A handful of days passed. Every morning, Hayden made a notch on the stick he’d collected the first day, tracking the time until a year and a day was up. Not that he planned for them to be there when it arrived. He vowed he and Gracie would escape well before that fateful day.
The birds made a racket in the branches at dawn, but he and his sister were used to rising early. Their life quickly fell into a pattern, and though the witch demanded they work, it was no worse than their duties at home.
Each morning, they found a simple breakfast awaiting in the common room of the witch’s tree-cradled abode. Though she never her broke her fast with them, she was always there, lingering long enough to give them curt instructions before disappearing for the day, either to her highest aerie or out into the surrounding forest.
Gracie tended the garden, and was also required to sweep out their bedroom aeries and the common room, as well as the staircase that curled around the oak’s sturdy trunk.
Hayden was allowed into the forest, though the magpie always accompanied him, its bright eyes watching his every move. He cut and gathered firewood, set a few snares for rabbits, and foraged for berries and mushrooms. Gracie was better at gathering, but the witch would not allow her to set foot far from the oak.
They both fetched water from the nearby stream, however. Nissa had led them to the banks and shown them the pool she’d created by damming a portion of the water, where they could also bathe and wash their clothing. They’d arrived with nothing but the clothes upon their backs, of course, but the first morning, they’d awoken to find shirts of finely woven linen, leggings, and for Hayden, a leather jerkin that fitted him perfectly.
On the sixth day, the witch gave him a new task.
“Tomorrow is my baking day,” she said. “Fetch stones to repair the oven, and mud to seal up the cracks. And replenish the woodpile.”
Hayden nodded. He’d noticed the huge oven squatting at the edge of the clearing. How could he not? It stood at least seven feet high, made of rounded stones with a cavity beneath to hold the fire. The interior of the oven was big enough to bake dozens of loaves, or roast an entire deer.
Or…
A shiver crept down his spine. Were the rumors about the witch eating people actually true?
As soon as Nissa left, he turned to his sister.
“Remember Tom Turkey?” he asked in a low voice. “Fattened up, until he finally became dinner?”
She stared back at him, eyes wide. “Do you really think she means to…”
“I don’t know. But I don’t intend for us to be here long enough to find out.”
“How will we escape?” she asked softly.
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the witch was really gone. “I don’t have a plan yet. But I will. Until then, act like nothing’s wrong.”
He gave her a quick hug around the shoulders, then left her to her sweeping while he went to find rocks to repair the oven.
As he hauled stones and chinked up the cracks, his mind worked at the problem. Outside the witch’s enchanted domain, it was still winter. There was no point in him and Gracie trying to escape until spring had arrived, and summer would be even better. That would give them enough time to gain their strength and gather supplies for their journey out in the world.
In the meantime, they were safe. Nissa might be a strange, awkward woman, but until their service had ended, he believed she meant them no harm. Just like Tom Turkey, he though wryly, slathering clay around a newly replaced stone. The fowl had probably thought he was a coddled pet until the moment the knife descended.
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START HERE – Publish July 7
The next morning, the witch woke them at first light. She waited impatiently for them to finish their breakfast, then set Gracie to mixing dough, while Hayden was sent down to make a fire beneath the oven.
“Not too hot, at first,” Nissa cautioned. “The dough needs just enough warmth to rise. Later, we’ll build the fire up.”
When he returned from this task, she told him to wash his hands, then thrust a stoneware bowl of dough at him to knead. Gracie, a smudge of flour on her nose, looked up from the table where she was turning more dough.
“How many loaves are we baking?” she asked.
“Thirteen,” the witch said shortly.
Hayden’s brows rose. “That seems a bit excessive.”
Nissa turned to him, hands on her hips. “Do not judge what you do not know. It is not all for us.”
“Who else, then?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” she said, and would tell them no more.
By midday, thirteen round loaves of bread were shaped, risen, and ready to go in the oven. Three of them, Hayden noted, were marked with symbols: a crescent moon, a stylized tree, and another sigil he couldn’t identify.
At Nissa’s command, he fed more wood into the fire, feeling sweat dampen his forehead as he pushed another log into the fire cavity. When the witch judged the temperature to be hot enough, she and Gracie slid the loaves inside, arrayed on four large baking sheets.
“You must keep the fire burning, just so,” Nissa told him. “But first, I need to show you something.”
She smoothed a few wisps of pale hair back from her face, then led them to the oak. Instead of ascending the staircase, however, she rounded the huge trunk. Lengths of ivy and morning glory trailed down, making a green curtain studded with purple-blue flowers. Hayden had thought little of it, until the witch drew the foliage aside to reveal a mystery of the forest.
A weathered stone, higher than he was tall, was embedded in the trunk. Made of mica-flecked granite, it was carved with strange runes and sigils. There was a spot hollowed out in the center, like an open mouth waiting to be fed.
“This is the Stone,” the witch said.
He and Gracie exchanged a glance.
“What does it do?” his sister asked softly.
“It is the source of power,” Nissa answered. “It has been here for centuries, and will remain for centuries.”
He blinked at her in surprise. “Have you been here that long?”
The deep sorrow that always lurked in her expression came to the fore. “No. But there has always been a Priestess of the Stone.”
