Pine, oak, chestnut, plum tree, elm, walnut, ash, witch hazel, wild cherry. Maria could find her way without thinking, running as fast as she could. It might be possible that Faith had escaped the darkest reaches of left-handed magic; either way, she was desperate to get her girl back. She went through the fields and didn’t think about Cadin and the night when the men of Salem set out to kill as many birds as they could. She didn’t think about the winter when eight feet of snow fell, the coldest winter, when bread rattled on the plate. She didn’t think about her loneliness, a well so deep she couldn’t bear it. She didn’t think of the man waiting in the trees when the rope broke, waiting for her all this time, waiting for her still. Perhaps she flew as crows do, for in no time she had made her way to the shed that had been their home, the roof covered with grape vines, and the tumbled-down fence meant to keep rabbits and deer out of the garden. She looked at none of it, for on this day every flower on the magnolia had opened so that the sky appeared to be filled with stars, and beneath the tree was the man she loved.

They were older than they had been, but they saw each other as they once were. A sixteen-year-old girl with diamonds in the palm of her hand. A man of twenty-three who kept the note she’d left for him in his coat. That was who they were beneath the tree. They had no time, so they didn’t think, and for once Samuel didn’t talk. They belonged to each other and they didn’t stop, not even to take off their boots.

They could hold what they had in their hands, they could see it with their own eyes, and they weren’t about to give it up now.

They went to town to search the taverns; they looked in the windows of the house on Washington Street, and in Martha Chase’s abandoned house, where the roof had fallen in. They hunted through the woods, peering into shadowy caves where bears slept, investigating the stony ridgetops where there were still wolves, despite all that had been done to destroy them. Faith was not to be found. After midnight, they were back beneath the magnolia tree. They climbed into the tallest branches so they might look for sparks in the sky or bonfires lit in the fields, any signs of life. Maria fell asleep for a brief time, there in the branches, nesting like a crow. She dreamed of dark water and when she woke she was drenched, even though there had been no rain. Samuel was sleeping still, holding onto a bough of the tree.