The Fenroot tree at the village’s center was the reason the last remaining Children had chosen to pilgrimage to De’Noran, despite the dangers of the Thickety. Fenroots had grown increasingly rare throughout the centuries, and you could not have a community that properly honored Timoth Clen without one. The villagers gathered around it now, waiting patiently on the smooth stones that encircled the tree. They were grouped by profession: Elders and their families sat in the first row, followed by the shopkeepers and farmers, and finally the fishermen and traders. Clearers sat in the last row, with a sizable gap between their people and the rest of the congregation so “noses could breathe.”

The graycloaks were the only ones who did not sit. They roamed among the stones, staffs held at the ready, wooden balls up. Anyone who dared fall asleep during the sermon would be in for a rude awakening.

But even the graycloaks stopped moving when Kara entered the circle.

Over the years she had grown used to the murmurs of disapproval generated by her arrival at their weekly Service. This was hardly a pleasant way to be greeted, but the reaction was usually halfhearted at best, just another errand to be done: sweep your barn, till your field, shame the Witch Girl. Today was different. Kara watched, from the corner of her eye, as a father hugged his children close and an old crone spit in the aisle.

They had seen the snow, and they thought she was responsible.

“What’s going on?” Father whispered.

Kara shrugged and led them to three stones in the farmers’ section. Once they settled into their seats, conversations returned to the usual topics of crops, weather, and trivial gossip. Father turned to the Widow Miller and asked her how preparations for the Shadow Festival were going. There was nothing particularly exciting about their conversation, but it made Kara smile anyway; perhaps her father was finally getting better.

Taff twisted on the stone next to hers. “I don’t see why we have to go to Service,” he said. “There’s only three nights left of Shadow Festival. We’re supposed to be having fun.”

“Don’t worry. I hear Fen’de Stone’s sermon is going to be even longer than usual today! Won’t that be exciting?”

“I could be building something right now. Or climbing. Or washing my socks. Or anything that isn’t this.”

“Be good.”

Kara eyed the graycloaks closely. Are they going to arrest me on suspicion of witchcraft? How strange it will be if I get blamed for the one spell I did not cast. Some kind of argument erupted between an old Clearer, his face cracked and wizened from years of service, and the blacksmith’s apprentice, a haughty lad who was fond of causing trouble. The graycloaks did not bother to hear both sides. They simply dragged the Clearer away as the apprentice chortled with his friends.

No, Kara thought. Nothing has changed. They may take me soon, but it will not be today.

She could see Grace sitting in the first row, her pure white hair arranged in two fancy braids bound by a black ribbon. Her magic is more powerful than mine, Kara thought. And the spell simply appeared for her. She didn’t have to work for it at all. The page Grace had used was ruined now, to Kara’s eyes nothing but a shimmering black surface that rippled at her touch. There’s a spell here, the book seemed to say, but you’re not worthy enough to see it.

It was her mother’s grimoire, but it liked Grace better.

“I think I have a fever,” Taff said.

“Nice try. But we’re not leaving.”

Nevertheless, Kara placed the back of her hand to his forehead and was surprised to find that it was warm. She looked at her brother more carefully and noticed the ruddy cheeks and dried snot.

“See?” Taff said.

Kara nodded, feeling guilty. It was the first time Taff had ever brought an illness to her attention without her noticing first.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been paying much attention to you lately, have I?”

Taff shrugged.

She wrapped her arm around him and squeezed. “How about this? After Service we’ll put your costume together. Just me and you.”

“That sounds great,” he said, even more crestfallen than before.

“But?”

“But you promised we’d make my costume yesterday. And the day before that.”

Kara stared at him blankly.

“Do you even remember?”

She didn’t. But she believed him.

Kara’s apology was cut short as the fen’de, wearing the crimson robes of Service Day, took his position upon the Speaking Stone.

“Work hard, want nothing,” he said.

“Stay vigilant,” the congregation replied in unison.