Gracie opened her mouth, her eyes full of questions, but the witch turned abruptly. She dropped her arm, and the curtain of foliage fell back over the Stone, hiding it once more from sight.
“Come tend the fire,” she said, striding away toward the oven.
As they followed the witch, Hayden glanced back over his shoulder. Whatever the Stone was, it had an eerie, eldritch feel, an ancient magic that cared not for the lives of humans.
Unease crept down his back. Maybe they all were Tom Turkey, Nissa included.
His fears weren’t eased when, later that afternoon, the witch performed her ritual. After the bread was taken from the oven and allowed to cool, Nissa took a length of pristine white linen and, chanting all the while in some strange language, carefully wrapped the three marked loaves.
A wind stirred the clearing, swirling about the witch and teasing a strand of Gracie’s hair from her braid. Nissa lifted her bundle of bread to the four directions, calling out her strange invocations, then led them in a circle around the base of the oak.
The third time they rounded the tree she halted before the hidden Stone. The witch nodded to Gracie to pull aside the hanging curtain of greenery, showing her where to hook the vines back out of the way. Eyes wide, his sister complied while Nissa unwrapped the bread. She kept the loaf with the strange sigils, but gave the moon-marked one to Gracie.
After a moment’s hesitation, she turned to Hayden.
“You were not expected, yet you are here.” With that cryptic pronouncement, she handed him the loaf with the roughly drawn tree. “Repeat what I do.”
Gracie looked at him, but he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He had no more idea than his sister what was going on.
Nissa began to chant again, a low singsong that rose and fell hypnotically. She raised her loaf, and, tentatively, Gracie and Hayden mimicked the motion. Then she set the bread in the empty mouth of the Stone.
A sudden flare of green fire made Hayden step back, and his sister gasped out loud as the loaf was consumed in an instant. Nothing was left behind—not even a smear of soot on the empty gray stone,
“Now you,” the witch said softly, nodding to Gracie.
Biting her lip, Gracie stepped forward. She set her loaf in the niche, snatching her hands back as the green fire blazed around the bread, then was gone. When the witch’s gaze went to him, Hayden made his tree-marked offering, laying his loaf in the hollow.
For a moment, nothing happened. Nissa frowned slightly, a line between her eyes.
Then green flame blazed from the Stone. With a little yelp, Gracie leaped back, and even Nissa swayed away. Not only was the bread consumed, but the runes inscribed in the granite glowed with a stark emerald light.
The clearing was suddenly silent. No wind blew, no birds sang.
A moment later, the Stone went dark again, the strange magical glow vanishing as quickly as it had come. The witch breathed out, a slow exhalation.
“Unexpected,” she said softly, her expression still troubled. “Come. This part of the ritual is done.”
She unhooked the ivy and morning glory vines, letting them fall closed over the Stone, then went back to where the ten unmarked loaves sat upon the wire rack next to the oven.
“There’s more ceremony?” Hayden asked, striding at her shoulder. “I’m not sure I like your magical rituals.”
“You’re not required to like them.” Her expression eased. “But this next part is far simpler, and will go quickly, with the two of you to help.”
“No more green fire?” Gracie asked.
Nissa unbent enough to give her a faint smile. “No. We simply scatter crumbs from the oak tree into the forest. One loaf each, which leaves enough bread for us to eat for the rest of the week.”
She handed them each a loaf, still slightly warm from the oven. Hayden resisted the urge to rip his open and take a bite, though his belly growled at the thought.
The witch sent him a wry look. “When we’re done, you can have a loaf with dinner.”
Although breakfast was always waiting for them in the morning, Nissa had told them to make use of the bounty of the garden for their other meals. Gracie always prepared some kind of dish for supper, leaving a lid on the pot afterward, and in the morning the food would be gone.
“I’ll make vegetable stew,” Gracie said. “Too bad you didn’t get to check your snares today, Hayden.”
“After this, I’ll go. Maybe we can add a rabbit to the pot.” He glanced at Nissa. So far, she hadn’t joined them for any meals, but it felt rude to outright exclude her. “Will you eat with us tonight?”
Her eyes widened, and a slight flush stained her cheeks. Their gazes held for a moment, and in her eyes he saw deep, sorrow-filled yearning.
“Ah,” she said, clearly at a loss for words. Then she cleared her throat. “Yes. I will.”
The magpie swooped over the clearing, having been conspicuously absent during the Stone ritual. It let out a trilling cry, black and white wings flashing. Nissa glanced up at it and nodded, then shook herself, as if recalling her duties.
“Come,” she said, tearing off a piece of bread as she headed for the oak.
This time, there was no chanting, no eerie fire. Hayden and his sister followed the witch in a spiraling path out from the base of the oak. He saw Gracie shoot the vine-hidden Stone a wary look each time they passed, until they reached the sunlit margins of the clearing.
They went a short distance into the woods, until they each ran out of bread. Hayden dusted off his hands.
“I’ll go check my snares now,” he said. “See you at dinner.”
Nissa nodded gravely, but Gracie grinned at him, her good spirits restored.
“Don’t take too long,” his sister said. “Or I might eat all the bread before you get back.”
He shot her a look and, shaking his head, strode off into the woods.