And then, in the middle of some facts she was telling me about her bike one day, she stopped and took a deep breath and said, “Rosie, tomorrow, things are going to change. You are gonna say good morning to me, and then ask me some things, and that’ll be the end of it. It’s time to rejoin the world.”

It was an overwhelming feeling, to know that the next day I would have to talk again and try to act like a normal person in the world, again. I wanted it and I didn’t want it at the same time.

Holding the book with my mother’s writing on it, I have a similar feeling. A feeling of moving toward something I’m not sure I can face.

I sit on the floor. My hands shake as I grasp The Witch Hunter’s Guide to the Universe, and open it. And then flip through its pages.

It’s not a very thick book, but the pages are dense—full of drawings and tight, cramped notes.

And witches. It is a book full of them. Over the next twenty-six pages are profiles of thirteen witches—some harmless-looking, some clearly malicious. For each witch there are descriptions on the right-hand page, written in all sorts of different handwriting, some very faded, as if different people have undertaken to write the notes over the years. But for each witch there’s a drawing on the left-hand page created by my mother.

The witches are beautifully drawn, shaded with charcoal. Some wear wild clothes, grimacing or sticking out their tongues; others have quiet faces with murderers’ eyes. There’s a picture of a greenish-tinted witch clutching a bag of gold tightly to his chest. There’s a tall man in a suit with his hand on the back of a wolf, a woman with a necklace of watches, and a bearded man holding a handful of spiders (though his picture has a big X through it). They have names like the Greedy Man, Hypocriffa, the Griever, Babble, Miss Rage, Chaos, Convenia, Mable the Mad, the Trapper. In my mom’s skillful hands, they look as real as someone you might see on the street, only monstrous—with evil in their eyes, and mouths that smile with malice.

I keep flipping until I reach a drawing that makes my hands freeze. It’s a woman staring out at me in desperation, dark black circles around her green eyes. She’s covered in webs, and moths and caterpillars—perched on her shoulders, clinging to her sleeves, and entangled in her hair. Her face, as scary as it is, is nondescript somehow, the kind of face you might see a hundred times and still never manage to recognize. My mom has spent a lot of time, probably the most time, on this one. It’s the most complete.