Saro Jane wanted a wish. Needed one for the health of Mama and her unborn sibling. She sat curled up under the windowsill in her end of their home on the mountain. Ruffle, her St. Bernard, rested his enormous head at her knee. She scratched his ear and gazed into the geometric segment of stars outside. Mama groaned from her bedroom on the other side of the cabin.
Saro Jane searched the twinkling for her salvation and resigned her green eyes to the dusty floorboards when one failed to arrive. “I think their wishes are all used up by the time they reach us, Ruff.”
Ruffle’s jowls flared through a lazy huff. His enormous body stretched toward the shadowy corner. Saro Jane stared into a hole in her floor. She manipulated the air over the opening until a green sprig emerged.
Ruffle’s deep voice entered her mind again. “If Papa catches you growing weeds in the house…”
“I know.” Saro Jane rubbed his head, then plucked her creation from the dirt. “Why can’t I do something useful for a change?” She chucked the sprout back into the hole in her floor. “Anything other than grow weeds.”
Ruffle’s deep brown eyes rolled toward her. “Maybe you just need an opportunity to prove yourself.”
Another yelp from Mama startled them both. Saro Jane crept through the living area and its snapping fire and crouched at the doorframe to her parent’s bedroom. Granny held a wooden cup to Mama’s mouth.
Mama winced and smacked her lips. “Bitter.”
Granny swept her white curls from her face and pulled a squat glass bottle from her leather satchel. “Bitter root is supposed to be.” She tisked and uncorked the bottle. “Drink this. One of my decoctions.” She handed it to Mama. “Should ease the cramping and calm baby for the delivery.”
Mama downed its amber contents in one swill. The baby bulge pushed Mama’s belly to its limit. She flung her head into the pillow and howled. Her brown hair fell over a sweaty face.
Granny stretched her hands over Mama’s abdomen. Her gray stare searched the ether. “Something’s not right.” She pulled a lantern from her satchel and placed it upon the nightstand. Wrought from iron, it was petite and ordinary to Saro Jane.
“I was hopin’ I wouldn’t need to do this.” Granny held her palms over Mama’s belly and slowly raised them. Wisps of bright light coalesced around her fingers, leaving trails of multi-colored sparkles. With a clap, Granny sent the energy onto the candle’s wick. The lantern’s gentleness warmed the cold shadows, claiming more territory in the corner.
Mama’s tone wavered. “What’s wrong with my baby? It’s not moving.”
“There’s a foul curse at work inside you. Cord is wrapped around its neck.” Granny leaned next to the flickering flame. “Moved its spirit for the time being until I can get what I need to dispel the curse.” She patted her evergreen trousers and eyed Saro Jane. “You.”
Saro Jane stood and inched into the room.
“We need your help.” Granny scribbled on her notepad. “Fetch me this herb. I need it for a decoction to rid your mama of a wretched spell. A patch of it grows on the far hillside beneath the face of the Man in the Mountain.” She passed the map to Saro Jane. “You remember? The boulder?”
“I know it.” Saro Jane studied the crude directions. The word hazelroot was scratched under a likeness of the Man in the Mountain. She wrung her black hair in her hands. “What curse?”
Granny rubbed Mama’s forearm. “It’s beyond my common magic. I have my suspicions, but that’s not important. Hazelroot is hard to find even in broad daylight.” She rubbed her wide nose. “Requires a soul of purity to locate.” She looked to Mama. “I’m needed here.”
Saro Jane’s gaze bounced between them. “Souls? Life and death? I’m nine. This sounds like a job for Papa.”
Mama eased her torso upright against the headboard. “Papa went out lookin’ but hasn’t returned. You’re all me and the baby have left, sweetie.”
Granny massaged Mama’s abdomen. “No time to bicker, young’un. If I can’t conjure this decoction soon, your Mama and the baby both may not make it.”
Mama beckoned her to the bedside. She took Saro Jane’s hand in hers. “I need you to be strong for me. For us both.”
“What about Papa?”
Mama’s calloused hand tightened. “Find him if you can and bring him home.”
“Take this.” Granny handed her the lantern. “Its light will guide you to the herb once you find the spot.”
Saro Jane hurried with the lantern to the front door. Its fire flickered and Mama groaned.
“Easy, child.” Granny set a cloth on Mama’s forehead. “That lantern holds the soul of the unborn child. If it dies, so will the baby. Strong magic requires great risk.” She carried jars of dried herbs and spices to the kettle hanging over the fire. “You should skedaddle before the storm gets worse. And mind the Crooked-Neck Woman. She’ll stop at nothing to get her hands on a fragile spirit.”
“Take Ruffle,” Mama said. “The sun’s going down.”
Saro Jane slipped into her patchwork overcoat and boots. She flipped the hood of her coat onto her head.
