I follow closely behind her.
“We’re almost there!” she shouts.
We can make it. We’re going to make it.
The house groans like a ship fighting against the ocean.
Aunt Em reaches the ladder to the cellar and scales down the rungs. “Hand me Toto!”
I scoot forward on my belly, shifting my grip on Toto, but the world suddenly heaves.
CRACK.
Light flashes.
I’m airborne, weightless, sailing toward the ceiling.
Thenboom.
I slam back to the floor, then up again.
The house goes sideways and I slide down the floorboards and then go vertical on the opposite wall.
Uncle Henry’s favorite chair skitters across the room and bangs into my legs. Toto barks in my arms.
“I’ve got you!” I tell him. “Hold on!”
The plaster ceiling cracks and pebbles rain down around us.
I slide down the wall and turn myself into a ball using my body to shield Toto tucked into the bulk of my sweater.
My head is ringing and pressure builds against my eardrums.
“We’re going to be okay,” I tell him and breathe in his scent. It’s spicy and sweet. Very much him. Aunt Em always said he had the oddest smell for a dog, like burning oak trees.
Right now it gives me comfort as the world turns and turns.
Please let me live.
Please let us survive this.
The ceiling undulates like a wave. The crack spiderwebs outward and then a beam snaps in half, shooting through the plaster.
And it flies straight toward me.
FOUR
Cleo
The Witch of the East is zigzagging across the snowdrop field, her dress hoisted up and fisted in her hand to avoid dirtying the hem of the skirt.
“Where?” she demands, eyes wide and crazed.
Cleo has never known freedom.
Born under a blood moon, she was cursed from her first breath. Or at least that’s what she was told. Perhaps that’s why her mother gave Cleo to the Witch of the East before she was old enough to speak.
Her first memories are those of desperation.
