Kara awoke to the aroma of freshly fried bacon. After sliding into her school dress, she washed her face and dashed into the kitchen. Father, in the middle of pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee from the percolator, gave her a bemused look.

“I meant to save you some eggs,” Taff said through a mouthful of food, “but they were just sitting there and I felt bad, so I ate them.”

“Good morning, Father,” said Kara. While reaching for a plate of biscuits she stuck her tongue out at her brother. “Good morning, egg thief.”

“Does this still qualify as morning?” Father asked. His pants were dirty from the morning’s chores, but he had taken his boots off at the door and scrubbed his hands clean.

“It’s not that late,” said Kara. “I’ll still be on time for school.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” mumbled Taff.

“It’s important that you learn,” said Father.

“But it’s so boring. I bet you even grown-ups would have a hard time sitting in one room for hours and hours and hours.”

“I spend my days toiling beneath the hot sun. Sit and relax while a wise man teaches me about the remarkable history of our people? I would trade places with you any day.”

“Really?” asked Taff.

“Of course not! I suffered through school and now you have to as well. Such is the way of the world.” He lifted his cup of coffee in Taff’s direction. “You’ll be having this same conversation with your own children someday.”

“I’m not having children,” said Taff, as though this was a topic to which he had previously given careful thought. “Too much trouble.”

Kara giggled. “Let’s see what your wife says about that.”

“Wife? I’m definitely not having one of those!”

Kara and her father burst into laughter, Taff’s confused protests of “What? What?” only making them laugh harder.

“Sounds like I’m missing all the fun,” said Mother, stepping backward into the kitchen. She held a basket overflowing with freshly picked herbs in her arms; Father quickly rushed to her side and carried it into the house. As always, whenever Helena Westfall stepped into the room Kara felt a subtle brightening of the world around them. Part of this was Mother’s beauty, but mostly it was just her.

“Taff has announced that he is never getting married,” Kara said.

“How sad,” said Mother. “Young girls all over De’Noran are headed for disappointment and they don’t even know it yet.” Father placed the basket on their counter. He had begun to grow a beard—trim and neat—and Helena ran her hand over it before kissing him on the lips. “Thank you, my love,” she said.

“Gross,” said Taff. He raised a finger in the air as though proving a point. “That is exactly the type of thing that happens to you when you get a wife.”

Kara started to laugh along with her parents but winced as a high-pitched noise buzzed inside her right ear. For a moment Mother and Father wobbled up and down as though they were standing on a ship.

As quickly as it came, the noise vanished.

“What is it, Kara?” asked Mother, an unusually sharp note of concern entering her voice. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Kara said. She tilted her head to one side, as though trying to loosen an earful of water.

“Come here,” said Mother. “Let me take a look at you.”

But Kara, shrugging, had already slipped out of her chair.

“I’m fine,” she said. “We’d better get to school. I don’t want to be late.”

Leah and Hope were waiting for her just outside the schoolhouse. The three friends usually chatted for a few precious minutes before class began, entering the building only at the last possible moment. But Kara was running late and barely had a chance to say good morning before the bell chimed, signifying the start of the school day. The girls had recently lost the privilege of sitting together—Master Blackwood, after chiding them one too many times for talking, decided this would be a simpler solution—so Kara reluctantly slumped into her new seat.

It was in the last row, next to Grace Stone. Kara thought that might be part of Master Blackwood’s punishment as well.

“Good morning, Kara!” the girl exclaimed, eager to see her as always. Her school dress, a size too small, was frayed at the edges and patched poorly in several places. Grace had tried to conceal her strange hair beneath a soiled bonnet, but a few white wisps, unwilling to be contained, dangled across her forehead.

“Morning,” Kara muttered.

She took out her slate and began copying lines from the board. Though she steadfastly avoided looking in Grace’s direction, she could feel the girl’s piercing blue eyes watching her every move. It was Kara’s own fault, she supposed. Last week some of the cattier girls had been teasing Grace, mostly about her father, and Kara had stepped in to defend her. From that point on, the former fen’de’s daughter had trailed Kara’s steps like a hungry puppy.

“I was thinking of picking washmallows today,” Grace whispered, tapping her fingers nervously against the desk. “You should come. I know a perfect spot.”

“I can’t,” Kara said, not looking up from her slate. “I have chores.”

“I could help you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Because of your mother? That was such a long time ago, Kara. And it was my father, not me. I was just a child.”

Seven years ago, Grace’s father had falsely accused Kara’s mother of witchcraft and tried to execute her in front of the entire village. Luckily Father and Aunt Constance had made the villagers see reason in time, leading to Fen’de Stone’s excommunication from the Children of the Fold and Grace’s subsequent adoption by duty-bound relatives.