Mama’s words followed them out the door. “Stick to the mountain road. All manner of trouble comes out after dark.”
Heavy flakes fell in clumps like weighted cotton. Saro Jane ambled along the muddy road through their mountain hamlet with Ruffle at her side. She clutched the lantern and its magic close to her body, shielding the flame from the precipitation.
“This is your chance.” Ruffle’s immense paws squished in the mud. “Show them your worth.”
Saro Jane tugged her hood closer. “Dying in a snowstorm wasn’t what I had in mind.”
Ruffle sniffed the road. “I doubt you’ll die from a trip to the far mountain. You’ve done it a hundred times.”
“I meant something useful like learning how to cook for Mama.” Saro Jane reached beside her head and scratched Ruffle’s side.
He ambled with an odd gait.
“Your back still sore?”
Ruffle harrumphed. “That’s the last time we ever race Ollie and his ostrich again.”
They passed the home of the tinkerer. Saro Jane had received several of his hand-made toys on her birthdays. Their replicas sat in the front windows beside marionette puppets. Their painted faces smiled at the impending storm and the fading sliver of daylight on the horizon opposite the storefront.
A few of their neighbors eyed Saro Jane as she strode past their homes. They knew what Granny’s lantern burning meant; a powerful curse none of them cared to tangle with. Men and womenfolk alike hurried inside, avoiding direct contact with either the girl or her horse-sized pooch.
She passed by Granny’s shop next. Its front door bore the official alchemist’s seal painted in dark blue. Mortars and pestles sat in her front window display next to books on herb lore and the magical healing arts. She moped by the smithy’s shop. The aroma of spent coal and wood hung like ghosts in the air around his abode.
Ruffle turned his nose toward the furnace. “Maybe you can cook for her when we get back.”
They trudged beyond the murky meadows and farmlands and followed the road over the hill into the arborous depths of the mountain. A stray owl whistled from the boughs high above and took to flight. Clusters of lime green foxfire mushrooms glowed on the trunks of towering oaks and walnut trees. Their staggered halos disappeared among the contours of the mountain and reappeared to bend back into the valley far below.
Saro Jane rubbed the chill off her fingers in her coat pockets. “If we make it back.” She surveyed the barren trees on the neighboring mountain, collecting a blanket of white. “Papa’s out there someplace. Can’t leave him to die.”
“We won’t.” Ruffle shook the flakes off his back. “In a way, he’s my Papa, too.”
She skidded in the mud in a few places as the road took a steep dive down the hillside. “First things first.” The road ahead grew blotted out by the intensifying snowfall. “We get to the old mill on the river.”
Ruffle stopped at a fork in a level section of the road. His muzzle searched the air in both directions.
Saro Jane rubbed his side. “What’s wrong?”
“Neither path smells familiar.”
She checked Granny’s drawing. The jagged pencil strokes representing the far hillside fluttered in the wind. Seems right according to this. She pocketed it and took a couple of paces along the right-hand path. The patch of pines that bordered it in the spring were not there. Saro Jane doubled back and walked the opposite route. A few spruces and firs swayed in the cold winds. “This way, I suppose.”
Ruffle whimpered. “Are you certain?”
She froze for a moment. An identical version of herself appeared between the paths in front of a boulder and laughed at her.
Not even four hundred paces from home, and you’re already in a bind. The doppelganger glared at Saro Jane with its milky eyes. Give me the lamp. Go home.
Ruffle nudged her with his wet nose. “You all right?”
He didn’t see it? Which way is which? She flashed a nonchalant smile. “Fine. Just thinking.” When she found the boulder, her evil twin was gone. “If I’m wrong, we’ll come back and go the other way.”
Ruffle padded along behind her. “Provided the Crooked-Neck Woman doesn’t boil us for her supper.”
A shack from the mountain’s earlier pioneer era poked through the gray haze of the storm. Howling winds whistled around the structure’s obtuse corners and rustled the flame in Saro Jane’s lantern. Firelight danced between warped slats in the shack’s walls.
Ruffle huffed at a group of mule deer, meandering across the hillside like raindrops rolling along barbed wire. He sniffed the winds sweeping down the mountainside. “The Crooked-Neck Woman’s cabin. We should turn back.”
Saro Jane shielded her lamp with her hand and turned into her footprints in the muck. The fleeting figure of her father running into the shack stopped her. “Hold on, Ruff.” Her boots crunched into the snow toward the rickety front porch.
“If she catches us,” Ruffle said, “she’ll fricassee us or worse.”
Mossy stairs creaked under her weight. “I thought I saw Papa.”
Ruffle inched toward the nearest corner. “I love him, but we haven’t the time for this.”
“He fought off a wildcat that clawed my leg and nearly ate me a few years ago.” Saro Jane set a hand on the uneven door. “I won’t be long.”
Ruffle studied the structure. “There’s no way I’ll fit in there. I’ll knock the entire thing down.”