After a sleepless night worrying about what might happen, Kara found it difficult to stay awake during the sermon. The fen’de could often be an excellent speaker—even Kara had to give him that—but he was just going by rote today, repeating homilies and stories they had all heard before. “When our people first came to this island, escaping the blind ignorance of a World that had forgotten all we had done for them . . .” Kara watched Grace closely. She expected her to still be angry that Kara had the grimoire, but instead her lips curled into a smile. Without turning in Kara’s direction, she gave her a small, dismissive wave.

Why is she so happy?

“. . . and on that glorious day Timoth Clen will return to us and cleanse the World of magic once more, and the Children of the Fold will be rewarded for never doubting the righteousness of the Path . . .”

The morning dragged on. Taff shifted in his seat, releasing an occasional sigh of boredom. Even Father looked ready to doze off. It was only hours later, when Service was finally drawing to a close, that the sermon took an interesting turn.

“Today is a special day,” Fen’de Stone said. “A day of celebration.” Men and women straightened in their seats as the customary zeal returned to their beloved leader’s voice. “With the Shadow Festival drawing to a close, and spirits so high, I thought now might be the perfect time to make my announcement.” He sighed theatrically. “I am nearing the twilight of my years and cannot be your leader forever.” The crowd murmured its objections, but Fen’de Stone waved them away. “Don’t worry, my Children. My time is still a long way off. I simply mean that the moment has come to begin training a new leader.”

Grace smoothed out her dress and ran a hand over her hair, making sure every strand was in place.

No, Kara thought, though really she had been expecting this day for some time. Not now. Not so soon.

“Please come forth,” Fen’de Stone proclaimed, gesturing toward the first row.

Grace leaned forward, ready to rise, before realizing that her father was pointing to the seat next to hers. Marsten Cloud rose proudly to his feet. Brushing past Grace he made his way to stand by the fen’de’s side. “I am honored by your decision,” he said, his handsome face dour and serious. “I shall do my best to serve the Fold.”

The congregation clapped politely. Marsten Cloud was an excellent choice, a paragon of the Clen’s ideals. He would make a fine leader.

Only Kara thought to look in Grace’s direction.

The pretty mask had slipped away, replaced by an expression of rage so pure, it twisted her features into something dark and feral. Although Grace had shown her nothing but unkindness, Kara felt a rush of sympathy for her. She knew what it was like to feel betrayed by your own father.

The crowd rose to its feet, still applauding, and Grace Stone—her smiling face pure and beatific once more—joined them, clapping louder than anyone. Her teeth were perfect white rows.

 

After Service ended, Kara watched Lucas make his way toward her, maneuvering against the tide of worshippers leaving the Circle. “Filthy Stench,” one of them muttered in anger. If Lucas heard he gave no sign.

“Can we talk?” he asked her.

Kara would have liked nothing better. She hadn’t realized how much she missed him until he was standing before her. But at the edge of the crowd, she saw Constance Lamb look meaningfully in her direction before heading toward the outskirts of the village.

She wants me to follow her.

“I’m sorry,” Kara said. “I have to go.”

Before Lucas could respond, Kara turned and walked away. She needed to talk to Constance about the night her mother died. Kara had been too overcome with emotion to question what Constance had been saying at the time, but in retrospect she was certain that a good deal of lies had been mixed in with the truth.

“Where was my father?” Kara asked, after following Constance to a secluded area behind the tannery.

Constance’s eyes flickered away for just a moment.

Kara continued, her voice louder than she intended. “He told Fen’de Stone that he had seen Mother murder those people! He turned against her—his own wife! And yet he was nowhere to be found in your story.”

“He arrived after me, but he could see what had happened. Anyone could.”

“That’s not right. He swore he had actually witnessed the murders. Why would he lie about that? He loved her!”

“No one is denying that.”

