Gwen already knew which tree she meant—the most ancient one in this part of the forest, standing alone in a field that bloomed furiously with wildflowers in spring. “It’s an oak,” she supplied as Isobelle tugged her onward.

Before they’d gone too far, though, Gwen’s steps slowed. She could hear something through the trees: voices, many of them, raised in some sort of song or chant. A prickle of concern made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, questioning the wisdom of venturing through a moonlit forest toward ethereal eldritch voices luring you onward. Not that she believed in faerie stories, of course, but plenty of people didn’t believe in stories about dragons, either.

But where her steps tried to drag, Isobelle’s quickened. The other girl had a firm hold of Gwen’s arm, though she was wise enough to keep hidden under the trees by the river.

They came to a dense blackberry thicket still bearing a few of the season’s last fruits at the edge of the wood, and without hesitation, Isobelle dropped down to wriggle forward through the brambles, leaving Gwen little choice but to follow. When she reached the edge of the thicket, Isobelle put a hand on Gwen’s, and together they gazed out through the thin, concealing layer of blackberry thorns.

The massive old oak had been struck by lightning once, leaving a section of its branches skeletal and brittle—a tiny forked slice of white, stark in the moonlight, amid the joyous green of its living foliage.

But Gwen had never been here at night. And never on the night of a full moon.

A dozen figures stood in a semicircle not far from the trunk of the tree, where a stone bench had been erected—no, an altar of sorts, with stones and feathers and other objects scattered upon its surface. There were candles, too—when the wind gusted just right, Gwen caught the faintest aroma of beeswax over the heady, sweet tang of crushed blackberries all around them.

The figures were all in white, and all women, Gwen realized—they’d shucked their dresses and stood in their shifts, which billowed in the wind. Their voices were raised in a rhythmic chanting that called to something deep in Gwen’s bones.

She turned her hand to twine her fingers through Isobelle’s and squeezed. “Witches,” she breathed, half dizzy with the spectacle and the idea that she might be about to witness true, real magic. Hedge witches tended to be cagey and secretive about their powers—never quite showing someone if they were real, or just a clever combination of mind games and herbalism. Delia would be there among them, though at this distance Gwen couldn’t distinguish her. And hedge witches from all across the county must have come here tonight to greet the moon.