She pushed the front door open. “Stay here. I’ll see if it’s him.”
“But Granny said…”
Saro Jane held her lantern into the partial silhouettes of the front room. Dark? But the fire. Flickering lantern light warped over the surface of an iron pot suspended above blackened logs in the hearth. She swung her light source to the far corner. A lone rocking chair collected dust beside a shattered window. If Papa’s in here, I’m not leaving without him.
Her lantern caught the mask of a fox in a hellish scream above her head. She shrieked and tripped over a knothole in the floor. Its facial skin was stretched along the top of the wall and pulled taut in an eternal expression of horror. Alongside it, other denizens of the forests shared in the same fate. Deer, wolf, and elk.
Saro Jane lowered her lantern and crept over the floor into the back kitchen. An iron potbelly stove poked into the candlelight on the rear wall. Knotted pinewood slats on the tabletop warped her lantern’s crown of light. A dented pot sat atop the stove, its interior as caked in rot as the rest of the shack. “Papa. You in here?”
“Papa?” The old woman’s voice was wet and fractured. The hag materialized from the shadows and limped toward Saro Jane. Her neck had been snapped and bent to the left. A bony bulge protruded through the skin on the opposite side. Twigs and leaves matted the Crooked-Neck Woman’s strands of graying black hair to her wrinkled scalp. “No one’s Papa here. What brings such a tender morsel to my doorstep in this weather?”
Saro Jane stumbled toward the doorway. “My Papa. I thought I saw him in here.”
The hag dragged her gimp leg across the uneven flooring. “Saw a man a-lyin’ out in the woods.”
“Which way did he go?”
The Crooked-Neck Woman leaned closer. The lantern light danced in her milky eyes. “What have we here? Vibrant light.” She cackled and clasped her hands. “Lively spirit, indeed!”
Saro Jane pulled her lantern closer. “Where did my Papa go?”
The Crooked-Neck Woman straightened. “Perhaps we can barter. Say, information for that lamp of yours.”
Saro Jane scrutinized the old woman. “You first.”
“What do you take me for?” The old woman’s hollow chuckle hissed around the bone stuck in her throat. “Set your lantern on my table.”
With reluctance, Saro Jane upheld her end of the agreement.
“Very well, child.” The Crooked-Neck Woman hobbled toward her. “I thought he was dead. Brought him in out of the cold. Fed him some stew.” She held a thin arm toward the pot on the stove. “Traded him to a mountain troll for various ingredients.” The hag’s hand hovered over the lantern handle. “Now, your light.”
Saro Jane snagged her lantern before the witch could take it and backpedaled through the doorway into the front room. “I should be on my way to fetch him. It’s dark out.”
A howl erupted from the hag’s mouth. “Trickster. Thief!” Her form grew and stretched across the ceiling. “Its spirit belongs to me.”
Saro Jane spun on a heel and darted to the front door. She tugged on its rope handle, but it would not budge. Soprano wails cracked the glass in the front room’s window.
The Crooked-Neck Woman’s fingers splayed across the door. “I’ll possess you and eat you alive.”
Saro Jane tugged on the handle, fighting against the witch’s supernatural forces. “Ruffle! Please.”
Her companion’s voice was muffled but audible. “Stand aside, Saro Jane.”
Heavy paws thundered over the ground. The boards in the front door splintered and buckled inward. The foul witch hissed and drew runes for her spell in the air. With another charge, Ruffle busted down the door.
The hag shouted and twirled into a tornado of ether. “Curse you both!”
Ruffle barked at the spinning ghost. Saro Jane ducked under his belly and raced into the snow, cuddling her lantern under the folds of her overcoat.
Storm winds roared and blustered. Lightning forked through the stratus clouds, pushing Saro Jane faster along the trail with Ruffle behind her.
“We can’t stay in this weather with the baby’s spirit,” Ruffle said.
She tucked her lantern deeper into her overcoat. The old woman’s cackles reverberated in the snowstorm. Its gales bent the lantern’s flame sideways, threatening to snuff it out. “I can’t run any faster with it.”
Ruffle galloped ahead of her and sniffed the gusts. “Water. The creek is nearby.”
Saro Jane turned her body sideways and shuffled down a steep embankment. “If we can get to the mill, we can rest for a while.”
Saro Jane’s right ankle buckled under her and she fell on her rump. Hot pain radiated up her calf. Her ankle throbbed.
Ruffle came to her side. “Your foot?”
“I didn’t see that root.” Saro Jane tugged on his haunches and pulled herself to her feet. “So dark out.”
She hobbled down the slope to where the trail let out along the bank of a gurgling creek. Cypress and fir bent over the inky swirls of water, their branches draped in elegant tufts of white. A lean structure with a paddle wheel jutted from the monochrome folds of the storm a stone’s throw away.