“And yet you want me to believe that he denounced his wife without seeing her do anything wrong? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“It was a long time ago, and I may have gotten some of the details wrong. William arrived after me, but it was only to bring the graycloaks. He had actually been there much earlier, before—”

“And when, during all of this, did you deliver Taff?”

Constance’s face froze. “Before your mother left for Abigail’s. I told you that, I’m sure.”

“Stop lying to me!”

Constance looked her over, a bit of the old coldness returning to her eyes. “That’s right,” she said. “You’ve become quite the expert on lying, haven’t you? Tell me, did destroying the grimoire simply slip your mind?”

Kara pulled her satchel closer. Since what had happened with Grace, she had been carrying the book everywhere.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“You don’t see it—maybe you can’t see it—but with the grimoire your eyes are different. Distant, even when you’re standing here. It was like that with her too. From here it gets worse. Fast.”

“I’m going to destroy it.”

“Of course.”

“It’s just, things have gotten complicated.”

“You sound like her. Making excuses.”

“Mother never made excuses for anything!”

“I wasn’t talking about Helena, you foolish child!”

Constance bit her lower lip, but it was too late: The words had been released. In the distance Kara heard the sounds of laughter and conversation as the Service-morning crowd congregated in the village square. The smells of fried dough and roasted hazelnuts drifted in their direction.

“What does that mean?” Kara asked. “If you weren’t talking about Mother, who were you talking about?”

Constance shook her head fiercely.

“What’s done is done. Destroy the grimoire. That’s the important thing.”

“Right. Or else my friends and neighbors will stone me to death and burn my corpse. It’s a shame, really. They’ve been patiently waiting my entire life. I’d hate to disappoint them.”

Constance looked at her with what might have been pity. “These are not bad people, Kara. They may do bad things out of fear or foolishness, but most of them want to live simple lives with their families. They are no different from anyone else, even you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I know,” Constance said, “and I’m sorry for that.” While walking away she added: “I’ll give you until Last Night. If you do not end this, I’m going to Fen’de Stone myself. I hate to threaten you, but I couldn’t live with myself if it happened again. I owe Helena that much at least.”

Constance left without another word.

 

For a few hours, as she patched Taff’s costume together from various odds and ends, Kara was able to push the grimoire from her mind. It helped that Father stayed in the room with them. Ever since their encounter with the fen’de, he had been acting a bit more like his old self. Yes, there were still the long silences and lapses of memory, but as Kara watched Taff and Father shooting marbles across the wooden floor, she couldn’t help but smile. He’s getting better. In time he will tell me the truth of that night. She would ask him when the moment was right, but not this afternoon. Kara did not want to do anything to disturb a scene so tranquil—so normal—that she could almost imagine Mother walking through the door.

She did not feel the pull of the grimoire until later that night, when she lay in bed listening to Taff’s worrisome cough and wondering if leaving his window open a crack had been the right decision. The need to touch the book started in the pit of her stomach and spread to the tips of her toes. It wasn’t as bad as before, not yet. But it was rising.

She thought of the three-leaved weed the Clearers called tagen. “It may not seem it,” Lucas had told her, “but it’s the most dangerous thing in the Fringe. Just a bit of it under your fingernails, and you won’t be able to stop smiling for two days. You won’t feel any pain either. But by then the tagen has started growing inside your body, and it creeps into your heart and makes you want more, and you will want it even after it begins squeezing you from the inside out and your teeth have rotted away and the skin has begun to melt from your bones. With your last, strangled breath, you’ll beg for it.”

Kara wondered how long it would be before she reached that point. To where she’d rather die than not use magic.

Maybe you’re there already.

There came a steady tapping at her window.

Kara flipped over in bed. Grace was standing outside, fingertips splayed against the glass.

“Were you thinking about me, Kara?” she asked. “I was thinking about you. That’s why I came.”

She continued to gently tap the window with the pads of her fingers.

“Why don’t you let me in, Kara?” she asked. Her eyes were silver lakes in the moonlight. “Do you have it there? Can I see it?”

