(Continued from this entry)

“I forgot something. I’ll catch up; you guys go on!” Kelsey said, turning and running back toward the improbable house with the lemon yellow shutters.

“What’d you forget?” Magnus called, but Kelsey’s shouted reply got tangled up in the dappled shadows of the swamp maples, and Magnus couldn’t make it out.

“Maybe we should wait for her,” Ryan said. Maybe we ought to go back with her, he was thinking. If I’m the hero, that’s what I should say.

“You were the one who said you had to get home,” Gwen pointed out. “You go on; we’ll wait.”

Magnus slapped a mosquito. Another whined by Gwen’s ear. “Let’s all just go,” Magnus said. “It’s not as if she can get lost. Look at our path. It looks like elephants have been through here.”

The witch-woman---she had to be a witch-woman if she lived in a tiny house in the woods, right?---was standing in her doorway, arms crossed and a small smile on her lips, watching Kelsey racing through the ferns toward her. She raised her eyebrows when Kelsey arrived, but didn’t speak.

“This,” panted Kelsey, taking the witch-woman by the hand and leading her into the back garden, where all the strange wind chimes were. In the corner, on an arching raspberry cane, tiny lights hung, invisibly suspended, among the ripening berries.


“What are they?” Kelsey asked. They swayed when a breeze passed through, but otherwise they didn’t move, and their filmy, swirling brightness, like flames seen through smoke, was constant. “Not fireflies.”

They were so beautiful. Kelsey wanted to touch one, but got the feeling that she ought to ask permission first. She looked up at the witch.

“No, not fireflies. You have a good eye. Your friends didn’t notice them.”

Kelsey glowed with pride. She was observant. Someone a witch would compliment. But she still didn’t have her answer.

“But what are they?”

“You really want to know?”

Kelsey frowned. “Is this going to be like finding out what goes into hot dogs? Are they smashed-up hummingbirds and unicorn tears or something?”

The witch laughed. “No, nothing like that. They’re, let’s see. You could call them life seeds, or life anchors. They’re what root you into the stream of life.”

If you stared at the lights, Kelsey was realizing, everything else seemed dark. It was like they were the only bright things in the whole world.

“Everything has one of those?” Kelsey asked. The witch nodded.

“How did you get so many hanging there? Where are, um . . . the things they go in?” Kelsey was aware of sweat beading on her forehead and running down the back of her neck, felt her heart picking up its pace. This was the question she didn’t want the answer to, but she’d gone and asked it anyway.

“People gave them to me.”

“Yeah?” Kelsey’s doubt hung heavy on the word. “Gave them?” It sounded terribly, horribly unlikely. Run away! Run away right now! she exhorted herself, but herself didn’t budge. Just stood there, waiting for the witch’s reply.

“Mmmhmmm. Don’t you ever want to float around free and untethered for a while? Cast away, anchorless? Move like a spirit?”

“You mean, fly?”

The witch nodded. “Fly, yes, and slip between walls and under stones, move through fire, walk on the bottom of the sea--you can’t do those things if you’re tethered. So, people unmoor themselves and go adventuring.”


“Just like that? There’s no catch?” Kelsey didn’t feel like running away anymore. Now she desperately, desperately wanted to try swooping, floating, and flitting like a spirit.

“Well, you have to remember to come back and collect your anchor. Without it, unconnected from the stream of life, eventually you just . . . fade away.”

Kelsey’s heart sank. “Do a lot of people forget?” She locked eyes with the witch.

“Not everyone forgets,” the witch said.

“But some do.”

“Mmmmhmmmm.”

“Lots do.”

“Yes.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

“What do you do with the extras, when people don’t come back?” Kelsey asked at last.

The witch laughed again. “That’s what you want to know? Don’t you care about the poor people who don’t come back? Doesn’t it seem like a terrible thing to let people risk so much? But you want to know what I do with the extras?”

Kelsey scowled. Was the witch criticizing her, now, or teasing? Was it wrong to ask?

“Yeah, that’s what I want to know,” she said, lifting her chin.

“Perfect,” the witch murmured, then leaned in close to Kelsey and said, “Smell them.” The witch herself smelled spicy, like crushed sweetfern. Kelsey put her face in among the lights, closing her eyes so as not to be blinded, and breathed in.

The fragrance—not strawberries or apples, not peaches or pineapples, not even something exotic like mangos or papayas. Just--something on the tip of her memory, so rich and ripe, something that made a bright bubble of hopefulness and joy right in Kelsey’s center.

Her mouth watered.

“You eat them,” she said.

The witch nodded. “Terrible, isn’t it. A horrible thing to do. But yes.”

“Horrible,” Kelsey repeated, in a whisper. Her stomach was rumbling.

“So!” said the witch, wiping her hands on the sides of her jeans. “Which would you prefer to do: fly like a spirit, or eat a life seed?”

“Y-you mean, right now?” The surge of excitement that flooded Kelsey left her fingers tingling. Which to choose? Flying like a spirit, of course! Except . . . the scent and promise of those lights. If you ate one, maybe you’d get witchy powers. Maybe you’d be able to fly without being in danger of fading away. But it was wrong to do that. The witch had said as much. Or was that a trick, to put people off?

At that moment, Kelsey remembered that she was supposed to be catching up with the others.

“Maybe later, actually,” said the witch. “You’d probably better run along. But think about which one you’d choose.”

Kelsey nodded and ran off to find the others.