“You’re from town.” He got to his feet. “You’re new here.”

“We’re not new,” I said. “We’ve lived here for three years.”

“And my family has lived here for generations. Three years is birdsong.”

I liked that birdsong bit, but I didn’t like the way he’d said it. “What’s wrong with people from town?”

“They’re mean to her.”

“Mean to Cate?”

He lowered his voice. “They think she’s a witch.”

I frowned at him. “Who’s they?”

He made a face. “Maybe not everyone. But some.” He thought back. “Do you have people called Lock something?”

“Lock something? The Lockharts? But I don’t have them, Larkin. They aren’t my people.”

He looked at me, puzzled. “What are they, then?”

I shrugged. “Neighbors. Friends. Okay, yes, my people, I guess. But they don’t have any children, so I don’t see them much. My sister and my brother and I are the only children on the mountain.”

“On the town side.”

“Yes, on the town side.”

“And why do you think no one ever bothers with the other side?”

I remembered my father telling me to stay close to home. “My parents don’t want us roaming too far. They say it’s not safe. Because of coyotes and bears and steep places where we might fall.”

“And mountain people like me. And a witch like her.”

I huffed at him. “No one ever even talks about her, Larkin.”

“Not even the Lockharts?”

I shook my head. “What would they have to tell?”

He sighed. “I was up here one day—a long time ago—when the Lockhart woman came up. She said she had a bad pain here.” He put his hand on his belly. “Nothing helped, she said. The doctor didn’t help. The medicine he gave her didn’t help. So she came up here, and my grandma asked her a lot of questions and then went in the cabin and came out with a jar of greens. Told the woman to make it into a tea and drink it every day until she felt better. And then my grandmother said what she always says to me, every time I leave here.”

I waited. “What does she say?”

Larkin paused. “‘Saol fada agus breac-shláinte chugat.’ Or maybe it was ‘Slainte mhor agus a h-uile beannachd duibh.’ One or the other.”

I stared at him. “What?”

He repeated himself.

“Is that a spell?”

“No, it’s not a spell. You see what I mean? Words don’t make people witches, Ellie.”

I was bothered by that. Him talking to me like that. “Then what is it?”

“It’s Gaelic. Her mother, my great-grandmother, came from Scotland. It means ‘Good health to you and every blessing.’ Not a spell. A blessing.”

“Well, that’s not much of a reason to call her a witch.”

“No, but the Lockhart woman didn’t get better. She got worse.”