Even though they saw each other for a few hours most days, Lily felt overcome with joy at the thought of having a full uninterrupted day to spend with her friend. Alice had lived in the cabin her whole life, but since her parents’ disappearance she had been received coldly by the rest of the Alder Vale residents. Alice was quiet but headstrong and unusual, and something about her presence made most people descend into gossiping whispers whenever she walked by.

One of those people, who called herself Alice’s ‘governess’, was a middle-aged woman filled with pity and self-righteousness. When Alice’s parents first disappeared, she took to making sure Alice ate occasionally and taught her how to keep a fire burning in the grate. Alice had been a pale and sickly-looking child back then, but her dark eyes were fierce and her temper was fiercer, and the woman had packed up and left less than a month after Alice’s parents.

‘She tried to curse that poor woman,’ Jemima Darroch commented to the shop girl in the bakery a few days after the woman had left. ‘That’s why she left so fast. Take it from me, love, that child, she’s a witch, and I’m as sure as I am that the sky’s blue. A witch through and through, and the sooner she leaves the better.’

As unkind and unpleasant as Jemima was with her gossiping, the ‘witch’ notion spread through the village like a plague. Within a week, it wasn’t simply a rumour muttered in bad taste, but an accepted fact. By the age of eight, Alice was only going down to the village every other week for food and supplies, and even then she made sure she was seen by as few people as possible. She hid her hair in a cap and skulked in alleyways, sneaking from place to place, before disappearing into the shadows again. She became a part of the local lore, ‘the witch in the woods’, ‘the strange Blackwell girl’, and every accident, every case of bad luck, every injury, was blamed on her.

There were only two people in the village who opposed the persecution of Alice Blackwell, and they were Lily and her uncle. So as soon as Alf heard that Alice’s parents, loyal customers of his, had gone missing, his immediate concern had been for their daughter. He thought, if nothing else, perhaps Alice needed a companion and sustenance. Barely a few hours after he heard the news, he packed a wicker basket full of cakes, herbal remedies, candles, and apples, and sent Lily up the mountain to visit her.

They had been just young children, awkward and shy, but their connection was instantaneous. From the moment they met, Lily knew they were kindred spirits and she felt sure that Alice had been sent specifically so they could be companions. She told Alice so that very first day, when they had sat together by the open log fire in Alice’s home. They shared a hunk of bread with some cheese, and enjoyed a mug of hot cocoa each, which Alice had just learned to make. Their friendship was forged that day, and Lily had visited Alice several times a week ever since.