We cut the current by the ruined mill and drifted beneath sycamores. She reached out and touched the bark, whispering a name I didn't know; the tree's leaves sighed and loosened a shower of tiny, paper moths that glowed briefly and then dissolved into river smoke. I should have been startled, but I only laughed until the sound made the water tremble.
Only of losing you, I wanted to say. Only of a quiet life without your crooked hands in it. Instead I said, "Not while the river remembers us."
I kept the ribbon. In winter I wrapped it around a jar of seeds and hummed to the soil. In spring, seedlings chased the sun like answers to questions. People in town still said she was a witch, but the edge of the jokes had dulled; a few asked about the garden, about how my tomatoes remembered rainier summers. i raf you big sister is a witch new
When we were children, everyone in town joked that my sister was a witch. It started with the cat — black and malcontent — who chose her as if by rightful inheritance. Then there were the nights she predicted lightning and the way seedbeds sprouted after she hummed to them. As we grew, the jokes turned sharp, a blade of gossip that kept its edge.
"I'll follow the maps you left," I said. We cut the current by the ruined mill
"She followed the current," I would say. "She went where the river carries what we can't carry ourselves."
"Don't tell anyone," she told me now, and that made me think of late-night conversations hidden beneath quilts, of hands warmed by hands, of promises that smelled faintly of rosemary and iron. Only of losing you, I wanted to say
"Are you afraid?" she asked.