“Some say the wind is the goddess, trying to blow the world’s troubles away,” Crafty Agatha says abruptly, startling me. I hadn’t realized dusk had arrived. “Sometimes it feels like she will never stop.”

I follow her eyes to the window. I don’t see—at first—the lonely, forlorn figure floating along the edge of the cliffs, surrounded by fireflies. But then my eyes and attention focus, and I realize I’m looking at Ebb. I bite my lip for a moment, then—suddenly decisive—pull my coat on, slip my trusty flashlight around my neck, and hurry outside.

I catch up with Ebb by the cliffside. The ghost of the rabid possum is out tonight, and he nips at my heels viciously as I walk, before he finally hobbles away. The wind is wild, whipping at the bugs and the grass and the trees, but Ebb doesn’t seem to notice. Still, he’s a lonesome sight.

When I reach him, he’s talking to a grasshopper on a leaf.

“What are all these bugs doing here?” I ask flatly. I’m not the best at starting conversations. A hello would probably have been better.

He looks at me for a moment, and I worry, since I’ve been so rude to him, that he’s going to ignore me. But he finally says, “They came to get a glimpse of you. Insects spread news pretty fast.” He shrugs. “They came to see the girl they think is going to fight witches and save the world.”

I shake my head. “One witch,” I say. “And why do they care?”

Ebb takes this in, then looks down at the grasshopper again. “Animals, insects… they see the invisible world much easier than people do. Like, you know how dogs seem to be barking at nothing sometimes?” I nod. “It’s not nothing. Anyway, animals hate witch darkness as much as anyone else does.”

I watch him. “How do you talk to them?”

“It’s mostly listening, really. When you’re dead,” Ebb says, “you can’t make a sound that the living will hear. You learn to listen instead.”

Ebb pulls his ghost spider out of his pocket, and gently pets the creature on the head with his pinkie I try not to stare.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Like… what would a tree even talk about?”

Ebb shrugs. “Oh, I dunno, bird nests, the weather, wind, earthworms tickling their roots, what the soil tastes like on any given day, when their bark feels dry. Stone is the hardest to understand—very slow to say anything, pretty aloof, concerned with ancient news—volcanoes, floods long ago. Mosses are kind of interesting.” He tilts his head thoughtfully. “Constant gossip about when it’s going to rain. Nature’s always talking, if you know how to hear it.”

I think of what The Witch Hunter’s Guide says about nature and magic, how it’s all connected.