She recites her tales, and we peer up at the stars and wait for spring to settle over the lake. For the seasons to change. We listen to the night insects buzz from the tall beach grass. We listen to the spring flowers bursting from the cracked soil, nights growing long and warm. We lie on the roof even when the summer rain pelts from the sky, cool drops against our heated flesh. I tuck a wave of hair behind her ear and she kisses me on the lips—and I’m certain there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

I’m certain that love can be a wound, deep and saw-toothed and filled with salt. But sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes I’m certain I’ve loved her before. That this is the second time my heart has knitted itself too tightly around hers.

The second time I’ve kissed her for the first time.

The second time I’ve placed my lips on her neck and let my hands drift up her spine. The second time I’ve fallen in love.

The second time I’ve known that I’ll never leave these mountains, the cold dark of the forest, the bottomless lake beyond her room.

The second time I’ve known—without question—I’ll never leave her.

Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine

NORA WALKER was born beneath a paper moon at the end of February, during an especially windy leap year.

Her birth was quiet—her mother, Tala Walker, barely made a sound—while her grandmother, Ida, hummed a tune from an old nursery rhyme to draw the baby into the world.

As a child, Nora preferred pomegranates over strawberries, midnight over midday, and she often trailed after her grandmother, tugging on her skirts, begging for the ginger candies Ida kept in her pockets.

Nora’s mother assumed Nora had been born without a nightshade. The first Walker to lose the old magic completely. But during one cold winter moon, Nora and her wolf found a dead boy inside the Wicker Woods, and while trying to flee a wildfire, she slipped into the lake and discovered her shade hidden inside the black hollow of her witchy heart.

Nora Walker could bend time as if it were a prism of light on blue-green sea glass.

Time had never moved in a straight line for Nora, but on that night, she learned it could slip forward and back when her heart begged it to. When she asked.

She could undo the mistakes of the past.

She could make right her wrongs.

She could bring boys back from the dead.

And she would use her nightshade many times.