Rosewater

They tell stories about me.

The children that idle on their bikes outside my house whisper rumors. They stare up at the columns that hold the house together, stained with age, and they think it barren. They place bets on the bravest who can sneak up and knock on my front door. I hear them, sometimes, from the back garden.

They sing: 

Little witch, little witch

What’s in a flower?

Little witch, little witch

What’s made you sour?

Give her a secret, don’t be shy

She’ll pat your head and tell you why 

The last witch I met ten years ago was a fragile thing covered in water lilies, pressing the green petals against her eyes. She told me they’d been hunting her for years. I know they’ve been at it much longer than that, because I know they hunted me too. In many ways, they still do, and they always will.

So when the strange boy wanders into my yard, I think very little of it.

Usually, stray visitors are victims of a lost bet: shoving teenagers converging in the bright flare of a flashlight, daring each other to touch the steel-tipped filigree of my house’s fence, bikes bent like metal corpses on the road behind them. They sing or whisper the rhyme under their breath like a curse.

This particular scrawny child is wary, and I notice an audience behind him, snickering as he walks to the gate. They are all very bright things, lacquered with youth. Heartbeats out of sync.

My fingers part the curtains. To this hushed town, I am a lovely, strange unknown, watching from the windows and waiting to snap them up. In the store when I go for groceries I am curtly spoken to, fearfully ogled. In the library when I browse for new books, since I have read all the others, I lift a hand to a spine and turn at the feel of eyes on my back. Curious neighbors, most of the time, stunned to see me out of my supposed crypt of a house. Men, on other occasions, lust swimming in their veins, beating like poison in their warm, plush hearts. I know the reaction is sometimes simply an animal one—like a cat in heat. It is the one thing I find fascinating about them: that warm stardust of want. It is implosive, destructive, and the nearest thing to a commonality we have.

So this strange, scrawny visitor standing at the garden’s edge is no more peculiar than a lone crow landing on a branch. I notice them more when they swarm, and four boys is hardly a murder. This lone crow stops short of the fence. He stares into the yard of broken-armed trees and long-dead shrubs. Behind him, the gaggle of boys cajole him to climb up and scale the iron. He steps back, shakes his head, eyes very wide. His hands bunch at the fabric of his shirt as one of the older boys grabs at him and shouts. There is much shouting. I sip my tea as a locked fist slams into his small jaw.

There is little I can do to stop it at this phase. Satisfied with their violence, the boys board their bikes and leave the small one behind. He stands slowly, watching their wheels kick up dust on the trail. He turns to see me in the window.

Blood, rich as paint, trails from his nose. 

#

I remember a time when I would have done something: stand in the doorway and catch and hold each of their gazes until they fled. Some of them shout things over the metal: “Tell us a fortune!”, “Just try and cook and eat me!” Children, although plentiful in imagination, frighten me the very least. 

When the boy returns, it is alone. I catch the shadow of him against the fence, the bruise on his face still livid, his sullen eyes fixed on the front windows. I part the curtain again, my other hand occupied by its usual cup of tea. For a short while he does not move. He sways slightly and then grabs at the metal hard enough that I hear it rattle. 

“Are you really a witch?” he shouts and it comes only slightly muffled by the aged glass between us. I take a sip of tea. He’ll leave soon enough.

Except, that he is there the next day. And the next. He waits this time, sitting with his back against the fence, and I find myself cocking my head in appraisal of the casual boldness. How naive, to turn your back on something you think is a witch. For a short while I wonder if he’ll leave, and then I catch a glimmer of movement in the woods. A laugh like a bark in the air. I am reminded of hyenas—predatory things, contrary to their scavenger reputation. They hunt in packs too.

The scrawny boy stands, panicked, as four more boys descend from the tree line. One of them drags a broken branch, swiping it violently in the dirt and air as he saunters toward him. There are words exchanged, accusations of cowardice, a sly “so this is where you’ve been hiding” voiced as an incrimination. One of the larger boys shoves the smaller one against the fence. I think once more of his bloodied nose and am reminded, vilely, of her. 

Eyes wide, empty, blood running from her mouth, my palms pounding at her unmoving chest. She will not wake. In some ways, I do not want her to.

