When I returned from the Co-op, I found Serana’s letter waiting for me in the mailbox. The envelope was wrinkled as though it had become damp and then dried. The ink was washed pale and I wondered that it had found its way to me at all. When I turned it over, the back flap sighed open without help from my anxious fingers. And when I pulled out the letter, it was obvious something was amiss.
One page was too short. There was no farewell to me. No matter how angry or hurt Serana might have been at my previous letter, she would never have ended with such an enigmatic phrase: “I do know this.” I tucked the letter in the bosom of my shirt and mounted the stairs, lost in troubled thoughts.
The house was deadly quiet. The couple on the first floor worked long days. Of Sparrow I had seen little of late. Sometimes, while in the garden, I would hear her shuffling on the back porch, but when I turned, she would duck inside to avoid me. I had hoped she would come to see me, to make amends of some kind. But once Serana’s scare-bird showed up, she had become reluctant to even talk to me in passing.
I entered the apartment and realized that Robin, too, was gone. My eyelids quivered, always a trouble sign. Though I had not seen Robin and Sparrow together, I knew for certain that they had already met. I heard it in the tunes he played each night. The tunes were not meant for these old feet, but for someone much nimbler than I. I only hoped that she was careful, for there were still too many unanswered questions about the boy.
Tapping the envelope against my wrist, I tried to feel the intention of whoever had tampered with the letter. Could Robin have done this? Maybe. Yet I had seen the changes in him. Each day spent in the garden with Jack had tempered his callowness, made him more agreeable company.
But someone had meddled with the letter. I immediately dismissed the girl Marti and her boyfriend whose name I had never learned. They would have had no interest in my mail, and besides, they were away on holiday. The Hands never went out of my rooms, or so I believed. As for Jack—foolish I may have been for taking up with him, but I trusted him now. Or at least I thought I did.
Then who stood to gain from the letter’s knowledge? Missing knowledge, I corrected myself. For there was someone who had the better part of Serana’s wisdom and that someone was not me. I needed to watch and learn who had stolen my sister’s words. I needed to warn Serana that we had been followed from the Greenwood. To whom did we matter so much? Certainly, not the Queen who had sent us away.
* * *
I SHOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE moment Robin sauntered into the garden the following morning with the pot of arum in his hands. At first I laughed to see it, thinking it a ribald joke. But by the end of day, I knew it had been a mistake to allow such a potent plant into the Great Witch’s garden. Oh, it was trouble all right, the very trouble my sister and I had hoped to avoid.
Two nights later, I walked to the edge of the park, where the trees gave way to the shore of an enormous lake. The full moon cast a glistening path across the restless water. I turned from its light and looked up, searching for a nest I had seen not too long ago, high in the canopy of an ash tree. I tucked my tongue behind my teeth and gave a sharp, short whistle. “I have need.”
Silently, a goshawk lifted from the dark trees and circled overhead. I held up my arm, wrapped with one of Baba Yaga’s shawls and offered her a perch. She alighted amid a flurry of wings and I was shocked by the pain of her talons digging into my arm. I had ridden such hawks as a sprout and never felt fear. But now, I trembled before her golden eyes and sharp beak so close to my face.
I know the rules of calling a hawk to service. Bringing out the remains of a mouse, killed the day before in a trap in the basement of the house, I gave it to her. She swallowed it whole, the whipping tail disappearing last. I tied a rolled letter to her leg and whispered my sister’s name and destination. She lunged into the air, her talons raking long scratches in my skin through the cloth. But I did not cry out, only watched as her powerful wings lifted her high above the trees and out across the water’s silvery path.
Sometimes a goshawk is more reliable than an eagle. And I only hoped that my letter would reach Serana in time to do some good.
Dearest Sister
I am troubled. Someone tore away the last lines of your letter before it reached my hands. All that was left was your proclamation “I know this.” If I could spell as I once did, I might know the truth of these wayward words. But now I can only stare at the ruffled edge of the paper and wonder who has the advantage of your knowledge. Please write back soon—the hawk will wait for your reply, though not for long.
I am edgy. And your Robin even more so since he planted the arum in the middle of the garden. I thought he did it as a joke, an affront to my old age. I went to pull it out stalk and root, but no sooner did I touch it than the Jack’s own laughter stopped me and I blushed furious, my hands wrapped around it as though to throttle youth and sex. I have left it, but, oh, what misgivings.
I saw Sparrow today, leaning out on her porch, hands clenched on the railing like a fledgling balanced for a first flight. Robin turned his face up to stare hungrily at her. And that damn plant bloomed, spreading pollen everywhere in the sudden gusting of the wind.
Worried as a tree knot,
Meteora