Tiny Hearts

Alicia Adams

Colophon

© 2026 Alicia Adams. All rights reserved

Produced in the United States of America

Edition Version Designation: HB001d-01

Layout and Design by Sloum

Cover painting “A Garden in September”
by Mary Heister Reid (d. 1921)

“The Polinators” is previously unpublished
All other stories appeared in Hearth Stories issues 1–6

“Out of the Rain” is adapted from
“Goin Into the House,” by J. S. Fletcher, 1894

Hearth Books
books.hearthstories.org

Dedication

To Brian.

Every story in here is for you and written because of you.

Thank you for teaching me that sometimes the smallest stories have the most heart and that quiet moments can be the most cherished.

Tiny Hearts

Dandelion

It wouldn’t be fair to say that Dandy was small; all of the folk were small. Dandy was about the height of a duck egg when held tall-wise, and that was expected for a girl just coming into adulthood. Dandy walked into the golden sunlight wearing her rattiest dress⁠—a brown shift of repurposed burlap⁠—so that she wouldn’t have to worry if it got dirty or damaged. Her dandelion-yellow hair was tied back with a piece of straw. She held a clay bucket full of medicinal ointment in one hand and a clean cloth in the other. Dandy puffed out her cheeks when she was nervous, and that’s what she did now⁠—puffed and puffed her cheeks full of air to feel the stretch as her inner cheeks inflated. It was the kind of thing she only did when no one was looking. When other folk were watching, she rubbed her fingernails with the pad of her thumb or twirled her hair⁠—acceptable movements, though sometimes people noticed. She remembered something Clover had said: “If you keep twirling your hair like that, people are going to think you’re flirting with them.” The thought made her stomach flutter.

But she walked alone across the meadow, cheeks puffed, with her hands clenched on the bucket handle and the cloth. She savored the soft breeze that cut through the warmth of the day and the low buzzing of insects the size of her head. Just beyond the tall grasses, she could hear splashes and the quack-quack-quacks of the family of ducks.

Dandy peeked through the tall grass. The mother duck stood tall in her white feathers with her fearsome orange beak held high. The three ducklings ran back and forth and flapped their floofy yellow wings. Dandy deflated her cheeks, took a deep breath, and poked her head through the grasses. Mother Duck spotted her and signaled that it was safe to approach. Dandy stepped out using her own body language to show that she was here to help. Communication with other species is nebulous, even for folk who know how. Dandy twirled her hair to calm her nerves.

She held up the bucket and moved toward one of the ducklings. With a few quacks and motions from Mom, the duckling squatted down in the mud. Dandy stroked the duckling’s yellow feathers with her fingers and cautiously pressed her face against the soft, warm duckling chest, hearing the low thump of the duckling’s heart.

“You look like you’re doing well,” she said to the duckling. Ducks didn’t speak her language, but she thought they might understand her tone of voice. “I brought you something for your eye.”

The day before, Dandy had been sitting on a fallen green leaf, watching the clouds lumber through the blue sky when she’d heard a bellow of fearful quacks. She’d hidden in the tall grass and peeked through. She saw Mama Duck flapping her white wings in panic and one of the young ones with her head in the water trying to splash something off. The duckling turned and shook her head in the air then scraped it on the muddy bank. From where she stood, Dandy saw the wriggling black nub of a leech at the inner edge of the duckling’s eye.

Without thinking, she’d run through the grass and grabbed a sharp stick that stuck out of the mud by the pond. She slid the stick along the side of the leech and pushed at its mouth until it let go of the flailing duckling. The slimy leech flopped off the duckling and squirmed against the mud until it found its way back to the pond. Dandy ran back into the grass, panting. She wasn’t sure that Mama Duck wouldn’t gobble her up right there by the water.

Her dress had been covered with mud, blood, and feathers, and her own mother had screamed when she’d walked through the door of their little home in the inner wall of the barn.

Standing out by the pond again with her tub of ointment, Dandy kept her back away from Mama Duck as she dipped her cloth into the ointment and dabbed at the corner of the duckling’s eye. “This will help against infection,” she said. “That means it will help your eye heal and help make sure you don’t get sick or more hurt.”

Dandy lingered for a moment after she was finished. She stroked the ducklings feathers one more time. “This has been nice,” she said. “I’ll miss you.”

She motioned goodbye to Mama Duck and the other ducklings and backed her way into the tall grass. Then, overwhelmed, she dropped the cloth and bucket, collapsed into a ball, and held her face in her hands.

She heard a rustle of grass. “That was very brave,” a voice said. She felt a hand on her back and jumped.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the voice said. Dandy turned and saw Clover standing beside her.

Dandy stared at her, not knowing what to say. Clover was taller than Dandy. Her acorn-brown hair was straight and cut off at the chin. She had a square jaw and freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her brown eyes looked deep into Dandy’s. Dandy looked down.

“Are you okay?” Clover said.

Dandy nodded and got to her feet. She hadn’t expected to talk to another person. She wasn’t prepared. She started twirling her hair. “I’m not flirting with you,” she said, dropping her hair and rubbing her nail beds with the pads of her fingers instead. “I just do that with my hair sometimes.”

“Oh, okay,” Clover said. Clover looked down at her shoes. She was wearing her finest clothes⁠—a moss green top and brown slacks. Dandy didn’t know why she would be so dressed up, but she felt incredibly underdressed in her burlap dress. She pulled the straw hair tie out of her hair and started combing her yellow hair with her fingers.

“I’m okay,” Dandy said, delayed. “How long were you watching me?”

Now Clover was silent. Then she said, “A long time. I watched you pull the leech out of the duckling’s eye.”

“But that was yesterday!” Dandy said, not hiding the surprise in her voice.

“I know. I should have said something. I just⁠—It was incredible the way you pulled out that leech. I wanted to tell you I saw you, but I wasn’t brave like you, Dandelion. I didn’t run out to help you. I’m sorry for that.”

“That’s okay,” Dandy said. She started twirling her hair in her fingers again. Then she felt her cheeks flush and put her hands back down. “You can call me Dandy, you know.”

“Okay.” Clover smiled. She reached down past Dandy, picked up the cloth, and put it in the bucket. Then she held the bucket in front of her. “Here, let me carry this for you, Dandy.”

Dandy rubbed the big woven fibers of her dress between her fingers as she walked beside Clover back toward the big red barn on the southwest side of the farm.

“I think you’ve made friends for life with those ducks,” Clover said, looking down at Dandy for a moment before facing straight ahead again.

“I don’t know,” Dandy said. “The whole time I was out there, I was so scared I was going to be duck food.”

“I was scared, too. That’s why I didn’t run out to help. I’ve never seen anyone do something so heroic before. Ducks can die from leech infestation, you know. You might have saved that little duck’s life.”

Dandy blushed. Again she didn’t know what to say. What do people say when they get compliments? “Thank you,” she said, but that didn’t seem right.

From the white farmhouse, they heard the creak of the front door and saw the great stretching shadow of the farmers’ son. Dandy dropped down behind a rock and pulled Clover down beside her.

The farmers’ child ran through the grass. The ground shook with each of his steps. Twigs and leaves crunched beneath the massive soles of his shoes. In the cacophony, Dandy heard the click of stone against stone. She looked at Clover, whose terrified face mirrored her own. The click of stones could only mean one thing⁠—the child was collecting rocks from the meadow. If he picked up the rock they were hiding behind, they’d be exposed. Her heart pounded, and her small body tremored against the stone at her back. It’s dangerous for creatures so small to be so scared. Dandy had heard stories of people’s hearts beating so fast with fear they finally stopped. The thought made her even more anxious. Beside her, Clover was gasping for air in panic. Dandy could smell the blueberry sweetness of her breath.

The thundering footsteps got closer. Clover put her hand into Dandy’s and interlaced their fingers. Dandy could feel Clover’s pulse hammering through her warm hand. Sweat commingled in the space between their palms.

A voice boomed from the house, speaking a language they couldn’t understand. The rocks tumbled to the grass. Dandy watched a round gray stone roll past them and stop mere inches from their feet. The thunderous footsteps receded, and the farmhouse door slammed shut.

Dandy took deep breaths and tried to slow her pounding heart.

“I’m sorry,” Clover said, regaining her breath and taking back her hand. “I didn’t mean to grab your hand. I was just scared. I know you don’t like me like that.”

“I never said that,” Dandy said. Her heart was slowing down, back to a safe and steady beat. She grabbed her bucket with the cloth tucked inside. She twirled her hair again. “I just said that twirling my hair doesn’t mean I’m flirting. I didn’t say I don’t like you.”

“I just meant, you don’t like me like that.”

“I know what you meant,” Dandy said. She felt her heartbeat quicken again. She couldn’t let this moment go. Clover liked her because she had been brave, Dandy thought. She could be brave again. Dandy leaned forward and kissed Clover’s beautifully freckled cheek. Clover’s cheek felt warm and soft under Dandy’s lips. She pulled away and saw Clover looking at her, wide-eyed with surprise.

Bravery depleted, Dandy stood up and ran as fast as she could toward the big red barn, where she lived with her family, leaping over pebbles and sticks. As she approached the crack in the sideboard to enter the wall, she looked back. Clover sat against the rock with one hand against her cheek where Dandy had kissed her. She waved to Dandy with her free hand. Dandy smiled and waved back as she ducked into the wall, feeling dizzy, stroking the sweat on her palm with the pad of her thumb, smelling the sweet blueberry scent of new love.

You’re Always Welcome Here

Lavender opened the door of her pine-tree home into the dark early morning, where the moon cast its solitary light over the meadow. The first blue light of morning dimmed the stars, and dew drops like giant tears lay over everything, bending blades of grass and the delicate slouching petals of the meadow flowers. She held Morning Glory in his sling across her chest, his arms and legs limp and dangling. His tiny eyes darted behind closed eyelids, turning every motion into dream.

Lavender pushed aside the pinecone that hid her doorway in the Jeffrey pine from the view of animals. The pinecone, though only four inches high, was taller than Lavender’s door, which could be completely hidden behind it. In the early light, Lavender could see as far as the red barn in the distance, and even beyond that to the white farm house where the human family lived. Most of the folk lived closer to these huge buildings or in them. But when they’d married, Basil had wanted them to live on the outskirts, closer to the forest, where it was quiet.

It was only quiet if you didn’t listen. In the early dawn, the chirp of crickets filled the air. Lavender heard rustling in the grass and the wind weaving through plants, the horror of owls hooting in the dark treeline.

She picked up a big, clay bucket from the doorway and walked out into the gray meadow. Morning Glory’s head rested against her heart. His eyelashes fluttered as she walked through the tall grass, pushing big spheres of morning dew into her bucket with both hands. The dew drops gleamed silver and blue in the early light before she splashed them into the bucket. She did her best to keep Morning Glory dry, but she couldn’t help splashing herself. Her long gray mourning dress and her midnight-black hair were covered with tiny drops of water that glittered in the dawn light. She filled bucket after bucket, bringing the water to a barrel in the house, feeling the water seep into her dress and onto her skin⁠—cold and wet and miserable.

The rooster crowed in the distance as the light stretched up and west and the morning birds began their chatter. Lavender looked up from her work and saw a figure walking toward her across the meadow. In her sleepiness she could have sworn it was Basil, but that only lasted a moment.

Lavender watched the figure approach. It was a woman, she saw. Her straw-colored hair was in a long, messy braid. She wore a green cape, with a lump under it that might have been a pack or might have been a hump in her spine. She carried a staff sharpened to a point at the end and wore a big leaf on her head to shield her from the sun.

The woman waved and quickened her step. She was broad-faced and sunburnt. Long, straw-colored whiskers lined her jawbone⁠—six, perfectly spaced whiskers, each longer than a finger. The woman ran the last two feet and smiled big at Lavender, panting for breath. She was a head shorter than Lavender and looked even smaller hunched over and panting.

“Am I glad to see you!” the woman said. She had an accent that Lavender had never heard before, and she reeked of sweat and alcohol. “The name’s Sugar Maple.” She turned her back to show two lines of sugar maple seeds stuck to her cape with sap. The seeds were winged pairs the size of Lavender’s arms. Some of the seed pairs were new and green and some brown with age.

“Oh,” Lavender said. She’d never met folk with tree names. She’d never met a stranger person ever. “My name is Lavender,” she said. Then, unsure if it was a grim custom for the strange woman, showed Sugar Maple a lavender seed from her pocket. “This is Morning Glory. Would you please come inside for tea?”

“I don’t mean to bother you and your baby, ma’am,” Sugar Maple said. “But would it be okay if I set up my tent nearby?”

