Prolog
A streak of silver-white hair runs through the forest. Lost. The boy is lost. As he tries to grapple with this, he walks further. If he just keeps walking, he will find his way back, he reasons. But minutes turn to hours and now he watches the sunset, hungry, thirsty, tired, and scared.
A flash of gold-blond hair runs through the forest. She reaches up and picks the blood-red magnolia berries, plopping each one delicately into the full basket. She looks around and, seeing no more berries, turns to head back. But a boy with silver hair catches her attention.
How very nice of the golden-haired girl. The boy walks beside her with a full stomach and well rested head the next day, carrying a basket of schisandra bars. As they walk up the steps to his father’s pub, he thanks her. She nods shyly and gestures to the door, which opens before he can even knock. He is quickly swooped up into his father’s arms in a flurry of questions, accusations, and finally questioning how he found his way back. The boy points to the girl but she was already walking away. His father calls to her but she continues on.
Meet me at the willow tree. The only six words she had uttered to the boy on their long walk to town. And so they did. Every mid-morning they would meet at the willow tree and he would help her with tasks or they would play. Using the bioluminescent rock she gave him, he would go home and help his father close the pub. Then her mother taught her how to make a luck charm and the girl made herself and the boy, who introduced himself as Silver, matching charms for his eighth birthday. She told him that she was a witch.
Silver is convinced that finding the lute in the pub’s alleyway was evidence that the charm was true. To repay the girl, whom he has taken to calling Gold, he wrote his first song for her and played it to her on her birthday. Tough as Bark, he called it, compared her to their willow tree.
It has been a few years since Silver found the lute, and, to her internal dismay, he found a band mate, a flautist named Lory. Now they come a few times a week. She is further disheartened when her mother questions why, for all these years, she goes to the willow tree rather than making friends within her own coven. Mother would not be pleased that she is playing with a villager, the girl knows, so she stays a few times a week to ‘make friends’. She does, however, and Ebony and her start going to the willow tree together. A friend for a friend.
Silver is so happy that Gold has made another friend, although a sour feeling sticks into his heart when he sees them conversing without him. However, they get time alone when Ebony and Lory become close and go off to play their own games, ones that boys aren’t allowed into. A friend for a friend.
Years go by and Silver and Lory’s band continues to grow. First a drummer, Jacob, and then a violinist, William, and finally he stops coming to the willow tree all together. They come. And as her real smile slips from her face, she sits on the willow branch, the one from her ninth birthday, and hums her song. She listens to them talk of things she will never understand, never be a part of, for witch music is about feeling and the rhythm of the earth. Quarter notes, doted half notes, rests, all of what they talk about, all they do, is wrong. All except for Tough as Bark. And so she sits there, hums her song, and sinks into the tree, becoming one with the bark, the wood, the willow.
His father has given him a task for his talent.
Now he goes to the pub during the week, not their willow. She was content to sit and listen to them at the pub because Silver's singing and playing was true, unlike the rest of the band. The girl only hoped that her mother did not go looking for her during the days that she was away. Witches were not welcome in town.
He waited weeks. Gold never came. She had stopped coming to his shows. And now he is 16 and leaving to tour the country with his band. They meet under the willow tree, just Silver and Gold, and he promises to buy her a drink on her eighteenth birthday at the pub. And he leaves to tour the country. He leaves her for three years.
The girl was crestfallen. First, she was caught, now he is leaving. Silver had talked of it, but she never expected it to be so long. To be without her. She received parcels on her birthday full of souvenirs from where he was; a sprig of pine, seashells, dry dirt. The last confused her. Worried her.
They said it would be hard to transport so he got a small one
She went to the pub. She stood in the corner. She searched the crowd, her hopes low. He was not there. She waited. And waited. And the lights dimmed. She heard the familiar tune of her song being played on the lute and she looks to the stage as she hears his silky voice drifting through the building.
Underneath the willow tree, the boy hands the girl a cactus. A saguaro, he told her. Understanding lights her eyes and she pours the packet of dry sand into the pot, topping it off. He climbs onto their branch and plucks her tune on his lute. He calls her up, saying that Gold should keep him company rather than stay by her lonesome down there. She climbs next to him and says;
“It’s Evika.”
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