She looked up, prepared to return the apples to the leaf-strewn ground. Or maybe she could bake them into a pie and give them to a homeless shelter. That would be all right, wouldn’t it?

Even God would be okay with that.

But God wasn’t sitting there, sprawled out like Huckleberry Finn with apple juice sliding down his arm. It was a boy. He looked close to Jack in age, no older than eight, and back then, his hair had been shorn close to his head. His lashes were long and thick. They fanned out over dark, curious eyes, as he peered down at her.

“Hello,” he said, half-shy and half-shocked. Clearly, he had not expected anyone to find him out there.

“Hi. Are you stealing too?” she asked, because he was dressed in tatters, just like she was. She didn’t know that he had clothes for climbing and clothes for going to school. Clothes for dinner. Clothes for church.

“Not stealing. Hiding,” the boy said, glancing toward the house in the distance. It was a mass of gray, jagged stones, with a tower rising from the top. Smoke curled from its chimney, making the orchard smell of campfires in addition to apples.

It was autumn, Jack’s favorite time of year. For the next few weeks, the ground would be littered with ripe, juicy apples, too bruised for most people to bother with. But for Jack and her five-year-old brother, Flynn, it would mean going to bed with full bellies for the first time in months. Dreaming of pies and turnovers and strudel.

“You’re hiding? From what?” Jack furrowed her brow, searching for trespassers in the orchard. She saw no one, but she could hear the faint sound of voices coming from Holloway Manor.

Shouting.

“My house is under a spell,” Raven whispered, leaning down. “A witch cast it a hundred years ago, and it makes my parents forget they love each other. They shout and I hide in my room, but I can still hear them through the heating vent. Their room is right next to mine, and they get so loud.…”

“So you ran away.”

He nodded, solemn. Solemnity was Raven’s natural state of being. But if you could make him smile, it was like finding the moon on the coldest, darkest night. Fierce and beautiful and bright. Jack learned that after she rounded the tree and lifted a fallen branch from the ground. “Let’s break the spell.”

Raven looked down at her, his eyes narrowed in confusion. “How?”

“We’ll have to find the witch. But we’ll need a magical sword if we’re going to defeat her, and a map to her lair.…”

Raven’s lips swept into a grin. Carefully, he slid out of the tree, eager to begin their quest. “How do you know what to do? Have you battled a witch before?”