Lavender knew she should say yes and let it be that. It was polite enough. She could sense the stranger was offering her a way out of customary hospitality, a way to just have space for herself and the baby. But something deep in Lavender wanted the strange woman to stay.

She thought through her next words carefully. “You may, of course,” she said. “But if you’re not too tired from your travels, I’ve just gathered fresh water. You should come in and have some.” She folded her hands around Morning Glory’s sleeping form. She knew she must look a mess⁠—a young widow with a baby, unkempt, damp in her gray dress, her gray eyes pleading for the woman to stay.

To Lavender’s shock, Sugar Maple clutched her belly and shook with laughter. The baby woke up and looked around with curiosity.

“Well, I don’t mean to take advantage of your generosity, missus, but surely I will!” the traveler bellowed. “It’s sure cold out, and if you’ve got some food and a nice warm place to sleep, I’d stay on with you and the littl’un for some time if you’ll have me!”

“Sure!” Lavender said, feeling herself brighten at the prospect. “If you don’t mind a crying baby, I have an extra bed with no one to sleep in it and plenty of food and water for a guest. Please come in. You’re wet and must be tired. You’ll have tea, won’t you? And breakfast?”

Sugar Maple howled with more laughter, her red cheeks turning redder above the light, floppy whiskers. “Lavender, my dear, I think we’re going to make great company!”

Lavender ushered the strange woman into her home and rolled the pinecone back into place. The sweet smell of Jeffrey pine greeted them as they walked through the door, and Lavender watched as Sugar Maple sniffed at the air and smiled.

“A lovely home!” Sugar Maple yelled, as if not realizing that Lavender was right beside her. Lavender had never met a louder person. Morning Glory wouldn’t take his eyes off the strange woman as Lavender took him out of the sling and held him on her hip.

“Oh, thank you,” Lavender said, but she didn’t think of it as lovely. A couple chairs, a small cooking area, a table, and two little nooks with beds in them. Modest, she’d say. “We don’t get a lot of visitors.”

“You and the babe?”

“Right.”

Sugar Maple took off her hat and cape and the pack that had been obscured beneath it. She walked over to the little window and looked out at the healthy green basil plants growing there. “That’s your partner there?” she said.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Basil.” Sugar Maple said.

Lavender’s chest tightened hearing his name. “Mm-hmm.” She held Morning Glory closer.

Sugar Maple looked back at Lavender, her face serious. “It’s hard to lose a partner so young. I lost mine, too. Many years ago now. It gets easier. But not easy.”

Lavender nodded. It was a phrase she’d heard before, but the truth of it struck her coming from the stranger. “Let me get you that tea,” she said. She grabbed towels for herself and her guest and heated the water in the hearth⁠—a carved out section of the tree, lined with clay and with a small vent at the top. She came back with two clay cups of mild nettle tea, two bowls of hot cereal, and one red raspberry to share.

When she set these on the dining table in front of her guest, Sugar Maple clapped her hands over her mouth. Her shoulders bounced up and down. Lavender couldn’t tell if she was suppressing sobs or joy.

“Is everything okay?” she said.

Sugar Maple uncovered her mouth to reveal a huge grin. “Hot food!” she shouted. “I haven’t had hot food in ages. This is mighty kind of you!” And with that, Sugar Maple dove into the cereal, little bits of it flying everywhere and sticking from the long whiskers on her chin. Lavender smiled. Such a strange person, but her home felt warmer with her in it.

Lavender brought Morning Glory to her chest, and let him suckle while she pulled off raspberry drupelets one by one and sipped her tea.

“Where are you coming from?” Lavender asked.

“The mountain,” Sugar Maple said between spoonfuls.

“The mountain!” Lavender gasped. Lavender had often looked up at the mountain while out collecting fruit and seeds in the field. It was big on the horizon, snow-capped, and countless miles in the distance. She hadn’t even known there were folk so high up.

“That’s right,” Sugar Maple said. She licked the bottom of her bowl and then started tearing into the raspberry.

“Get some more. Please, help yourself,” Lavender said in knee-jerk politeness. She didn’t want to talk about food; she wanted to talk about how Sugar Maple had traveled all the way down the mountain and across the world to be sitting at her table.

“Thanks so much, Ma’am. This here cereal is delicious. And I don’t say that lightly.” Sugar Maple got out of her chair and walked over to the big pot of cereal.

“Thanks. But tell me, how did you get all this way? The mountain is miles away. On hazy days, you can’t even see it from here.”

“Oh yeah, it was foggy for a few days, and I watched my whole mountain disappear. Scared me close to death, I tell you.”

“How did you get down the mountain? Were you at the top?”

“Yep, up near the top. Just rode a bird down, is all. Would have taken forever to walk it.”

Now Lavender understood. She laughed. “You’re making fun of me.” She switched Morning Glory to her other breast.

Sugar Maple set her second bowl of cereal down on the table and sat. She stared intently at Lavender, her broad face serious. “Now I promise you, Lavender. You took me into your home. You gave me a good place to sleep and this delicious food to eat. I’m not never gonna lie to you. Not now, not ever.”

“You’re serious?” Lavender said, sure that at any moment Sugar Maple would start that belly laugh again, that she would be the butt of some joke. “Really, how could a person ride a bird?”

“I’ve ridden a few birds in my time,” Sugar Maple said, digging into her bowl of hot cereal again. “It’s long work, but it’s worth the time. Freer than you’ll ever feel is up on a bird. Freer and more terrified, too. But that thrill! Worth the danger to feel that thrill of flying through the air. Of being higher up than anyone’s ever been.”

“But how?” Lavender pressed. She was leaning forward now and had to remind herself to lean back, to give Morning Glory enough room beside the table.

“Well, I recommend you find a bird that eats seeds, not one that eats little creatures like you and me. That’s a good start. And give it some seeds, too, that’s for sure. But really you want to find one with a problem. Birds are reasonable creatures. They’ll make a trade. One bird I freed from being stuck in some tangled vines and the like. That didn’t take too long, but I didn’t have nowhere to go, so just flew and flew around. To get down the mountain I found a bird with lotsa mites on him. Spent a whole afternoon pulling off mites, throwing ’em down on the forest floor. Poor bird was covered with red, itchy skin, but by the time I was done with him, he didn’t have a single mite or mite egg left on him. He was free.”

Lavender’s mouth hung open. “And then you just got on his back? You got on his back and flew down a mountain?”

“Yep.” Sugar Maple finished her bowl and rubbed the extra off her face with both hands. Then she rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Listen. There was no good place to camp last night. I spent all of the dark hours working my way through that fen on the other side of the farm. So I haven’t slept in a spell. Would it be alright if I got a few hours now? Then we can chat again when I wake up? If it’s too much of a burden to be in your space, I’m happy to set up the tent, but don’t worry about noise or nothing. At this point I could sleep through the end of the world.”

“Of course,” Lavender said. She tried to hide her disappointment. Riding a bird! How could someone sleep at a moment like this?

But Sugar Maple slept for hours.

Lavender went out foraging with Morning Glory as she always did. The way she would if it were an ordinary day and not a day where someone who rode a flying bird down a mountain slept in her own home.

She imagined herself pulling mites off a great brown bird, holding the wriggling terrors in her hand before dropping them to the earth. Her face pressed against the feathers. Walking around huge flapping wings. And then, at last, climbing on the back of the great creature. Holding on to dearest life as the bird jumped into the air and spread its wings! The wind on her face faster than any wind, and the dizzying view of her Jeffrey pine, the barn, the farm house, the pond, all tiny specks below her. She imagined herself lost in a cloud, pure white and then gray and trembling with thunder.

She trembled thinking about it as she used her ceramic knife to cut free a curly white oyster mushroom from the bark of a dying aspen. But the trembling subsided as she pushed the mushroom into her bag and went to cut a second one. She wanted to feel that kind of thrill. Worth the danger to feel the thrill, Sugar Maple had said. She heard the twittering of birds high up in the canopy over her head. Heard their beating wings. She had never looked at a bird with anything but fear. She had never seen them for how beautiful they were, how extraordinary.

A crow cawed above her, and Lavender tightened her grip on Morning Glory. Extraordinary, yes, but still dangerous.

It was one of the world’s slowest days. She let Morning Glory play on a woven mat with some of the toys she had carved for him. She set him on his belly and watched him hold up his head. She listened to him cry and bounced him on her knee. Just the two of them, just like any other day. But she listened to the deep breathing from the other room, and she waited.

Lavender had had plenty of visitors. She listened to them talk about Basil and how much they missed him. Accepted their food. Accepted their hugs and their pats on her arm. Watched as they held the baby. Refused when they offered to watch him so she could get some sleep. She felt dull and restless when they came over. She wasn’t sure what made this visitor different. She wanted to hear this one talk, to hear more of her adventures, but it was more than that. She wanted this visitor to like her. She wanted her to stay a while. And more than anything, she wanted Sugar Maple to wake up. Wake up! she screamed at her in her thoughts. Wake up! And it was so loud in her head that she wondered if Sugar Maple could hear it.

Sugar Maple didn’t stir until dusk. Morning Glory was already asleep, and Lavender, as she did most evenings, stood at the window watching the basil leaves grow. If she unfocused her eyes and waited, she was sure she could see them growing taller, bit by bit.

“Umph, how long was I out?” Sugar Maple grumbled, coming out of the little room and wiping her eyes.

“A long time,” Lavender said. “The day’s about over. Are you hungry? Would you like more tea?”

“Tea? No. No, thanks. Puts me right to sleep, nettle tea. Should have remembered. But if you’ve got food, I’ll take some.”

Lavender washed a full mushroom cap and smothered it in oil and spices before cooking it up on a clay pan in the hearth. It smelled like a feast, more like a party than a small dinner.

“Was the bed alright?” Lavender asked over the sound of sizzling food.

“Best bed of my whole life,” Sugar Maple said, stretching. She yawned. “Almost want to crawl back in it.”

“You’re welcome to,” Lavender said, hoping she wouldn’t.

“Nah, nah, I’m up. And now that I’ve smelled dinner, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Sugar Maple walked over to her pack and pulled out a glass bottle full of yellow liquid. “Lavender, my friend, would you like some dandelion wine?” She opened the bottle and let the sharp, floral smell fill the room.

“I’d love some. Thank you,” Lavender said. She’d never had dandelion wine, but she would have said yes to anything. She brought two clay cups to the table, and Sugar Maple filled them near to the brim.

Lavender finished cooking the mushroom and brought it to the table. She served Sugar Maple enough to fill a whole plate. It barely made a dent in the mushroom. She took a smaller piece for herself.

Lavender smelled the wine⁠—sour and strong⁠—and lifted her cup. “To adventures!” she said.

“To friendship!” Sugar Maple said.

Lavender beamed, her cheeks feeling hot and red.

They tapped their cups together and drank. The wine was bitter, but Lavender made herself swallow. Across from her, Sugar Maple downed half the cup.

“Ah, good stuff,” Sugar Maple said.

“Very good.” The light had seeped out of the room, so Lavender lit candles and placed them on the table between them. “I’ve been waiting all day to hear more about your journey, Sugar Maple. Where are you going?”

“To the sea!” Sugar Maple sang.

“The sea?”

“The sea! The sea!” Sugar Maple’s eyes were wide, her hands gesticulated wildly. “Have you not heard of the sea? Like hundreds upon hundreds of ponds all put together! But water you can’t drink, and water that moves and tries to push you down and pull you in.”

“Why would you go there?” Lavender said. It sounded terrible.

“From the sea you can see the whole world,” Sugar Maple said. “The humans have built ships⁠—they’re like big houses that go on the water. And on a ship you can travel across the sea and visit different lands.”

“What’s in the different lands?” Lavender asked. The candles flickered.

“That’s what I want to find out.”

“But then how do you know? Surely someone must have told you about these different lands.” Lavender downed another gulp of bitter wine.

“I’ve heard stories, yes. All incredible. Different kinds of folk. Folk with different languages and customs. Different animals, too. And plants. Even the humans are different across the sea.”

“You’re just going to have a look?”

Sugar Maple laughed her full-body laugh and finished her cup of wine. She poured herself another. “Yes,” she said. “I’m going to look. Before my life is through, I want to see as much of the world as I can.”

“Even if you die at sea? With no one to plant you?” Lavender shuddered.

“Even so,” Sugar Maple said. “But that’s me. I want to know about you.”

Lavender shifted in her seat. “Nothing to tell,” she said. “I haven’t done much of anything.”

“I thought we were going to be honest with each other,” Sugar Maple said. She gave Lavender another serious look.