I open the door with a swinging creak of the screen. Attentions turn to where I stand in my white dress, shoeless. The larger boy spits to the side and throws up two hands: middle fingers high. 

“I’m not afraid of you!”

Of course not. I let the door swing shut at my back. I don’t need to speak. I wait, meeting his gaze, until he cannot hold it anymore and turns to walk back down the path. He tosses the branch so that it skitters into the woods, breaking stiff boughs in its falling arc. The small boy remains. He turns back to me but my hand is already on the screen door. I wait for him to leave. For a long time he remains.

#

In the winter, my garden still blooms. The roses, you see—if you look just there, where they climb the trellis against the fogged glass of the greenhouse—have for years been getting hungry. I wonder if I should be feeding them more. Rain softly hits the roof.

I usually take breakfast there, on the small metal table bought from a highway stand, sculpted from repurposed metal. I have tea and a biscuit and a shred of uncooked steak. I drain some of the steak’s blood into the earth beneath the roses. I open a hinge above, so that they might catch some rain. It falls on their velvet, beading, slipping languid from fat, full-lipped petals.

I hear a knock on the door. My tea is halfway to my parted lips, the steam ghosting them, and I turn towards the open door of the greenhouse that leads to the hall. The mailman never knocks. He shoves the junk mail and credit card offers for the house’s past occupant into the tilting mailbox and then walks very quickly away. I suspect he comes less often than he should.

I drift back into the front room and look through the gauzy curtains to see the small one from before, the boy with the bruise. His jacket is torn. His eye is swollen. He pounds again, face screwed up, and I notice tears on his cheeks. I doubt it’s bravery that brings him here. It never is.

I open the interior door so that the screen stands between us. He watches me, wild-eyed, fisted hand falling back to his side. His voice, when it comes, is very quiet. “Are you a witch?”

I haven’t spoken in some months. I touch at my throat and shake my head. 

We hover in that in-between for a moment. 

“Can you tell fortunes?” he asks.

There are plenty of penny tellers in town that will do that for him. Assure him of a better fate, convince him his problems are near solving. I shake my head and watch as he glances back over his shoulder. He’s not frightened of me, but he’s very frightened of other things. 

“Why are you looking for a witch?” I ask. My voice is hardly soft anymore—it is breath from an old cave. His heart, in his chest, is so small. I hear the beating of it; I hear the sluicing of adrenaline in his veins. 

He swallows. So fragile, necks. “I’ll tell you a secret if you tell me a fortune.”

Such a small thing, delivering itself on a platter. No other recourse but to throw yourself at a witch and hope she doesn’t eat you. What has forced him to my door? What does he hope my fortunes will do for him?

“I don’t need a secret,” I say and I’m not sure why. I imagine her laughing over my shoulder, a hand caressing at my arm. Her old tarot deck is years unused. It’s probably been eaten at by moths or paper worms. I reach to open the screen door and he steps back. Maybe he’ll flee. Instead he glances up at me and steps into the house.

He pulls at his shirt’s edges nervously. There are holes in the bottom. What looks to be a cigarette burn mars the arm. I wonder if the skin is red and weeping beneath it. I wonder, had I a heart, if it would twist in sympathy for this boy.

I ask him: “Would you like some tea?”

#

I light a fire in the hearth. Bend before it, scratch the match against the box, toss it into the kindling. I have done this many times in many different houses over many different years. Electric, gas—they have tried to sell me on everything else but firewood. 

The boy is sitting on a plush chair, hands cupped around a steaming mug of tea. He flinches once, when I offer him a biscuit, but he takes it and chews on the edges first. Small bites, as if afraid to eat. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I prod at the fire as it grows. “For what?”

“Trespassing.”

My voice is growing less ragged. “It is only trespassing if I don’t let you in.”

I pour a cup of tea for myself and set the pot on the tray between us. The steam is thin as a veil against the chilled air. He watches me drink.

“You won’t eat me, will you?”

“No.” I gather the box from the bookshelf, brushing it of dust. He watches me pull out the deck, shuffle it in my hands, and slide it on the table between us. They are very worn and very old. I tap at the top card. “You can shuffle it now.”

