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He thought about it for most of the ride. He answered the way he plows. One straight line, no decoration.

“Same way I knew the storm would find your street,” he said. “You watch a thing for two years, you learn where it leans.”

“They watched me lean,” I said. “For two years.”

“The entire village. Especially on market days.” He put his hand over mine on the bench. “You leaned east.”

I’d leaned then, and I leaned now.

Three miles east, against a shoulder like a root cellar, the rest of the way home, while the beast pulled us up the road. The fury sat inside me, getting quieter.

It was hard to stay angry at being loved when it involved minutes and a subcommittee.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

RAIN

The village put the roof on in three days.

Guilt was the fastest fuel this village ran on. Shingles arrived Tuesday, real ones, to real specifications, hauled personally by the dales man, who’d heard the entire story and refused the delivery fee because he was so upset by the mischief. By sundown on Thursday my quarters had a roof, a swept chimney, reglazed glass, and floors you could eat off of. Mrs. Piddock led a scrubbing crew through the rooms.

Friday, curtains. New ones, yellow, with flowers, sewn by the grannies. The old ones had been torn during the storm.

On Saturday morning, a pie sat on the sill, still warm.

Half the village found reasons to be on Willow Lane by midmorning that day.

The wagon came up the lane a short time later.

I heard it before I saw it. Little bells, dozens, sewn along the canvas edges, and a sound like a music box being tuned. It swung around the corner past the bakery, and the lane got its first look at Mistral’s wagon.

It had been painted dark green, with a stovepipe puffing smoke, and a fold-down step. A copper weathervane shaped like a running rabbit spun on the roof.

A lean, brown-skinned man with silver in his beard and rings in one ear drove the wagon, laughing at something the woman sitting beside him said.

She wore a traveling cloak I didn’t recognize, and she’d arranged her hair. I’d only seen her do that when someone else was admiring it.

“Mama,” I called out.

“There she is,” Cyrena Trevil said, smiling my way. She stepped down off the wagon before it came to a stop.

I was across the lane.

She caught me, smelling of bergamot and cloves. For a moment, the storm, the roof, the tea, the wall, and the bells disappeared, and I was just a witch whose mother had come home.

“Let me look at you.” She held me out at arm’s length, her eyes going over me. One pass, not missing the color in my face. The set of my shoulders. The river stone, which I’d worn on a cord around my neck since Friday.

“Well,” she said. “You’re sleeping, for one thing. That’s new.”

“Mama.”

“Marvelous color. Farm air, I expect.” Her mouth twitched with humor, something I inherited and can’t stop either. “We’ll get to the rest. Mistral! Come and be examined.”

He got down and came around the wagon, and took my hand in both of his. A tinker’s hands, warm and calloused. Up close I spied lines around his eyes that only come from a lifetime of laughing.

“Rain Trevil,” he said. “I’ve heard about you. The tea, the tower, and the ogre. Your mother tells the story better in every village.”

I gaped at my mother. “You’ve been telling people?”