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WINTER
Snow entombs the atelier.
Despondent, wraithlike, Olruggio drifts from his room out into the cold. He pushes through the thick and numbing snow and the numbness seeps through his robes, into his ankles, his calves. His feet are slabs, invisible; he moves by the memory of them. All is gray and still and silent, and the snow sticks to his cloak, to his hair, like falling stars, spat out of heaven, blessing the earth by their ignoble deaths. Then the wind stirs the stars, bitterly; and the barren branches of the silverwood contort, and they creak.
In summer this plot, this precious quarter-acre at the back of the atelier, had been a garden—a garden of beans, of squash and tomatoes and carrots. Of peppers and eggplants and a failed attempt at rhubarb, for he’d planted them too closely together. A joke about the seeds feeling too lonely. A sheepish smile; a peace offering of peas. And now the earth is a rupture of roots, and the silverwood towers some forty feet high, and its gnarled branches don’t look like they’ll produce any life, ever again.
Of course, it is the dead of winter; all the trees are “dead.” In fact, they’re only resting—waiting—for the world to turn again.
Olruggio needs his world to turn again.
He lays his head against the silverwood and presses his bare palms flat against the flinty bark, and in this stillness he allows himself to weep. The girls are inside, safe and warm and asleep, wiped out by grief of their own. And Olruggio doesn’t know what he should say to them. He doesn’t know what to do now at all.
“Help me,” he blubbers, fingers scraping hard enough to bleed and feeling nothing. Snowflakes sink into the exposed skin of his neck, his shoulders. His knees buckle; he slides into the snow, into the ground. “Please…”
Another gust of wind disturbs the tree. Its branches rattle like bones.
“What do I do…” Olruggio’s tears run into his mouth; they freeze along his chin. Their tracks sting like bitter cuts. “I’m not…I’m not a professor,” he whispers. “...What do I do…I don’t know what to do…’m lost.”
He groans.
“I’m lost…!”
He wraps his arms around the tree and with trembling lips, through a whimpering sob, he presses a desperate kiss against the trunk. He holds on. He can’t break away. He feels like if he breaks away, if he ends this kiss, then he will extinguish with his parting breath his final wisp of irrational hope. The tree’s life breath.
Branches protest again; they groan as though they themselves mourn, loudly, deep, crackling thunder. And suddenly Olruggio feels a weight upon his neck—scraping and cold—and he sniffs and stares at mottled bark, uncomprehending.
He feels the branch lurch down his back, and all the while the tree pops and creaks, a symphony of contortion, and the branch wraps itself around Olruggio’s waist, and Olruggio, fresh from battle, starts to panic, but there is no brim or blood or seal—the branch does not constrict him—no. The branch…
…it hugs him back.
Olruggio, through runny nose and eyes, gazes upward—up the trunk of the great tree, up through the thorny canopy which pierces the gray gloom. His fingers and his feet—they tingle. He looks down again. Is he dreaming? For the snow around his legs has melted, and his arms are warm. The tree radiates warmth.
This can’t be.
An icy draft rouses the far reaches of the tree. But where Olruggio kneels, the blast is bested—it’s a balm against his frigid skin, a waft of warmth.
Olruggio swallows. He slides his hands from the trunk and wraps careful fingers over the branch across his chest. It’s warmest here—it almost glows. It warms him to his core.
He hears snow melt and fall and splash around him. He remembers snow is water, and the one who loathed getting wet.
But this can’t be. He is certain it’s a dream.
With a small and plaintive squeeze of the branch, Olruggio says, “...Qifrey? Can you hear me?”
A pause.
A creak.
A gentle, scratchy squeezing of his hand.
SPRING
For frozen months, Olruggio keeps the girls inside, and he doesn’t visit the tree. He can’t bear to confirm he’d imagined the scene. He would rather dwell with it in dreams, curled up on the living room couch which has become his bed, for he cannot be far from the girls. The bridge is too great a span. What if something happens? He’ll sleep here; he’ll keep watch. It wrecks his back and barely soothes his heart.
He daren’t leave the safety of the atelier; he daren’t make the easy trek to Kalhn, which now is too immense an undertaking. When the girls ask him for casting components—for in the fray, all theirs had been lost or destroyed—he scrounges in his workshop and gives them what he finds.
(For even though he knows it was a dream, he doesn’t want to leave the tree.)
And bless the girls, they understand. At least, they don’t complain. They use his hand-me-down quires and wands almost without a word at all.
They teach themselves. He watches them; he feels an utter failure. His beard grows gnarly and unruly. His eyes sink under heavy brows and hooded lids. The brushbuddy stops visiting his lap for warmth—he shakes too much—he sloshes tea and wine and harder drinks onto its fur.
And then it’s spring again. And voices thaw; tempers crash; emotions push their way up through the quiet.
“Argh—piece of shit!”
The wand rolls over the stone floor that Tetia’s kept swept all this time. Bless her. Coco crawls to the hearth to retrieve it. Agott glares.
“Don’t bother,” she snaps. But she’s almost in tears; she seems overwhelmed by her own feelings. “It’s worn out. It’s rubbish. I can’t draw with that.”
Coco scoots backward and sets the wand back on the desk, anyway. She brushes her knees; she glances at Olruggio, who lags against the mantle—silent specter—nursing an empty mug.
“It’s all we have. It’s not safe to leave yet,” she says quietly, tugging Agott’s hand and pulling it into her own. Olruggio looks away. The storm outside affirms this with a stuttering flash and a peal of thunder. Wind howls through the chimney.
“...I don’t care,” says Agott, bitter and defiant. “I’m going to Kalhn. I have to get out of this house.”
“But—” This is Richeh, furrowing her brow. “Professor Olly doesn’t want us to go by ourselves.”
“And he doesn’t want to…” Poor Tetia purses her lips and studies her sketchbook. She’s using the backs of the pages; she’s running out of room.
“We’ll go.”