“The mill.” Prospects of warmth and hope rejuvenated her spirits.
The footpath narrowed and snaked among high weeds, bordering a half-frozen bog on Saro Jane’s left. Faint cackles in a fleeting breeze startled her. Not my baby brother or sister. Find another spirit, witch.
Weeds rustled ahead. Stalks shook in a line for the trail before them. A pair of wolves padded from the undergrowth and barred their advance. The predators lowered their pure white eyes and growled. The wolf on Saro Jane’s right bared its teeth.
Ruffle leaped in front of her and dropped his head to match their attackers. “Protect the baby.”
“But your back.”
The wolves pounced on Ruffle. One nipped at his paws, while its counterpart snapped its jaws at his ear. Ruffle kicked the lower wolf away and picked up the other in his maw. He flung the animal around like a toy, then tossed it into the creek. The remaining attacker recovered and leaped for his throat. Ruffle whimpered as the wolf’s maw clamped down on his neck and pendulated in violent arcs.
“Ruffle?” Saro Jane’s mind raced for a solution. She retraced Granny’s lessons in herb lore. “Wolfsbane.”
She reached toward the high grass nearest the wolf and concentrated all her power. Stems emerged from the weeds and unfurled in purple blossoms. Saro Jane bent her hands and the plants obeyed, ensnaring the wolf. Its hide boiled and sizzled. Tendrils of foul smoke unfurled into the dancing flakes. The wolf yelped and retreated into the thicket from whence it came.
“Ruff?” Saro Jane reached for his wound, but her companion cowered. “Let’s get inside the mill before she sends anything else our way.”
Cobwebs hung like haunted lace in corners and between posts in the millhouse. Remnants of cornmeal adorned the stone wheel and laid in mounds upon the floorboards. No one had been in here since early fall by Saro Jane’s estimations.
Ruffle meandered to her at the glassless window. “How’s your ankle?”
Saro Jane bent that leg at the knee and placed her weight on the windowsill. “It’s swelling.” Her stomach dropped at the gashes in Ruffle’s neck. “Those look deep.”
“Minor cuts,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
The precipitation out her window intensified. Flakes crackled as they landed on everything. Clusters of them coalesced in the distance, forming a pair of white eyes.
Ruffle lowered his head above her shoulder. “We should get going.”
“That’s my decision.” The baby’s spirit flickered and danced within her lantern. “My baby brother or sister is my responsibility to protect.”
Powerful gusts forced Saro Jane away from her window. Swirls of snow invaded their sanctuary and rotated in a cone atop the grinding stone. A figure appeared in its vortex. Its broken neck jutted through the cone.
Ruffle growled and stood between Saro Jane and the apparition. “Be gone, witch.”
A sinewy hand reached from the tempest. “Liar! Cheat! Give me what’s mine.”
Saro Jane stepped toward her. “Come and get it.”
Ruffle barked and snapped at the swirls. The Crooked-Neck Woman screeched and shrank into the tornadic storm. The tempest retreated through the far window in the back of the mill. He sped around the grind wheel and chased her through the busted window. His head cocked to one side. “You should come see this.”
Saro Jane protected her lantern and joined him. She raised up on her tiptoes over the ledge and peered into the calming snowfall. A large log stretched across the creek. A rickety handrail constructed from fresh branches staggered along one side.
“The footbridge.” She gazed into the tumbling flakes. “Looks like as good a time as any.” Saro Jane headed for the mill’s door. “Let’s find this herb.”
Wet flakes melted on her exposed hand. Her once nimble fingers turned to a frigid claw around the lantern handle. Saro Jane followed the creek bank up an incline and found the footbridge nestled between two sycamore trees.
Ruffle dipped his muzzle to the waters. “I’m too big for the bridge. Suppose I’ll wade across.”
She placed a boot on the log and it glided forward, stopping on a raised knot. Heartbeats thundered in her ears. She dug her fingers into the handrail and regained balance. Easy does it.
Ruffle sloshed into the shallows of the gurgling creek and searched the air for foreign scents. Saro Jane shuffled out over the gentle rapids, taking meticulous steps. The snow slowed to a light flurry when she reached the midway point on the bridge. Ruffle frolicked in the middle of the stream. His big ears tossed up crystalline ribbons. She giggled. “What are you doing?”
“It’s cold.” He spun in circles. “Really cold!”
Between chuckles, she said, “Stop foolin’ about before weee—”
Saro Jane fell and slid off the log. Strips of bark snapped free under her desperate grip, then she plunged feet-first into the biting waters. Instinct held the lantern at arm’s length over her head. Saro Jane stood on her good leg, but the creek’s force proved the greater, sending her and the lantern careening toward the rapids.
“No!” The bottom half submerged into its waters, cutting the flow into icy comets. Where is the flame? The rush of the creek concealed all visible facets. “Ruff?”
