Chapter 24
Carrie
Sometimes he would be gone for days, and she would wait for him. Wait for him to court her and bring her back pieces of the mountain. Stone, leaf, flower, a sketch of some forgotten, wild place up there.
—Nora Morgan, May 20, 1918
The snow falls steadily for the next two weeks as we glide further into November, my heart falling with it. His hand occasionally brushes mine as we pass each other, like when we converge on the kitchen at the same time to make a hot drink. Sometimes I catch him looking at me, a small smile on his face, and the heat instantly floods my veins. We call out the wrong answers to the quizzes on the tinny radio and have endless debates about what’s better, doughnuts or cookies. When I have to climb a ladder to reach a second-story window, the feel of his hands bracing my waist leaves me dizzy.
We talk about everything. Slowly at first, then more openly. About our childhoods, our families. He asks me hesitantly about the Morgan Compendium, and I tell him about reading it when I was younger, about Cora keeping it hidden now. He grows thoughtful, a frown pinching his features, when we talk about the stories of people going missing in the mountains, like Henri. Hikers, the brokenhearted—tales of the lost are scattered throughout the history of Woodsmoke. But he brightens when he shares details about his brother—his auburn hair and wicked sense of humor, how he liked cricket and reading. We discuss the winter in the mountains, how fresh and renewing it is. He tells me about the other birds he’s found on his walks, and he shows me the pictures he managed to take before the flame-colored thrush we watched finally left.
What I don’t tell him is that he is becoming the siren call to the cottage each day, luring me deeper into this winter. When I woke up two days ago, my fingers had found my set of pencils and sketch pad and were tracing the shape of a dream on the paper before I had even fully greeted the morning. I don’t tell him that I hadn’t picked up my pencils since I returned here—longer than that even. I don’t tell him that he is coaxing out my true nature in the midst of all this frost.
I don’t dwell on the conversation with Tom, and no messages from Jess show up on my silent phone. I realize that our friendship is never going to restart and I have to accept that. On the few trips I make into Woodsmoke, I keep my eyes pinned to my boots and sweep in and out of shops like I’m stealing. No one tries to strike up a conversation or even shows that they know who I am. I wonder if Jess has changed, if she’s spread some poison about me among everyone in town. Or perhaps the other girls I knew back then, Gillian and Amy, did that. Then I shrug off my suspicions and find myself again as I drive away from the center of town.
One day in the second week after we saw the thrush, Matthieu leans over me as I chatter about something inconsequential—maybe paint colors? And I feel his fingers brush the shell of my ear. My heart stutters and I falter, electricity zipping through my veins.
“Some plaster dust. It fell in your hair,”
he says, his voice low and close.
I swallow, tilting my head toward him. His face is so close to mine, I can see the depth of color in his eyes, the kaleidoscope of darkest blues and charcoal and gray . . .
“Thank you,”
I say softly, my eyes flickering to his mouth, then back up to his eyes. If I leaned in a little closer, if I closed this small distance between us, what would he taste like? What would his mouth feel like on mine?
My phone trills suddenly, breaking the moment, and I fumble for it in my dungarees pocket, heat flooding my face. Matthieu moves away, and I answer a call from my dad, who’s checking in on the renovation, asking how it’s going. After I hang up the call, I realize I don’t remember a single word of what was said.
In the third week after we saw the thrush, the sun brightens a little, the wind stills her temper, and the frost thaws on the ground. As I begin the work for the day, clearing out the kitchen so the carpenter can fit the worktops, I don’t worry that Matthieu doesn’t turn up. Not even as the sun climbs higher on the bright late November day and the snow melts into sullen sludge.
It’s not until I leave the carpenter to it and check my phone for the time that I see it’s three o’clock. Matthieu hasn’t messaged. It still nettles me when I change clothes later back in the caravan, and later when I start tracing the lines of the pencil drawing I worked on at dawn.
“It’s just not like you . . .”
I say as the sky darkens outside. I peer out, narrowing my gaze, seeking out the blurred edges of the field. My fingers slip over my phone, light it up, then pocket it again. I’m not going to call him, but I feel a little let down. I thought we’d reached an understanding since the day we walked up the mountain and saw that bird together. I thought that maybe we might be more than friends.
When I search for tea bags and realize I’m out, I take that as a sign. In minutes, my boots are on, my coat shrugged over my shoulders, and I’m setting off, into the gloaming.
My knock is less hesitant than the first time several weeks ago. When Cora opens the door, her surprise is genuine.
“Witchy intuition failing you?”
I ask with a smile. She crumples slightly, as though she’d been bracing herself for this.
“Carrie,”
she says, relief softening her. She’s aged in a few weeks. Her features are dimpled with deep wrinkles, and her skin is gray as porridge. I blink, hiding my shock, and she reaches for my hand, my arm, grasping me as though she’s drowning. As though this moment is her first gasp of air in a month. “I didn’t know if—I didn’t think—”
“Kettle on?”
I ask, moving past her, pulling off my boots to walk through her clinically clean home. “I’m out of tea bags. Figured it was time I stopped by.”
She fusses around me in the kitchen, pulling out mugs and tea and milk. When we settle in the lounge, the loudest sound in the house—just as it’s always been—is the ticking clock on the mantlepiece, marking the steady buildup of seconds. I can’t understand how it doesn’t drive Cora completely mad.
