The woman’s face hardened to a beautiful edge. “No,” she agreed with just as much venom. “I suppose you don’t anymore. You should be careful, Lily.Those who hunt alone often starve.”
My mother narrowed her eyes. “I don’t hunt anymore. But if I catch you near me or Piers again, I’ll expose us all. You know I can.”
The woman tapped a finger against her arm before finally speaking. “When he finds out, this man of yours—and he will—he dies. Do you understand?”
My mother didn’t respond.
“Lily, promise me, and I won’t tell them where you are. If you don’t, I can’t stop them—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, her shoulders sagging, beaten. “I understand.”
The tall woman sighed. “Educate her while there’s still time. At the very least, explain what’s happening to her. She’s more lost than you ever were. We need her, Lily.”
Angry tears slipped down my mother’s face. “Go,” she answered through gritted teeth, her head hanging. “Just go.”
I watched as the other woman spun away from the kitchen, heading toward the door. Ducking, I stumbled a few steps into the grass before the sliding door opened and she stepped out, mymother behind her. She looked between us, her face suddenly uncertain. “Your…auntwas just leaving. Say goodbye, Piers.”
I waved as she started past me. The glass door slammed, my mother retreating into the house. The woman paused in the yard, beckoning, and I approached her. “Piers—that’s an unusual name,” she said.
“It’s for boys,” I told her.
“Is that what you think?” She eyed me skeptically.
I nodded. “Mommy wanted a boy instead of me. She said so.”
Her eyes softened. “Your mother loves you, child, whatever foolishness she speaks.” Her fingers toyed with a lock of my hair, nearly identical to her own.
“But…” I whispered, confessional, “I did a bad thing.”
Her eyes flared wider, flicking to the house and back. “Did you now?”
I nodded slowly, brimming with unexpected tears.
She brushed them away with the end of her scarf. It smelled of plums and rosemary. “There now. We mustn’t cry over spilt milk. Was this very recently?”
I craned up at her, my neck crunching behind the weight of my head as I shook it from side to side.
Her eyes glittered like something shimmering in the dark. “Did he hurt you, the bad thing you did? Did he hurt you first?”
I gaped, my mouth a porthole—how did she know?—and shook my head again.
“I bet,” she began, “that if you think very hard, you’ll find he hurt someone even if it wasn’t you.”
The lips like death, the unblinking eyes—the woman I’d seen only in my mind, like a streak of memory, when I’d first laid eyes on him. “But I hurt him,” I tried to explain. Didn’t she see the danger inside me, the storm corralled by my ribs?
Bending, she said sweetly, “Things are not always as they seem, Piers. Remember that. A very little poison can do a world of good. It’s all about how you apply it.”
I didn’t understand yet, but her words touched something small and raw inside me, soothing the inflammation.
“Tell me, do you know what a crow is?” Her long, bold form intrigued me. My mother always made herself smaller, her shoulders curled with shame and grief and things I didn’t understand. This woman held her head so high I thought her neck might snap.
I nodded. “They nest in the trees behind the house.”
She smiled, her lips parting beguilingly. “We are a family of crows,” she told me. “Don’t forget that. The other children you know, they’re hawks or sparrows, doves or starlings. But you, dear girl, are a crow. Do you know what sets a crow apart?”
I shook my head.
“Crows feed on what others can’t.” She stared down at me. “Including other birds.”