“It’s not here,” Kara said.

“Yes, it is. I already checked the farmhouse. Your secret spot. Father mentioned it to me. He might not have known what it was for, but I did. So clever of you to move it before the graycloaks came. Your mother’s treasure.” Grace paused, considering. “Do you think that when she touched my mother’s stomach and made me like this . . . that she also made me like you?”

Grace continued to tap against the glass. The rhythm was completely out of sync to her words, as though her hand had a mind of its own.

“She would never have done that,” Kara said. It was one of the many stories that had developed after her mother’s death, when the villagers seemed intent on blaming all their misfortunes on the dead witch.

“Of course you would say that. But I know the truth.”

“I’m sorry, Grace. The truth is, there was no magic involved. You were just born wrong. No wonder your father didn’t pick you to take his place.”

The tapping stopped.

“You’re not a very nice girl, are you? Can I hold the book? Just for a moment.”

“No.”

“Has it ever occurred to you how alike we are? We’re practically sisters, Kara.”

“No.”

“Who knows? Maybe we are sisters. I’ve seen the glow in my father’s eyes whenever he talks about the beautiful Helena Westfall. Father used to be quite dashing. Stranger things have happened.”

“You need to leave.”

The sound of Taff’s coughing broke through the night.

“Oh dear. The whelp has a leak.” She looked up at Kara, honestly curious. “Why haven’t you fixed him yet? Just think it, and the book will take care of the rest. Do you not want to waste the page?” Noting Kara’s downcast expression, Grace broke into a huge grin. “Wait! It’s not that easy for you, is it? You have limitations.” She clapped her hands together. “He told me I was more powerful than you!”

“Who did?”

“You know who. He sends me the most wonderful dreams. Can I have the book, please?”

Kara pressed a hand against the windowpane.

“Grace. You can’t listen to Sordyr. He’s evil.”

“Yes. The book? Can I have it? You might not be powerful enough to fix your brother, but I am. Give me the book and I promise I’ll do it.”

“Don’t go near Taff! Ever!”

Grace’s eyes widened. She drummed her fingers against the window. Her left hand had begun to shake.

“You are being so unreasonable, Kara Westfall. I walked all this way. Can you imagine how hard that was for me? I don’t even need to hold it. Just let me see it. That’s all. Just hold it up against the window.” Grace folded her arms around her stomach and in the process lost her grip on her cane. She slipped to the ground. “Please, Kara. It hurts. You of all people should understand. I need to see it. He won’t let me sleep until I do.”

A coil of guilt twisted in Kara’s stomach. If she hadn’t been so careless, Grace would never have seen the grimoire, would never have known such suffering. No one deserves this, Kara thought, even her.

She drew the grimoire from beneath her pillow and pressed it against the window.

“Here,” she said. “And now that you’ve—”

Grace hurled herself against the glass like a rabid wolf, her mouth stretched in an inhuman snarl of rage. Using the palms of her hands, she slapped the window so hard that Kara was certain it would break.

“Mine! Mine! Mine!”

Kara dropped the book. It fell open on the bed, and the pages turned until settling upon a meticulously rendered illustration of a squit. It looked different from the one she had plucked off Lucas but no less deadly.

Here, the book seemed to say, try this one.

Kara did not remember speaking the words, but that didn’t matter: The result was the same. The first squit landed on Grace’s arm and touched its corkscrew tongue to her skin. Grace yanked it off quickly before it could start to burrow. The second squit got farther, managing to dig into the flesh below Grace’s elbow before she could pinch it out with two fingers and squish it to pulp. Kara felt a tiny pain in her finger, nothing more than a momentary ache. I’m getting used to death, Kara thought, and then the squits were everywhere, blanketing the bedroom window until Grace vanished behind a swarm of shifting bodies. Kara ran her finger down the inside of the window and a dozen squits clamored for position, longing to be close to their queen.

The book is mine. No one is going to take it away.