“How is the cottage coming along?”
she asks now as she spoons sugar into her mug, even though she doesn’t take sugar anymore. Not usually. She clatters the teaspoon in swift little circles, placing it precisely back on the tray when she’s done.
“Quickly. It’s . . . there’s not much left to do.”
I take a gulp of tea. “I can get it on the market in January or February most likely. Should be ready for photos by then.”
She sighs, taking an efficient sip of tea. “I suppose you’ve had help.”
“Matthieu? Yes, he’s been a great help.”
I steady my voice, bracing my hands around the mug. I remember Howard’s words, how he asked me when Matthieu appeared, how I told him Matthieu seemed to arrive with the frost. I take a sip, then set the mug down on the coffee table. “Couldn’t have done it all without him.”
“Not there today, though, I imagine,”
Cora says in clipped tones, turning beady eyes on me. “I expect you haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“How . . .”
She places her cup on the coffee table and points at the window. It’s dark outside, but she hasn’t drawn the curtains. Still, I know what the window would show. The perfect picture of a thawed driveway, rivulets of water pooling at the edges.
“What happens when the frost thaws, Carrie?”
I shake my head, a tiny puffing laugh escaping me. “Come on, Cora—”
“I’m right, though, aren’t I? You haven’t seen him. I bet he hasn’t messaged, hasn’t called.”
She leans toward me. “It’s why you’re really here. You believe because you’re a Morgan. You can’t deny your own blood. It’s who you are. Those stories, the mountains, are what both of us are made from. The stuff of our blood and bones.”
“Cora, please—”
“Could you even tell me his last name?”
I shake my head, pursing my lips.
Cora sips her tea, watching me. “I don’t say it to hurt you, dear one. Quite the opposite.”
“They’re not all real,”
I say suddenly, picking up my mug with a jerking swipe that makes the tea slosh out. I stare for a moment at the tea splatters pooling in clouds on the coffee table. “Sometimes—sometimes someone really does go missing, and there are reasonable explanations. A slip from the path, a twisted ankle—”
Cora cackles. “Don’t be so daft, girl. Of course they’re real. Every tale in the book is true, every working, every potion written down, passed from hand to hand . . .”
Her eyes soften, growing misty. “It’ll be yours one day. You can pass it down to your granddaughter—”
I stand abruptly and go to the kitchen, where I grab a cloth, hold it under the running tap, then squeeze it out. My breath is coming a little too quick, and my shoulders are hunched around my ears. I’ve had a lifetime of Cora’s warnings, Ivy’s too. She even included one in her will, reminding me to greet the mountains on my return. Her letter now echoes in Cora’s words.
It was Cora who told me on my twelfth birthday that I was about to meet my first love in the orchard. My mum’s eyes darted to her aunt in warning as she quickly lit the candles on my cake, then drew everyone around to sing “Happy Birthday.”
I met Tom in the orchard three days later. He was stealing apples from the tree in our garden, five of the best ones my mum had been saving for an autumn pie, letting them ripen up before picking. I knew him from school, but not that well. He was one of the kids who populated the backdrop of my life—or rather, I appeared only in the backdrop of theirs.
I pelted him with conkers that day, and he just winked at me as he took a big, juicy bite. The tartness made him gag, and I doubled over laughing. He spat out the apple bite, and rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth, he started laughing too.
“Cooking apples!”
I said, walking over to him. “What was it, Tom Gray? A dare?”
He nodded, dropping the rest of the apples into my hands. “Billy bet me a fiver I wouldn’t even climb the wall. Said you Morgans are all witches who eat your husbands’ hearts.”
“And you didn’t believe him?”
I asked, tossing my hair. I had outlined my eyes perfectly that day with a sweep of dark kohl and thickly applied mascara I’d stolen from Mum’s dressing table. I looked the part. “You should see the book.”
“It’s true, then,”
he said, his grin lighting him up. My heart skipped as he placed the last apple in my arms, then leaned forward to kiss my cheek. My blush was instant, and scarlet heat flushed my skin. “That was the second bet. That I wouldn’t kiss you.”
Then he was gone, racing for the fence, slipping over it to sprint up the lane. I remember that first kiss every time I smell apple pie. Cora didn’t mean to curse me, but in a way that’s exactly what she did.
I march back into the lounge to clean up the spilled tea and drag my mind back into the present, back to Matthieu. I eye her, this woman with her stories and her curses, and I draw in a breath. Cora is old. And in light of what Howard told me about her, and what the man in the hardware store said . . . I pause, stilling any retorts before they burst out of me. It would do no good to upset her by letting them out. It would just be noise.
“Cora, I respect all of it, truly. But this is different. I’ll go and find him—tomorrow, at first light. He lives in the first cabin up the mountain trail from Ivy’s field, the Vickers cabin. I found it with Jess and Tom when we were younger. It’s not far,”
I say to her quietly, decisively. “Thank you for the tea.”
“Be careful, Carrie,”
she says. “Please, my girl, if you must go there, don’t stray from the path. Don’t follow any shouts or calls. Don’t . . . don’t believe everything you see and hear.”
I don’t wait for her to say anything more. I don’t wait for her to tell me I’m wasting my time, or that I shouldn’t go looking for someone who is not even real. I don’t want to hear her tell me that he’s some vengeful spirit, the mountains made flesh. I don’t want to hear any more curses fall from her lips, or any more stories of broken hearts and lost loves. I pull on my boots and set out into the gathering night, making my way back through the mud-slicked fields to the caravan.