“I know who you are,” she said and blushed a little bit. “That’s why I made this for you. Go on now, open it.”

I pulled the blanket back from the wicker basket. I didn’t know what I was expecting—maybe cookies or some kind of jam or a cake or something. But instead there was this strange tiny thing at the bottom of the basket, maybe the size of my fist. It was a corn husk doll with a little knitted suit on it, a dopey grin like a clown’s hand-painted onto its face. It was kind of cute, maybe, if you squinted right.

“It’s a wardle,” she said. “You like it?”

The woman looked up at me with eyes so kind and innocent they might as well have been a toddler’s.

I thought about what Cass had said to me, that I should try and use whatever gifts the Spirit had given me for good, to help people. I wondered what it was that Willamette needed, what had brought her to the Farm in the first place.

“Um, what’s a wardle?” I said.

“A little critter I invented,” she said. “I’m always making them out of stuff I find at home. Pine cones and corn cobs and straw, little bits of string, you know. Got a whole house full of them, only don’t nobody want them.”

She’s lonely, a voice whispered to me, maybe Jeremiah’s, maybe the Spirit’s. Don’t you feel it?

“I don’t recall Grandma mentioning you to me before,” I said. “Were you one of the original folks at the Farm?”

“Gosh, no,” said Willamette. “Always wanted to be, but I was too scared to ask. Besides, my brother told me I was being foolish, that nobody would want me here.”

“Where’s your brother now?” I said.

“He died. Just last year.”

“I’m so sorry, Willamette.”

“It’s okay. He wasn’t too nice to me. He’d drink too much and smash my wardles. He’d say, ‘Look at your little friends, Willamette. The only friends you’ll ever have.’ And he’d toss them right out the window.”

What does this woman need from you? What does she want?

Something happened then, and I caught another glimpse, like what had happened with Horace. I saw Willamette Darling at home by herself, making her little creatures, piecing them together from debris and trash, from things she had collected from the forest. I saw her building them with care, speaking to them, laughing, her wardles gathered all around her. I saw her pick one up—a round-looking bucktoothed thing made from a gourd—and kiss it on the check, swaddling it like a baby.

And then it was gone. I was back in the field, talking to Willamette.