He takes the deck and—of all the ridiculous things—begins to look through the cards. Face up, inspecting them. I frown but let him because while I don’t believe in these things, she believed readings should be free of control. Let them do what they want, it is their fate. So I let the boy inspect the cards and pull out two. He hands them to me. 

“I like these ones.”

“Mm …” I hum. He’s chosen the Seven of Pentacles and the Hierophant. I set them facedown between us. “What is the problem you’re trying to solve?”

“I want to know if I can talk to an angel.”

I turn over the Hierophant card. “How come?”

“So I can ask them about heaven.”

“Heaven?”

The boy slurps—a loud, childish sound—and shrugs. “If there is one. If it’s worth it.”

I turn over the Seven of Pentacles. “Why do you need me to tell you that?”

“They say you’re always right. They say you’ve killed people before and buried them in your backyard and they’re the ones who tell you the fortunes.” He studies the unused cards.

I gather the deck again and shuffle it. “What do you think a witch is, child?”

“I have a name,” he affirms. “Marshall.”

I nod. “Marshall, then.”

“A witch is a lady who can see the future.” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And do spells.”

I nod and set the cards out in a fan. “Pick four.”

He hovers over them, thinking very deeply on his decision. I sit back and wait. I want to tell him that witches can’t tell the future. No one can. 

Spells, of course, are another matter.

#

Each day after school, that same little crow winds up on my steps. He doesn’t ask for readings every day, but he does ask for tea. I indulge him, but I am starting to run out of tea leaves to steep. 

I don’t know how to scare him away. For two days, I don’t open the door. But I still hear her memory at my ear, her breath warm: he just wants a friend. 

I want to remind her that I’ve nothing of friendship in me. 

But I do find out that he’s insufferably curious and, when comfortable, entirely too talkative. I notice bruises on his arms. I start to wonder; and that warm clot of anger sticks in my throat like a wad of blood one night. I stare out the window into the dark long after he’s left, imagining how it is that progeny should ever suffer at the hands of their predecessors. I suppose reptiles eat their young. Some animals leave the weak ones to die. It is the way of things. A little crow in my garden with broken wings is no reason to rue on injustice. It is not my place and it never was.

I do, out of perhaps some small light of pity, show him the garden. He squats over the pots of mint in the greenhouse, and watches with hands pressed to his knees as I snip at the leaves to wash and add to our tea. He asks how they grow. He asks, one day, after the roses.  

“Someone very special gave them to me.” I say to him as we stand, side-by-side, staring up at the curl of their vines on the trellis.

“I thought roses grew on bushes?”

“These are very special roses.” And, because I can, I add: “Witch’s roses.”

He steps to touch at one of the petals. “They smell like blood.”

I look to the flowers with him. Curious he should know the smell of blood so well.

“Where do you live, Marshall?”

“I can’t tell a stranger that.” 

“No, of course not.” I smile, entertained, because he’s made himself fairly at home in a stranger’s house, with no qualms at all, but I don’t argue. He takes my hand. I’m startled by the motion, and want in that moment to rip myself away and scowl at him. But his hand is so small, and very warm. He looks up at me. He can’t be older than ten.

“Can I tell your fortune this time?” he asks.

He will be very bad at it. “Why not?”

#

I go into town to buy more tea, and I figure I might as well grab things for him to eat too. Crackers, some small pouches of fruit-shaped gummed things. I frown as I inspect the ingredients. I opt to grab apples and oranges and bananas as an alternative. From the hardware store, I buy seed packets and a pair of child’s gardening gloves.

I show him how to plant. 

We sit in the greenhouse and fill the indents of old egg cartons with dirt and seeds. They won’t all take, I tell him, but we’ll work with the ones that do. He asks if we can plant coriander, lavender, and thyme. Of course. We plant a dozen of each. It’s a wonder he knows what they are, but he says he’s been reading recipe books, because it’s all his parents really have. 

“I can’t find anything about witch’s roses,” he says. 

“That’s because they’re one of a kind.”

“How did your friend grow them?”

“Patience.” I touch a bloom gently with a gloved finger. More than patience, of course. Practice. Love. I help oversee his watering of the seeds and then—reluctantly, but once again I feel somehow compelled to—I show him to the room I have repurposed into a library. My personal collection of favorites.