Lavender took another drink. “I do want to be honest with you,” she said. She looked down into the yellow liquid in her cup. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know all about you. All about you and the life you live and have lived. Tell me what it’s like to live in a house between a farm and a forest. Tell me about Lavender.”

So Lavender told Sugar Maple about growing up near the farm. She told her about the friends she had growing up. About her parents and her brothers. How everyone knew she and Basil were going to get together, even before she knew herself. How Basil wanted to live right here, on the outskirts, where he claimed it would be quiet. How he climbed the Jeffrey pine soon after they moved in to get a view out over the forest and then somehow (she would never know for sure) he slipped and fell to the earth⁠—with a cracking thud she would never forget. How even in her grief she followed the customs⁠—pulled the basil seeds from his pockets and placed them on his body when she buried him. How she watered him and tended the plants that grew. How she kept everyone away and gave birth alone.

And she told her all about Morning Glory. The way he strained so hard to be mobile. The fascination he had for bugs and worms. How he instinctively knew to stay quiet outside, a born survivor. “Did you have any children?” she asked Sugar Maple.

“No. I wanted kids, but when my partner died I decided that part of my life was over. We were well suited, my partner and I. I didn’t think I’d find that kind of connection with anyone else. I’ve just been traveling, trying things. I want to know what else there is to life. But I envy you. Morning Glory is beautiful. You’re a wonderful mom to him.”

Lavender blushed. “Thank you,” she said.

Sugar Maple finished another cup. She refilled Lavender’s cup and then her own. “Well, the wine is gone, but I don’t want to stop talking.”

Lavender smiled. “Me neither.”

“Good! I’ve got one last bottle. It’s ours! Let’s finish it up under the stars!”

“Okay!” A small cry came from the cradle where Morning Glory was sleeping. “Give me a moment to check on the baby,” she said. “And I’ll meet you out there.”

Lavender held Morning Glory in her arms. She smelled his head and stroked his soft, fine hair with her fingertips. Then she dipped a clean cloth in a jar of breast milk she’d expressed earlier that day and let him suck, as she had seen some of the other mothers do on festival days. He looked confused at first, but the more she dipped, the more he got used to it. When his eyes closed and he wouldn’t drink anymore, she burped him and set him back down in his cradle. His little arms raised over his head in victory. She kissed his cheek and walked back out to the main room, where she blew out what remained of the candles and walked outside.

Sugar Maple whispered, “I’ve brought out this blanket, is that okay?”

It was a small, rough-knit blanket in brown and gray that Lavender had hand knit in the months after Basil’s death. “Yes,” she said.

Sugar Maple unfurled the blanket and put it over her knees. She motioned for Lavender to sit beside her. Lavender had to sit right up close to Sugar Maple to fit under the blanket. Their arms and legs touched.

“Is this too close?” Lavender whispered. “I can grab another blanket.”

“Not too close for me.”

Lavender smiled as Sugar Maple handed her her cup.

“I’ve been enjoying these stars on my journey,” Sugar Maple said, looking up. The stars twinkled bright in the sky, surrounding a bright full moon. “They keep me company on my days alone.”

“Do you like traveling alone?” Lavender said. She took a big swallow of wine.

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I miss talking so much I end up talking to myself for days at a time. It’s nice to have a real person to talk to for a while.” Lavender could just make out Sugar Maple’s smile in the dark.

“It’s weird,” Lavender said. “My family comes by. The neighbors come. Old friends come. They bring food. They make sure Morning Glory and I are okay. They tell stories about Basil, and they hold the baby for a while. And the moment they come, I want them to leave. I don’t have anything to say to them. I just want to be alone.” Lavender pulled the blanket up higher so that the course fibers rubbed her chin. “But I don’t feel that with you. Since you’ve been here, I haven’t felt like a widow, or even a mother. I feel like a person.”

Sugar Maple wiped below her eyes, and Lavender thought she saw the gleam of tears. She put her arm around Lavender, and Lavender let her head rest on her shoulder. “It’s a hard road,” Sugar Maple said. Lavender wasn’t sure which of their roads she meant. “I know what you mean. I feel happy to be here with you; I feel like myself again. I wish I could stay, for your sake and for mine. I wish I could rest here, but I can’t.”

“I know,” Lavender said. “I understand. I wasn’t asking you to stay.”

“But I want to. Know that I want to.”

Lavender could hear Sugar Maple’s heartbeat through her shoulder. She could feel the cool drops of tears in her hair. Around them, the crickets chirruped and leapt through the grass. The moon and stars blurred in her vision. From alcohol or from tears, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t think she’d started to cry.

“Oh, look,” Sugar Maple said.

From the folds of darkness, a bright white moth appeared. It twirled and danced in the dark, bathed in moon glow. It was huge, almost a third of Lavender’s size, half of Sugar Maple’s. Lavender cuddled in close to Sugar Maple, safe and warm under the blanket. They watched the moth dip and twirl, fluttering, catching the warm white light on its delicate wings.

But then the darkness moved, and a massive bat swooped at the moth. The moth dived low and escaped into the treeline.

Lavender jumped to her feet, and the two women scurried inside and covered the door. She saw the bat disappear in the treeline as she slammed the door shut.

Sugar Maple started to laugh her big, booming, house-shaking laugh.

Lavender laughed too, wiping her own eyes. “We shouldn’t laugh!” she cried. “We could have been killed by that thing!” She imagined the big hairy animal flying toward them as they sat, oblivious, beneath the blanket. She imagined Morning Glory waking up in the morning with no one there to pick him up. What had she been thinking going outside at night? Her own laughter stopped as Sugar Maple’s rolled on. Eventually the neighbors would have come, she thought. From the door, they would have heard Morning Glory crying and come in to help. She should be nicer to the neighbors when they came. She should let them stay and talk about Basil, if that’s what they wanted.

“What a wild night,” Sugar Maple said, her laughter dying down.

“We left the wine outside,” Lavender said. “I think it spilled.”

“That’s okay,” Sugar Maple said. “I’ll make more.”

They stood facing each other in the dark. “I don’t want this night to end,” Lavender said. “But I think it has.”

Sugar Maple reached out and held Lavender’s hand in both of hers. “It’s been a good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Lavender walked into the kitchen with Morning Glory on her hip. She had overslept and had woken to the sound of Morning Glory’s cries, the rooster crowing in the distance, and the sound of a boiling pot on the hearth.

Sugar Maple stood stirring over a bubbling pot. The table was a mess of yellow dandelion petals and toppled over sacks of powders that smelled both sweet and tangy. They were orange and white and black.

“Good morning,” Lavender said, sitting at the table with Morning Glory on her lap and holding her throbbing head in her free hand.

“Good morning!” Sugar Maple sang. “I’m making more dandelion wine. I didn’t think through all the steps. There are lots and lots of steps! Over the first few days, then months. If I leave them with you, could you tend to some bottles?”

“What?” Lavender said, looking up at Sugar Maple, whose voice was so loud it made her head ache. “Oh, sure. I can do that.”

“Great,” Sugar Maple said. She took the pot off the hearth. “I’ll be off soon, I’m afraid. But I’ll walk you through the steps before I go.” She turned to face Lavender, and Lavender saw that her braid had come loose.

“Sugar Maple,” Lavender said. “Come sit by me. You can tell me the steps while I braid your hair.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Sugar Maple said.

“I would like to.” Lavender went to her room and grabbed a hairbrush and the baby cradle. She set Morning Glory in the cradle and motioned for Sugar Maple to sit on the floor in front of her chair.

Sugar Maple sat. Lavender unravelled the braid, pulling out bits of grass and dirt as she found them. “You can bathe before you go. It wouldn’t take you long.”

“No, it’s time for me to go. If I get too comfortable, I’ll stay another day. And then another. And if I wait too long, the snow will come before I ever reach the sea. But let me tell you the steps to making dandelion wine.”

Lavender brushed through Sugar Maple’s long golden hair and listened to the many steps of how to make dandelion wine. There was stirring multiple times a day for two weeks. Then straining, releasing gases while fermenting, siphoning, changing containers, and then doing it all again every three months for nine months. Lavender felt overwhelmed. Maybe she wouldn’t make wine after all.

“Then you funnel it into the bottles and close them up. Let them sit in there for at least a year.”

“I’m so sorry we spilled that wine!” Lavender said. “If I’d known it was the product of two years of labor, I would have braved the bat and saved the bottle!”

“No, no,” Sugar Maple said. “It’s easy! You just have to remember when to do each step.” Sugar Maple shifted her weight as Lavender finished the braid and tied it off. She turned around and looked at Lavender, her long whiskers brushing against Lavender’s leg. “And I was thinking,” Sugar Maple continued. “Maybe we can have another night like this one. Maybe in two years I will have seen enough of the sea and the lands beyond them. And then I could head back this way.”

“Oh,” Lavender said. She smiled. “I would like that.”

“Then let’s make it happen! This isn’t goodbye. Just until next time!”

Lavender offered her hand and helped Sugar Maple to her feet. “I would like to see you again,” she said. “But if you’re happy out there, don’t come back for me. We’ll be fine.”

“I know you’ll be fine,” Sugar Maple said, still holding Lavender’s hand. “I’d like to come back anyway.”

Lavender pushed aside the pinecone by the door with Morning Glory sitting on one hip. She watched as Sugar Maple placed the green cape covered with sugar maple seeds over her back, strapped a leaf over her head like a hat, and gripped her sharpened walking stick. Such a strange-looking traveler, Lavender thought. She smiled. She’d almost forgotten. “I’m really happy to have met you,” she said.

“I’m happy to have met you, too,” Sugar Maple said, and she gave a small smile, different from all the others. Her voice was quiet. “Meeting you has been the very best part of my journey so far.”

“I doubt that.”

“It’s true!”

Lavender tightened her grip on Morning Glory and started bouncing him, even though he wasn’t fussing. “Then be sure to come back. Anytime. You’re always welcome here.”

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

“That soon?”

“Yes.”

Lavender bent low and hugged Sugar Maple. Sugar Maple wrapped her arms around both Lavender and Morning Glory.

“Stay safe out there,” Lavender said.

“Be good to yourself,” Sugar Maple said. “And your littl’un.” She kissed Morning Glory on the head, gave Lavender a sad smile, and turned to go.

Lavender didn’t like seeing Sugar Maple leave, but she stayed and watched as her friend marched through the tall grasses of the meadow, watched her tiny form get smaller and smaller. The wind blew so that the basil, the flowers, and all the grasses looked as if they were waving. Lavender held up Morning Glory’s hand, and the two of them waved and waved until the small speck that was Sugar Maple disappeared over the horizon, and it was just Lavender and Morning Glory again, just like any other day. But it was different now, too. Behind them, huge and covered with snow was a mountain. Before them, miles and miles away, was something called the sea. Today they would go and visit the neighbors. And two years in the future, Morning Glory would be running around on his own. The dandelion wine would be ready. And maybe, just maybe, Sugar Maple would find her way back.

As they walked back to the door in the Jeffrey pine, Lavender heard birds calling to each other in the trees. “Listen, Morning Glory,” she said, holding his tiny hand in hers. “Can you hear them? The birds are singing.”

Out of the Rain

It’s two days journey from Farm with Horses to Farm by the Fen. A bird can fly over the trees in the forest in under an hour, but for the folk, all of us but the size of a sparrow’s wing, it’s a hard day’s walk through thick tree growth, up and down steep hills, and all with the constant start and stop of hiding from animals that might want us for supper. Though some of us are quick as mice, and though some can run great distances, it’s two days however you take it, though short days or long depends.

The folk came together long ago to build a shelter at the halfway. It was to this halfway that I set, on my first day’s walk from farm to farm. It was late afternoon, and I was still a great distance from the shelter when the first rains came.

It was not a drizzle, but great, fat drops that fell. The kind that could give a person a concussion and lay them out to die in the woods. And so I ran beneath a great tree, searching for the biggest oak leaf to guard my head from the water.

It was the smell that caught me first⁠—the smell of rain as it hits fallen blackberries. Then the scent of flowers just past bloom. From beneath my oak leaf, I searched for the source of the smell. I circled the tree trunk beside me, climbing over its giant roots, until I found it.

Folk lived there for sure, or at least had done. It was a copse of oak trees that served as their homes, and all around the trees were plants where their dead were buried. There was a hodgepodge of all kinds of plants growing tangled together. Ivy clung to the side of one tree. Beside it, a long stretching bush of blackberries, though the late-season fruits were molding along the ground and beset by insects. Mint and borage proliferated beside it, adding to the intoxicating smell of the garden. And all sorts of shrubs and vines and flowers⁠—fiddlenecks, lupines, buckwheat, and milkweed, which spilled the fluffy white contents of its seedpods in a dampening mess. A tall, solitary sunflower hung its heavy head over the garden.

