The door to Willow’s kitchen slammed open as she entered the house with her earnings. She had all but run down the lane back to her house after selling the bag of things to the woman at the market, eager to share the money with her family. Hurrying back to her house, her mind had raced with the thoughts of what they would be able to buy. Food other than bread, maybe a dress for her little sister Juniper if they bought second-second hand or found a really good deal. The money would probably go into candles, though, and then any cheap food they could find. Winter was on its way, and they’d need supplies if they didn’t want to go hungry.
Willow tried to shrug off the nagging feeling in the back of her mind, the one thought that wouldn't go away no matter how hard she tried to make it. Willow had always wanted to go to school, study magic. But any hope of that dream coming true had been crushed when her father died earlier that year. Their family had barely had enough food to make it through each day, nevermind sending her to school. Willow lived so near to one of the schools of magic. Every time she passed by it, she couldn’t help but stare longingly at it, watching the students come and go from the building.
“Mother, Juniper!” Willow called. There was no answer. The pail of milk was still sitting on the table.
She placed the bag of money on the table, then reconsidered, picking it back up again and sliding the entire thing into the wooden box where they kept all of their precious funds. She slipped the box into one of the kitchen drawers, burying it underneath a few raggedy dish towels.
“Juniper?” she called again, striding through the quiet house towards the backyard. “Mom?” Willow reached the backyard, opening the door to the small patch of scraggly grass they called their back garden. The front yard was much bigger and used for pretty much everything, including their cow, which… now that she thought about it, she must have missed the cow in her haste to get back to the house. That, or, she thought, rushing back to the kitchen to glace out of one of the front windows, the cow had escaped. She was gone from the yard.
Willow’s mother might have taken the cow, though, she thought as slow dread seeped into her stomach. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, of course. Willow loved the cow dearly, but money was money, and if they had to sell her, then that was what her mother was going to do. And she’d obviously taken Juniper with her, which isn’t something that Willow would have done personally, as she herself would have found the experience altogether rather traumatizing, but hey, parenting!
If her mother and sister were out, Willow really ought to have gotten a head start on her chores, maybe scrounge up what little food they had already into some semblance of a meal, and then she would have sat down with one of the few remaining novels in the house and tried to entertain herself. But it was nice out, and so Willow took a walk.
She should have known better. After a few slow minutes of strolling aimlessly, Willow found that her legs had taken her straight on over to the school, the one she daydreamed about in her spare time.
She sighed. She looked ahead of her, down the street. She looked back at where she had come from. And then she stepped onto the school grounds.
Wandering the grounds wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. Willow had never been to the school, and she obviously didn’t fit in, with her unwashed clothes and face, her worn hands from hours of scrubbing floors in other people’s houses to try and make a little money. But she could pretend.
There weren’t many students around. Class must have been in session, though there were a few groups of people lounging on the grass on the other end of the courtyard she had stumbled into. Willow breathed in the fresh air. She could feel a breeze, hear the wind rustling the leaves of the trees that dotted the campus. A gleam caught the corner of her eye, and she noticed that there was a lake along one side of the school. She’d been to that lake before, but she didn’t know that it was accessible from the school.
Willow threaded through the tall grass towards the pond. The water was sparkling in the noon sunlight, so clear she could see straight through to the bottom, lined with pebbles. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, entranced by the water, only broken from her spell by a sharp pain in her side.
Willow sucked in a quick breath, stepping back from the water and roughly sitting down in the grass. Stomachache? Hunger pains? Stitch in her side? She almost didn’t want to know. It was just one more problem she’d have to deal with, one more problem her family would have to deal with.
Taking a few deep breaths, Willow continued to stare out towards the expanse of the lake. She crossed her arms, hugging her torso tightly as she struggled to catch her breath amidst the pain like the quick slip of a jagged piece of glass into her skin. She ran her fingers over the spot where it hurt, but she didn’t feel anything. What she did notice, in one pain-clouded moment, was that she had completely forgotten about the coin she had swiped from the table earlier this morning.
It was an odd thing to notice, but it gave her mind something else to focus on besides the pain as she turned it over in her hand, inspecting the engravings on the coin. Willow still didn’t recognize the coin, so it was lucky she’d never have to. The coin slipped from her grasp and landed in the grass. In the place where Willow had once sat was the tree of her namesake, a single branch outstretched, grasping at the space in front of it.
The wind stilled above the lake. No one paid any mind to the willow.263Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2CPZRT6foE