All four girls turn to him with wide, uncertain eyes. It's agony to meet them; he gives up right away.
“Alright?” he says to his slippers, voice hoarse from neglect. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
But tomorrow, though the storm has passed—though the sun shines through the opaque window pane, and puddles shimmer along the path, and birds call out to one another, asking after one another—tomorrow, Olruggio can’t bring himself to leave.
And the girls take up their shoddy wands and pore over their spellwork. The girls take breaks to check on him; the girls bring him hot tea. The girls understand.
He wishes they didn’t.
He stands alone in the kitchen, gazing out the window, trying to come up with something to make for dinner. He hasn’t cooked in ages—but—he’s let them down today. Again today, and every day. He’s failed the girls so utterly. He’s supposed to care for them, not the other way around. He’d promised that. And yet without that heart to which Olruggio’s own heart had always been accountable…without that smile, that sweet assurance, how can he keep a promise anymore? How can he go on at all?
tink tink tink
Olruggio blinks. His eyes refocus. A little sparrow sits on the sill, pecking at the window.
For minutes, Olruggio only stares, but the small bird persists—it pecks and pecks until Olruggio leans over the counter and wrenches the window open. He’s winded by the effort; it hasn’t been opened in months. Since…
This either scares or satisfies the sparrow, who flits away. It’s left something behind. Olruggio scoops it from the sill.
It’s a sprig from a tree, dotted with buds and a single, fragile flower. Olruggio traces its petals with his little finger; he brushes over the silvery wood.
His heart is in his throat.
He prepares a simple casserole, moving about the kitchen with sudden, impossible energy. He leaves the window open. It’s really still too cold for that, and brisk breezes send shivers down his spine, but he’s got fires going—tea on—with the tree branch safely on the sill.
The bird returns, a tawny streak in his periphery, there and gone again. Olruggio nearly slices his finger open. He orphans the knife on the cutting board and hastens to the window. The bird has left another branch. This one is larger, sporting several buds and six or seven flowers, and Olruggio caresses it and sets it by its sibling.
And when the bird returns with yet another sprig of silverwood, Olruggio realizes what it wants.
He situates the kitchen, yanks his cloak from the rack, and slips out the back door.
His eyes water in the face of the setting sun—his lungs cry out against the chilly air. He hasn’t been outside in weeks. He trudges round the back of the atelier toward the old garden plot, and the path is strewn with tender, milk-white flowers, surely scattered by the storm. Among them hops the sparrow, picking at stray petals…waiting for Olruggio.
The moment he steps near, it flutters upward—up, up, up into the boughs of the silverwood tree.
How singularly beautiful are trees in bloom, Olruggio thinks; and this tree is no different. Its nascent leaves shine brilliant green; its buds and flowers twinkle, ten thousand kisses, bright daystars. It sways with rapture in the wind. It’s waking up. Olruggio can feel it.
He is, too.
“I missed you,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
The wind whisks his words toward the tree. They spiral up its trunk, around its boughs; they slither through its leaves.
The sparrow catches his eye again. It hops along a lower branch, adroit and steady, chirping idly to itself. And where the branch ends and spiders into smaller twigs, the bird stops; it hops to face Olruggio and beckons to him with a warble.
Spellbound, Olruggio steps forward. He stops before the branch.
The bird takes off. And before Olruggio’s very eyes, the tips of the twigs begin to crackle and blacken. The darkness spreads past where the twigs thicken into branches, and it spreads all the way to a knot near the center of the heavy bough. And there it ceases. The bough is dead.
Olruggio stares. This is…
The sparrow cheeps at him again. He tears his eyes away. What now?
The sparrow rests upon a neighboring branch. It cleans its beak against the bark. Swipe, swipe. This branch twists outward, opening toward the sky—a great deal like a spindly, cupped hand.
Olruggio counts its thicker branches. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
A frosty gust of wind catches his cloak. It billows forward, pulling him a little closer, toward the tree. He takes a stumbling step.
“These are…these are for us?” he asks, clutching at his cloak, his voice no higher than a whisper. “How did you know?”
The little bird sings something to him in response, and off it flies.
Olruggio flies to Kalhn this very night.
Nolnoa follows him over the hills to the atelier; and bless that old man, he scratches his beard and defers all his questions, and he gathers up both black and silver wood and promises to return them as quickly as his old hands and bleary eyes allow him to.
It only takes him a week.
“I’ve never worked with such pliant wood,” he muses as he hands Olruggio a trove of full inkwells, a stack of five sleek boxes. “It was perfect. Perfect size, perfect strength. Perfect everything. I hope it’s all to y’all’s liking.”
Olruggio hugs the old man, more tightly than he should. The girls take turns after him—Tetia, Coco and Richeh. Agott stands off to the side. She clutches her open box to her chest. Her wild hair obscures her face.
“Thank you,” she says. Her voice is broken. She’s crying.
“Agott…” Olruggio lifts a hand.
“I love my wand,” she says. “I love it.”
“I’m very glad, my dear,” Nolnoa says, full of melancholy fondness.
Coco moves past Olruggio, into Agott’s arms, and holds her close.
SUMMER
Olruggio washes his face and trims his beard and makes it a point to go outside at least once a day. And he’ll never be a teacher, but he tries his best to help.
He sits with the girls during lessons, which Tetia has taken upon herself to plan and carry out, and he talks through any questions they can’t suss out on their own. He looks over their new spells and offers feedback if they ask. His heart fills with aching affection whenever one of them reminds him of…through their insights or their musings, or even the strokes of their pens. And at first he has to excuse himself, but he gets better. If the girls can carry on, then so can he. So he must.
It helps that he’s drawing again. He can’t help it. He can feel the life flowing through his wand, the coursing energy, every time he dips it into the ink. His spells are almost certainly more vivid, more alive. Sometimes he even thinks he hears a whisper, faint as mist; the susurrus of leaves that might have been a voice.
“Hey,” he says to the silverwood one morning, a clear, cartwheeling summer morning, abuzz with bees and birds. The silverwood rustles in response.
“We’re having lunch out here today,” Olruggio says. He peers up through the branches, his hands on his hips. “I want…” He huffs a tuft of hair from his eyes. “...I wanna show them you can hear them.”
I want to show them that you’re in there. That you’re alive. Because I…
…I believe in you. I believe that.
Lunchtime arrives. The girls spread their picnic dutifully beneath the tree’s lush canopy. They cast cautious glances over its branches; they exchange looks among themselves. Their meal is no kind of fancy, five-course ordeal like it might’ve been before. But the girls seem satisfied with simple snacks and sandwiches.
Olruggio sucks at suspense. He scarfs down an apple and chucks the core over the hill, and he slaps the gingham blanket with his palm.
“Alright, girls,” he says. “You’ve been avoiding this tree. Why?”
They fidget.
“You know why,” says Agott, as blunt as he is, mildly indignant. “It’s obvious.”
“It scares me,” Richeh says—indeed, she sits the farthest from it, with the picnic basket drawn between her and it, a clunky, wicker shield.
“It makes me sad,” Tetia mumbles, picking at her hem.
Coco is quiet.
“Yeah…” Olruggio mutters, stroking his goatee. He shifts into a crouch. “...Can you girls try something for me?”
“What is it?” Tetia asks.
“I want y’all to stand under the canopy,” he says. “At different points. Like compass points.” He pantomimes a compass face. “Got it?”
“Why?” says Agott.
“You’ll see in a minute.”
He feels like he’s being too vague, but he sucks at suspense and he sucks at explaining something so fraught with emotion; so he relaxes with relief when Coco rises first and walks to where the dancing shadows of the leaves meet the sun.
“Like this?” she asks.
“Exactly.” He offers a gruff thumbs-up.
Spurred on by this show of approval and encouraged by Coco’s success, Tetia rises next and trots to a spot to the right of Coco.
“Good work,” Olruggio says with a small salute. She salutes back over a nervous smile.
In the meantime, Richeh has shuffled to the point on Coco’s other side, and Agott stalks moodily to the last open spot, giving the tree a wide berth.
Olruggio stands; he wipes his sweaty palms on his skirt. It doesn’t help. Will this delight them or upset them? Has he been dreaming all along?
“Now, girls…this might sound crazy,” he begins. “...but I…” I think? I know? “...I feel like Qifrey’s still alive inside this tree.”
He sees them flinch at the use of the name. They don’t always, but in this context, on this raw nerve…His heart clenches with compassion. But before anyone (Agott) can snap at him, he makes himself continue:
“I know, I know. I might be off my rocker. And I don’t mean that Qifrey’s trapped inside the trunk, or something.” Olruggio steps over the basket. He treads barefoot through the grass, over the roots; he approaches the tree.
“I mean…all of you know.” He pushes past the swell of grief that tightens his throat. “This tree is him. And it’s alive…” He gazes up through the myriad leaves. “...so he’s alive.”
Right?
He lays his hand against the trunk. It thrums under his palm. The feeling reminds him of his wand; it gives him strength.
“Your wands.” He looks around at them, keeping his hand upon the tree. “And your ink. They came from it, you know.”
“I know,” says Agott, biting her lip, frowning between him and the jagged, black edges of the severed branches in question.
“And I reckon that he heard you somehow, Agott,” Olruggio says sternly, earnestly. “And I’ve spoken to him since, and I…I think that he can hear me, too.”
A crew of sparrows zooms overhead and lands in the treetop, showering the picnic with debris and punctuating their loaded silence with little cheeps and chirrups. Coco, once more, is first to humor him.
“And so you’re thinking, maybe…” She taps her chin, considering their arrangement. Her musings are muted these days, though no less sincere. “...maybe if we ask it who is who, then it—then he—will answer us somehow?”
“That’s right,” says Olruggio.
clever as always
His breath catches. He stares at Coco. She stares back. Had they both heard…or…felt that?
“Let’s try it!” cries Tetia. Olruggio looks at her. She clutches her daisy-dotted summer dress; her eyes are shining with desperate hope.
“Richeh wants to try, too,” Richeh says, glaring, determined.
Agott murmurs, “...Might as well.”
He should have known the girls would give him the benefit of the doubt. They’ve been doing that from the start. His spirit stirs with gratitude, with fresh anticipation.
“I promise I’m not fooling you,” he says. “I haven’t hidden magic anywhere, or anything.”
“We trust you,” Tetia says.
Coco meets his eyes. She smiles a little.
He nods once. Here we go.
“Hey, Qifrey,” Olruggio says to the silverwood, with his fingers yet spread out over its trunk, “the girls are here. We got a game for ya.
“If you can hear me…” he says, “...then…where is Coco? Can you point to her?”
The pause which follows is immense. The sparrows fall silent; even the insects seem to cease their whirring, waiting…listening. The girls hold their breath, frozen in place.
Then Coco gasps. She claps her hands over her mouth. The other three pine for her, and Olruggio calls out,
“Coco?! You okay?”
She can’t speak for her welling tears, but she nods fervently. She motions for them all, and as they rush toward her, she points to the ground. A pretty, pinkish pastel flower bobs between her toes. A wild sweet pea.
“I-it wasn’t there,” she manages. “It just popped up—just now.”
Agott kneels to examine it, exhaling in wonder. Tetia throws her arms around Coco.
“It’s him!” she cries. “He made it for you! He made the flower for you!”
“Well, that was easy,” says Olruggio, smirking over his shoulder. “Show-off.”
But Richeh marches several steps away from them, out of the shade, and glares up at the silverwood.
“I don’t want flowers,” she snaps at it. “Or leaves or seeds or berries. I want water.” She clenches her fists. “You’re a water witch, right? The best there is? Show Richeh what you’ve got!”
Her fierce hope is evident to Olruggio, in the severity of her grip, in the poise of her chin—the twitch of her jaw. She just needs a little more proof. He understands. He’s greedy for a mountain of it. He needs Qifrey, too. Can silverwoods summon water?
if they must
He jumps. And Richeh’s eyes widen.
For overhead, right over the silverwood tree and nowhere else, a cloud takes shape, woven from the ether in an otherwise cloudless sky. It thickens and darkens, covering them in shadow; and Olruggio blinks rapidly when—plop—a drop of water lands squarely in his eye.
It pours. Briefly—magnificently—and the bewildered sparrows flee to find another tree, and Richeh and the girls and Olruggio spread their arms wide and they dance in the rain, laughing, hugging each other and hugging the tree, letting streams of rainwater mix with their tears.
Soon, the cloud dissolves; the sky is clear again. Their picnic lunch is waterlogged; their hearts are deeply full. As they head inside to clean their dishes, Richeh tugs at Olruggio’s skirts.
“I have an idea,” she tells him. “I need to borrow your searneedle wand.” Her frown deepens. “But…will it hurt him?”
“Will what hurt him?” Olruggio asks, kneeling to face the serious girl. She leans in, whispering in his ear.
“...I think it’ll make him happy,” says Olruggio. “And he’s tough. It won’t hurt him.”
He smiles crookedly to reassure her. And he can see her spirit glowing—sees the passion in her eyes. He brings her the wand and leaves her there alone, cross-legged at the base of the silverwood—she oft prefers to be alone, and he trusts her by herself.
Besides, she isn’t by herself. He can be sure.
It’s not until the sun is gone and crickets sing and whippoorwills cry out that Olruggio carries a lantern down the path to the silverwood. He crouches by the trunk and lifts the light to squint at Richeh’s handiwork, which she had been too shy to show him earlier. At once, he melts with tenderness, with sweet and sad affection.
She’s always been good with intricate designs—her detail work always impresses him. As it does now: She’s carved a heart with sweet pea flowers stitched around its border, and five initials cradled in its center. A. T. R. C. O.
Olruggio studies the heart for a while, awash in the unremitting music of the night. He drags a hand down his face. He hoists his lantern toward the spot where Coco stood, where the little sweet pea now keeps watch, and he wonders aloud,
“So, is this ‘thank you?’...Or is this ‘goodbye?’ ”
No flowers spring up for his answer.
AUTUMN
There are birthdays and bonfires, hugs and shouting matches, heartaches and successes, all shared at the atelier. Months gather like fallen leaves into seasons, and those pile into years, and Olruggio balks at the Big Day’s arrival—a day which no amount of calendar-marking and kitchen-pacing could have prepared him for.
The girls are ready, of course. It’s the Big Day. The Fourth Test. The sole object of their focus for the past forever. Agott’s room is a forest of index cards; Tetia’s hair is pulled back with a length of twine, since all her scrunchies are employed in the noble art of scroll color-coding. Richeh only emerges from her secret room to eat, and Coco—bless her—Coco’s chewed her nails down to the quick, and she still tries to gnaw on them now.
They’re nervous, sure, but ready. Olruggio, on the other hand…
He’s not their teacher. Never has been. And yet he knows today will mark the end of something so important to him. There’s a new fissure in his heart, stemming from the largest one and crossing with the oldest ones, and the rending pains him, has him clawing at his heart over the bathroom sink and lying in his bed, heaving, until the light of morning.
They beg him to go with them. He refuses. Tetia protests; Coco entreats; Richeh pouts, but Agott doesn’t press him. She understands. No matter how highly they all regard him—still, in his own eyes, he has never earned the right to stand by them as their teacher. That’s a space that only one could ever fill.
He makes them breakfast, and sits with them, and sees them off at the windowway. They’ll be back in the evening, come hell or high water, bearing weighty tidings one way or another. One by one, he hugs them, stressing that it doesn’t matter:
“I know you’re gonna try your best. Whatever happens, it’s alright. Alright? Come home; we’ll figure it out.”
Tetia is taller than him. Agott is close. Richeh holds on for an extra-long time. And Coco clasps his hand in both of hers.
“We’ll let you both know right away,” she says. Her smile is laced with fiery conviction.
He swallows a swell of emotion and nods.
“...Thanks.”
Every year, beginning in autumn and all through winter, the silverwood tree grows quiet and still; and every year it seems to take a little longer for the tree to thaw and interact. Olruggio sometimes worries that he’ll never hear from it again. He sits with it this day to quell his tangling, twisting nerves, lighting a little fire, rubbing his hands together. He checks on Richeh’s carving, which has warped and risen some over the years. Woodpecker holes pockmark the trunk, numbering in the hundreds; tiny acorns lay nestled inside each one. The branches above him are all but barren; the occasional brown leaf lilts softly to the earth.
“I’m sure you’re nervous, too,” Olruggio says at length, after clock marks of crackling quiet. “But they’ll be fine. They’ll be great. I’m sure of it.”
He rubs his neck, bowing his head. “You’ve done well by ’em, Qifrey…they’re wonderful witches. And they’re good people.” All four of ’em. Despite all they’ve endured—maybe, in part, because of it—they’ve turned out to be four distinct and strong and beautiful young women. They’re closer to one another than ever, and Olruggio hopes—he dares hope—that they’ll be friends for life.
“Like me an’ you,” he says with a chuckle, knocking his knuckles against a cold root. The silverwood makes no reply.
Darkness creeps up on them, bearing with it a bitter chill, and Olruggio really ought to head inside. Start on dinner and brew some tea and warm the place up for the girls. But it’s hard to leave the tree alone; it’s hard to keep his memories and musings to himself, as they bubble up and spill over into his thoughts.
He remembers taking the Fourth Test with Qifrey, remembers trekking home at midnight, skipping, leaping, elated, overwhelmed by their success. Gushing over how hard it had been—how much they had worried—how hungry they were, both for food and for the future.
He remembers Qifrey’s sharp smile, his startled gratitude, when he’d said of course he was keeping the tassel—of course. It was gonna be the centerpiece of his new hat’s design. The staple. Irreplaceable.
“And what about you? Tired of tripping over that ribbon?”
“Never! I trip less than you ever did.”
“Cuz you’re taller!”
“Because I’m clumsy enough! I think it cancels out…”
Then dread sinks through him, a heavy, fast-falling stone. Too heavy to catch and keep back. He remembers their conversation in sketches and impressions, but when he tries to supply Qifrey’s voice to the memory, it’s instead an affected version of his own. Why can’t he imagine Qifrey’s voice?
He sifts for another conversation, another happy one. Cooking together, after midnight once again, suffusing their cozy kitchen with delectable smells and delightful warmth. Discussing Qifrey’s newest student, Richeh, over mountain apple wine; reveling in their house becoming home.
“She reminds me of you.”
“Me?”
“Stubborn. Determined. Knows what she wants.”
“Another hard-head, huh? Geez…how many of those do you need in this atelier?”
A smile. “Clever and talented. Observant…and kind.”
A blush. “All that too?”
A squeeze of his hand. “Just so.”
Olruggio wants to smile. He remembers how happy that made him, still makes him. But for the life of him, he can’t summon the true sound of Qifrey’s voice. He feverishly recalls its qualities: its refined accent, learned from Beldaruit; its scathing edge when run up against raw emotion. Its airy cadence, threaded through with profound sadness. Its smiling warmth whenever it spoke the girls’ names. His own name.
How long has it been since he’s heard Qifrey’s voice? Almost five years, he realizes. Time has been eating away at the binding of his mind—at his precious memories. Cherished details slip through the holes. Immense and vital fragments of his life—his heart. Lost.
Suddenly Olruggio can’t bear to be out here. He kicks out the fire and absconds indoors.
He focuses on cooking. A “Chef Olly Specialty,” the girls like to call it, a cute-enough name with a sad-enough origin (a recipe they’d designed without Qifrey): pork chops with cabbage and his signature husk potato pancakes, with lemon and chocolate cupcakes for dessert. Maybe even a little celebratory wine. They’re all old enough, right? He sets the food warming and cooling as needed, lays his head on the table, and waits.
On another night, he might’ve fallen asleep. This night, his failings torture him. How much more would Qifrey do! How much more preparation would he have poured into the celebration! He’d have gone with them, for one. For lousy one. Olruggio curses himself. Who gives a shit about his pathetic crybabying? They needed him there. He’s failed them again.
Clamorous footfalls interrupt his brooding. Pounding up the basement stairs, like a pack of puppies, bursting with boundless energy—
“Professor Olly!!”
—the girls are back.
He’s on his feet just in time to get knocked back off them. His vision clouds with pink—Tetia—crushing him in a hug, and other arms pull him this way and that, and his mood skyrockets as he gathers from this hullabaloo what must surely be true:
“Ack!—welcome home—how’d it—koff—go?!”
Subdued, soft, and disbelieving, Agott breathes: “We passed.”
“We passed!!” Tetia proclaims, releasing him to bounce on her heels and tug at her pigtails, twirling through the kitchen. “We’re witches!! We’re actual witches!”
“We’ve always been witches,” says Richeh, already eyeing the dinner spread.
“That’s true,” Coco says, grinning round at them all, “but I know what you mean, Tetia! It hardly feels real…!”
They look exhausted, with sweat-sheened brows and tangled hair and dark eye bags that rival his own. They also look happier than Olruggio’s seen them in a long, long time.
“I knew you’d pass,” Olruggio says, beaming, accepting their repeated hugs. “I knew you would! I’m so damned proud of you, girls!” His bleeding heart spills over, “And I—I’m sorry that I didn’t—”
“It’s alright,” says Agott, smiling with such empathetic warmth that Olruggio almost cries.
“We felt you there with us,” Richeh asserts, grasping his hand.
“Both of you,” Coco adds quietly.
They partake in the feast he’s put together, recounting their perilous adventure and commiserating over how inadequate the textbooks had been to prepare them for the test. Their practical experience had made all the difference. They thank Olruggio profusely for his guidance, quick to highlight the moments they’d used fire spells—he blushes and waves them off. He’s so full-up with food and wine and mirth that it takes him a while to notice that Tetia is missing.
“I don’t know where she went,” says Coco, frowning. “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”
“I heard the door,” says Richeh. “I think she went outside.”
“Sit tight,” Olruggio says. He scoops the brushbuddy off his lap and crackles and pops to his feet. “I’ll go check on her.”
He shrugs on his cloak and takes up his lantern and shuffles around the atelier perimeter, shoulders drawn against the frosty autumn night.
Olruggio finds Tetia sitting by the silverwood. She’s rekindled his fire spell; she stares into it, knees pulled into her chest, despairing—and looking for all the world like Qifrey as a boy. Pained nostalgia washes through Olruggio. That, and pity for Tetia. Nobody should be so forlorn on such a bright occasion.
“Hey,” he says, trudging toward her over barren earth and jutting roots, closing the distance between them. Her head shoots up; she tries to pacify him with a smile, but it shrivels into a grimace. She’s been crying.
“Sorry,” Tetia says, burying her face in her sleeve. “Sorry! Thank you for making food for us—it was really good—I’ll come back in, I just…”
An abrupt sob arrests her words. Olruggio drops his lantern and hastens to her side. He wraps his arm around her.
“I’ll be okay,” she mumbles, without conviction. “I just…I want to tell him…” She crumples with fresh tears. “...I want to see his smile, you know? I want to hear him say, ‘I’m proud of you.’ ”
Olruggio hopes vainly for the tree to send a sign. They need one now, more than ever. Doesn’t it know today was the Big Day? Can’t it feel the girls’ elation—their conviction—their longing for its presence, for its support, for its praise?
But the silverwood sleeps, a ragged, looming silhouette against the firelight, creaking in the brumal wind. Desolate.
With heart as hollow as the night, Olruggio rubs Tetia’s shaking shoulder.
“I know,” he says. “It’s cold out here. Let’s get inside.”
She follows him back up the path; they leave the tree behind. They have to, else they’d freeze to death out there, waiting, straining to hear its voice.
ANOTHER WINTER
Olruggio feels old enough to retire. Aches and pains spring up in every nook and cranny of his body; he can barely draw for half as long as he used to. Silver hair sprouts from his temples and streaks through his long beard. Seems like 40 is the new 80, or something like that.
Winters are rough. His very bones protest the penetrating cold. He’s got routines, though—ways to keep the whole atelier as balmy as the eastern beaches in the summer. He closes up the rooms that have been empty for years, so as not to waste the heat. His drawing desk is built around the hearth. It’s really only when he has to go outside that he curses the cold.
One of his outdoor routines needs fulfilled today, for last night’s storm dumped about a foot of snow over the valley. After several mugs of tea and several more aggrieved sighs, Olruggio bites the bullet. He tugs on two pairs of pants and three thick sweaters, stuffs his sore old feet into his boots, wraps his cloak over it all, and treks out to the tree.
“Good morning,” he grumbles. Icy clouds bloom from his breath. Adorned in fresh and glittering snow, the silverwood is nothing short of stunning. Resplendent. Olruggio admires it for as long as his bones will allow him—ten seconds or so. Then he digs for his palm quire and ignites the spell he needs.
In a huge column of steam, the snow evaporates off the tree and melts around its base. A second spell blasts the tree with hot air, drying up the puddles. And a third spell wraps the tree within a forcefield, shielding it from the elements and keeping it quite toasty for a while.
Once satisfied, Olruggio climbs into the cocoon of warmth and situates himself upon a thick, protruding root. His spot. A perch extending from his empty nest. He reads out here, or thinks out here; occasionally he sleeps out here. He’s cried out here before. And sure he’s laughed, too—long and short of it, he’s lived his life out here.
He tugs a square of parchment from his cloak and folds it open.
“From Coco,” he says to the dormant tree. “Thought we’d read it together.”
He’s glad to hear from her. He hasn’t seen her in a long while. She didn’t make it to this past Silver Eve, where Olruggio had met up with the other girls and caught up on their lives. She’s been buried in her work, in her research. He certainly relates to that.
“She says she’s doing well,” he says. “Busy. Still sees Agott a lot, though—that’s good. It’s hard on a couple to be separated.”
He resists the temptation of cynicism.
“Anyway, let’s see…she’s thinking of moving south, for her mother’s health…not a bad idea, winters are brutal up there…ain’t a walk in the park here, either…and she misses the atelier.” He scratches his beard. “Geez. Hell, the atelier misses her, too! She’s welcome any time! She can bring her research. I’ll write to invite her.”
He flips the letter over. “She’s been working hard, and she’s had a breakthrough…”
He trails off.
The back half of Coco’s letter ends after only a few lines. The rest of the page contains notes. Diagrams. Instructions for crafting a seal.
A forbidden seal.
Olruggio shudders. He struggles to gather himself. Not forbidden, not really. Not for him, anyway—anymore. He’s vowed for years now to put kindness and love above letters of law. Still, Coco had taken a huge risk in sending this. For her safety alone, he can hardly condone it…and yet…
He squints through his spectacles at the notation. A transformation spell. A spell he used to fantasize about, to dream of finding. Here in front of him.
‘Untested on a silverwood,’ warns Coco. ‘But it’s a variation on the spell we used to resurrect—’
—to resurrect—
‘—my mother.’
Nothing moves; nothing breathes. Olruggio stares at the letter. He feels the blinding white void closing in upon his sanctuary. What is he meant to do with this? What the hell should he do?
He’s spent so many years building a wall between his heart and this incredulous dream, laying brick after brick of resignation, contentment, acceptance. He’s strived to have a reasonable outlook—grateful for the things he has—conscious that others have lost more, that life’s joys are temporary, ever balanced against sorrow. He’s lived with the conclusion that Qifrey, as he knew him, is gone; that Qifrey will always be a tree.
And he’s worked so hard to inculcate this idea as the truth...he’s forgotten that it never was the truth. Forgotten those raw, tormented months in the beginning, when he’d clawed at any possibility, any option, any means of turning Qifrey back. Forgotten that the girls had seen it all.
But nobody had ever said that Qifrey could never be changed back. Nobody but Olruggio—first to himself, then to the girls. Just so they all could carry on. Just so he could survive. And now—
Now, thanks to Coco, there is…there is hope.
Olruggio trembles. He shifts. Gazes upward, through the towering, defoliated branches.
“...Hey,” he whispers. “Coco’s come up with a new spell.”
Are you in there? Can you hear me?
“She used a version of it…to resurrect her mother.”
Is this something you want? Do you even remember?
“It’s a spell to…turn a silverwood..into a human.”
To turn you back. Into her professor. Into my best friend.
My dear Qifrey.
“I…” Olruggio’s voice breaks. He lays his wrinkling hand upon the tree. Rubs his calloused thumb over the bark. “I’m willing…I’m willing to try it. If you…”
If you understand me. If you’re you at all.
“...if it’s something you want.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. Tears run into his beard. He feels foolish, suddenly, as though the many little ‘signs and wonders’ that the tree has shown him have all been in his imagination. In his desperation, his intense loneliness, he’d ascribed human traits to this tree and led the girls astray with his wishful thinking.
Indeed, the tree remains impassive, stiff and imposing. What use is there in talking to a tree?
Olruggio chucks the letter into the dirt. He pulls at his hair, hard enough to hurt. He can’t abide it anymore. He cannot stand himself.
And then a rustling, a biting wind, cuts through his dome of warmth. He opens his eyes.
The gust sweeps the letter off the ground and flings it, forcefully, against the tree.
Olruggio gapes at the letter, stuck there, fluttering, held by the wind. Slowly, he reaches for it, peeling it away with careful effort.
Underneath it is the crooked, faded heart that Richeh drew. And the answer salutes all his senses—rustling—breathing—shouting:
YES
SPRING AGAIN
The girls don’t question Olruggio’s request to meet in Kalhn. He couches it in excuses, anyway: how cheerful the town looks in springtime, how fun it’ll be to choose ingredients for supper together, just like old times. Why another trip through the drab ole basement windowway? Whether they’re indulging his nostalgic tendencies or wondering if he’s become quite the eccentric hermit during his years alone—either way, he’s happy they’ve obliged him on this sunny, breezy April morning.
Tetia spots him first, springing from her seat at the cafe table and waving.
“Your beard looks even grayer!” she says, giggling.
“Hullo to you, too,” he calls out, waving back. Tetia’s double-pointed hat always prompts a smile from him. The few times he’s met her three apprentices, they always sport them, too—they look like little whiskercats, bobbing about at her heels.
Richeh looks up from her sketchbook, smiling softly; her hat and robes jingle, replete with sparkling talismans and scalewolf scales. The brushbuddy, sleepy and gray in his old age, lays wrapped around her neck like a boa, snoozing.
Agott lowers her drink and lights up with an effusive smile. The shift in her countenance still amazes him from time to time; she still lives in his memory as the anxious, guarded little girl who had so much to prove.
The bearer of her joy, Coco, rises to hug him. She smiles and greets him as the others do, but her eyes gleam; he meets them as neutrally as he can manage. Her hair blows wildly in the wind. He knows she wears a veiled hat, which she’s concealed within her cloak. It still gives him instinctive pause—he worries, of course. But he has faith in her. She can take care of herself now, and she has Agott, too.
“It’s great to see y’all,” he says. “Thanks for meeting me.” He indicates the baskets in his arms. “I got here early—picked up some stuff for dinner already. We can head on over if you want.”
So why did we have to meet in Kalhn at all? He winces in anticipation, but the interrogation doesn’t come. The girls just smile and agree. They draw their shoes together and take to the sky.
“What did you buy?” asks Tetia, flipping upside-down in midair and peering into a basket. “Oooh…lots of veggies! Maybe for soup?”
“I’ve missed Chef Olly Specialties,” says Richeh. She scratches brushbuddy’s chin. “The shop is always so busy. We usually get takeout.”
“Agott cooks for us,” says Coco, awfully brightly. “My mom’s not really up for it, and I’ve just got my head in the clouds these days!”
And Agott smiles again, with a bit of consternation—a subtle crease of her brow. “It’s a bit basic, but I do my best,” she says.
“Well,” Olruggio says, “we’ll see what we come up with.”
The closer they get, the worse he worries. The girls chat away, catching up, swapping stories, prompting him to chime in here and there. At one point, Richeh leans in and dips the brushbuddy into his basket, where he curls up between warm bags of bread. It’s all so congenial, so natural and right. He sees them as his daughters—sure he does. And he’s so deeply happy to be surrounded by them, the way flames spark with grasping joy when he rekindles them. His heart is running over.
He just can’t help but agonize a bit, all things considered.
At last—after a short eternity—Olruggio, out in front, spots the slanting, taupe rooftops. He holds his breath. Which of the girls will remark on it first? He’s forgotten the responses he’d prepared.
“Now, girls—” he starts to say, a snatch too late.
“Oh my god!”
Tetia grabs his sleeve.
“Professor Olly! It’s—it’s gone!” She pales. “The silverwood!!”
Olruggio swallows. “Ah—”
“Where did it go?!” Richeh demands, tugging at her hair, dismayed.
“Wh…what happened?!” Agott shoots ahead, scanning the ground. “A storm? A fire?! Did—did someone—”
“No,” says Coco. Quietly, but so firmly that everyone falls silent.
“Coco…” Agott murmurs, looking back at her. “Is this…”
“Professor Olly,” Coco says.
He turns to her. His heart races. She regards him with a look of deliberate, practiced calm.
“Did it work?”
The tension sizzles, sparking through the air. The other three shoot frightened looks between them.
Olruggio considers; he adjusts his hold on the baskets. Then he smiles, warmly, eagerly, unable to stall any longer. Never has been good at that.
“You oughta ask him yourself,” he says, nodding toward the atelier.
He’s there, way down there, just a smudge of white in the open doorway. Same spot Olruggio left him in. Watching for them. Waiting.
Coco shoots landward like lightning. Agott hurtles after her, Tetia and Richeh too. Olruggio won’t miss this. He follows close behind.
“Coco!!”
In a shower of dirt Coco skids down the path and barrels into Qifrey’s arms. He staggers backward, coughing, laughing, rubbing Coco’s back, murmuring soothing reassurances to the inconsolable girl. She sobs loudly, too hard to speak.
The other girls all hesitate. They can’t believe their eyes.
“Go on,” Olruggio says. No point in warning that Qifrey is prob’ly still too weak for this. You wanna talk about the most bullheaded set of six witches in all of Zozah—by god, it’s this atelier.
Agott caves first; she staggers down the path. She doesn’t bother to stem her bewildered tears. Qifrey smiles and holds his arm out to receive her, too, and immediately she breaks down. She buries her face in his shoulder, gathering his tunic in her fists, like a child.
Richeh, with both hands pressed against her heart, hastens toward the trio. She leans into them, bowing her head, and Qifrey stretches his hand to grasp her shoulder.
Olruggio can’t help it—he tears up, too. But someone’s missing from the group hug; sniffing, he turns to his right, to the frozen Tetia.
“Pretty sure there’s room for one more,” he says gently.
She glances at him, owl-eyed, all but terrified.
“It’s not…” Her voice wobbles. “It’s not…a dream again?”
I don’t know, Tetia. Months along, and I still don’t know.
“If it is,” Olruggio says with a little smile, “then we might as well enjoy it, huh?”
Tetia gazes at him. She nods to herself, slowly, as she turns toward the others. She takes two uncertain steps—then she runs. She throws her generous arms around all four of them.
...
They crowd around the kitchen table, elbow to elbow, nursing tea; pots and pans clatter, making tinny melodies in Olruggio’s hands. While he cooks, he listens to them talking; allows a deep, deep peace to wash over him.
He understands Tetia’s doubt. To be here, at home with everyone, inside and warm, talking and laughing...for so long his heart had ached for this, had pined for this simple dream. Now, it aches from fullness. That old chamber had been closed off for so long—and now the curtains are thrown open, and it must beat and beat to flush it full of the light of joy.
“I sent the spell months ago,” says Coco, cleaved to Qifrey’s side, clutching his crooked elbow. “How long did Professor Olly wait to use it?”
“If I recall…” says Qifrey after a breath, a meditative pause, “...he used it right away. Until recently, though…I’m afraid I wouldn’t have been very lively company.”
In subdued tones he speaks slowly, almost dreamily, his shoulder-length hair shifting with the movement of his shoulders. And he moves just as slowly, lifting his teacup with thoughtful ponderance and taking tiny, spaced-out sips. Olruggio can’t imagine how jarring it would be, spending ten years stuck in one spot and suddenly moving freely again. Surely weird as hell.
“Why not?” asks Tetia. “I’m glad to be here now, of course, but I—I mean, we would have loved to know—!”
Qifrey echoes Olruggio’s thoughts. “Ah…I’m sorry, Tetia…but I wanted to speak to you as I used to...and it took a bit of time for me to regain my bearings.” His smile grows apologetic. “I had not walked or talked in quite a while, you see. Poor Olruggio became my tutor by necessity.”
“Tch—” Olruggio scoffs from the stove. “You make it sound like I was miserable about it. It was no skin off my back. You’d do the same for me.”
“That’s true,” says Qifrey. “Even so…thank you.”
“Mhm.” Olruggio feels Qifrey's grateful, knowing gaze. He hides his blush and stirs the bubbling sauce. It’s still so sweet to hear his voice.
“To me, it’s fascinating,” Agott says, resting her chin on both hands, leaning in. “I mean—do you have memories from—then? Do silverwood trees store memories…?”
Qifrey mulls over this. Over his chin he rubs a gnarled hand; the fingers on this hand curl inward, bent and ink-black—permanently that way. He is not at all self-conscious over this, or over the old scar that's no longer hidden behind frames or under hair. He’s still Qifrey—definitely. Still, Olruggio has never known a Qifrey so centered, so calm. Especially today, in the arms of his dear girls, the man practically radiates serenity. Maybe being stuck in one spot imbued him with divine calmness, too. Nature’s wisdom and all that.
After a good two minutes, Qifrey answers Agott. “...I can’t speak for every silverwood, but as for me…I do have memories,” he says. His brow furrows a little. “...of sorts. They are…hard to describe. To relate to you, with…human senses. Even to recall, myself.”
Agott nods, deeply invested. “That’s so interesting…”
“I agree,” says Qifrey. “Perhaps I’ll attempt to intimate them in writing…although I was never much of a wordsmith.”
“I’d love to read it,” murmurs Coco.
“So, Professor Qifrey.” Richeh’s been quiet till now. “Do you remember, in the beginning—the flower? The rain?”
Qifrey lights up. “Oh yes,” he says. “I do, Richeh. Thank you for bringing that up.”
She pulls at her hair. “I’m glad.”
“It reminds me…” Qifrey slips out from under the girls’ embraces and stumbles to his feet. Olruggio starts to protest—where are you off to now, you’re supposed to REST I swear to god—but Qifrey merely kneels in place. He rolls up the hem of his robe. “I wanted to show you.”
On his ankle, outlined faintly in white, is a decorated heart.
“Your carving,” Qifrey says, beaming at her. “I was so glad when you drew it for me. And I'm so glad to get to keep it. Thank you.”
The girls exclaim with joy—they scoot close to examine the heart and to hug Richeh, who hides her face behind curtains of hair, too overwhelmed to say thank you but straight-up shouting it through shining eyes.
“My dear girls,” says Qifrey, once they've all returned to the table, fervently gazing around at them all. “So much time has passed. And how you all have grown. Even if you told me in the past—I want to hear again. With human ears. About it all—your lives, your dreams, your tests, your spells. Please tell me everything.
“Your mother, Coco, how is she? Your genius spellwork revived us both. How is your and Euini’s shop doing, Richeh? I must visit! Agott—Lady Agott, the Librarian. How do you feel about all the incredible things you’ve accomplished? And Tetia—dear Tetia! A teacher! As I had been! Can you fathom how proud I am of you? Of all of you?”
He’s crying now, freely, calmly; so are all the girls.
“You have become marvelous witches,” Qifrey says to them. “And you grow only more marvelous. So talented. So skilled. So bright and kind. So wise and compassionate. I wish—”
His face crumples before he stops himself; he finds his smile again.
“...I’ve longed to tell you all this time, and I’m so glad…” He wipes his eye. “Even though it’s long, long overdue…I’m just so happy I can tell you now.”
He draws them all into another, mighty hug.
“My darling girls.”
Olruggio turns away. He carries himself out the back door, over the uneven earth to the old garden plot. The earth here lies fallow, rootless once more, tilled and sectioned off in preparation for the coming season. Little labels peek out from the soil, written in two sets of handwriting, wiry and thick, thin and scrawling.
And here, Olruggio weeps with his own joy, collapsing, kneeling in the dirt. And birds wheel overhead, and sing; and insects flit and fly from firewood to daffodil to trowel; and underneath him, he can feel the earth warming—can feel the world turning, turning again.
END