Out of the rain, I could imagine this garden covered in bees and butterflies, but now, in the poor weather, my eyes were drawn to holes along the leaves. There were the brown and black spots of disease. It was a place where the folk had once lived, yes, but it looked abandoned now.

Even so, I reasoned there would be shelter, and it was shelter I needed. Holding my oak leaf high, I ran to the trees in search of a door and knocked when I found one nestled among the roots. I expected no answer and to let myself in, but a voice came through the door, the voice of an old man.

“A moment! A moment!” he called through the door. And a long moment it was, me by the door beneath my wet oak leaf, water dripping down my arms.

A man with a long gray beard opened the door, and with a look at the sky he bid me come in.

“Thank you,” I said. And then, “I didn’t expect rain.”

“It’s been looking to start,” the man said. “We’ve been watching the clouds gather here at the window.”

From another room came an old woman holding a small blanket. Her back was bent so far I could hardly see her face, only a bundle of white hair, and her steps were uneven and labored as she carried the blanket to me.

“Thank you,” I said. I dried my arms and wrapped the blanket round my shoulders.

It was a nice home, I could see. The great space hewn into the tree had many levels reachable by stair or ladder. I had the sense that my hosts did not get up there much these days, nor anyone else. The furniture I could see was covered in dust with even a few long strands of spider web from wall to wall. I wondered at how these two would fare against an intruding spider.

On the ground floor, there were great soft chairs. Not the wooden chairs of my own home left years past, but great upholstered chairs, stuffed and fluffy and comfortable. There were great carved-out bedrooms with large beds in each. A table fit to seat twelve stood before the biggest kitchen I’d ever seen, with pots and pans of real metal hanging from a string above. From the look of the house and the garden outside, I knew this house must be generations old, passed from family to family through the ages.

While I looked from house to window, where the rain pelted down over the neglected garden, the old couple sat side by side in their armchairs, holding hands between them, and said nothing.

I was struck by the sad looks of the two folk. They sat looking down at the wooden floor as if willing it to turn into a sinkhole and swallow them up. Now and then the woman shook her white-capped head and sighed. And as the woman’s sigh ended, the man shook his own head or stroked his beard and clicked his tongue. I sensed there must be trouble for the old family.

“It seems I’ve caught you on a bad day,” I said.

The old man shook his head and said nothing. The woman, straining against her hunched back to look up, said, “There are those worse off than us.”

“Cori is right,” the man said. “There are those off worse, though we’ve had our troubles, her and me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “In such a beautiful house, I’d think you’d be settling into the quiet life.”

“A beautiful house, yes,” the woman Cori said. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I was born in this tree, and I’d hoped to die in it and be buried right outside with all my family here.”

“No, Cori. Now don’t start,” the man said. “We don’t know how things will go. Maybe it is all for the best.”

The woman bowed her head back down and lifted her free hand to her forehead, as though even this small conversation were too much to bear.

“You see, Cori’s back’s been hurting her a while now. And my knees aren’t what they used to be. There’s plenty of food around here if we can harvest and can it. But the older we get, the harder it is to do for ourselves,” the man said. “You’ve caught us on our last day here. When tomorrow comes, we’ll pack what we can carry and make a slow trip to one of the farms they’ve got round here. The closer one. Whatever they call it.”

“Farm with Horses.” I went to the table and pulled one of the chairs over so I could sit beside them. My heart hurt for the old couple. I knew what it meant to leave this place. Their home for generations. Their garden out front. They were too old to set about building a new house. They’d have to go from door to door at the farm and ask to be taken in by everyone they met. They’d have to hope someone could take them both in together and not one or the other.

“It’s been a hard choice,” the man said. “We’ve been sitting with it for a long time. Probably too long. Probably we should have set out long ago.”

“There used to be so many folk out this way,” the woman said. “All my brothers and sisters grew up here. And my cousins. And all our family friends. We used to take care of our old folk. Took care of them in their own homes. But when the farms came up, all the folk moved away. Hyssop and I stayed and tended the garden and took care of the homes, but they never came back. They chose the safety and convenience of living near humans over the life we had here. It was such a beautiful life here.”

“It was,” the man said. “It was.” He looked down at his partner’s hand, interlaced with his. “I only hope we can stay together, Cori and me. I hope we find some kin out there who can care for both of us. We’ve been together over 50 years, Cori and me. I would miss her if she lived in another house, and I know she’d miss me, too.”

The woman said nothing but hung her head.

I wished I could promise they would stay together at the farm, that someone would take them in both. But though I was mostly sure they’d both find care in the community, I didn’t know for sure that they’d find that care together.

“Do you have no children who could help you?” I asked.

The man shook his head, and the woman sighed a deep sigh.

“We had three,” the man said. “But all are gone. Our sweet Sunflower died very young. Mint moved into the tree behind us when he was of age, but we lost him to the animals, poor boy.”

“And the third?” I asked.

“Our youngest was Nettle,” the man said. “He was a wild one, Nettle. Running through the woods making all kinds of noise. Climbing to the highest branches in the canopy. Always on the search for adventure.”

“He was a kind boy, our Nettle. A kinder child has never lived and breathed,” the woman said.

“A good heart,” the man Hyssop agreed. “He disappeared without a word, some 20 years past. We never learned what happened to him. We expect he died long ago.”

“We mourned our Nettle long ago.”

“And since then,” the man said. “We’ve been just the two of us in this house.”

“We’ve gotten to be so set in our life,” Cori said. “I won’t stand being in a small corner in someone else’s house and for someone else to be telling us what to do and how to live.”

“Oh Cori, it might not be as bad as that,” the man said. “The only way to know is to go and see.”

“Then I will take this chair,” the woman said, slapping the arm of her chair. “I’ve sat in this same chair all my life. It was my grandmother’s chair. I held my babies in it, and fed them, and watched them fall asleep in my arms. I’ve sat beside you every night in this chair. I won’t leave without it.”

“It will be a hard journey even without dragging a chair along,” Hyssop said.

“It breaks my heart,” Cori said to me. “I can’t explain how it feels. We’ve lived here since the beginning, and there’s not a more beautiful place in the world. I used to sit out by the garden and watch the bees travel from flower to flower. And smell the earth that is our earth on my hands as we tended the garden. I don’t want to leave here now that I’m old. I’d rather die here.”

“But we still have some years left, Cori. We can live them at the farm. We can see what it’s like.”

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and amid the light pattering of drops I heard the thud of footfalls coming through the garden toward the door. Not someone running through the rain, but careful, thoughtful steps. Hyssop heard them, too, and started to slowly rise from his chair.

“Sit, please,” I said. “I can get the door.”

“Probably someone else wanting in from the rain. Tell them they can come in and stay dry with us.”

I opened the door to a tall man with broad shoulders. His long, brown beard had streaks of gray in it, and there was a long scar beside one eye. But his eyes had a gleam of innocence as though there was still a child behind all those years.

“Is this still the home of Coriander and Hyssop?” the man at the door asked.

There was a sharp cry from the woman behind me. “Nettle! It’s my baby Nettle. Hyssop! Our Nettle has come home!”

I stood aside and let Nettle into the house. I saw Hyssop slowly rising from his chair and Coriander stretching out her hands for her boy.

And quietly, I slipped from the house and back into the rain, only light drops now, to leave the family to their sudden reunion.

Past the garden I turned and snuck round to peer in through a window. The large man was kneeling by his mother, whose hands were at his cheeks and beard. The father stood behind, waiting his turn, his face red and blinking back tears. I turned back toward the halfway, where I would rest for the night, and my face was wet with more than rain, though the rain came fast all around.

It was more than a week later that I made my way from Farm by the Fen on the way back toward Farm with Horses and beyond. It was a bright, sunny day as I passed the old house, and the young man was outside pruning leaves in the garden and collecting seeds for the new season. On the doorstep, in two chairs set side by side, were Coriander and Hyssop, holding hands as they’d been the day I first saw them. I saw from my spot in the trees that Hyssop had trimmed his beard and wore a broad-brimmed hat in a style I had only seen on my most distant travels. And Coriander, sitting just a bit straighter to watch her son in the garden, wore a new green dress with lace at the collar. They did not look as though they were setting to leave. And I gathered they would stay in their house for years to come.

The Pollinators

Children make the best pollinators. At the first golden rays of late-spring sunrise, we jump through the doors of our homes and run across the meadow. We run through grasses taller than our heads to get to the flowers.

We meet at the trumpet vines over the fence, each of us in our puffiest sweaters, each of us carrying a sharpened stick to ward off birds or snakes or cats. A cat could eat a child in one swallow, our families tell us, but they wouldn’t, and that would be worse.

In a trumpet vine flower, the world is quiet. All the laughter of the other children is muffled and far away. Your world is red and yellow, and you scoop handfuls of nectar to drink all to yourself in the safety of the petals.

We giggle at the sight of our friends’ feet dangling out of the flowers. We point and laugh as we each emerge, our hair full of yellow, the puffy sweaters that our parents made us—or our grandparents or our friends and neighbors—covered with pollen. We are like flowers ourselves. We are like yellow sunshine.

We go to the other trumpet vine flowers and the other trumpet vine plants. It’s not enough to drink the nectar of one flower, our families tell us. You’re a pollinator now. It’s your job to spread pollen from flower to flower. We take our jobs seriously. We gorge on nectar. We spread our pollen. We are fuzzy yellow springtime workers. We work hard to pollinate our garden, and we enjoy every moment of it.

We run on our own or we hold hands and run in pairs. Sometimes we make a great big yellow chain, all of us holding hands together. We go flower to flower, pressing our hands into the yellow middles. We start with the fruits—strawberries, blackberries, huckleberries, elderberries. We leave the apples and the cherries to the bees. We hear them above us, landing their fuzzy bodies on every open blossom. The air smells sweet. The sun is warm. We’ll remember these moments our whole lives long.  Our families say when you look into the eyes of folk who are dying, you can see us there, these yellow children dancing in the sun—these yellow pollinators drinking nectar with our friends.

We move on to other flowers. We poke our fingers into the tiniest blossoms. We peek our heads through every bowl of petals.

When at last we’re full and tired and done, we unclasp our hands and run home. Our families usher us into our houses in tree trunks or walls or holes in the ground. They brush the pollen from us to use in cooking. Look at all this nice pollen you’ve brought home! they say. Our soups and breads are yellow for weeks. They wash us up and change us into regular clothes.

When the first green berries start to form, our families walk us around to show us each one. You helped to make this, they say. You helped this food to grow, these flowers, this life.

In the summer, we pick the berries. We can each carry one ripe strawberry at a time, or maybe it takes two of us if the strawberry is big enough. We carry the berries home. Some of them we keep for our own families. Some we carry to our neighbors. Some we preserve in jars to have during the long winters when nothing grows.

Winter comes, and we dip our spoons into jars of berry jam and drink cup after cup of warm tea. We remember that spring always comes again. We remember our friends—our hands clasped, our hair full of pollen, all of us bright and yellow as the sunshine.

To the Scribe Who Reads This

Your sister has had a baby, Ivy scrawled onto thick paper as the older woman dictated. She is healthy. Her name is Daisy. Ivy sat at her desk in the front room of her underground house, nestled between the roots of a quaking aspen tree, and waited for the woman to continue. When the silence stretched a little too long, Ivy said, “Would you like to add anything else?”

“Like what?” the woman asked. She paced backlit beside the only window.

“Well, you can say anything. What would you like to tell your son?”

“In a letter?” The woman, Mallow was her name, chewed at her nails, as if the very idea of writing a letter made her anxious.

“Yes. Whatever I write here, the scribe in his town can read to him. You can say anything you want.”

“Okay. How about, ‘I hope you are alive and that you are in good health’?”

“Yes, okay.” Ivy dipped her glass pen into the jar of ink that her apprentice Poppy had collected from shaggy mane inky cap mushrooms earlier that day. She added the new sentence to the letter. “Would you like to tell him anything about you and your family here? Maybe catch him up on how you all are doing?”

“Oh. Hm. Okay, how about this: ‘We are doing fine. Your father hewed a new bedroom in the trunk of the oak tree. Your sister is busy with the baby.’ ”

Ivy added these new sentences to the letter. “This is great. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that.”

Mallow stepped out from the window light, and Ivy saw the nervous grin on her face as she absentmindedly braided her long, brown hair. “Do you think maybe he’ll come home to see the new baby?”

