The urge to leave the Wood and grab a case of beer was intense. She rubbed the dirt off her lips with the back of her hand, skin still cold and damp from the snow, and stood. Took a step forward. Heard a warning in the breeze. The leaves rustled and informed her that if she left, she’d lose as much of the Song as she’d already sung and have to begin again from scratch.

“Or,” she muttered, checking her tuning, “since the foliage has never been all that chatty before, I’m afraid that’s what’ll happen and am refusing to take responsibility for my own decisions.” The aunties would vote en masse for option two. Here and now, the aunties could go fuck themselves. Because she wasn’t a total idiot, all evidence to the contrary, she didn’t think that last bit too loudly.

Time as such didn’t pass in the Wood. Charlie licked her lips, licked her teeth, breathed from the diaphragm, and sang her way past birth, conception, to birth again. Thirty-two weeks. Two years, give or take Allie’s willingness to fight the universe’s plan for her life. Forty-weeks.

She stepped out of the Wood to the baby duet of five and six and dove back in again, driven by David’s hoofbeats, before the urge to turn and check on the world even came up.

“If he ever learns to run silently, I’m in trouble.” Her throat felt rough and the Song had dried her mouth to the point where it took time to work up enough spit to swallow. “On the other hand, my willpower remaining untested can’t be a bad thing.”

She didn’t chew gum during a performance, not after the first time she’d caught hell for a wad stuck to a mic stand, but she checked her pockets anyway. One used tissue. The crushed foam cover off an earbud. The expected guitar pick. A linty humbug.

Charlie didn’t like humbugs and she had no idea of how the candy had ended up shoved down under the ridge of her jacket pocket’s lower seam.

Lie.

Auntie Jane always carried humbugs. It helped her maintain the illusion she’d been born before Mackenzie King entered politics. She also carried scotch mints. Charlie liked scotch mints. Interesting that a humbug had shown up.

Actually, less interesting and more typical.

Having something to suck on helped, as little as she liked the flavor. “Insert dirty joke here,” she muttered around the candy as she tightened her G.

She Sang past the birth of three and four. Past the conception of five and six. Past the birth of five and six. To . . .