His head snapped in her direction. “Saro Jane!” Ruffle galloped through the water and lent her his muzzle for leverage.
She held fast to his fur and pulled the lantern from the flow. A minimal amount of water had seeped into its corners, but the baby’s spirit burned still.
“Here.” Ruffle lowered into the rushing water.
Saro Jane climbed onto his back and held tight. His muscles tightened through a series of groans.
“I’m sorry.” She shivered. Her stockings, boots, everything from her waist down was numb. “I’m trying not to reinjure your b-back.”
Ruffle whimpered. “It’s all right. I can’t feel it much anyway.”
Lantern light intensified and spread across Ruffle’s fur. Saro Jane held it at eye-level. The flame was tall and bright. “We’re getting close to the hazelroot.”
Saro Jane tromped over iced earth in the lower elevations of the neighboring mountainside. The babble of the creek reduced to whispers. Her lantern trembled in her hand and drew long shadows across an ivory mantle of death.
She searched her coat pocket and produced Granny’s map. “This is the right mountain.”
“You’ll freeze to death if you don’t find warmth soon.” Ruffle sniffed the ground. “Wish hazelroot had a distinct scent.”
“According to Granny,” she said, “the patch should be right here—somewhere.”
Saro Jane held her lantern aloft in the night. Its warm radiance illuminated the frosted veil in sparkles for several paces. A rotund boulder glinted in her sweeping lamp. “The Man in the Mountain.”
Its prominent nose of stone had gathered a thin stripe of white. The Man’s lopsided eye sockets were packed with melted snow that had refrozen. Saro Jane pocketed her map and hobbled up the hillside. The fire burned brighter inside her lantern. She moved to her right a few paces and her light dwindled.
Saro Jane returned to the previous spot. “This has to be it.”
Ruffle rooted around, plowing a path through the snow. “I don’t see any.”
She knelt and extended her hands over the ground. So long as it’s here like Granny said, this might work. Fresh hazelroot sprouted through the snow and bloomed near her fingertips. Saro Jane unearthed several plants and stuffed them into her coat. “There. That should be enough.”
A large indentation in the snow ahead caught her attention. Saro Jane bent her light closer to it. The footprint was twice as big as Ruffle’s paw prints. “The mountain troll.” She scanned the area. “Papa?”
“I smell his scent.”
Saro Jane followed the troll prints around the bend in the mountainside. “I’m bringing him home.”
The tracks led her to the far side of the mountain and a cave tucked into its folds. Logs in the unseen fire popped and snapped. Firelight warped around the cavern’s contours.
Ruffle tucked his big body into the deepest shadows of a pine glade. “We should come up with a plan first.”
“We’ve managed so far without one.” She turned her light away from the cave and rubbed circulation back into her legs.
“This is a mountain troll.”
“I’ve been piecing one together.” She crept up the embankment. “Mama and the baby are waiting. Let’s go.”
The aroma of sweet smoke enveloped Saro Jane as she approached the cave entrance. Guttural snorts billowed out of the hollow depths of the mount. She peered around the corner. Her father lay bound and gagged against a wall behind the fire.
Saro Jane set her lantern outside the cave and snuck in on her hands and knees. Loud snoring emanated from deeper in the cave. An immense foot twitched in the wavering shadows. She sat beside the fire and removed her boots and waterlogged stockings.
She called out in a whisper. “Papa?” Saro Jane slid into her boots once more.
Her father grumbled and lulled his head toward her.
Saro Jane whispered again but louder. The fire’s heat felt good on her skin. “Papa. It’s me. Wake up.”
His eyes pried open and blinked. They widened at the sight of her. He mumbled through the rag in mouth. Saro Jane crawled across the shale and sandstone to his side. Sharp edges cut into her clammy flesh.
Ruffle tucked his head inside the mouth of the cavern. “Is Papa all right?”
She chose a jagged stone and cut the binds on his hands. “Fine by the look of it. I thought you were staying outside.”
“I had to check on…” Ruffle’s nostrils flared. His head twitched.
“Don’t do it.” Saro Jane finished cutting the twine around Papa’s feet. “Not now.”
Ruffle sneezed so hard he blew the fire sideways. The troll sniffed and glared around the corner. Its shoulders brushed either side of the wide cavern. The creature’s forearm was as wide as she was tall. It had beady black eyes and a head of disheveled brown hair. The troll snagged its club leaning against the wall and crawled toward them. It wore nothing but a soiled pair of shorts that resembled a bedsheet.
Saro Jane jumped to her feet and took Papa by his hand. “Time to run.” She led him out of the cave and toward the grove beside Ruffle, grabbing her lantern in her other hand.
The troll blew its rancid breath into her face as she limped into the dark. It flashed what sparse and stained teeth remained in its oblong head in a howl of anger.