“You can ask him.”

“Yes, ask him! See if he’ll come home.”

Ivy wrote, We hope that you can come home and meet your new niece. She said, “I’m thinking of ending the letter ‘With love, your mother Mallow.’ Do you like that, or would you want something different?”

“That’s great,” Mallow said. “How long will it take to reach him?”

“No one can really say,” Poppy, the apprentice, jumped in. She knew Ivy hated this part. “If no one wants to take him the letter directly, then we’ll have to wait for a traveler headed that way. There’s no way to tell how long that could be.”

“Okay,” Mallow said, her smile waning. “Hopefully someone will come soon.”

“Yes, hopefully,” Ivy offered.

Mallow walked up the clay stairs to the door, taking one last look at the letter, as if at any moment it might turn into a response from her son. When its only response was stubborn silence, she stepped up out of the door and closed it behind her.

Ivy motioned Poppy closer. “Once a letter is complete, we add a few more things to it. Come, take a seat.”

Poppy pulled a chair up next to Ivy.

“On the outside of the letter, we put an address. Since most people can’t read, we draw a picture.” Ivy dipped the pen into the ink. “At the top left, we draw a picture of the recipient’s name.” Ivy drew a cluster of small berries surrounded by small pointed leaves.

“Huckleberry,” Poppy said.

“That’s right. Now anyone will know who the letter is for. Below that I draw a map of where he lives.” Ivy drew trees of a forest emptying out into a clearing. She drew a house, a barn, a chicken coop, and a corral full of horses.

“That’s the next farm over. The farm with the horses.”

“That’s right. And now on the right we draw the name of the person sending the letter.” Ivy drew broad leaves and small flowers for Mallow. “On a new page, we can add news from our own people. It’s helpful to share news between settlements.” Ivy pulled out a clean sheet of paper and read aloud as she wrote the list:

We lost three trees in the storm, though no homes were hurt and no one injured.

An apple tree was found not far away, and small apples have bent the branches almost to the ground.

Our physician, Rosemary, has taken an apprentice, Hollyhock.

Clover has been chosen once again as story master for this year’s festival. All are welcome to attend. Included is a transcript of Clover’s story from last year, “The Wind and the Wayward Traveler,” as transcribed by the scribe’s apprentice, Poppy.

“I’m transcribing the story?” Poppy asked. She pushed the red hair out of her face and looked up, startled.

“You’re ready,” Ivy said. “I took the story down myself. All you have to do is make a copy so we can share it with the folk at Farm with Horses. It may be they like it so much they perform it for their own festival.”

“I just copy it?”

“One letter at a time. You’re ready.”

Poppy nodded but her complexion went green behind her freckles. “Right. I can try at least. What are you writing now?”

Ivy looked up, cheeks flushed. “Oh, nothing important. I like to add a note for the scribe who will read the letter. It makes me feel connected to the other scribes.”

“What does it say?”

“You’ll have to wait until you can read it yourself.”

Poppy grabbed the letter and transcribed the last part onto some scrap paper to decipher later. Some day she knew she’d be able to read at just a glance the way Ivy did, but for now what she liked about reading was the mystery of it. A page full of symbols, decoded letter by letter, could unveil a whole story. A letter received from a traveler could reveal things that had happened across the world. The books in Ivy’s front room could open up the mysteries of the past. It was only the scribes who could tell these things, and Poppy was on her way to becoming one.

“Have you met any of the other scribes?” Poppy asked.

“My own mentor, Chive. And you. So that’s two.”

“Is that all? Where is Chive now?”

“Once you train your apprentice,” Ivy said, “you’re free to go where you please. The young scribes like you and I are stationed in a settlement. Once there’s a scribe to take your place, you’re free to travel. Chive left to be a wandering scribe. She might make her way back some day. Many of the scribes make it back to be buried beside the aspen.”

Ivy looked out the window at all the plants growing there. “And I’ve read through all the scribe journals, as you will too someday. It feels like you’ve met them when you’ve read their journals.”

“But you haven’t really,” Poppy said.

“You’re right. It’s lonely to be a scribe. I want to prepare you for that now.”

Poppy shook her head. “But you don’t have to be friends with just scribes, Ivy. You can be friends with anyone.”

Ivy stood up and stretched her back. She kept her eyes on the small plants tangling together beside the aspen roots. Ladybugs clambered along the leaves. “Of course you can be friends with anyone,” she said at last. “But you become a different person when you learn to read. You learn about different worlds. You grow a curiosity that can’t ever be satisfied. And no one you know is like that. You can be alone even surrounded by other folk.”

It was only a few days before a traveling party came through on their way out of town⁠—two older folk with short gray hair and accents that were difficult to understand. It had taken almost as many days for Poppy to finish her transcription of “The Wind and the Wayward Traveler.”

Ivy folded the transcript into the stack of papers that contained the letter, the news, and the recipient address and set it on top of the other letters going out. She told the travelers where each letter was going, who should receive them, and what they were about. Some letters would make it all the way to their destinations with these folk. Some would only make it part of the way on their long journeys, but the scribes in other towns knew to hold on to them and to pass them along when another traveler came, going in the right direction.

Poppy was surprised by the sadness she felt letting her transcript leave the house. All that work, she thought, gone forever.

The water Poppy used to make paper was always cold, no matter the season. After making enough paper for the day, she went back to the quaking aspen. Its leaves had already started to turn gold, and they trembled in the early autumn wind. Poppy opened the door to the scribe house and walked into the first room. It was warm in the house. She passed through the rooms to find a towel for her hands and saw Ivy sitting alone with an empty sheet of paper in front of her.

Ivy saw Poppy come in and looked up. “Finished already?” she said.

“Already? It’s been hours,” Poppy said.

“I must have lost track of the time.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Not yet. I will in a minute.”

“Stay there. I’ll get you something.”

Poppy dried her hands and went to the kitchen. She cut some slices of bread and made a quick salad from some of the wilting greens she found there.

“You should come back to my house tonight for dinner,” she called to the next room. “My grandmother loved hearing you talk about your craft last time you were by.” It was a lie, but it wasn’t a lie that would hurt anyone. Ivy needed good food and company, Poppy was sure of it, and her family could afford a little boring conversation every once in a while. Especially if I grow up to be like Ivy, she thought, feeling her future loneliness stretch out in front of her like a shadow.

She brought the food to Ivy’s desk.

Ivy looked down at the sad meal. “I should go restock my kitchen soon, shouldn’t I?”

“You’re so busy,” Poppy said, her eyes avoiding the empty sheet of paper in Ivy’s hands. “Let me do it. If you have dinner with us tonight, I can go foraging for you tomorrow.”

“I need you to do me a favor,” Poppy said. She didn’t look up at Clover as she talked, but she could sense her standing there⁠—tall, acorn-brown hair brushing up against her chin, her subtle smile. Poppy kept her eyes on the pages laid out in front of her, two stacks laid out on her mother’s kitchen table. She copied words from one stack of papers to another.

“Sure, whatever you need.” Clover sat beside her and pushed some wayward red hairs behind Poppy’s ear.

“Don’t touch me while I’m writing, okay? I don’t want to slip while I’m copying the letters.”

“Okay, sorry. How can I help?”

“Can you gently remind people to bring food to Ivy?” It felt so awkward to ask. But if the settlement wanted a scribe, they had to remember to feed her; it was how it had always been. “You know, be nice about it. I think people just haven’t been thinking about Ivy lately. She’s shut herself into her house more than usual. I think she’s trying to write her journals.”

“Of course,” Clover said.

Poppy could hear the embarrassment in Clover’s voice and moved quickly to change the subject. “Thank you. Look what I’ve been working on.”

“What is it?”

“It’s your story, ‘The Wind and the Wayward Traveler.’ We sent a copy to the next settlement over. Ivy thinks they could learn it this year for their own festival.”

Clover looked down at the indiscernible markings on the paper. “This is it? You’ve written it all down?” There was something about Clover’s smiles that made everyone feel good about themselves. Poppy felt that pride now, watching Clover lean over the pages to see the story.

“This is it,” Poppy said. “I’m making a copy for you. I know you can’t read it, but I think you should have a copy of your own work, you know?”

“Poppy, this is amazing. Thank you so much!” Her eyes traced the symbols along the page.

“I can’t read all of it yet, but I’ll learn. These symbols here,” Poppy traced two letters along the page with her finger, “together they mean ‘wind’. Someday I’ll be able to read it all back to you.”

“But I know it all,” Clover said.

“I know but⁠—” Poppy couldn’t think of how to finish the sentence. Why did she feel the need to read Clover’s story? It felt important. It was important, but Poppy couldn’t put together why. “I⁠—I know you know it. But if I write it down, then other people can know it, too. We can share it.”

“I don’t understand,” Clover said.

Poppy looked up at Clover. She could tell by Clover’s eyes that she wanted to understand, that she wanted to join Poppy in this but that she couldn’t.

Poppy was putting away a gift of yellow bread, strawberry jam, and tea brought by Marigold’s children, when there was another knock at the door of the scribe’s house.

“I can get it this time,” Ivy said.

Two men were at the door. One Ivy had never seen before, but one looked familiar in a way she couldn’t place. “Welcome, travelers,” she said.

“Thank you!” the first man said. “Could you be Ivy?”

Ivy smiled. “Yes, I’m Ivy. Please come in.”

“Can always tell a scribe’s house by the inky cap mushrooms all around the house,” the first man said as the two walked down the steps and into the house.

“You’ve got a good eye!” Poppy said, running into the room to join them. “We are just sitting to tea. Would you like some?”

“Please,” the first man said. “You must be Poppy!”

“I am! And who might you be?”

“Phlox,” said the first man. He was short with the beginnings of a belly and gray popping up around the temples, though he looked to be too young for it. His face was smiling and flushed from the cold.

The other man was young and tall. He kept his hair long and had a neatly trimmed beard. “And I’m called Huckleberry,” he said.

“Huckleberry!” Poppy said. She and Ivy exchanged glances. “You must be here to visit your family and meet your new niece!”

“Yes. Thank you for the letter.”

“And we would love some tea!” Phlox said, pulling off his scarf and setting it in the corner, comfortable as if he were visiting his own family.

“I’ll get the tea!” Poppy said. “Please, sit. Make yourselves comfortable!”

Ivy led the two men to the dining room table as Poppy heated the water for tea. Huckleberry, the more serious of the two, looked around the room as if not knowing where his eyes should land. Phlox, a constant smile on his face, kept his eyes locked on Ivy. Ivy couldn’t stop herself from blushing.

“Have you seen the baby Daisy yet?” Phlox said at last.

“No, actually. I haven’t made it over that way.”

“Ah, then you must come with us!” Phlox said.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t come with you. It’s a special moment for Huckleberry and the family. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Of course you should come,” Huckleberry said in little more than a whisper as Poppy poured tea into his cup. “Both of you. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t even know about Daisy.”

“Right! We wouldn’t have come at all!” Phlox said. “You must join us! Nothing to lift the spirits like seeing a new baby.”

“What makes you think we need our spirits lifted?” Ivy said.

Poppy sat down and blew into her tea.

“Oh, meaning no offense of course. It would raise anyone’s spirits, wouldn’t it? Don’t you think so, Huckleberry? And we’d love to have you join us.”

Huckleberry lifted his tea and took a sip. “Of course.”

Poppy tried to catch Ivy’s eye. She knew better than to say she wanted to go without Ivy’s approval first.

Ivy took a sip of her tea. “We don’t have any gifts to bring,” Ivy said.

Phlox said, “Ah! You’re bringing Huckleberry! That’s the best gift you could bring, don’t you think?”

Ivy looked over at Poppy, finally catching the excitement in her eyes. “Okay,” Ivy said. “Of course we’ll come. Thank you for inviting us.”

A breeze blew cold evening air as the bundled-up group approached the wind-bent oak tree where Huckleberry’s family lived.

“You knock!” Phlox said to Ivy. “We’ll stand behind you. It will be a better surprise.”

Ivy rolled her eyes, but she stood in front and knocked. Mallow opened the door, looking harried and sleep deprived. “Oh, hello, Ivy. Poppy,” she said. Then her face lit up. “Oh! Have you had a letter back from my son?”

“I’m sorry, no,” Ivy said. Poppy could barely contain her giggles. “No letter,” Ivy continued. “Instead he’s come straight to you!”

Ivy and Poppy stepped to the side revealing the handsome son and his smiling companion.

Mallow shrieked and ran forward into Huckleberry’s arms. She was so small beside him, enveloped completely in his long arms. Poppy saw the hint of a smile on Huckleberry’s shadowed face.