The white-haired girl was a constant reminder of the night that could have destroyed Kara’s life. For this reason, she could never be Grace’s friend. It wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t wrong, either.

Kara felt a hand on her shoulder.

“What is that?” Master Blackwood asked, poking a trembling finger at her slate. “It is certainly not the Clen’s fourth creed, I can tell you that much!”

“What do you mean, sir?” Kara asked. “I copied it directly from the board, just like I always—”

She looked down at her slate and gasped. Though the words were in her handwriting, Kara did not remember writing them.

She read the words—truly read them—for the very first time:

REMEMBER WHAT IT EATS.

That night Kara dreamed of a forest littered with lost things, keys and dolls and golden rings set with strange jewels. She followed a path deeper into the trees, winding her way toward a soft, beckoning light. Kara felt someone’s hand in her own but when she tried to turn her head to see who it was, the dream did not let her. As Kara neared the light she heard an old woman whisper four achingly familiar words . . . and then she woke up, with no memory of having dreamed at all.

Years passed.

They were good years, stitched together not only from births and weddings and celebrations, but ordinary details like trimming nails and darning socks and waiting for various eggs to boil. Kara grew from a pretty child to a beautiful young woman, the spitting image of her mother. With her school days now behind her she began to take on more responsibilities at home, but though Kara loved spending time with her family, she did not believe she was destined to be a farmer. She had begun to earn a fair amount of seeds by tending to sick livestock, and she suspected there might be a place in De’Noran for a woman who specialized in doctoring animals. Kara was unusually good with them.

Occasionally, on what she came to think of as her “strange days,” Kara felt that she was not Kara Westfall at all but a thief who had stolen someone else’s life. These days were few and far between, however, and in the end she did not pay them much mind.

Life was everything she had always wanted it to be.

On a morning just three weeks shy of her sixteenth birthday, Kara headed to the Fringe to gather herbs. Farmer Loder had a cow with the tremors, and he was willing to pay Kara two browns for a cure, a respectable day’s work. Kara wished that Mother could have joined her, but since Master Blackwood’s death the previous season, Mother had taken his place at the schoolhouse. She swore it was temporary, but Kara had her doubts; she heard the enthusiasm in her mother’s voice when she spoke of her charges. Kara had asked Taff to come to the Fringe instead, but he was locked away in his work shed building some sort of machine he swore would cut their threshing time in half. She didn’t doubt it.

Kara ate from a handful of berries and thought about the upcoming Shadow Festival. Two boys had already asked her to the dance. The first was a Clearer named Lucas, and though he seemed pleasant enough, Kara knew him on only a passing basis. She had refused him immediately.

The second boy presented a more complicated scenario. Aaron Baker came from a good family, demonstrated a fine singing voice at Worship, and was certainly not unpleasant in appearance. Despite this, Kara did not like him, sensing that beneath his smooth words lurked a dangerous combination of cruelty and cowardice. It wasn’t the first time Kara had been granted a feeling of unwonted familiarity about another member of the village, as though she had a deeper pool of experience to draw from than just her day-to-day life. She had never told anyone about these inexplicable insights, not even her own family . . .

. . . because you don’t trust them they’re not your real—

Kara squeezed the thoughts away. Nonsense. Just nonsense. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and as a result her thoughts were singular and scattered. That’s all it was.

She walked along the border of the Fringe, searching for the herbs she needed. A pinch of thistlerun, laberknacle, gill’s ferry. It would be easier if she could just enter the Fringe itself, of course, but that was forbidden. Instead, Kara snagged those plants beyond her reach with a long, hooked rod and dragged them back to her basket.

The wind rose to a feverish pitch and the trees of the Thickety creaked and groaned like stretching giants. Kara kept her eyes averted from them, as she’d been taught.

She heard footsteps.

“Hello?” Kara asked. She scanned the Fringe weeds, taller than they should have been; the Clearers, of late, had been lax in their work. “Is someone there?”

Parting two overgrown ferns, Grace Stone poked her head out.

“I found something interesting!” she exclaimed. “Come see!”

Grace’s dress was torn in several spots and covered in dried mud, and her filthy white hair, littered with leaves, hung down her back in tangled waves. Kara could not remember the last time she had seen her wear shoes.

“I have to get back.”

“This will take but a moment. I need to show you.”

“Why?”

Grace shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know why. I only know what.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Kara said. “I have chores.”

“Ah, yes,” said Grace. “Chores. Sweep the porch. Till the field. Marry the boy.” She tilted her head to one side and examined the ground in front of Kara’s feet with keen interest. “What does that mean?”

Kara looked down. Using the sharpened end of her stick, she had scrawled something in the earth:

REMEMBER WHAT IT EATS.