“You can take one book home,” I tell him. “If you swear to bring it back.”

I let him leave with two.

#

Spring is, perhaps, my least favorite season. When I start to see the buds on the trees—dainty little nubs—I squeeze at some of them until they bleed water and green viscera. It’s an old habit. I used to get scolded for it: a hand resting on mine, asking me to let them live.

Since it has been some months now, Marshall has ceased knocking altogether and simply lets himself in. I could be sitting in the parlor, or the library, or my room, and I will hear him call out for me and I’ll have to set down my book and tend to whatever questions he has that day. 

His teachers, he tells me, think him rather dull. He’s quiet. Contemplative. Reading is difficult for him. So we sit by the ash-empty hearth and I’ll read him words from my books, much older tales of woodland creatures long dead, or long thought dead. I wonder if he’ll wield these new stories like little knives in his essays, make his teachers wither under the implications of their supposed myths. He is fascinated by the stories about faeries. Not lithe, beautiful beings, but cavern-mouthed creatures with toadstools sprouting from their sharply-jointed limbs, creatures with moss knotting their hair who curse interlopers on their land.

#

One day, Marshall does not come. 

It has been, so far, like clockwork: three in the afternoon, once school lets out, and he leaves before dark. I look for him out the window, glance at the clock, and wait. Night falls and there is still no Marshall. He’s absent again the next day. And the next. I start to wonder if he’s gotten a spring cold, or some other human malady. Children are always slightly unhygienic, aren’t they? A bit leaky. He has a bad habit of wiping his running nose on his arms. 

Unfortunately, worry begins to claw its way into the cavity of my chest by the third day. I wait with the door open, the book before me largely unread, as I stare at the empty porch and wait for the boy who should be on it. 

He comes, inexplicably, during the evening. Just as I start to light the candles in the foyer window, I hear a soft knock at the door. I see his shape through the screen as a dark, tiny blur.

He wears a beaten baseball cap but I can tell something has been done to his hair. I say nothing of it as I let him in. He limps slightly. I watch as he shuffles into the chair he always claims by the hearth’s side and curls up tight against himself. 

I bend down before him and lift at the cap.

His head has been crudely shaved, the dull iron teeth of the electric razor cutting his scalp in places that had just only recently healed. Some are still raw and very red. 

“Who did this?” I ask.

It takes him a while to answer. “She said it was too long.”

“Who?”

“Ma.”

Yarrow and woad, I hear her in my head, mashed pumpkin. I rise for the greenhouse and numbly snip at the woad and yarrow, and check the patch of winter gourds that grows at the edge of the garden, but there are none left. I press the cut leaves into the mortar to grind with some clay and then I ask if I can apply some of this to the wounds. I wrap his head with a scarf, the quiet stretched and thin between the both of us.

“Tea?” I ask.

He nods. 

That night, I let him sleep in the library, tossing blankets in and hoping he can make his own little nest. I wonder, just briefly, if his parents will try to come find him. I realize I don’t give a damn. I spend that night on the old, fat-headed computer that I haven’t fired up in nearly two years, scrolling down ad-clogged webpages to read up on what this country has in place for laws to help children. I wonder if I can make an anonymous tip to the police and why his teachers have not noticed.

I imagine how long he has lived in a house that does not love him, and I want to promise him that he will find one, someday, that does.

#

When spring has wiped all traces of winter away, I begin to notice the eyes in the woods. Watchful, careful, calculating. Marshall is telling me a story when I first see them. They settle on the tree branches and do not bode well. I’ve seen them before, heard the sharp fox-cry of their warnings. Death.

A week ago, I called the police station from a garbled pay phone, quarters cold in my palm, to explain that I heard shouting from the house where Marshall lives. He has still not told me the address, but I have, of course, been able to find it.

When next he visits, I ask if he’s had any visitors lately. He says yes, he has, a nice police lady came by. His father was very angry. “When he gets mad, I hide.”

“Where do you hide?” I pour his tea.

“A tree. A really big one. If I don’t …” Marshall pauses here, gaze shifting downward. “Mom gets really mad when she can’t find me. She says it’s my fault when she gets hurt, so I have to stay, because that’s what sons do. I’m supposed to protect her.”