“Hello, Mother,” Huckleberry said.

“My boy! My dear boy!” she said. Then, “Oh dear,” as cold air blow past. “Come in, all of you! Get inside where it’s warm! And meet the baby! Yes, everyone, come meet the little one.”

Mallow ushered them all inside.

The living room was full of flickering candles as the sun dipped down outside, and the candle light flickered across the wooden walls of the tree and the furniture carved with fruit and flowers.

“Prim! Iris! We have company. Come see!”

Mallow’s husband Prim came first. He looked confused until his eyes fell on Huckleberry. Then he put a hand to his heart. His knees fell out from under him before he caught them again and righted himself. “Huckleberry!” he cried. “My son! You’ve come home!”

“Huckleberry?” a voice from another room called. Then Iris appeared, her golden hair falling from a hastily tied bun. A small infant squirmed in her arms. “It’s you!” she said. “We were so hoping you’d come!”

Huckleberry walked across the room to hug his sister. He smiled down at Daisy, who looked up at him with wide, curious eyes. Then he hugged his father, who combed his fingers through Huckleberry’s long, brown hair.

Ivy’s face hurt with smiling. She saw Poppy beside her, wiping away tears but smiling just the same.

From the corner of her eye, Ivy sensed that Huckleberry’s companion, Phlox, was watching her. Even as the family hugged in reunion, even as Huckleberry lifted his new niece and kissed her forehead, Phlox kept his eyes on Ivy. She was careful not to make eye contact as she put her arm around Poppy and let Poppy rest her head against her shoulder.

“It’s just so beautiful, isn’t it?” Poppy whispered.

Mallow left the clump of family and crossed the room over to Ivy and Poppy. “Thank you so much for bringing him home!” she said. She wrapped the two of them in a strong hug.

“And you!” she said to Phlox. “What is your name? Did you come with Huckleberry?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Phlox. I read your letter to Huckleberry and decided to tag along. I hope that’s okay.”

Ivy whipped her head around to look at Phlox, her mouth open. Phlox laughed, his smiling eyes glittering.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Mallow said.

“You’re a scribe!” Poppy said. “I’ve never met another scribe! We’re so happy to meet you, aren’t we Ivy?”

Ivy nodded, mouth still agape.

“Well, we are,” Poppy said. “We were just talking about meeting other scribes, weren’t we Ivy?”

“Yes, we were,” Ivy said, but it was like someone else was saying it. She felt stiff as stone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the scribe?”

Phlox stepped in closer to the scribe and her apprentice. “Isn’t it clear by now how much I love surprises?” he said. “I must admit, I’ve been anxious to meet you. I’ve been reading the postscripts on the letters you send, you see.”

Ivy blushed. “But you’ve never written anything back.”

“I know,” Phlox said. “I’m a terrible scribe! All day I write up letters for everyone else, and I have no skill at choosing the right words for myself. I spent months scribbling out responses and then tearing up the pages. When Mallow called her son back home, I invited myself along to meet you in person.”

“To meet me?” Ivy said.

Poppy kissed Ivy’s cheek. “I’ll leave you here to chat while I go meet the baby,” she said.

“To meet you,” Poppy heard Phlox say as she stepped away to join the family crowded around Huckleberry and the baby in his arms. She couldn’t stop the warm laughter that pushed its way finally free. Tears and laughter both⁠—a release. There seemed to be so much that she had been holding in.

“She’s so beautiful,” Poppy said, looking down at Daisy’s round face, her little hands stretching and reaching out. She offered the baby her finger, and Daisy wrapped her tiny hand around it. “It’s nice to meet you, little one,” she said.

Mallow stood beside Poppy and put her arm around her shoulders. “Thank you so much for bringing my son home,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

“I didn’t bring him home, though,” Poppy said. “I just helped send the letter.”

“But he wouldn’t have come home without you and Ivy,” Prim said. “He wouldn’t even have known he had a new niece.”

“It’s true,” Huckleberry said. “You helped bring me home.”

“Well,” she said. Her cheeks flushed red beneath her freckles. “I’m happy to have helped. I’m glad you came home. Thank you.”

“You’re thanking us?” Huckleberry said. He set the baby Daisy in Poppy’s arms.

Poppy held the baby close to her chest. She breathed in the warm milky smell of the baby’s head. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

The next morning, as had been discussed the previous night, Poppy returned to Mallow’s house and brought Clover. Clover had insisted on bringing her girlfriend Dandy, so she came, too, looking awkward and uncomfortable under her mane of bright yellow hair. They brought three loaves of bread and a big pot of soup.

Ivy and Phlox were already there, with great bags under their eyes and huge smiles on their faces.

Poppy sat next to Ivy and whispered, “Long night last night?” with a smirk.

“I don’t think we got a wink of sleep!” Ivy loud-whispered back. “Phlox brought a pack-full of books, and we read and talked all through the night!”

Poppy laughed and gave Ivy a tight hug. “This is the happiest I’ve ever seen you,” she said. “I’m so pleased.”

Prim set out tea and enough cups for everyone.

Mallow stood in front of the room. “Thank you all for coming! Today we are celebrating my lovely daughter, Iris, and her beautiful baby, Daisy. We are also celebrating the return of our son, Huckleberry, who has resettled in the neighboring farm. His companion, Phlox, is the scribe for their settlement, and he has brought us stories from our neighboring storytellers. We have asked Ivy if she would read one to us, and she has graciously accepted!”

Ivy walked to the front of the room with a pile of papers in her hands. Her hands shook as she looked over the crowd of people in front of her. But these were her neighbors and friends, she realized.

“This story,” she said, “is called ‘The Sun and Moon Say Farewell.’ ”

“I think I understand now,” Clover said to Poppy as they stood outside the oak tree. She was still wiping tears away, but she was smiling, too. “Can you help me learn that story? Maybe I can recite it sometime. Or maybe Ivy can. She read it so beautifully.”

“Of course I will,” Poppy said. “I could read that story a hundred times.”

Poppy turned back toward Ivy to wave as they started to walk away, but Ivy didn’t see her. She was talking with Phlox, beaming, her cheeks flushed.

“I’ll miss you,” Phlox said. He and Ivy were back in the scribe’s house beneath the aspen, eating yellow bread and strawberry jam while sprawled across the bed, their stocking feet touching over the blankets.

“But you’ll come back soon?”

“At the first possible moment.”

“And you’ll write?”

“Every day.”

Ivy stroked his hair with her fingertips. She put her hand over his. “I’ll miss you, too. Thank you for coming all this way. I’ve been waiting so long to meet you.”

It was snowing outside as Poppy straightened the piles of letters in the underground house. The storm was too great and too cold for Poppy to walk home. She knew she’d have to stay at the scribe house at least until morning. There was already a bed laid out for her and an extra set of nightclothes.

Ivy and Poppy ate their evening meal in pajamas. The snow had already covered the window, and the candlelight danced along the walls as they ate. They talked about Phlox, who had gone home a month before, and Huckleberry, who would be going home come spring. They talked about Clover’s new festival story and Marigold’s kids and the baby Daisy.

Ivy looked different these days, Poppy noted. Tired, but there was a happy glow about her. Other folk came by the house most days, and her pantry was stocked to bursting, enough to make it through the winter and beyond. She served tea as she told her visitors stories from folk around the world, stories from the past, stories from the scribe journals.

They hugged goodnight, and Ivy went to the back bedroom. Poppy was tired, but there was one more thing she wanted to check⁠—something she’d waited a long time to read.

Ivy didn’t write much at the bottom of her letters anymore, but for a time she had. Poppy had transcribed the message to another sheet of paper so she could read it herself once she was able. Her reading was getting much faster now. She only stumbled a little as she read the message.

Poppy blew out the candles and climbed into her made-up bed. As she closed her eyes, she heard the scratching sound of pen against paper as Ivy sat to write her journals. Poppy would only read the journals after Ivy left. It would be like Ivy was still there with her.

She was sad to think that one day Ivy would leave. She knew Ivy wanted to meet the other scribes and see the world for herself. She understood. But she would be sad to see her go. Somewhere along the line, Ivy had become a close friend.

To the scribe who reads this,

I imagine you are lonely. If you are like me you are lonely. If you are like me you probably can’t relate to anyone else in your settlement. But I imagine you could relate to me, and I to you. I think about you, and I wonder about you. I wonder if we would be friends.

Your friend,
Ivy

Datura of the Desert

Clover had heard of the traveler from Hollyhock, who was the physician’s apprentice. The traveler had sprained her ankle coming through the fen and was resting up and healing in Rosemary’s tree. “She’ll probably only stay a few days until the swelling goes down,” Hollyhock said. “But you’ll want to talk to her before she goes. She’s been traveling her whole life, and she’s bound to have good stories.”

Clover thanked her friend and hugged her before running back home to gather tea and applesauce to make her visit.

“But you already have a story for the fall festival,” Dandelion said as she watched Clover gather teacups and spoons into a basket. “I’ve heard you practicing.”

“Don’t listen!” Clover said. “I want the story to be a surprise, even for you.”

“I know, but I love listening to you practice.”

Clover blushed. “Please, promise you won’t listen. I want you to be surprised at the fall festival. I want you to experience it with everyone else.”

“Fine. I promise I won’t listen.” Dandelion added the jar of applesauce to the basket. “I hope you get a good story today.”

The heat was already starting to recede from the forest, and the wind that blew through the pine needles had the first bite of cold. Clover had already practiced three stories for the fall festival, but none of them were right. None of them made you stay up during the night wondering about them. None of them were warm enough to keep the settlement going through a hard winter. They were fine, but Clover was looking for something great. This was her contribution to the community, and she took it seriously.

Clover found Alyssum in the healing tree, lying on one of Rosemary’s many beds, her ankle wrapped and elevated with a cool cloth set over it. She had sun-browned skin lined with wrinkles and long ashen hair. “Hello,” the traveler said in a high, thin voice. “You must be Clover.”

“How did you know?”

“Rosemary said you would come. She said you’re drawn to good stories like robins to the morning.”

Clover laughed, pleased with the comparison.

“And you must be Alyssum, the traveler. I’ve brought you some things to make your stay more comfortable. I hope you like spice tea and applesauce.” There was already a kettle of hot water beside Alyssum’s bed, another sign that Clover had been expected.

“That would be lovely, dear. So, you’ve come to hear my stories?”

“I hoped you’d share one with me. I’ll be sharing a story at the fall festival in a month’s time.”

Clover set out the cups, and Alyssum filled them with the steaming water. “You’ll want to hear about Datura,” she said with a wink.

“Anything you’ll share with me.”

“Even with all my travels, my best stories come from the desert, where I was born and lived my childhood years. Likely you’ve never even heard of the desert.”

Clover shook her head.

“In the summer it’s so hot you can hardly go outside. In the winters the nights are cold and bleak. It’s a place of extremes. Instead of soil, there’s sand as far as the eye can see. The plants are different there. Trees are rare. Mostly the plants are low and scrappy, covered with thorns or spines. But in the spring, the bright flowers rival the beauty of anywhere else I’ve seen.

“Datura’s house was part of the children’s route, so we saw her once a week. She seemed so old to me, though she was probably half the age that I am now. She had short copper hair and was paler than the rest of us. She spent most of her time tucked away in her little withered cactus home, not talking to anybody.

“A cactus is a type of plant,” Alyssum clarified. “It has thick green walls and sharp spines. It’s filled with water, usually, but when they die they make good homes.

“I remember her home so clearly.” She looked off into the distance as she spoke, as if looking across the miles and years and into the dwelling itself. “She had few possessions. Kept all her food tucked away in chests, but when you opened them the food was in disarray. The few things left out were always turned over on their sides. It seemed to us kids like she just walked around her house knocking everything over. You could bring a fresh prickly pear to her house one day, and by the next it would be bruised.

“I went over to her little house once a week with the other children to bring her food and water and to check on her health. And whenever we came over, she let us in, as was customary, and asked us how our days were and how our families were and how things were in the settlement. But she asked in a distracted way, never looking at us, smiling through clenched teeth.”

Clover set down her tea, leaning in.

“It was so strange, so uncomfortable,” Alyssum continued, “that finally I begged my mother not to make me go. We can just leave the things on her doorstep, I said.

“But my mother wouldn’t hear it: Alyssum, this is non-negotiable!” Alyssum deepened her voice and waved her finger in the air as she spoke her mother’s parts. “You are ten years old now, and you know what your responsibilities are. Your community takes care of you, and you take care of your community.”

“But Ma! I whined. She doesn’t want us there anyway.

“How do you know that? Did she tell you?