Grace screamed—the sound desperate and pure and surprisingly childlike—and Kara gasped. The world jumped into clear focus again.

“No!” Kara exclaimed. She pounded on the glass. “Stop it! Get away!”

As one, the squits flew off into the night. Kara pressed her face to the glass and watched Grace limp away. She had abandoned her cane, and her useless leg dragged behind her. She’s alive, Kara thought. Thank the Clen. Grace turned back, once, and there was just enough moonlight for Kara to make out the expression on her face. Not gratitude, as it should have been, but a promise of revenge. Kara laughed. That’s what you think, cripple. Just try it again. See what happens. She laughed some more, and while a part of her realized that the laugh sounded wrong somehow, the majority of her body—still warm and satisfied from spell casting—rejoiced at the feeling.

“I’m better than you,” Kara said. The grimoire nestled into her hands, home at last. “I’m better than all of you!”

She thought about conjuring something else to chase Grace all the way home. Her hand stroked the book. It would feel so good. So right. She would even choose something slow—a magslov, perhaps—in order to give Grace a chance. She touched the book again; this time it moved against her fingertips. We have such fun things to do, you and I. I am my mother’s daughter, after all. A part of Kara that had grown disturbingly small wondered why all the noise had not woken anyone else in the house, and that’s when she heard it: The sound that had been camouflaged by pounding glass and wandering thoughts and the buzzing of the squits.

Taff’s screams.

Kara dropped the grimoire and ran to his room. Father sat on his bed, holding Taff in his arms. There was blood everywhere.

“Towels!” he exclaimed. “We need towels!”

There were two wounds—one in the center of Taff’s forearm and the other behind his neck. The latter was nothing more than a deep scratch, but the forearm wound was deep. When Kara pressed a towel against it, blood bubbled to the surface, along with the body of a drowned squit that had burrowed too far.

Father picked it up between two fingers and flicked it outside. He shut the window.

“This is my fault, Kara,” he said. The desperation in his voice brought sudden tears to her eyes. “Everything that has befallen our family. I didn’t stand by her like I should have, and now we’re all being punished!”

No, Kara thought. It’s my fault for thinking I could control the grimoire.

She cleaned and bound Taff’s wounds and made him a poultice for the pain. He grimaced but fought tears the best he could. Eventually Taff fell asleep, and she watched him, his slightly flickering eyelids, the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Her beautiful brother, who had never hurt anyone.

He could have died tonight. I did this to him. Me.

No. Not just her.

“Where are you going?” Father asked moments later, when Kara swept through the kitchen, satchel swinging from her shoulder. He was sitting at the table, halfway through a jug of moondrink. “Kara?” he asked.

But Kara didn’t answer. She just grabbed a handful of matches and continued on her way.

 

By the time sunlight streaked the sky, Kara had built a nice stack of branches. She dropped the grimoire onto the pile. The book crashed through the makeshift firewood like an anvil and plummeted several inches into the earth.

Kara took out the first match.

She wondered what tricks were in store for her. Would the grimoire suddenly come to life, grow legs, and skitter across the field? Perhaps Sordyr would materialize before her eyes and tempt her with promises of power and happiness.

At the very least, there was no way the match would catch on the first try.

But it did.

Kara watched the flame dance, waiting for a supernatural breeze to extinguish it. The morning remained calm. Still expecting something to stop her, Kara cupped the tiny flame and touched it to the wood. The branches, though slightly damp, caught easily enough, spreading the flames gleefully through the pile. Heat snapped at Kara’s skin, but she remained still and watched the flames engulf the cursed book, certain that it couldn’t be this easy.

But there were no tricks. The book did not rise up into the sky. It did not possess her mind and force her to reach into the flames to save it. A black dragon did not swoop from the sky and snatch the grimoire away.

It simply didn’t burn.

When the fire worked itself out, Kara retrieved the book, dusted off the ashes, and returned it to her satchel. It wasn’t even warm.