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Dedication

To my mother and my father

fall

CHAPTER 1

Bay and I approached the farm at dawn. The first sun churned sideways through the trees, catching in the previous day’s rain, which the wind now shook down from the Carolina silverbells, the beeches, and the poplars. I rolled down the window and heard the forest fizzing.

Bay had taught me one of their songs in the car: “Come, my soul, and let us try, for a little season, every burden to lay by, come and let us reason.” He sang the harmony and drummed his thumbs on the wheel. I couldn’t hold the melody and my voice kept slipping.

Before I met Dice, before I met Queen and Pear, he was the whole Ash Family to me, and I promised him: my soul, with which I would try. We repeated the song till I could maintain my line. When we turned off the paved road, the low sun lit up every strand of his hair, so that, as a result of its extreme disorder, it looked like a giant, bright halo. He had rescued me, I thought.

Bay drove maybe a mile more up a road so bumpy that my head kept hitting the ceiling. We passed four signs warning hunters not to come near, BEWARE LARGE DOGS.

“Here,” he said. “We’re here.” In an instant the gold light broke, and here was my first view of the farm. The house crouched in a whirl of yellow leaves from the biggest hickory I’d ever seen. The wind spun the leaves in the air as thick and self-contained as the liquid in a snow globe. I felt like my eyes were failing. I stumbled out of the car. Bay took my hand. I’d gotten a splinter in it the day before, and I felt like he’d shoved a stake through my palm. A light went on in the house.

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