“You ought to know better than to repeat things you hear from a stranger in the woods,” Ezra said, too sober for my liking.
“Normally I would agree, but this particular stranger can make plants move.”
He let out a tiny laugh I found immensely comforting. “Is that how you’re evaluating one’s authority these days?”
“I have little else to evaluate you by. You live in a shack.”
“In a barn.”
“And in the woods.”
“In a hammock. A perfectly nice hammock I wove myself. And I’ll have you know that I can do far more than make plants move. It’s only that I’m so often surrounded by plants.”
I didn’t like the thought of him having no place of his own, no bed of his own. No one in particular to care for him. “Why do you live here? In Frostbrook?”
“It’s as good a place as any. Beatrice doesn’t mind that I haven’t had formal training at a house of healing. I can start my life here. A quiet, simple life helping people. Once I get good enough, I’ll travel as a healer.”
He sounded so wistful, and I wondered if his life could ever be quiet or simple if there were people in the world who wanted him extinguished.
A small frown formed at his brow, as if he could read my thoughts.
“Can you read my thoughts?” I asked, already succumbing to a feverish blush. I’d had more than a few thoughts I didn’t care for him to hear.
“No, but I know that sad look.” He flicked a twig at me. It missed. “Quit feeling sorry for me.”
It was my turn to smile. I’d nearly forgotten how we’d arrived here, that I’d heard voices in the woods. He bowed his head, fidgeting with some dead leaves that briefly rose and swirled between his hands as if blown by a tiny tempest.
“Who taught you how to do these things?” I asked.
“The trees did. The air did. My mother did, too.” He was murmuring, gaze on the leaves and his hands. There was something private about it that made me think I ought to look away.
But I didn’t.
“Can you talk to them?”
This time, his laugh was so loud that I threw myself forward and covered his mouth with my hand. His breath was hot and his lips soft, and I snatched my hand back as if I’d touched glowing coals. “Idiot,” I whispered.
“I can’ttalkto trees,” he murmured with a smile that made my insides swoop.
“Why is that so absurd? They certainly do what you tell them to do.”
“It’s not words. It’s … it’s a feeling. It’s asking and offering. I don’t know,” he said, studying his fingers.
I wanted to take his hand, but forced myself not to. “Does Beatrice know?”
“No. She’s good-hearted, but I don’t imagine she’d want me around newborn babes if she knew I had wild magic in me. Superstition lingers.”
I knew the nursery songs and the stories meant to keep children in their beds at night. Animators had snatched babes from their cribs to sacrifice them. They called on shadows to steal the breath from those who slept with the window open on nights with no moon.
The stories had frightened me. But then … that had been the intention, I realized with a start. Stories had purpose. They taught you to fear.
They justified murder.
“People called me a witch when I was little,” I offered, patting my curls clumsily and trying not to dwell on the fact that I’d never questioned how Animators could all be evil. “There’s a story about—”
“A woman who killed so many that she bathed in blood, and her children and their children and all their children for the rest of time were cursed with hair the color of lifeblood.”
“I’m not sure it was always told so extravagantly, but yes.”