As usual, she did not remember writing the sentence, but she recalled, with shocking clarity, its other appearances in her life. Whispered in her ear upon waking. Clapped out by ocean waves. Pattered by raindrops on the roof.

It’s important. I don’t know why, but these words might be the most important thing in my life.

“Remember what it eats,” Grace said, considering. “The thing I found in the Fringe—I think it might have something to do with that. If you’re interested, that is. I wouldn’t want to distract you from your chores.”

“Show me,” said Kara.

Grace had to use her walking stick to maneuver across the unsteady ground of the Fringe, but despite her weak leg she kept a steady pace. Kara followed her along the outskirts of the border, refusing to enter the Fringe itself.

What am I doing? she thought. I’m following the craziest girl in the village. Why? The instincts that had served Kara so well the past few years were complicated when it came to Grace. For some unfathomable reason she trusted what the girl was saying, but she did not trust the girl herself. Not one bit.

“Here,” Grace said.

Using her walking stick, she pointed to something on the ground. At first, Kara didn’t even see it, camouflaged as it was against the other weeds. But gradually she was able to make out six green petals splayed across the ground, as though a flower had decided to spread out its arms and take a nap.

“Do you know what this does?” Grace asked.

Kara shook her head. It did seem vaguely familiar, though. Perhaps her mother had taught her about it at some point and she had forgotten? She tugged at a cloud of memory but it slipped away.

“Watch,” Grace said.

She picked up a beetle from an overhanging tangle of purple vines and placed it next to the splayed leaves. The beetle hesitated a moment, its instincts telling it not to proceed, until Grace poked it with a stick and forced it onto the first petal.

The petals clamped together into a bell-shaped dome as large as Kara’s head, then rose into the air on a single shoot and slowly began to spin.

“It’s a trap,” said Grace. “The beetle thinks it’s still just going about its life and . . .”

Like a flash of lightning in Kara’s brain: lost things hanging from the branches.

“. . . doesn’t realize the truth . . .”

More flashes. One after the other.

People.

Mouths agape.

Something wrong with their heads.

“. . . until it’s too late.”

Slithering.

Screams.

Taff.

“My brother,” Kara said. “He’s in trouble. I have to go home.”

“Do you?” asked Grace.

“Yes!” But another voice, a voice that was her own but different, stronger, said, “No. The boy at home isn’t Taff at all.”

Remember what it eats.

“Lost,” Kara murmured. “It eats things that are lost.”

The farm is not your home.

Remember what it eats.

“What’s happening to me?” asked Kara. “I feel like my head is being torn apart.”

Grace noticed something past Kara’s shoulder. “You have visitors,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.” She paused and added, “See you soon!” before vanishing into the Fringe.

Kara turned. Her family stood behind her.

“Come home, Kara,” said Father. “We need you.”

“It’s time to prepare dinner,” said Mother.

“I got it to work!” Taff exclaimed, beaming. “My threshing machine! Don’t you want to see?”

Mother reached out her hands and Kara took a step forward, longing to fold herself in those lilac-scented arms and forget about this whole thing, but then . . .

The farm is not your home remember what it eats.

. . . she saw a younger version of her mother hanging from a tree, jerking as stone after stone struck her.

“You’re not you,” Kara said with grim certainty. “You’re dead.”

Mother straightened her back and sighed deeply.

“I don’t have to be,” she said. “Stay with us, and we can live like this forever.”

Remember . . .

(Mary. That’s Mary’s voice!)

. . . what it eats. The things you’ve lost.

“Stay with us, Moonbeam,” said Father.

Imogen. She has me right now.

“Don’t go, sister!” exclaimed Taff.

She’s in my mind.

“Stop it,” Kara said. “None of this is real!”

Mother shrugged. “Real is what we make it. Come back to the farm, Kara. Forget all this foolishness.”

“My brother needs me,” Kara said. She looked at the boy wearing Taff’s face. “My real brother.”

The Taff-thing winced as though Kara had struck him, and a seam of nothingness zigzagged across his cheek, revealing the trees behind him.

“Mother,” the Taff-thing said, jamming his fingers into the crack in his face. “Look what she did!”

“Is this what you want?” Mother asked Kara. “To hurt your brother?”

“I want to save him!”

Mother’s arm vanished up to the elbow. A sizable piece of Father’s torso disappeared as well.

“I’m very disappointed in you,” said the Mother-thing. “You could have had me back again.”

“You’re wrong,” Kara said. “My mother is gone forever.”

Her family vanished.

Where a path leading back to the village should have been, a swirling nothingness expanded like a spreading stain across the horizon. Kara watched it approach, and in a few moments it took her.