I want to laugh. Humans are such fascinating puzzles. At least with beasts, the actions lack forethought. They eat the young when they are hungry. It is survival. It is survival here too, I suppose, but there is a wretchedness to it. 

The next night—and do not hold this too against me—I walk the woods to see his house.

It’s visible from the road, but just barely. Dried ivy crawls up the sides. Beat-up cars spotted with rust crowd the yard. Some of their hoods are open and gaping, like jaws pried wide. The screens are torn in the windows.

His father is a wraith-like man with greasy hair. Anger rolls off of him as he shouts for his wife, a similarly thin woman. They fight very loudly, barking like mad dogs. Marshall sits before a blaring television, face lit with the white-blue of its glow, hands curled around a stuffed bear that is missing an eye. I soon hear a door slam and see Marshall cower. His father enters, loud as a musket ball, red-faced, and I think of other men I’ve watched at hunting parties shooting down smaller things; that gloat as the pheasant falls from the sky.

The bear is wrenched from Marshall’s hands. 

I land on the rooftop with a thud. Sound in the house stops but for the television. Just a cartoon-voice and slapstick music. The night is dark around me. I stand on the rotting shingles as a door bangs open and the father steps into the night. He holds a shotgun limply, whistling out, spinning to aim at the roof. I crouch low and wait. 

“If that’s you, Barry, you better have that seventeen for me!”

Silence. I can smell the liquor in his blood. He stands on the porch for a few moments, listing slightly, and mumbles something about coyotes. When he retreats inside, I wait still. I wait until there is no more shouting, until I hear only the snoring of the man asleep on the sofa. I slink down to peer in a greasy window to see Marshall curled on a mattress on the floor staring at the ceiling. His mother is passed out in a chair with the television still on. She smells putrid.

His breathing is erratic for most of the night. He falls asleep eventually, but only for a short while.

#

I buy him paints, because I start to fear the house is becoming too boring.

He sits on the back porch, legs kicking, sketching and then slapping color on what I imagine are supposed to be flowers. I tell him—because really, what choice do I have?—that they are lovely whenever he asks me what I think. The canvases are starting to pile up, some wasted with only half sketches.  

The works he does actually finish I start to put on the walls of the library, stack in the greenhouse. They aren’t very good, but at the same time I find them inexplicably wonderful. I can’t pinpoint what about the sloppy, premature art speaks to me, but it does. I usually have better taste than this.

School is nearing a release schedule of a sort, where all the children are free to run rampant around the town, so Marshall asks if he can come during the day now. It hardly matters. I don’t bother locking my doors. 

“Pa thinks something’s hunting him,” he informs me one evening as we take tea on the porch. The fireflies are too numerous for this time of year yet. He hasn’t noticed that some of them are eyes, but I do. 

“Hunting him?” I ask. 

“He says it might be a bear.”

“A bear?” I could be offended, if I cared enough.

“Or a really big bat. I hear it sometimes, on the roof.”

“What do you think it is?”

He shrugs. “An angel.”

I wait for him to continue. He doesn’t. “What do you think angels are?”

“They protect you. That’s what Mom used to tell me.”

I let him think that that’s exactly what angels do.

#

Food has always been a strange, foreign necessity. 

I like cake—genuinely, I do—and sometimes meats seared or served raw. I’ve come to love tea, of course, and biscuits. I can’t turn away a good soup. I know how to cook well enough to serve others, because I find the preparation of it fascinating. I used to watch her in the kitchen, her hair tied in a bun, lovely skin slick from the fire.

In essence, the kitchen I have now is spiritually the same as that one. I’ve recreated it perhaps a dozen times in every new house. At first, I wanted to imagine her standing in it, fire-lit and coyly asking me what I was looking at when I watched her cook. I imagine her licking at a nick on a finger and then how I’d circle my arms on her waist and bring the blood to my mouth. In each iteration since she has slowly faded from view, and I am left with only an understanding that I have, like a dog, spun in the same circles without laying down.

That night I clean up the dishes from a stew. Night has settled. The windows are open, so I hear the footfalls in the forest. 

