It didn’t mean anything.
But the words were whispering through her mind, whispering and slithering, echoes of women overheard in town, men at Patience’s graveside, taunts and rumors, gossip milled for years and years. An early frost: witch weather. A late spring blizzard: witch weather. Years of hardship remembered generations later. Failed crops. Harvests eaten through with disease and rot. Unseasonal, unnatural, suspicious, wrong. That’s what happens when you anger the Lovegoods, and, boy, those women are easy to anger. That was what they said in town, half a joke.
But that had never been what the Lovegoods said among themselves. The orchard did not shudder in response to every sling or slight. The witch weather wasn’t revenge.
It was the orchard’s way of mourning.
Sorrow pushed the door open.
Verity’s room was lit by moonlight. Sorrow could just make out her shape on the bed. Curled on her side, only taking up half even though she slept alone. Her back was to Sorrow.
Sorrow took a step forward, then another. Her third landed on a board that creaked loudly and she froze, her heart thundering. Verity didn’t stir. Sorrow couldn’t tell if she was asleep. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t making any noise. She couldn’t tell, she couldn’t hear, she had to know—
Verity snorted softly and let out a low whuffling breath.
Relief hit Sorrow so hard she stepped back, right onto the creaking board again. She waited until she heard another breath, and another. The gentle inhale, the soft exhale. Verity was fine. She was only asleep.
Sorrow backed out of the room and shut the door quietly. Adrenaline and cold racked her entire body, made her hands shake and her teeth chatter. She picked her way down the stairs and into the kitchen. She filled the kettle and set it to boil on the stove. As it warmed she paced anxiously around the kitchen, tried to decide if she wanted to start a fire or not. She didn’t think she would be getting back to sleep anytime soon, even if she could find a way to get warm. By the time the water was boiling and her tea was steeping, Sorrow was so annoyed at her own indecision she stalked over to the woodstove just to have something to do besides fret.
She started piling kindling and balled-up newspapers into the woodstove, but when she reached for the long lighter she stopped. She might be doing it wrong. It was all too easy to imagine smoke billowing out of the stove as the paper crumpled to ash. So easy, in fact, that as soon as the idea came into her mind she couldn’t shake it. She would do it wrong, she would make a mistake, the fire would rage out of control, it would engulf the kitchen, chew away everything bright and new. It had never been her chore anyway, starting the fires, that had always been Grandma’s—
Grandma. Sorrow jerked away from the stove so quickly she slammed her knee into the iron door. “Fuck,” she whispered. She rubbed at the sore spot as she scrambled to her feet and limped down the hall to Grandma’s room. She paused only a second before opening the door.
The curtains were drawn tight, blocking out the moonlight, and Sorrow had to blink for a few moments to let her eyes adjust. The room smelled of flowers and earth and laundry detergent. It was quiet. Grandma was a featureless shape on the bed. It was so incredibly quiet. Sorrow’s heart, already racing, stuttered with anxiety. She needed to see. She needed to be sure. She reached for the light, stopped with her fingers on the switch.
A loud snore rumbled from beneath the blankets.
Heart still thumping wildly, Sorrow shut Grandma’s door and returned to the kitchen. She picked up her tea, but the first sip was too bitter, almost metallic, and she set the mug down. She started toward the woodstove, changed her mind, turned on her heel. Verity was fine. Grandma was fine. She was fine. All three of them were alive and well. She didn’t know where this discomfort and restlessness was coming from. She felt as though she had woken in ill-fitting skin, and with every minute the sense of wrongness grew stronger. Verity was fine. Grandma was fine. She was fine. It was so cold.
Sorrow pulled the back door open. Everything was silver in the moonlight. She couldn’t tell if there was frost on the garden. Grandma would be crushed if her garden was wrecked by frost in the middle of summer. Sorrow grabbed a sweater Verity had left draped over a kitchen chair, jammed her feet into her sneakers, and darted outside.
Her breath was a bright puff of mist. Everything was the wrong color, silver and gray and black. Grandma’s garden looked like it had been carved from marble.
She stepped down from the porch and crossed the lawn. Her shadow was long and wavering, and the grass was damp with cold dew—not crackling with frost. She touched the top leaves of one beanstalk, holding the baggy sweater against her chest as she leaned forward. She half expected the leaf to snap when she brushed her finger against it, but it gave, still perfectly supple. She touched others with the same trembling fear. None of them were frozen and stiff. It wasn’t cold enough to frost. Not yet.
Sorrow straightened and looked around, casting her gaze over the barn and the chicken coop and the dark edge of the orchard tipped with silver. She ought to check the apple trees too.
She twitched her knees, but she couldn’t bring herself to take a step. Blades of grass tickled her ankles. The orchard at night had never frightened her when she was a child; she wasn’t going to let it frighten her now. But it was cold, and she would rather be back inside, drinking her tea, calming down, going back to bed.
A soft breeze rose. The air was bitingly cold; it laced through the knit of her sweater and sent a shiver through her entire body. Leaves turned in the garden, rustling quietly, and more distant, more softly, the trees in the orchard did the same.
The wind stilled, and it was quiet.
There were no crickets. She didn’t hear any night birds or owls. No crackle of small nocturnal creatures scurrying along the ground. She couldn’t hear the peep of the frogs that sang in the soggy field below the house.
The orchard was absolutely, achingly silent.
The stillness lasted seconds, minutes. The only way Sorrow could measure the passage of time was in the racing of her own pulse.
Witch weather. She moved her lips as the wind rose again. She heard it before she felt it, chasing through the leaves in the orchard like an approaching rainstorm. The touch of cold on her skin, on her bare legs, through the sweater, that came after. It stung her ears and made her eyes water and carried with it, faintly, the scent of smoke.
Sorrow spun around, poised to run, fear stinging like ice all over her skin. There was a fire nearby.
The rational corner of her mind was thinking: It was a cold night. It was a fireplace or woodstove. She was in the mountains, surrounded by farms. It didn’t mean anything. It could be anywhere, drifting on that unsteady wind. Next door or a mile away.
She tilted her head and breathed in.