She said, “Wake up.”

She said, “Follow me.”

She said, “Come and play.”

The Witch smiled, shaking off thoughts of the strange visitors from the day before. She scratched behind the foxes’ ears before galvanizing them from their rest, singing softly as she nudged their ribs with her toes, her exultant hum setting the leaves to vibrating and the wind to whirling. The foxes needed nothing from the Witch of Wishes, and for that she was grateful. They slept in clusters all around the base of her throne, forming a ring of fine auburn fur trimming the dais, but when she called to them, they stirred and stretched their legs. They followed her to the glade, where from the heap of offerings on her altar she selected a child’s detached shadow and twisted it tightly in her hands, ridding it of its accumulated darkness. When the dust had been thoroughly drained, she compressed the light that was left into an orb and tossed it into the air, so high that it stuck to the sky. The foxes yawned, snapped their jaws, winking in the dull, dripping light of the shadow-wrung sun. They tilted their heads as the Witch of Wishes pirouetted around the glade, before they joined the wild waltz.

The foxes had not learned this yet, but it was something the stars knew well, and the Witch knew it too: The burning scream inside you hurts less when you keep moving, keep going, keep reaching, in whatever way you can.

This was the Witch’s way, and had been every day—dancing under the warm shimmer of the transient sun. Until the morning when the Witch looked out at the foxes gathered around the glade and noticed a stranger among them.

At first she ignored him, this intruder with sleek black fur who smelled of apples and cinnamon and secrets. She did not like that he appeared the day after the curious pair of older children, and neither did the other foxes, who kept their distance; only the red-furred fox approached him and snarled. The Witch called her guardian back, inciting the foxes to join in her midday revels as if nothing were amiss. Falling into a fast-footed rhythm, the Witch leaped and laughed, the sunlight silvering her dark hair. She glanced over her shoulder to see her foxes galloping dutifully after her.

Every fox but one.

At once the Witch halted, and several foxes crashed into her calves, their wet noses swiping the backs of her knees. She swiveled toward the stranger and marched over to him, hands on her hips.

She said, “Dance.”

She said, “Now.”

She said, “I will use your bones to drum the beat of our song, if you will not join along.”

But the strange fox only lifted his head, and smiled.