“No.

“Then I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

Clover chuckled and blew the hot steam from her tea as the drink steeped.

“But I was a stubborn child. I was convinced that Datura would be happier alone. And if my mother wouldn’t listen to reason, I was going to get the truth from Datura herself.

“The next time my brother and cousin and our friend went over to Datura’s house to deliver some cactus flowers, I sat up straight at the table and asked her directly: Do you like it when we come over? Or would you prefer us to set food out on your doorstep and leave you in peace?

“Datura turned to face me as if seeing me for the first time. Oh, would you? It’s not that I don’t like you kids, but would it be okay to just leave things on the step? There’s a flat rock out front; you could hide it behind that.”

“And did your mom find out about it?” Clover said.

“Oh yes. I told her immediately,” Alyssum laughed. “I wanted her to see how clever I was, you see. She was outraged, said this wasn’t the way we did things. Marched right over to Datura’s house that same day to apologize.”

“And how did that go?” Clover asked, smiling, remembering her own mother’s reactions to hardheadedness.

“Ma came back home looking furious. What we had negotiated with Datura couldn’t be undone. You’re going to wait, she said. I don’t care how long it takes. You’re going to knock, hide behind the cactus across from her door, and wait until you know for sure that Datura has taken the food. Do you understand me?

“My brother threw up his hands. What? he whined. Why do we have to wait?

“But my mother said, Not all of you. Just Alyssum.”

Clover laughed. “Was that even worse than spending the time in the house?”

“It depends on how you look at it. It was worse in the summer. Especially since I had talked myself out of the opportunity to ask for a drink of water and a quick rest indoors. I ended up making the trip alone most weeks since I was the only one who had to sit around and wait. I went in the cooler mornings or at dusk but always when I knew Datura would be awake and ready to open the door and take in the food or water I had brought her.”

“How long did this go on for?” Clover asked.

“Months. But I’m glad now that my mother insisted.

“One day right on the edge of autumn, when the days were starting to cool, I knocked and waited, but Datura didn’t come to the door. I knocked over and over again, hiding behind the cactus each time and waiting, but her hand never reached out to grab the food there.”

Clover felt herself tensing. It was a good story then, she thought. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do. The other children weren’t with me. The door wouldn’t open, like there was something stuck behind it. I looked around the cactus and found a high-up ventilation window. I climbed the long spines of the cactus and pushed my way through the small opening, tumbling to the ground and skinning my knees. I called her name and heard a moaning from another room. I followed the sound to Datura’s bedroom.

“I opened the green door and was met with all of Datura’s clothing. Not on the floor in piles or something like that. It was floating. Mid-air.”

“What do you mean, floating in mid-air?” Clover said. “Hanging up?”

“No, I mean floating,” Alyssum said, her hands held up to demonstrate. “Bobbing up and down as if riding a current. Her dresses, her shoes, the blanket from her little bed, and then among these things, Datura herself, floating in the middle of it all, her short hair flung out behind her as if she were under water. Even my own long hair was rising up, my body lifting slightly off the ground.

“Datura? I asked again, more panicked by now. She opened her eyes and recognized me, and then everything fell. The little mattress that had been hovering fell to the floor with the blanket and Datura heaped on top. The floating clothes fell into sloppy piles all around.

“Don’t tell, she said from the mattress, her voice low and choked. Don’t tell anyone what you saw. Please.

“I remembered my safety training and went over to feel her forehead. She was burning hot.

“I’m going to get the doctor, I said. I’ll be right back.

“Don’t tell, she insisted. So I told her I wouldn’t.

“I didn’t tell anyone about what I had seen. My mother checked in on Datura a few times while she was sick, but I didn’t go back until the following week when I came with my regular delivery of food and water. I didn’t hide behind the cactus this time. I waited to be let in, even though I knew it wasn’t her preference. I told her I thought we should talk this time.

“Datura was looking better, but she greeted me with the same clenched teeth and distracted air I had grown used to seeing with her. I said to her, I saw, and I didn’t tell anyone. You don’t have to do anything special for me.

“Datura looked at me, breathing hard through her clenched teeth. Oh fine, she said. And she relaxed back into her chair. As she did, all the things around her started to lift! First the package of food I had brought, then two prickly pears on the counter, then the table itself and the chairs we sat on. Datura let out a long sigh. That’s better, she said.

“And then something happened that was even more amazing than all the floating things. Datura smiled. A real smile. Thank you for helping me, she said. And thank you for not telling anyone.

“She explained to me that this had been happening for a long time. That she had to concentrate all her energy on keeping everything down every time someone came to pay her a visit. That it was so draining that she would rather be alone.

“I don’t know why you would hide it, I said. I think folks would find it kind of neat, maybe a little odd, but I don’t think anyone would fault you for it. And if they did, wouldn’t that still be better than being alone all the time?

“You think so? she said.

“I think you could try.

“My mother had always been kind to Datura, and I assured her that she would be kind again. But Ma fell to the floor when she saw Datura and then immediately floated up to the middle of the room!” Alyssum cackled, showing all her teeth. “Even though I’d warned her ahead of time! She hadn’t believed me I guess. I don’t blame her.

“To her credit, it didn’t take long for Ma to get used to the idea. I think she saw, like I did, the change that came over Datura, how free she looked, and she hurried to be okay with floating.”

“Your Ma sounds like a good, caring person,” Clover said.

“She was.” Alyssum took a break to drink some tea. “She was a kind person. She cared about everyone. After we brought her in on Datura’s secret, Ma told a few more people who invited a few more. Datura was really social it turned out, when she wasn’t so afraid of what people would think of her.”

Alyssum took more sips of her tea, her gaze still fixed somewhere far away.

“It’s a beautiful story,” Clover said, picking her words carefully. “A neighbor in need, a community coming to support her.”

“But?”

“But how will anyone believe it to be true when it’s clearly impossible?”

Alyssum broke into a wide grin, wrinkles appearing at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “I knew you’d say that. Does it matter if it’s true? It will still make a good story for your festival.”

“It matters to me.”

“Well, it is true. If you ever make it to visit the folk in the desert, they’ll tell you just as I have.”

“But how is it possible? How could she float?”

“Now, that I can’t tell you. Some things will always be a mystery. But doesn’t that make stories like these just a little bit sweeter? The not knowing?”

Clover bit her lip, pondering.

“Is there anything else you’d need to know for your story?”

“I suppose⁠—” Clover stopped and scratched her head. Was this really the story she wanted to tell? Would she call it a piece of imagination or a story of truth? And did it matter? “I suppose it could be nice to know what kind of plant a datura is.”

“That’s right. You’ve probably never seen one! Datura is a magical plant. Big beautiful flowers, white and bell-shaped. Spiky globed fruits. You should never eat them, but there are medicines that can be made from them. Some of those medicines will make you see things that aren’t there.”

Clover raised her eyebrow. “And these plants grow around the desert?”

“Goodness!” Alyssum said. “That’s not what happened! I knew Datura for years before I started my travels! We spent full afternoons together floating up by her ceiling. I remember it so vividly, the weightlessness of it, like floating in a pond. You can’t imagine such things.”

“You don’t think hallucinations are the more likely explanation?”

“Group hallucinations?”

“Why not?”

“Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Who cared if it was true or make believe?

The story was mostly formed in her mind by the time Clover started back for home⁠—“Datura of the Desert,” she’d call it.

It would be hard not to tell the story to Dandelion right when she got home. And to find a place to practice it without her overhearing. She might have to practice in her head, only hearing it out loud when she stood before the whole settlement in one month’s time.

But this was a good one⁠—a story to make the listeners wonder about it long after they’d heard it, a tale to keep the settlement warm through the cold months. Clover imagined herself trying to drink tea with Datura while both of them hovered up to the ceiling in a great green room. Datura’s wide smile as her copper hair floated out behind her. Laughter echoing through the spiny green cactus.

Clover took a deep breath and started rehearsing in her head.

All this happened in the desert, she started. Where a woman named Datura lived alone in a tough, spiny plant, with no one to visit her expect for the children.

Not a Promise, but a Wish

All the folk looked forward to the fall festival, but for Dandelion this was the best part⁠—the preparation. This year she had Sage, Poppy’s youngest daughter, strapped to her chest, and she narrated everything she did into the baby’s ear, just loud enough for the little one to hear her over the constant crashing of the waterfall. “First we set up the tables along the edges of the cave. We need to leave enough room for the musicians and for everyone to dance. We sweep out the cave and wash away dirt. We chase out all the bugs. Shoo shoo!” Sage was an active partner, listening with wide eyes and making small cooing sounds in return, getting her little hands tangled in Dandy’s bright yellow hair as she pointed out a trail of ants, a pocket of dirt.

The celebration space was only an hour’s walk into the woods, hidden in the cave where the settlement kept extra food sealed tight in clay jugs. The waterfall at the front of the cave formed a barrier for sound, making the celebration space a safe place for music and laughter and raucous joy. The cave was kept sealed through the year behind a woven barricade, dug into the ground and tied fast at the edges. But today the barricade was pulled aside. Great gourds and pumpkins had been hollowed out and carved, with steps and trails for the little ones to climb and clamber through. Dandy breathed in the rich squash smell as others arrived with arms full of food and drinks and great sprays of leaves and flowers for decoration.

Sage squirmed in her sling on Dandy’s chest. At ten months, she was too small yet to climb through the pumpkin play area, but Dandy watched her eyes as they followed the two bigger kids who had already arrived, chasing each other through an acorn squash and into the great pumpkin. This was the one time of year when children could laugh as loud as they pleased, their mirthful echoes muffled by the falling water.

Dandy could hardly believe how big those kids were already. She remembered holding Daisy in her arms as an infant when she and Clover were newly a couple and the scribes had come together to read stories aloud. It didn’t seem so long ago, but Daisy was four years old now, her long curly hair streaming behind her as she raced over the top of the pumpkin.

Dandy hadn’t met Morning Glory until he was two years old⁠—he and his mother had stayed near the edges of the woods, keeping mostly to themselves until recently⁠—but now he was five and losing the baby fat in his cheeks. His eyes were dark and serious even as he jumped from the pumpkins onto the cave floor with a resounding thud.

“Be careful,” Dandy said, in a voice hardly loud enough to be heard over the waterfall.

“Okay!” Daisy called, not slowing at all.

The baby kicked against her sling.

“Do you want to go see the gourds?” Dandy asked.

Sage pointed to the big pumpkin, her big eyes fixed on it.

“The pumpkin? All right. Let’s go see.”

Sage reached her hands out to the thick orange pumpkin shell as they approached.

“You can touch it.” Dandy reached out and thumped the pumpkin, listening to the hollow reverberations.

Sage slapped against the pumpkin with the flat of her small palm and smiled.

Morning Glory and Daisy appeared beside them, breathing hard. “Does she want to go inside?” Morning Glory panted.

“Well, let’s see. Do you want to go inside the pumpkin with these kids?”

There was a moment’s apprehension before Sage started squirming in Dandy’s arms toward the other children.

“I think she does. But just for a few minutes, okay?” Dandy lifted Sage out of the sling and handed her to Morning Glory. The three kids disappeared into the pumpkin while Dandy waited outside.

“It suits you,” a voice said over Dandy’s shoulder.

Dandy jumped and spun around to see Lavender, Morning Glory’s mother, standing at her side. She had cut her hair short, so that the dark ends landed at her collarbone. She was half an inch taller than Dandy, tall for the folk, and Dandy had to crane her neck to look up into her gray eyes.

“Sorry?”

“I mean, you look good holding a baby. It suits you. Are you and Clover thinking of having any?”

It was a question Dandy hated, and her facial expression must have shown it.

“I didn’t mean to pry! Of course, have children whenever you want. Or don’t. Goodness knows they’re a lot of work.”

“We haven’t decided yet,” Dandy said, letting her bright yellow hair fall over her face in shame. Clover had decided. She’d been talking about seeing the midwife in Farm with Horses for the past two years. Dandy had been “thinking about it” for too long, and she could feel the unanswered question straining against that time, stretched and taut and close to snapping. She had felt herself start to pull away from Clover, afraid to be asked again. The answer was, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t mean no. It meant maybe, maybe later. But she didn’t know when later would come.

“The kids are occupied,” Lavender said. “Come have a drink with me.”

Dandy followed the tall woman to a pair of chairs set beside a long table.

Lavender opened a glass bottle full of yellow liquid and rustled in her cloth bag for cups.

“What is it?” Dandy asked.

“Dandelion wine. Fitting, I think. A friend taught me how to make it, years ago. I’ve just started making enough of it for big gatherings like this.”

Dandy took a sniff of the wine as Lavender passed her a clay cupful. “Which friend?” She knew all of Lavender’s friends. Everyone in the settlement knew everyone else, at least in passing.

“No one you’d know,” Lavender said, taking a big swallow. “She was a traveler, just coming through⁠—an adventurer. I had a few letters from her, but not for years. Probably planted at the bottom of the sea by now.”

“The sea?”

Lavender spoke the next words in an unknown accent: “ ‘Like hundreds upon hundreds of ponds all put together! But water you can’t drink, and water that moves and tries to push you down and pull you in.’ That’s how she described it.” She sounded amused more than sad, like she’d made peace with losing her friend long ago.

Dandy cringed. “You think she drowned?”

“Sugar Maple wouldn’t have thought of drowning as a bad thing, I don’t think. But every time I drink dandelion wine now, I drink to her.”

Dandy clinked cups with Lavender. “To Sugar Maple,” she said, trying not to picture a lone figure sinking into depths of blue and green. She took a sip of her wine. “Ooh, it’s strong.”

Lavender laughed. “Yes.”

“I’ve only ever eaten dandelions. I’ve never had a drink of them. It adds more value to my namesake, I suppose.” Dandelion took a full swallow of the wine. “I think I want kids. Eventually. But I’m not sure if it’s a good idea.” She looked down into her cup.

“It’s a big decision to make. What does Clover think?”

“She wants kids. I told her I need to think about it.”

“It’s smart to think it through,” Lavender said.

“Right,” Dandy said. “If you decide no, you can change your mind later. But if you decide yes, you’re locked in.” Dandy swirled the liquid in her cup. “And I just⁠—I don’t know if I’d be a good mother. Like you.”

Lavender was quiet a moment. “You think I’m a good mother?”

Dandy looked up a little higher. Not all the way to Lavender’s eyes, but almost there, to her chin. “Well, yeah. You had to raise Morning Glory on your own. You brought him into the community when it was clear he needed more folk in his life. You’ve raised a good kid.”

Dandy was surprised when Lavender pulled her into a tight hug. “Thank you for saying that,” Lavender said. “I didn’t know how much I needed to hear it.”

“Oh, um, sure,” Dandy said, patting Lavender’s back awkwardly until Lavender let go.

“I can’t tell you if you’re going to be a good mom. It’s not something you’re born with. It takes work. Every day it takes work. Some days you’re going to do better than other days. But you love your child. It’s that love that keeps you going on hard days. It’s worth the work. And there’s joy, too, of course. The first years are hard, but there’s joy in them, too.”

Dandy had been hoping for more insight than that and tried not to look disappointed. She knew parenting was hard; anyone who knew a parent of a small child knew that. And she knew there was joy in kids. She’d spent lots of time with her nieces and nephews, her friends’ kids, and the other kids in the settlement. It was part of being in this community, watching the kids. But at the end of the day she gave the kids back to their guardians. She didn’t have to worry if she was raising them right, if they were getting into trouble. She didn’t even like all the kids she met. Kids were loud. Relentless. Always in need.

Morning Glory came running up to them, Baby Sage bouncing along in his arms. Sage’s big eyes looked both exhilarated and unsure.

“Well, you’ve had quite the adventure,” Dandy said, scooping the wee child into her arms. “We should help set up the decorations.”

“There’s no rush,” Lavender said. Morning Glory had leapt into her arms after delivering the baby safely, and she was stroking his back and hair, looking just like a perfect mom. “Morning Glory and I will start on decorations. Why don’t you take Sage outside? See if she’ll take a nap?”

“Oh, okay. You think she needs a nap?” But Dandy could see it now, the little one rubbing at her eyes with her balled-up hands. “We’ll be in soon to help. Thanks.”

Dandy adjusted Sage on her shoulder and carried her out of the cave to a spot just out of range of the water droplets that flew off the waterfall, shielded from the sun by an outcropping of gray rock. “Was that fun?” Dandy asked. Sage continued to rub her eyes but struggled in Dandy’s lap, unwilling to succumb to sleep. “Nope. We’re not going anywhere until you get a little rest. You might as well settle in. You want to be nice and rested for the rest of the festivities, don’t you? You want to hear Auntie Clover’s story? And hear the music and see the dancing? Yes? Then you need to get some sleep.”

But little Sage struggled in Dandy’s lap. She kicked her chubby legs and wrinkled her brow, her mouth a circle of agitation. Dandy put Poppy’s daughter up against her shoulder again and made little bouncing movements with her knee. It seemed like forever, but the whines slowed, faded into half-hearted protests, and then the fussing stopped. Dandy could feel Sage’s little breaths against her chest and shoulder. She rubbed Sage’s back and her little wisps of dark hair. As she sat with Sage sleeping across her body, she watched the musicians arrive. She watched her friends and family come in small groups, all dressed up as their namesakes or carrying their leaves and flowers over their arms, their faces lit up with excitement. This was her favorite part⁠—the preparations⁠—and she was missing it. She loved to watch the musicians tune their instruments and start their vocal exercises, hear each note echo off the cave walls. Later there would be music, but it would be cacophony. There would be laughter but too much of it. There would be costumes, but they would be everywhere⁠—a full field of plants rather than the appreciation of one costume, one plant, at a time. There would hardly be time to find a bright yellow dandelion flower for her own costume.

Dandy could feel the disappointment pulling her down, like great blue arms in an unfathomable sea.

But Baby Sage’s little body was warm against her ribs. Dandy’s breathing slowed to match Sage’s soporific rhythm. And this was nice, actually, just this. Sitting with her friend’s child behind a great waterfall, helping her get the rest she would need for the coming festivities. There would be other years for fall festival preparations. This one could belong to Sage.

Sage shifted her small arm and repositioned her head. The shift put Sage’s chest flush against Dandy’s, and she could feel Sage’s little heart beating against her own.

Dandy was calm and smiling by the time Clover appeared, ducking below a bush, already looking magnificent with three-leaf clovers twined around her clothes and two great white clover flowers set at her shoulders.

“Dandy!” she said. “You’re missing the preparations! Go inside. I’ll take the baby.” Clover tiptoed over to Dandy, her arms outstretched.

“We’re fine,” Dandy said. “You go. I’ll join you when the rest of her family comes.”

“You’re okay missing the musicians setting up?”

Dandy had never missed the musicians setting up, sending experimental notes into the curved recesses of the cave. She sighed. “I’ve made my peace with it. She’s getting a good nap. I don’t want to disturb her.”

Clover placed a careful kiss on Dandy’s cheek, mindful of not disrupting Sage’s sleep. There was a knowing smile on her lips as she pulled away. “Okay. Let me get set up. If Poppy isn’t here by the time I’m done, I’ll go find you a dandelion for your costume.”

The light faded from the sky as Sage slept on. Dandy found herself thinking of Sugar Maple at the bottom of the sea and Basil growing at the edge of the wood. Lavender had raised Morning Glory all alone. Even if Dandy ended up being a terrible mother, the child would still have Clover. One good parent was enough. And Dandy would have Clover, too. Clover could tell if she was messing up, would keep her moving in the right direction. “I worry because I care so much,” she told the sleeping Sage. “Do you think that’s a good sign?”

Sage blinked her eyes open and yawned. “Mama,” she said.

“Oh, so you can talk!” Dandy said, lifting Sage to a sitting position. “Your mom’s not back yet, little one. Just me.”

But Sage insisted. “Mama!” She pointed past the waterfall.

Dandy looked out and saw Poppy and Huckleberry approaching the falls. Poppy’s bright red flower trailed behind her, while Huckleberry fiddled with the midnight-black berries that kept dropping off their stems. Dilly toddled behind with a cluster of flowers tucked into the sash around her waist.

“Thank you so much for watching her!” Poppy said.

Reluctantly, Dandy handed over the baby. “We had a lovely time.”

Huckleberry ushered the other kids past the waterfall as Poppy tied a sprig of sage to her baby’s clothes.

“Did you have a good time with Auntie Dandelion?” Poppy cooed. And even though they had had a lovely day together, Sage buried her face into Poppy’s shoulder like she was coming home after a long journey.

Despite the constant whoosh of the waterfall, it was quiet after the family walked into the cave to join the festivities. Dandy sat outside for a long time, her head resting against the rock face, puffing out her cheeks to feel the strain against the walls of her mouth, taking deep breaths through her nose. Clover came out and sat beside her. “Worn out from all your time with the baby?” she said.

Dandy rolled her head to the side. “Something like that.”

“That’s the good thing about being an auntie,” Clover said. “At the end of the day, you get to give them back.”

Dandy sighed. “I didn’t want to give her back this time.”

“No?” Dandy could feel Clover’s hopeful silence, but she wasn’t ready to fill it. She let the silence settle between them. “Why don’t I go find your dandelion, huh? The festival’s about to start.”

“I’ve been keeping an eye out, but I haven’t seen any pops of yellow out here.”

“Leave it to me.” Clover gave her a squeeze and a kiss before dashing off into the field.

Dandy started straightening her hair with her fingers, wondering how long she would stay at the festival this year (at least for Clover’s story, but maybe not more than an hour), when there was a rustle in the bushes ahead. She was surprised to find Clover coming back so soon, but it wasn’t Clover.

Dandy smiled as her old friend Ivy pushed her way past the hedge. It had been a year since any of them had seen the scribe, and she looked radiant. Her cheeks were flushed and happy. Ivy vines wrapped around her dress, their big leaves reaching out in all directions. “Are we late?” she called.

“Just in time!”

Phlox came up behind her, rosy cheeked and dashing in his suit of purple flowers.

A stranger walked behind them. She was short, with long straw-colored hairs growing in one evenly spaced row from her chin. She huffed along as she walked, and it was clear to see why. Her costume must have weighed a whole pound. Strapped to her back was a thin branch with a cascade of flame-orange leaves dangling from it.

“We brought a friend,” Phlox said.

“You’re alive,” Dandy said to the stranger.

The stranger smiled a wide smile and confirmed, “I’m alive!” Her cheeks glowed with the wonderful truth of it, and her bellowing laugh shook leaves loose from the heavy branch at her back.

Dandy smiled. “There’s someone in there who’s going to be very happy to see you, Sugar Maple.”

“How did you know my name?” the stranger asked in her thick accent. But then she looked up at the massive branch and laughed again. “Oh right! Aye, happy to see me? Then I better not wait a moment longer.” She had to lean to the side to get her branch between the rock face and the waterfall.

Even from outside, Dandy heard Lavender’s wailing cry of shock.

Clover came running. “What was that?”

“This is turning out to be a really exciting festival,” Dandy said. “Folk are coming back from the dead.”

“What?”

Dandy laughed, overcome with the joy of it. “Oh, you found one.”

But it wasn’t the bright yellow flower she had expected. In Clover’s hand was a tall dandelion, but instead of a golden flower it had a white orb of seeds on feathery parachutes. Some of the seeds had caught in the wind when Clover ran and were floating prettily in her wake.

“It’s all I could find,” Clover said with a note of apology.

“It’s fine,” Dandy said, looking up at the delicate sphere. She sighed. “Everything changes so fast.”

Clover helped her secure the stem to Dandy’s clothing. “Is that so bad?”

Dandy leaned down and kissed Clover on the cheek, as she had kissed her the very first time so long ago. “As long as we’re together, I think I can manage.”

Clover smiled. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Dandy said.

“Does that mean you’re ready to talk?”

Dandy thought about Baby Sage’s heartbeat against her own, the look in Clover’s eyes when she’d seen Dandy holding her, Lavender’s assurance that you weren’t a good parent or a bad parent by birth⁠—that it was something you worked on a little bit each day.

“I don’t have a definite answer yet,” Dandy started. “But I’m ready to talk about it.”

Clover wrapped her arms around Dandy and lifted her up, shaking more of the white seeds free. “Thank you!” she said. “That’s all I ask.”

Dandy laughed. “I’m not making any promises!” she cautioned. But a happy feeling stirred in her as they stepped into the celebration space, where the last of the preparations were under way⁠—not a promise, but a wish.

About the Author

Alicia Adams lives in the forest with her spouse, young daughter, and cat. When she was working on her MFA, a professor told her that being a poet changes you; you start to become the kind of person who picks up worms after the rain and moves them to the edge of the road where they won't be squished by people who won't notice them. Alicia doesn’t write many poems anymore, but she still rescues worms after the rain. Her speculative fiction has been published in DreamForge, Abyss & Apex, Hearth Stories, and Luna Station Quarterly. You can read more of her work on her website: AliciaAdamsWriting.com