A bear, I think, because the steps are loud like a predator's would be. I stop scrubbing at the bowl, hands still sud-covered, and walk slowly to the front door. Branches break in the woods. The fireflies no longer glow. The forest is very quiet.

Panic is a slow bleed; I feel it as an unused muscle starting to stretch as I toe quietly around the front room, eyes trained on the woods through the parted curtains, trying to find lights or the glint of moonlight on knives or swords or, more likely, of course—gun muzzles. 

Glass shattering. I swivel and turn to the greenhouse door and see a bright flare in the foggy glass. Something has been tossed through the window, and I rush in to find it: a small bottle clogged with a rag, burning. 

I dart to lift the meager weapon, hands blistering, and toss it back out into the woods. There is a clamoring, the cursing of young boys. I smell them then—sweat, adrenaline, intent. The huff of another fire stakes my attention to the side. I push out from the greenhouse door as another bottle of fire sails past me. 

Something collides with my skull. A heavy something, making me shift only thanks to the weight of it. I press at the tiny indent in my head that is slowly punching itself back out into its proper shape, like a ball re-inflated.

“Don’t hurt her!” I hear the voice call and turn to see the shadows of four boys, one of them smaller than the rest. “You swore you wouldn’t hurt her!” It’s Marshall. He’s tried to grip the coat sleeves of one of the other boys, who quickly shoves him off. 

“She’s a witch,” the larger boy shouts. “Let’s see if she bleeds like one.”

This boy draws out a knife, flicking it open. I have half a mind to let the pest stab me. 

“No, no!” Marshall is gathering himself from the ground, scrambling towards me. Why is he with them? The large boy wields the knife threateningly in my face, as if I should cower, and then presses the tip of it to my chest. Where does he get the boldness? The others circle.

“I’ve never seen what a witch has under their dresses. I thought they were all old hags.”

I stare at him. He wavers, falling back a little, the knife lifting from my skin. 

I am tired of petty boys who grow into cruel men. I grab at the knife and rip it from him. The blade slices my empty skin and I toss it aside. My hand grabs at his throat. 

“Leave.” 

He scrabbles at that hand, wide-eyed, as the boys around him begin to bark out that I need to let him go or else. Or else what? 

“You are still a child,” I tell him. “Come here again, and I will treat you as I would any other man.”

When I let him go he falls to the ground and his hand goes immediately to his throat. There is new fear in his eyes now. I remember the first time I saw that fear take shape and how lovely it was.

One of the other boys charges and grabs for my arm. I wrench his back with a snap and he falls, wailing. I should leave them better off than when I found them. I bend to the broken-armed boy. “Why don’t you sing that rhyme for me?”

“W-what?” He winces, pushing away from me with his feet. “You’re crazy! Bitch!”

I cock my head to the side. “It goes ‘little witch, little witch.’” His pulse is so fast. His skin is so thin. I place my hand placatingly on his head. “If you threaten me or any woman ever again, I will make sure your insides turn to acid.”

He stands and stares at me, breathing out, and then he runs. The rest of them are fleeing now, rushing back into the woods, but for Marshall. Behind me, a fire is burning brighter, licking at the greenhouse walls.

The roses. 

I spin to them. The blaze is growing, eating leaves and petals, and all I can see in it is her. I am back there: fire-sick and wearing her blood. They circle us on horses and I cry out over what will soon be her corpse. Cruelty, I have seen. But until that night, I had only known it as one understands storms that hit the plains. But when I learn what has been done to her, I know that cruelty is mine to call on too.

I fall to my knees before the fire. They were what I had left of her. I hear footsteps at my side as it burns, as Marshall squats down. “I’m sorry. They said they just wanted to meet you. They told me …”

“Leave.” 

He does not move. I shout at him, teeth serrating my lips, and he trips over a rock as I loom over him. I can hear the pounding of his little heart. His head has healed some, the hair growing slightly back. He no doubt still has the scarf I used to wrap it. And in that moment I am more angry at him than I have been at anything in a very long time.

He scuttles to stand and then he runs.

#

I have killed before. I’m sure that comes as no surprise. 

I had killed for years before I grew bored of bending necks back, of the vile sound of blood pumping from holes in a twitching throat. I had not killed with much purpose until her. 

