Unsure of what to do next, I start a slow walk around the edge of the town. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for—the statue, a bookstore, any sign of life. But everything looks bereft of humanity, beaten down by years of abandonment. Trees burst through broken windows. Roofs sag beneath their blankets of snow. I almost trip over what looks like the remains of a chair, broken and molding.
When I look down, I know that mementos like this are everywhere, half hidden by snow—the carcasses of furniture, broken plates and bowls, toys and books all unrecognizably swollen with dampness and age. I remember what the orphanage clerk said about looting in the wake of the time crisis, and my stomach clenches at the thought of such chaos.
A flicker of motion in the sky makes me raise my head. I look up and see a thin column of smoke, rising into the blue from somewhere deeper in the town, and my breath seizes in my chest. What kind of person would inhabit such a place?
Well, you’re here, a dry inner voice reminds me. Surely all manner of explorers and scavengers have descended upon Briarsmoor since it was abandoned. It may be nothing. And even if it isn’t—I won’t learn anything about my past by skulking around the edge of town. And though I’ve scanned everywhere, I can’t see a statue that resembles the one from my dreams.
So I square my shoulders and walk toward the smoke.
Eventually I come upon a small house that seems slightly less in disrepair than its neighbors. Pale smoke rises from the chimney. A small path in the snow has been cleared out to the front door. Not daring to give myself time to hesitate, I go up and knock.
There’s a long, long pause. Then I hear the sound of footsteps—slow, light, hesitant. The door opens.
I don’t know who I expected, but the woman standing in the doorway looks just like anyone in Crofton or any other town: long brown hair in a braid down her back, weather-beaten face and hands, a homespun dress hanging off her thin figure. She seems about Papa’s age, maybe a little younger.
“Who are you?” she says. She looks only momentarily surprised to see a stranger on her doorstep before she slips into a familiar smile. “Good afternoon.”
“A-ah—” I stutter before finding my voice. “Jules. Jules Ember. I’m looking for—information. I think my family used to live here.”
A beat passes, the woman staring intently into my face. Then she says, “Come in.”
Clutching my bag to my chest, I follow her inside. A weak fire burns in the hearth, a kettle boiling over it. Furs are piled against one wall, and dried meat and herbs hang from the ceiling. How long has this woman been living alone in this abandoned town?
“My name is Rinn,” she tells me as she sits down at a rough wooden table, gesturing that I should do the same. “I live here. I have always.”
It doesn’t sound like she’s mixing up her words—there’s no confusion or stutter in her voice. Instead, it sounds like something is plucking her words from the air and scrambling them before they reach my ears.
“Hello,” I say gently. “I thought the Queen ordered the town evacuated.”
Rinn smiles. “But in all the confusion, who will notice if one woman stays behind?” she replies. “As long as the fire doesn’t catch.” She says it like the flames might leap out of their confines, wild and hungry, at any moment. And for all I know, they might.
There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach. “What about your family?”
“My son will die.” Rinn’s voice is matter-of-fact, but I hear the current of grief running underneath it. “He is sickly, and . . . it will be too much for him. Another woman stays with me. But she died of fever.”
“I’m so sorry.” I swallow my horror at the thought of such aloneness. I stare at her, trying to understand the world as she sees it—her strange language, strung between what was and what will be. Perhaps time has shattered around her, too, like it has the town. “And you’ve been here by yourself ever since? How have you survived?”
Rinn shrugs one shoulder. “Hunting, planting, preserving. And people come along like you. So I am not so alone. Tea?”
Startled, I nod, and Rinn rises to busy herself around the kettle. “Are you coming to the festival today?” she calls over her shoulder.
My heart sinks. There is no festival today—there can’t be. This is a ghost town, a place stuck forever in time. She hands me a mug and I sip at it, waiting to speak, not wanting to tear away her illusion. “If I can. But I came here for another reason. I was born here,” I tell her slowly. “I’m looking—” I pause, stumbling over the truth. “I’m separated from my parents. I don’t remember them at all.” I dig down in my memory to the vision I had of Briarsmoor, the blood and the screaming woman and the man who took me away. “I remember a lawn and a statue of the Sorceress, holding a handful of stones like this.” I demonstrate cupping my hands over the table, then let them drop, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry; I know that’s a strange thing to remember.”
Rinn’s gaze on me grows more intent. “I know whose house that is—the Morses, a merchant and his wife and their family. Naomi Morse.”
Disappointment surges in me, followed by frustration—who is Antonia Ivera?
Rinn continues, “She and her husband and sister and their children all live in an old manor west of here, near the edge of town.” She tilts her head, staring at me like she’s desperate to recognize my face. “I am Naomi’s midwife.”
My stomach twists at her language—the implication that they’re still alive. I hold the sides of my chair as my heart beats a little faster, trying not to get my hopes up. It could just be another twist of her mind’s grasp on time. “Could you tell me where the manor is? I think— I’d love to go look around.”
Rinn blinks. “My dear,” she says after a moment. “The house is burning.”
My stomach sinks. “Burning?” I echo.
Rinn reaches out and puts a brown hand over mine, her eyes suddenly wide and wild. “We must go,” she says, “we must—”
“Rinn.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “No house is on fire.”
“Jules, you said?” Rinn’s calmer now. “Naomi Morse, well . . . they’re saying she’s a witch. A real one.”
“So they burned her house?” My throat is constricted, making it difficult to get the words out. “They killed her?”
She shakes her head. “Naomi’s dying,” she says. “I see it. A mercy, I’d think—her sister, her husband, their children—they all die in the fire. We will all die in the end, but the fire won’t take me. She will.” Her voice slips into a whisper.
I grip my mug, fingers strangling the hardened clay. “Who will? Who’s she?”
She stares at me, then blinks. “The house is coming down. We have to get out.”
Her eyes have gone distant, glassy, like she’s fallen back into the past for an instant. Then tears fill her eyes. She bows her head, old-yet-fresh grief clouding her face—and I feel it too, to my surprise. I remember the screams, the blurry faces gathered around the bed in my vision. If my guess is correct, Naomi Morse was my mother, the faces my aunt and cousins. And all of them long dead.