Immy sat on a log that she guessed was supposed to be a balance beam and chatted with a girl named Ava, who was in the year below her. Kids were running all around them, and Immy noticed that most of them were boys. The woman at the table in the hall had been right. There really weren’t many girls in this village.

After a few minutes, Ava’s mother called her into the hall, and Immy was left sitting by herself. It wasn’t long before she heard it — the song. Her back stiffened. But wait. This time . . . this time it wasn’t in her head. Someone was singing it out aloud. It was more than one person, she realized — there were two or three. Just as she swiveled on the log, a woman’s voice called out.

“Girls! Come here. Right now, please.”

It was Caitlyn the woman was talking to. Caitlyn and the two other girls. As she watched, they shuffled across the playground to the woman, who was standing near what Immy guessed were the classrooms. She carried a pile of books under one arm and was obviously a teacher.

“I do not want to hear that rhyme at this school. That tree is hundreds of years old and of great historical significance. Fear, ignorance, and hate can lead to terrible things, and it’s silly talk like yours that makes people destroy things. I sincerely hope you’re not going to start the year off on the wrong foot.”

There was silence.

“Are you, Caitlyn? Zara? Erin?”

“No, miss,” all three girls said at the same time. Caitlyn’s gaze slid to meet Immy’s, and the look she gave her! If she’d hated Immy before, she was out to get her now.

“Good. Well, off you go, then. Into the hall. I’m sure your parents are looking for you.”

All three girls trudged off toward the hall in silence. The woman waited until they’d entered. Then she turned, and her gaze met Immy’s for a moment. She smiled a small smile, and it was then that Immy realized the woman knew who she was. She knew she was living in Lavender Cottage.

Was there anyone in this village who didn’t know they’d moved in? Immy doubted it.

Immy stood and lifted a hand in an awkward wave, but the woman with the books had already turned and was making her way back inside.

Immy was still standing there, in exactly the same position, when one of the girls reappeared from the hall. Not Caitlyn, but one of the other two — either Zara or Erin according to the woman who’d told them off. The first thing the girl did was check for the teacher. Seeing she wasn’t there, she shifted her gaze to where Immy had been sitting. She looked a bit taken aback when she realized Immy hadn’t left.

The girl hesitated and glanced back toward the hall. Immy guessed that her mother had sent her outside. Now she was trapped.

Before the girl could disappear somewhere else, Immy started across the playground toward her. She had to find out what that rhyme was. And why the teacher had been angry with them for singing it.

The girl’s eyes widened when she realized Immy was coming straight toward her. She checked behind herself quickly, as if to see if help was coming. Immy guessed she didn’t know what to do without Caitlyn leading the way.

Immy stopped right in front of her. “What’s that song you keep singing?”

“I . . .” The girl took a step backward.

“I want to know,” Immy insisted. Her stomach was churning. She didn’t like arguments or fighting with people. She could feel unexpected tears welling up behind her eyes, and she gulped, trying to push them away. “Tell me!”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes! Now!”

“But the teacher said . . .”

“You didn’t seem so worried about teachers when you had your friends with you. Now hurry up and tell me.”

A final backward glance told the girl that no one was coming to save her.

“Well?”

“Okay! Okay, already! It’s . . . it’s about the tree. People have sung it here for . . . I don’t know . . . forever, I suppose. It goes like this: ‘Do naught wrong by the mulberry tree, or she’ll take your daughters . . . one, two, three. In the dead of night, spirited away, never to see an eleventh birthday.’” Her cheeks red, she rushed through the words, then waited for Immy’s reaction.

Immy stood frozen, her mind working backward. “It can’t be,” she said. The rhyme. She’d heard it in her head even before they’d decided to rent Lavender Cottage. No one from the village had told it to her. It had just appeared.

In her dream.

Girls had been singing it in her dream.

The girl looked at her like she was crazy. “What do you mean it can’t be?”

“I . . .”

“Don’t you get it?” The girl took a step forward. “‘She’ll take your daughters . . . one, two, three.’ Two have already been taken. You’re the third girl.”

Immy and her dad started the walk home with their big bag of uniforms, neither of them saying very much.

“Speak to any of the kids?” her dad eventually asked her.

Immy wasn’t sure what to say. Should she tell him about the rhyme? She decided not to, because she wasn’t sure what to think about it herself yet. “I met a nice girl named Ava. She’s in the year below me.”

“Good.”

They walked the rest of the short way in silence as Immy thought about the teacher who’d told the girls off. The woman’s words kept playing over and over again in Immy’s mind. Fear, ignorance, and hate can lead to terrible things, she’d said. Immy’s brow creased as she struggled to make sense of this. And, on top of that, the rhyme, which had started to repeat itself in her head again now that she knew the words, distracting her and muddling her train of thought: Do naught wrong by the mulberry tree, or she’ll take your daughters . . . one, two, three. In the dead of night, spirited away, never to see an eleventh birthday.

“What did you say?” Her dad glanced down at her as he held open Lavender Cottage’s gate.

“Nothing,” Immy said quickly, her breath catching as she felt the shadow of the tree looming over the back of the house. “I was just . . . singing to myself.” She slowed as they walked up the side of the house around to the French doors, where they’d taken to entering and exiting the house.

Her dad let himself in, but Immy remained outside, pretending to tidy up her shoes on the rack. It wasn’t until he was out of sight that she dared to look up. The tree was waiting for her, brooding in the blocked-out sky. It was almost as if it were biding its time, tapping its long roots, counting out the seconds until her birthday. Her stomach flip-flopping, she stared at the two knots in its trunk.

She’ll take your daughters . . . one, two, three.

The song in her dream was meant to scare her off. It had been a warning. A warning from the tree. They shouldn’t have rented the house.

Immy knew then that she had to find out what had really happened to those two girls.

She had to find out the truth.

Or she’d be next.