I slide across the floral-printed sheets, only inches away from him, our fingers still woven together. And I wish I could slip into his dreams—just like my grandmother could. I wish I could see what he sees.

Then I’d know for sure, the secrets he keeps.

Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine

IDA WALKER was born at the last hour, on the last night of the wolf moon, with chalky-blue eyes and a ribbon of blond hair that later turned black.

She sucked her thumb until she was nine and she often fell asleep in unusual places: the crook of a dogtooth elm tree, a patch of stinging nettle, between the paws of a mother wolf, on the roof of the old house during a rainstorm. Ida could sleep anywhere, even while floating on her back in Jackjaw Lake.

When she was eleven, she saw her first dream that was not her own.

She never intended to spy, but every dream she saw from then on didn’t belong to her. When Ida closed her eyes, she fell headfirst into the dreams of others while they slept. She learned to decipher those dreams with startling accuracy, but she knew that most people would not understand, or grasp, the true meaning of their dreams, so she told them fanciful fairytales instead.

Every full moon she brewed crowberry tea with spinster lemon, and she wove stories together as tightly as the braid down her back. She fell in love only once—to the man who gave her a moonstone ring that reflected the slate-blue color of her eyes, the same man who gave her a daughter who could charm wild honeybees.

Ida Walker died on a warm autumn night, the bone moth at her window.

And no regrets in her heart.

To Brew Crowberry Tea:

• One handful crowberries—picked during the coldest night
• One pinch poppy flowers, star anise, licorice, clover
• Steep all night during a full moon. Drink before sunrise in a teacup held away from the nearest clock.

NORA

I want to trust him.

I don’t want to do what I’m about to do.

But there are things—at least one thing—he’s not telling me.

I watch the swell of his chest, the shiver of his skin while he sleeps as if he were recalling the forest, the snow, the night I found him inside the Wicker Woods. It haunts him still.

And when I’m certain he’s really asleep, I slip from bed, pressing my feet silently to the wood floor. I creep across the loft, through shadows and long patches of moonlight, avoiding the places where I know the floorboards give way an inch or two and would let out a soft shudder. Fin breathes softly from the floor. The whole house is sunken into dreams—except me.