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“I asked Auntie Myrna once, but she didn’t know.”

The mention of her aunt gave Harriet a pang. Of sadness. Perhaps guilt. She’d turned her back on the woman who’d been an important part of her life all her life in favor of a man she’d just met.

How could that happen, she wondered, that Sam could get so deep into her heart so quickly? And eclipse loved ones?

He seemed to understand her. She wasn’t afraid with him. He’d even shown interest in her odd hobby of collecting bricks, saying he had one himself.

“A hobby?” she’d asked.

“No, a brick. One I’ve had since I was a kid. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

He brought egg salad and peanut butter sandwiches wrapped in a damp dish towel out of his knapsack, and she pulled a large thermos of ice-cold water out of hers. They ate in silence, enjoying the view.

The warmth of the day was hitting the pines and balsams, bringing out the sweet fragrance of their new needles.

Harriet looked over the endless canopy of forest and saw unimaginable beauty. It was enchanting, bewitching. And if you weren’t careful, it would kill you.

A few steps off the path, perhaps to pick up pinecones or look at a wildflower, and you were lost. You’d turn around. And around. And the path would have disappeared.

At first there’d be disbelief, even perhaps mild amusement. And then, as the minutes turned to hours, there’d be a quickly mounting awareness. This was trouble. Then, as the sun went down, anxiety turned to fear turned to panic.

This can’t be happening.

Was that how Anne Lamarque felt when the priest turned her in, as the witnesses against her piled up? As her husband testified about the grimoire? Did her amusement turn to disbelief, turn to panic, turn to terror?

She’d strayed too far from the prescribed path, and this was her punishment.

Harriet looked over the forest and imagined a woman in long, torn skirts and a rough blouse, clutching a shawl to her breast with one hand and a burlap sack with the other.

Anne Lamarque’s face and hands were torn and bloody. Her clothing encrusted with muck and stinking of sweat and piss and shit. Her wild hair was thick with leaves and twigs, as though she were turning into the forest itself.

She finally looked like what she’d been accused of.

Before I was not a witch / But now I am one …

The witch woman was on the run, chased through the wilderness by beasts hungry for her body and demons hungry for her soul.

Every sound became a threat. The howls of the wolves, the scrambling and shrieking of strange creatures, the bright eyes staring at her in the moonlight. Flesh-eating flies buzzed around her head, tormenting her, biting her, driving her mad. Sending her running through the forest, over the edge of the known world and into insanity.

Until she’d finally fallen to her knees. Her head in her hands. Bent over small, like a child who’d seen the closet door drift open in the night. And knew the nightmare was real.

Anne Lamarque surrendered to her fate.

What then? Harriet wondered.

Had Anne heard the soft babble of the river and raised her head? Had she lifted her face from her filthy hands and seen soft light in the sky? Had she seen a clearing just ahead? A meadow with herbs and sweetgrass?

Had she, like so many after her, recognized in this hidden place a home?

Anne Lamarque had defied her tormentors. Instead of being damned, instead of dying, she’d made a home. Here. Found a home here. Built a home here, from stones pulled from the earth, and from trees that once seemed so fearsome, but now offered themselves as shelter.

According to Ruth, two other women eventually found their way to Anne. But Harriet suspected there were more. Many more.

A bouquet of them, perhaps. Young and old. Their common crimes were breasts and a womb. And a mind.

With the help of the grimoire, they survived, built a community where all were welcome. That was the real magic.

“What’re you thinking?” Sam asked, his voice soft, gentle.