Papa stood his ground before the troll. “You two. Run.”
The mountain troll emerged from its home and stretched to its full height. It slammed its club into the ground and voiced its frustration at losing its dinner.
“Papa.” Saro Jane limped closer to the danger. “You’ll be smashed flat.”
Ruffle darted between Papa and the creature and snapped his maw at its leg. The troll swung its weapon down toward Ruffle’s skull, grazing Ruffle’s snout with its barbed club.
Papa scolded him. “Back, Ruffle.”
The dog growled and inched away from the monster.
Saro Jane tugged on Papa’s forearm. “You can’t fight it with your bare hands.”
The troll swung its club down in front of Papa, knocking him off his feet. Saro Jane searched the grounds with an outstretched hand for any plant she could manipulate. Give me something…anything. The troll reared its weapon overhead and prepared to crush Ruffle. Found you. Green vines sprouted forth and slithered around the mountain troll’s calves. Its left leg broke free from her magic, but the other vines ascended its right leg like starved pythons and cocooned the creature from head to toe. It swatted its club in violent arcs, ripping her vines to shreds.
“Hurry!” Her determined gaze bounced between Papa and Ruffle. “Head for the bridge.”
The troll battled against its bonds, but the more it fought, the more they constricted. It grabbed handfuls of her vines and gnawed them in half. More grew and slithered down its gullet, choking it to death. Saro Jane scurried in the darkness, stepping on her original boot prints leading toward the cave.
“Careful, Papa.” Saro Jane shimmied over the footbridge behind him and held onto its railing. “It’s slick.”
Papa faltered and recovered. “Maybe I had the wrong idea about your gift.”
A frigid gust invaded Saro Jane’s overcoat and nipped at her shins. Her boots squeaked over patches of ice on the narrow footbridge.
“There’s more to your magic than I thought.” Papa stretched his leg over a glistening section of log and gingerly set it down.
She slid over the remaining few feet of the footbridge. Its handrail wobbled in her hand. I’m not going for another swim. She stepped off the bridge onto steady ground and took a deep breath. Ruffle trotted ashore and shook out his coat.
Papa took her by a hand and hurried up their mountain. “Did Granny send you out to find me?”
“That and the hazelroot for Mama.”
Papa scoffed. “All I found was the knot on my head.”
“The Crooked-Neck Woman told me.”
Papa halted the party. “You shouldn’t go near her. She’s dangerous.”
Saro Jane puffed warm air into her hands. “I took a wrong turn.”
“Either way,” Papa turned and went farther, “don’t ever go back there again.”
“Yes, pa—” Her gaze followed Papa’s to the lopsided shack on the mountain. “It’s her.”
“This way.” Papa hurried her along the path toward the fork and away from the witch.
Saro Jane jerked free of his grip and jogged ahead. The candle’s flame whipped at her side. “I know where we are. Once we reach the fork, we turn up the hill.”
She strode along the trail. The wreath of lamplight swung over toadstool mushrooms half her height and a path of brown muck. Another sudden snow squall muted most sound in the forest. Saro Jane yawned as the flakes melted on her hands.
Papa’s footsteps ceased behind her. “How?”
Saro Jane stopped and held her lantern out. The Crooked-Neck Woman’s shack sat before them. “We ran away from it.”
“Something smells off,” Ruffle said. He loosed a hearty yawn and shook the snow from his fur. “And it’s way past my bedtime.”
“Forget the trail,” Papa said. “Just make for the mountain top. We’ll find town from there.”
Saro Jane sped uphill as fast as the slick ground allowed. She wove around mushrooms as tall as trees, resting her hand on their stalks for support. Her footing slipped, plunging her knees into the cold sod. The lantern landed on its side, its fire fighting against the void.
“Gods!” She pulled it out of the snow and took the brunt of the storm’s winds against her back. The flame disappeared. Her entire body tightened. “Don’t. We’re almost home.” As the winds receded, its fire righted itself.
She clamored to her feet with snow and forest as far as she could see. Ruff’s right. It’s not natural. No wildlife. Not another living soul aside from themselves.
Papa brushed the snowy dirt off her legs. “Did you hurt yourself?”
She strode on. “Fine. Not even a scrape.” Her lamplight fell upon the shack once more. “She’s cast a spell. Likely found the nightshade root, or had the animals bring it to her.”
Ruffle teetered on his legs, then collapsed beside her and began to snore. A drowse as cozy as her quilt back home weighed down her shoulders and eyelids.
Saro Jane tapped a paw with her boot. “Come on, Ruff. We need to stay awake.” Another deep yawn. “She’ll… catch us… for sure.” She sat and leaned against a mushroom stalk. Energy drained from her body as the snow fell. In moments, she fell into a deep slumber.