We lived quiet lives. I didn’t understand hatred then, because what I always felt for warm flesh was indifference. It twitched and lived while I fed on it, until I made it go still. And oh, don’t they warn of love. Love that will destroy us, fetter us to rage. She had grown love in me. There was nothing in the world that I cherished more than our little hut, her hands working tiny spells in the air. The smell of her hair.

When they came, I was not there. If I had been, they would not have done what they did to her and then gloated about it afterwards, threatening me with the same. I held her, skin slick with blood, gasping out as I understood the brutality of their violations. When one of them tugged at my hair, I whirled and punched through him, breaking skin and muscle and bone. He fell, gaping, and so I bent to tear open his rib cage with all the strength it takes to press down the wings of a butterfly. 

I do this with all of them, even the ones that try to flee. There is no malice in it, in the end, there is only that small fire of necessity. I, too, am simply a hungry wolf. Blood-doused and docile from the hunt, I take each heart and bury it beneath her roses. 

Her, I lift and take to our garden. Her, I dress and build a pyre for and set the stakes to flame. They said they did it because she was a witch. But really, they did it because they could.

Days later, others would find the corpses of their brothers, fathers, sons splayed on the grass and pecked at by scavengers. They imagine that there is some beast in the woods, hunting them. They will call it many names.

#

I salvage some of the roots. 

I pull them, still slightly green, from the ashen ground. I set them in water and wait. Anger has left me fairly hollow as I sip my tea and nibble at the steak and drip its blood into the water. 

Marshall does not come back. 

I realize this one day as I pass the paintings. I frown. Should I tear them down? Burn them? Wretched little beast. But I also understand—reluctantly, of course—that he’s very young, and thus very stupid. He is prone to making mistakes, and I am far too old to hold grievances with the young. I keep the paintings up.

It isn’t much later I hear a knock on my door. I expect Marshall but open the door to blue uniforms. Police. They ask if they can come in and I say of course. 

Will they ask me about the boys I threatened, or why there’s been a fire in my greenhouse? Surprisingly, it is none of these things. They ask me about Marshall.

“His teachers say you used to let him borrow books,” the woman says, serious as she circles my living room, examining everything from candles to framed paintings. I have no photographs on the walls. 

“Yes, he owes me some still.” Three, last I counted. 

“When was the last time you saw Marshall?”

“A week ago.”

“Do you know if he had any places he might go, if he were scared?”

“Scared?” I’ve offered them tea but neither of them drink it. They are clearly unsettled and skittish and I remember that even if they are not children, all humans are still very young. There is a look exchanged between them. 

“His father was found…deceased…this morning. We believe Marshall may know something.”

Curious, I stare at them. This clearly makes them even more nervous. I must appear like an owl to them, cock-eyed and unblinking. “He’s a child.” 

A nod. “We understand that…”

I set my cup down. “Have you investigated the house?”

“We … yes.”

“And you don’t suspect the mother?”

“Please. If you know anything …” The woman leans forward, ignoring my question. “We’d like to speak with him very much. He’s not in trouble.”

I nod and smile without teeth. Liars. They leave and sit in the car for a long while, looking furtively my way every so often. Arms crossed, I clench fists at the fabric of my sleeves. Stupid boy. Brave, but very stupid.

That night, I hunt once more. Not for flesh this time; at least, not to feed on it. I hunt for a small heartbeat very familiar to me now.

The house is exactly the same as the last time I left it: screen-windows torn, ivy—now green—climbing higher to the roof. It has enveloped some of the cars as well, and I place a hand on the rusting metal and look for signs of freshly dug earth. I sniff for blood. And there is blood here, quite a bit of it, all melding together so I cannot tell if any is his. Police have cordoned off the perimeter of the house. I see a car hidden down the road some, hear the thud of the heavy heartbeat within. An officer, I assume.

The room Marshall sleeps in is empty, the mattress shoved against the wall. And suddenly the absence brings me there again, fist chest-deep in a wicked man. I skirt along the house’s edge and catch sight of something lying in the overgrown grass: the glint of a marbled eye. I bend to see a stuffed bear. Its arm is torn and there is red there, a crude hand print on the side. They have not canvassed thoroughly enough.

