left, then a little to the right. Isabelle grimaced, and the woman raised her eyebrow. “That hurts, eh? I’d say you’ve got a mean sprain, but no worse. You shouldn’t put your weight on it for a day or two. I can put a plaster on it. Eucalyptus leaves, camphor. To help the healing.”

Hen kneeled next to Isabelle. “I’ve heard eucalyptus will help with a sprain.”

The woman looked at her. “You know about healing, do ya?”

“Some,” Hen replied. “My uncle trained to be an apothecary, but he was killed in the Nine Years’ War
and never put his learning to use. He taught me some things before he left.”

“’Twas a bad war, that,” the woman said, nodding. She stood and brushed dirt from her apron. “Took many a life, and for naught, I’d say. Kings’ wars fought by villagers’ sons. Folly, all of it.”

The woman lifted her apron and with one motion tore a strip from near the hem, and then another. “That should do for a binding, for now at least,” she said. “My house isn’t but a quarter of a league from here, but you shouldn’t cover any ground until that ankle is wrapped tight.”

It felt natural to Isabelle to lean against the old woman’s shoulder. She hopped awkwardly along on her good foot but didn’t feel awkward at all. Why was that? And why did these woods seem so familiar? Why, when they got closer to the woman’s house—she pointed to the smoke curling out of the chimney—did Isabelle feel like she was going someplace she’d been before?

Oh, she was pretty sure she knew why.

Well, almost sure.

Anyway, she was sure enough to start giggling like crazy, and after a minute Hen joined in, and even the old woman cracked a smile.

“Why are we laughing, miss?” Hen asked after another minute.

Isabelle shook her head. “Just happy, I guess,” she said, and then it was Hen’s turn to shake her head.

“Just happy,” Hen repeated. “Who ever heard of such a thing?”

And then the two girls laughed some more.

Grete’s cottage was small, and it was made to seem smaller still by a cacophony of—well, the only word that Isabelle could think of was
stuff.
There was furniture, of course, but not a lot of it, a round kitchen table with two chairs next to the stove, three rocking chairs in front of the fireplace. In the small bedroom off the kitchen, there was a narrow bed and a blue washbasin on a wooden stand.

What filled the rooms of Grete’s cottage so decidedly were woven baskets and wooden boxes and clay pots glazed in red and blue, each with its own mishmash of this and that. Roots and leaves still redolent of dirt. Balls of scratchy wool in variegated strands—purple twining into pink easing into
periwinkle fading into gray. At least three boxes held squares and strips of fabrics, all colors, and eight pots overflowed with apples.

The walls were lined with shelves, the shelves were lined with books. Wordless spines peered out. As soon as Isabelle saw them, she itched to open one up and read it from cover to cover.

“You girls sit, and I’ll bring you something to drink before I set to work on that ankle,” Grete instructed as she opened the stove door and livened up the fire with a few pokes of a stick.

“Tea?” Hen asked hopefully, taking a seat at the round table.

“Of a sort,” Grete replied. “And some bread, if you’re hungry. I made salt bread this morning.”

Isabelle thought of the salt and flour clay she’d made when she was little, the way it tasted like the ocean when she’d put a pinch of it in her mouth. But Grete’s bread had sweet notes beneath the salty ones, as though the ocean had chewed on sugar cubes for breakfast. The tea, however, was bitter, and Isabelle and Hen had to stir spoonfuls of honey
into their cups before they could take a single sip.

“It will make you sleepy,” Grete said, pulling a rocking chair to the table and lifting Isabelle’s ankle onto her lap. “You look like a girl who needs a rest. You as well, Hen.”

Already Isabelle felt drowsy, but she still couldn’t help wondering, had Hen told Grete her name? They hadn’t introduced themselves as they’d walked through the woods to the cottage, no
How do you do’s
or a single
Pleased to meet you, my name’s ———
. But when they’d arrived at the doorstep, a package wrapped in rough brown paper and tied with twine was waiting,
Grete of the Woods
scrawled on it in ink so wet that it had branched out from every letter like veins. The address looked like something a spider might have written.

“That’s me,” Grete had said, picking up the package. “Though any more than one name is too many. The more names upon your head, the more they think they know about you.”

“Who’s
they
?” Hen had asked, but Grete just shook her head and said nothing more about it.

Now she carefully wrapped Isabelle’s ankle with a long piece of soft fabric that smelled like cedar chips and peppermint. Isabelle felt her eyes grow heavy as Grete explained to Hen how she’d prepared the poultice, boiling eucalyptus leaves into a syrup, mixing it with wax to make a salve, then spreading the salve onto the strips of cloth.