When Saro Jane awoke, she was leaning against a wall in the Crooked-Neck Woman’s shack. Tight twine dug into her wrists and ankles. Her lantern sat on the kitchen table. Papa was bound in a similar fashion to a rickety chair on the far side. His head slumped against his chest. Ruffle? The dog’s loud snores pierced even the hollowness of the storm outside the walls.
Raspy labored breaths floated from next to Saro Jane, across the floor, and to the table. The apparition of her host took shape and studied Saro Jane’s lantern. The Crooked-Neck Woman stretched an ethereal hand through its candle. “Soon I’ll walk among you and use your mutt as my hellhound.”
Saro Jane worked at the twine on her wrists. “For what? Why is that worth my baby sister or brother’s soul?”
The witch swung her head toward Saro Jane. Vertebrae jutted from the torn flesh in the witch’s neck. “My little sister was the one responsible for this!” She clutched her throat. “And for what? My witchcraft? Not like her alchemy’s any better.”
The Crooked-Neck Woman floated around her table, inspecting the black candles and tracing runes with her translucent finger. With a sharp clap, the candles sparked ablaze in a ring around the tabletop. “Her time’s comin’ quick.”
Saro Jane sobbed into the collar of her overcoat. This is all my fault. I’ve ruined everything. The Crooked-Neck Woman chanted archaic phrases and drifted next to Papa. With the final utterance, her ghost vanished.
Papa raised his head. He glared at Saro Jane with milky white eyes. The witch’s voice percolated from his throat. “Now to finish it.”
Papa snapped his bonds with a single tug and stood, his grin spreading over his face. “Such a strong body your Papa has.” He took deliberate paces around the table toward Saro Jane. He plucked a butcher knife from the counter beside the sink and turned it in the candlelight. “It’ll make my work on you go that much faster.”
Saro Jane fought at her bindings. Too tight. Her rope caught on something farther up the wall. A nail! She rubbed her bonds across it until they loosened enough for her to slip her hands free. She waited for him to come a bit closer.
Papa lunged and swung his knife at her face. Saro Jane rolled toward the doorway and scampered into the front room. A surreal purple fire burst alight in the hearth.
“There’s no use resisting.” Papa tugged the tip of his knife free of the wall.
The woman’s cackle erupted from him. His weighty footfalls creaked to the kitchen doorway. A chorus of fluty chuckles rained down on Saro Jane. Dancing violet light swept over the stretched animal masks animated in magical laughter. Saro Jane raced to the front door and pulled it ajar.
“You think you’re so bright.” Papa slammed the door shut with a swipe of his arm.
She tugged again, but the witch’s sorcery held it shut. Papa strode toward her. The firelight turned his eyes into narrowed slits of angry purple. Saro Jane feigned a sprint into the kitchen, and instead raced the opposite direction.
Cobwebs hung from the corners and walls of a claustrophobic hallway. Occasional snowflakes drifted between the boards in the wall and whirled in her wake. Saro Jane ran into a dark room at the end of the passage. Her father thundered around the corner and down the corridor.
The Crooked-Neck Woman’s voice spoke from him again. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”
Saro Jane stumbled over a bedpost in the dark and hobbled to the farthest point she could find. Cold wind pulsed through the slats at her back. Papa lumbered closer. Both of her feet now hurt. The witch’s raspy breaths entered the bedroom and floated in the dark toward Saro Jane. She searched the floor with her hands for anything to defend herself. A leather strap? She pulled on it, heaving her rump off the floor. She slid aside and tugged harder. A trap door whined open, revealing a wedge of firelight in the cellar.
Saro Jane scooted onto the top step and hurried into the orange light below. The Crooked-Neck Woman guffawed above the trap door.
“Foolish child.” Papa threw the trap door open and tromped after her.
Impossible options swirled in her mind. Kill Papa to save Mama and the baby, or surrender the baby’s spirit in hopes that the witch will release her Papa. Saro Jane backpedaled across the dirt floor. Dozens of jack o’ lanterns flickered along the cellar’s perimeter.
The witch cackled. “The father or the child. Who’s worth more to you?”
Saro Jane shuffled backward until her hands touched cold stone. “I’m sorry, Papa.” She summoned vines from the sod, but the witch withered them in a single motion of Papa’s hand.
Papa raised the butcher knife next to his head. “Afraid I need your sacrifice to complete my rite.”
Saro Jane huddled against the wall. Flickering light caught her eye. Light of a spirit to live… Of course! She squished her heel into the jack o’ lantern under her and pulled her boot from a crumpled pumpkin.
Papa bent over and clutched his chest through a growl. The witch’s influence over him faltered.
Papa staggered back and shouted in his own voice. “Get out. Leave me be.”
“Fight her, Papa!” Saro Jane plunged her boot into another jack o’ lantern, but failed to affect the Crooked-Neck Woman’s hold on him.
The witch spoke through him once more. “Stop, I say!”