The blood is not fresh, but it’s not all that old. The bear comes with me as I flit through the woods, trying to catch a scent, to understand where a little boy might have gone, to outrun a house that never loved him, to outrun a desperate act. 

A tree. A really big one.

I hear it then: his heartbeat. Slow, as if in sleep, so bare that it’s no wonder I didn’t notice it before. It is deeper in the woods, alone, and I slip towards it, dragging bent fingers over moss, to find a large tree with knobbed roots.

“Little crow?” I whisper into the dark.

There is no answer but I hear a rustling of leaves and pull at some of the vines that have crawled up the length of the tree, sheltering its hollowed center from view. There, crowded by molding wood, is the shadowed form of a child. I close my fingers around a small, cold wrist. 

He wakes as I reach to gently lift him from the tree’s hollow. Blood stains his shirt. He is not breathing right. I give him the bear and he takes it. He stares up at the stars and asks if I’m not a witch, but an angel.

“Neither,” I tell him. 

I do not ask him what has happened. I do not ask him what he’s done.

I know much of cruelty, but that night I know only of mercy.

#

Fifteen years later

“Do they need a refill, do you think?” Marshall stands poised over the glass jar, hands clasped behind his back.

I wave him away. The book I’m reading is very good.

“I’m just imagining them wilting then?” He holds the jar up, examining the cloudy yellow water that holds the spreading roots. I see him set it back down and tuck a cloth underneath it. He joins me near the window and parts at the curtain, frowning at the sun. “Shall I get things started down there?”

“I did the cuttings last night.” I speak from behind the book. 

“I need to flip the sign,” he says, tilting his head towards me. “Unlock the door.”

“You can do that yourself, can’t you?”

“I thought you had readings to set up for?”

I set the book down. “At noon.”

“It’s nearly 11:30.”

Ridiculous. Time matters now, does it? All these years, and I’ve rarely had to worry about time until these last few, when I’ve had to fuss over a human that time matters to very much. I set the bookmark in between the pages. 

By the time Marshall arrives at the front door, our first customer is already waiting.

“Mrs. Ng.” I nod to her as Marshall unlocks the door. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too, dear. I’m a little early.”

“We’re a little late.” Marshall doesn’t bother to give me a pointed look, he just smiles grimly. I look at him over my sunglasses. All these years later, and he remains as bold as the boy who knocked on my door all those years ago. I wonder if I should have been less soft, sometimes, but remind myself there are still scars on his scalp where the hair grows a little unevenly.

He gets the door open and holds it for her and I and then steps in after us, flipping the wooden sign to open.

“I got an email saying the delivery came in?” Mrs. Ng tests. 

I wave a hand. “Yes. Marshall can help you with that.” 

I let him deal with the computer, entering the woman’s information and ‘pulling up’ her order on the crisp new silver monitor. I don’t even want to touch the damned thing. 

It’s a small shop—quaint, I would say. Marshall and I have run it for a year now. It was, as most things are, his idea. I’m not at all fond of his newfound entrepreneurial streak. Business matters move far too quickly for my taste. There are a lot of fast-talking people eager to rent you shacks and call them ‘luxury.’ I can’t help but scowl and press at the soft wood and play at the rickety doors and rub the peeling paint between my fingers while he asks after rates and services and the costs of materials.

Marshall tells me I frighten people. I remind him that is half the point.

The bell chimes at Mrs. Ng’s departure as I check on the roses that grow in the back. We have some here and in the apartment above. We feed them only when we need to.

“Mom,” he calls out. I turn. It was strange the day I first heard him say it, when he was twelve, and it remains maddening to hear him say it at twenty-four. I suppose I have more in common with humans than I like to think I do. Motherhood is not one of those things—I’ve had to build that myself. “Someone’s here for a reading.”

“They can wait.” Why must everything be so rushed? Yes, well, because for Marshall and everyone else here, time moves much more quickly. I feel like molasses in comparison—a boulder he’s been trying to make grow legs. I try not to think of his aging as anything more than a problem of the future. It has already gone so quickly. I’ve had to learn about absurdly human needs, like doctors and macaroni and cheese. One day, I will miss him very much.

I draw the cards from the shelf.

To this day, they tell stories about me.

The stories go like this: