The only soul in the entire town who did know where Alice resided was a girl of a similar age who made the trip through moss-covered forests and up into the cold mountain air to visit Alice several times a week. She usually brought little bundles of fresh herbs, baked goods, and an apple or two, and they would spend hours talking and laughing before the girl disappeared back down into the valley, leaving Alice alone again.

Contrary to what the townsfolk whispered, Alice lived a solitary life not by choice, but because she had no family to speak of. Her father and mother had raised her in this cabin. They’d loved her, cared for her, and cherished her for the first six years of her life. Then one day they’d kissed her goodbye and ventured out on a short but routine hunting trip.

And never returned.

Loneliness had stopped tugging at her heart years ago, very soon after she started receiving visits from the girl from Alder Vale. Something else tugged at her heart though, and it tugged with relentless abandon. The irony of the townsfolk calling Alice the ‘witch-girl’ was that Alice was sure that she possessed no real magic. She knew very little about her lineage, except for what was in her beloved grimoire that sat proudly on her crooked bookshelf. It was an ancient leather-bound tome, filled with spells and incantations, that she’d inherited from her mother, who had inherited it from her mother, and so on. For Alice, this book proved that she came from a line of women who were all gifted with real, visible magic, but she’d never seen any proof that it actually existed. The only skill Alice had was in reading cards and tea leaves – hardly useful in the world of real witches. A world she wasn’t even sure existed.

In truth, Alice was quiet and introverted; she enjoyed the solitude. Never once had she shown an inclination to leave her hidden mountain home. Oh, she dreamed of the world beyond the Shadow Lands: castles shrouded in mist, and schools where magic was taught to those who possessed the gift. She spent much of her time in her head dreaming of such things, but home was home. It was comfortable, peaceful; a reminder of her past, a physical memorial to her parents. She could never really, truly commit to the idea of leaving.

One evening in late autumn, all that changed.

A deafening storm rolled over the mountainside, pelting the wooden roof of Alice’s cabin with rain. She stoked the fire and tried to ignore it; she’d never liked storms. She was acutely aware that living out in the wilds with no real means of income meant that if a tree came down and crushed her cabin, she’d be homeless. Over the years, she’d learned about essential maintenance from some of her father’s old books. She’d treated the wood, cleaned every inch of the cabin inside and out, and even replaced three beams in the roof where it had started to leak last winter. She had done everything she could to weather-proof it, time-proof it, but tree-proofing it? Alice was sure there was nothing that could be done to protect her or her cabin if a tree decided to hurl itself down upon them. She’d managed to avoid destitution for eleven years, but when the wind howled, she couldn’t help but worry that her little wooden sanctuary wouldn’t protect her for much longer.