Just as Esther and my mother tied their hair back, and polished their shoes, and did everything they could to keep Samuel, too, from growing up wild.

Chapter Five

By the time Quiet was born, I had found many more of the strange and marvelous gifts left by the stranger I’d glimpsed in the trees, each of them tiny, each of them enormous, like shooting stars.

One of them I found next to Maisie’s water bowl, in the yard near the cabin door.

It was a little dog, the spitting image of Maisie, right down to the perk in her tail, the tip of her head. So wonderfully done that I held it gently, as if it were made of sugar.

And then I looked up carefully. Turned slowly in all directions, as if I were a lazy clock, looking for a glimpse of who had left the tiny dog for me to find.

This time, I saw something move in a grove of birches. And I burst toward it like an arrow from a bow, straight and fast, intent on only one thing: to see more than a face this time.

But when I reached the birch grove, there was only a place where some twigs were freshly broken and, on the ground there, a few pale curls of wood, fresh from someone’s blade.

I was disappointed. But I was also worried that running into the woods like that might have ruined everything.

—

Sure enough, the next few days were empty ones: no new carvings, no glimpse of anyone among the trees, and I was sorry all over again that I’d been so impatient.

I told myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. That I would wait, and be careful, and do what I could to prove that I was worth another chance.

But at the end of a long week of waiting and wondering, I decided that the next move would have to be mine.

So I left my jacket hanging from a branch as I had before and went into the cabin for the night.

I thought doing that might seem like an invitation. A sign of friendship. A bridge. But in the morning, when I went out to fetch my jacket, I found nothing in its pockets.

And I wondered whether perhaps the jacket had felt too much like a trap.

Or whether I had indeed ruined everything by running into the woods, like a hunter chasing her prey.

—

Finding another gift a month later was like a yellow sunrise after days of rain.

It was a full-moon face, left by the brook where I always went first thing to wash the night from my eyes.

This time, I didn’t even look around. I simply kissed the face of that moon, smiling, and hoped that someone was watching. That someone would see how much I loved such a beautiful gift.