I had not laughed like that for so long. While Anne held sadness so close, that it seemed her laughter burst from her, like water from a dam.

‘Come.’ The elder girl stepped from the mirror, and I wanted to clutch her back, my new-found friend. ‘You must make yourself ready.’

Her smile wilted as she helped me from my old Evey clothes.

‘Is my time in your world ending, then, Anne Greeneye?’

I brought that dragon dress about my shoulders, felt its sigh of cotton lace.

Anne opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She flushed, then turned to her closet, and drew out shoes and a cloak of such scarlet. Wool slid soft between my fingers.

‘This was Jane’s.’

‘What happened to her?’

Anne shook her head, looking to the window, thinking on her father below.

‘Here, Evey, your bag…’

As she swept it up, Mother’s stone loosed and fell to the floor.

‘Oh!’ It circled Anne’s feet as she bent to it. ‘This is…’

‘It’s mine!’ I blurted out, then I felt shame. She wasn’t Dill, always fretful for it.

I watched her fingers trace over the black stone, turning it.

‘Strange, I thought this was Mother’s…’

That painting of her mother, her hand upon a scrying stone. A witch in this house of rose beds and gilded windows. A witch like Mother. Witches everywhere.

‘When my mother died,’ Anne moved to the window, ‘my father blamed witchcraft, said she had dabbled, had been punished by God. And he cast everything she owned away.’

She watched her father in the garden below, holding the stone close to her chest, as if she nestled a bird waiting to fly.

‘He was so angry, Evey, driven by grief. I pleaded with him, that I might have something of her. All I have is that painting. Nothing more.’

Her hands stroked the stone. I moved to her.

‘This is all I have of Mother.’ I took it from her gentle-like. ‘Her scrying stone.’

Anne brushed the hair from my face, looking me over as though I was her sister, dressed for the day. ‘And what is it you scry, Evey?’

Heat rose to my cheeks. ‘I cannot.’

She raised an eyebrow, just like her watching mother, proud and powerful.

‘I am not… I have no magick,’ I said firm.

She laughed, ‘Oh, but you are magick to me!’

I stared to her, and those tears glistening green and happy.

‘I am?’

‘Yes, you—’ She stopped, hearing something beyond the window.

A voice below in that kept and cut garden. I turned to see Sir Robert hail his master. The old lord turned from his rosebud guard. We watched Sir Robert point to the window where we stood.

To us. To me.

Anne pulled me from their sight.

‘We must hurry.’ Worry tangled in her voice, her smile dying as she placed the food to my bag, then my old Evey dress, as those voices sounded on, yet I could not hear their words. Men murmuring. Bringing matters about.

‘Your father would not want a witch in his house, I think.’

I swung into that scarlet cloak of her lost Jane, a smell of rose petals as it settled about me, its hood falling over my eyes. I felt bold, like a hawk watching from the shade.

I swirled to the window as might a fine lady. Anne’s mother watched once from this window, like a dove cooped, yearning to fly.

The old man was too blind to see me. But that whiskered Sir Robert did right enough. When he saw me in Jane’s scarlet hood, his brow furrowed. He looked as if he saw another. Looked with such fury.

A high scream rang out, shrill, full of pain. I threw my hands to my head.

‘Evey? What’s the matter?’

‘Did you… I heard a cry, did you not?’

Anne had not screamed. But I was sure I heard it. I looked to the stone in my hand.

‘It was a woman…’

I had looked to that furious man and felt a surge of many things. Anger and fear and something else, something deeper that stirred my body.

‘It is only the horses in the stable.’ Her hands pulled mine, fingers cold like pebbles from the river. ‘And where you must go—’

‘Wait. What happened to your Jane?’ And still my heart beat over from that scream. I felt out of breath, as if I had been running.

Anne watched something at my shoulder that seemed to watch her back.

‘Some months past, she…’

I pulled at Anne’s fingers, urging those green eyes to tell their story.

‘She was thrown by her horse.’

The men muttered louder still. Let them.

‘She rode too fast that day into the woods.’

‘I am sorry for it, Anne Greeneye.’ But my voice sounded flat, not enough.

‘My sister had such spirit, Evey,’ She stroked the scarlet cloak about my shoulders. ‘Jane wasn’t like me. She was wilful and wild. She did what she wanted. You might as well stop the wind.’

How often I had said same for Dill. How different we were. Where Dill laughed, I frowned. As Mother let her run and play, so I worked my chores all day.

‘And she was not like my father, who is deaf to my silly tales, who will not listen to me, who grieves for her just the same as me.’

‘Jane was like my mother, you see –’ she turned, gazed into the gloom, where her mother ever watched her sorrow – ‘who loved her so.’

I reached to her. My Anne Greeneye, my lost friend.

‘She loved you same,’ I said, sure as the tears that marked her cheeks. ‘Do not think that she didn’t.’

The sparrow chittered from the garden. The muttering had stopped, and then a sound of feet, turning on stones.

‘Damn them! Damn the men of this house!’ She wiped her tears as her mind took hold of something. ‘Damn that man who tried to hurt you! For Jane, I will do something!’

Her gaze burned green fire. There was such anger seamed deep within her. Like a poison that would not draw.

‘Evey, listen to me. My father is the magistrate here. He signed the decree. There’s going to be a trial.’

‘A trial? For witches?’

‘Yes. He is pressed by those around him. The puritan church. The militia. The will of the people. Their fear and suspicion. And he…’

She seemed to grow taller and minded me of that sprite I had first met in the wood, so strong and sure, so not to be passed.

‘He blames my mother’s death on witchcraft, like others blame this war against the king. His grief has changed him, Evey. And others use it, feed on it.’

‘Others?’

‘Those men. That came for you.’ She smiled, full of sadness, anger and wile. ‘I know where they will be.’

She took my hand again.

‘At this trial they have staged. To cleanse their guilt with the blood of innocents. They will be there, Evey. In town. Not two days’ ride. And a fine lady such as you, Evey, will need her horse, will she not?’

She smiled her wily smile to me.

‘She will, my Lady Greeneye.’ I smiled back. ‘That she will.’