Saro Jane examined both crushed pumpkins. Smoky lines slithered from the first, but the candle still burned in the second. She snuffed the burning one out underfoot. The Crooked-Neck Woman howled and swung the knife in erratic arcs. Saro Jane marched around the cellar, stomping out pumpkins.
“Let him go.”
Papa’s torso arched backward under inhuman influences. Cracks raced up his spine as it neared its snapping point. Saro Jane kicked and squashed candles until her father collapsed to the dirt. Wisps of purple light coalesced into the witch’s ghost.
The Crooked-Neck Woman sulked and flew through the main floor of her humble abode. Upstairs, knick-knacks shattered and furniture overturned.
Saro Jane hurried to Papa’s side. He lay on his back, his chest undulating in regular rhythms. “Papa?”
He coughed and rolled onto his side. “Where are we?”
She helped him to his knees. “Her cellar. It’s a long story.” Saro Jane steadied him up the steps. “Let’s get Granny’s lantern and go home.”
Saro Jane shuffled through the dark bedroom into the hallway. She flinched at every creak of boards either in the wind or underfoot. She could be hiding right in front of me. She followed the lantern’s glow from the front room into the kitchen. The ghost of the witch lay curled up beside the stove weeping. Saro Jane grabbed her burning lantern and dragged Papa out into the snow and growing daylight. “She won’t be bothering us again soon.”
The far mountain stood in silhouette against the creeping brown of predawn. Saro Jane, Ruffle, and Papa ambled past the open meadows and farms on their mountaintop. A dark silhouette wobbled on the farmhouse’s front porch in its lamplight.
Saro Jane rubbed a glass window on her lantern. “Home’s around the bend.”
She led her weary group past Granny’s place and turned up the path into the glade surrounding home. Saro Jane stopped on the front stoop. The enormity of her ordeal pulled her forehead against the front door. The interior was quiet, save the snapping of the fire in their hearth. Home. Praise the gods.
“Go on.” Papa shooed her to the door.
Saro Jane kicked the mud and snow off her boots and went inside. Ruffle rattled the ice from his coat and trotted to the fireplace where Granny stirred a steaming kettle. Papa rushed to Mama’s side and hugged her tightly.
Mama’s nightgown muffled Papa’s words. “How are you and the baby?”
Mama took heavy blinks. “Better after Granny turned the baby around.”
“Quick.” Granny’s snapping fingers pulled Saro Jane out of the moment. “Gimme the lamp and the herbs.”
Saro Jane rushed the lantern to the hearth. She pulled a bundle of plants from her coat pocket and handed them over.
Granny bounced the hazelroot in her gnarled hand. “Mighty fine, dearie.” She dropped them in the kettle and gazed at Saro Jane. “Are you ready for your reward?” She ladled a small amount of her decoction into a mug and waddled to the bedside.
Saro Jane had no idea what Granny had in store.
Granny smiled. “You finally get to make your wish.”
Saro Jane hurried to the window and peered into the clouds. “But how? We can’t even see the stars.”
Granny passed the mug to Mama. “Sip that.”
Mama did and eased into her pillows.
“Let’s see if you can help me put this spirit back in its rightful place. My brew needs your wish to set things right.” She aimed her finger at the flame in the lantern. With a whirl of her digit, its fire crept through the glass and danced to her finger’s motions. “Ready that wish and close your eyes.”
Saro Jane shut her eyes. Granny wound up her finger and flicked the fire in a golden comet toward Mama. Saro Jane clamped her eyes closed. I wish more than anything that my Mama and the baby both come out of this happy and healthy. As she opened her eyes, Saro Jane caught the remnants of Granny’s magic settling onto Mama’s belly.
“Now that’s settled,” Granny said, “let’s see about bringing that baby into the world.”
She perched herself before Mama and coached her through several powerful contractions.
Mama grabbed her abdomen. “The baby’s really moving.”
“That’s what we hoped for.” Granny took a bowl of water from Papa and set it on the floor at her side. She rubbed her hands and prepared for the catch. “One more good push, honey.”
Mama bore down on her bed covers and growled through her teeth.
“There she is.” Granny grabbed the rag in the bowl and made quick work of washing the newborn clean.
“She?” Papa sounded ecstatic.
Granny held the baby toward him. “Another happy, healthy daughter.”
Papa held back his tears. “With any luck, she’ll be as talented and helpful as her big sister.”
Granny swaddled the babe and passed her into Mama’s slack arms. The baby cried as Mama unfastened her gown to feed her.
Mama beckoned Saro Jane to her side, and she obeyed. Mama brushed the baby’s cheek with her thumb. “What do you think we should call your sister?”
Saro Jane answered right away. “Hazel.”
Mama and Granny shared a laugh. Mama cupped Saro Jane’s face. “Hazel Mae. That sounds perfect.”
