Page 26 of The Witches of Cambridge

“Fine,” Ava said. “Anything is possible.”

Jamie reached for a piece of newspaper on the ground. As Ava watched, he turned it into a crow right before her eyes with quick origami folds. “She taught me how to do this as well,” he confided. “It takes twenty-seven folds.”

“Tell me the rest of the story.” She wanted to hear, but she felt a bit of a fool, not really knowing if he was trustworthy. “Unless you’ve already told it to a hundred other girls and you’re sick of it.”

“I haven’t told it to a single one. You’re the first.”

That was what she wanted to hear. “Go on, then.” Ava fitted her hand into his much larger one. She could feel the scar on his left hand, in the same place as her scar, where an eleventh finger had been removed.

The crow took the shape of a man, Jamie told her, but he still belonged in the sky. It was in his nature to fly, and one night he did so. When he disappeared, his wife on earth tied bells and ribbons to a tree to call him home, but he was in the shape of a crow, and when he did return, she didn’t recognize him. He was there and she couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t say a word. His wife waved him away into the highest branches, where he waited for her to recognize him, but she never saw him for who he was. His feathers had turned white from grieving, but there was nothing more he could do. As for his wife, she was skin and bones; she wouldn’t eat or drink and she vowed never to love again. When she could no longer stand his betrayal, she hanged herself from that same tree, and from that day on, he had never left its branches.

“That is not a happy ending,” Ava said solemnly. “Your mother shouldn’t have told you that story.”

His mother wanted him to know that love could bring grief, for if you gave your heart to someone, it could easily be broken. She always ended the story with the words We never know what will happen until it does.

“I don’t know about that.” His mother was the only one in the family who always seemed to be on his side. She was quietly honest, and although she wanted him to fit in with his brothers, she loved him despite his flaws. “I think she just wanted me to understand that love is complicated.”

“Too complicated?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

They kissed for a very long time, so long that Ava forgot the rest of the world. She forgot the white crow who never again left his tree. This was all three fates that awaited them: the one they’d been born to, the one they would walk away from, and the one they would make for themselves.

When she left Jamie, she went to the library and approached the shelf where she’d found the first letter. If there was another one in the very same place, then she would know someone was trying to tell her the truth.

Tell me everything, Ava whispered. Tell me all I need to know.