“Quite a hag now. Oh, it’s all right,” she said at the look on my mother’s face. “No harm in calling me that. You weren’t wrong. It’s what I am. Nothing at all wrong with being a hag.” She gave me a look. “Nothing wrong with being smart that way. And anyone who thinks otherwise needs to think again.” She held out a hand to me, which I took. “I’ve come to help Ellie. Who is also a hag, you know.”

And I, in that moment, became an oak. A snake. A bright bird.

But then Samuel said, “Why can’t I be a hag?” and I was a girl again, just like that.

She smiled at him. “I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“What’s a hag?” he said again, just days after Esther had answered with a witch.

“I’m a hag,” she said.

“Oh.” Samuel looked at her for a long moment. “Is there some other kind of hag I could be?”

“Of course,” Cate said. “But you might need to grow up for a while first.”

He shook his head. “You said Ellie’s a hag and she’s only twelve.”

At which Cate nodded. “Well, some people are born to it. Others, like me, need to work at it for a long time.”

When she struggled to rise from her chair, I held out my arm and Larkin came to help. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to meet your father, Ellie.”

So we slowly made our way back to the bedroom where my father lay sleeping no matter how hard the jonquils outside the window blew their yellow horns.

Cate stopped in the doorway.

I thought she’d been brought up short by the sight of my father.

But after a moment she started forward again, leading us not to him but to my mother’s mandolin.

Which Cate picked up carefully. Tenderly.

She smiled at me, my mother. “My son made this.”

She hadn’t needed to look inside to know that.

I nodded. “Larkin told me.”

Cate looked at me, amazed. “Do you play?”

“A little,” I said. “My mother does.”

Cate turned to her, holding out the mandolin. “And will you?”

“Oh, perhaps later,” my mother said, taking the mandolin and setting it aside. “It needs tuning and—”

“Oh, it’s all right. I understand,” Cate said. I’d never heard her sound so sad.

I pulled the rocking chair close to my father. Larkin settled her in it carefully.

The rest of us took up stations around the bed.

My father was as he’d been. Pale. Still. Thin enough to break.

“You said he’s been asleep since January?” Cate said.

“He has,” I said.

“Then where’s his beard?”

“We shave him, every day,” Esther said proudly.

“You shave him?” Cate looked at my mother.

My mother nodded. “Should we not?”