harrowfield

The village believes her mother.

The village always believes her mother.

Faye Reid is thirteen years old when Maren sends her away. Not in anger - Maren Reid is never angry, not visibly, not in ways that leave marks anyone can see. She sends Faye to Harrowfield with a letter Faye is not permitted to read and a patient, sorrowful explanation that she has done everything she can.

The village nods. The village always nods.

Faye comes home a year later to find that nothing has changed - except that her mother now knows the mechanism works. That Faye can be removed. That the account Maren has been building for thirteen years is solid enough to bear weight.

The years that follow are the eggshell years. Faye learns to move through her own life making as little noise as possible. She has the field where the earth hums steady under her palms. She has Edmund, who sits beside her through the worst of it and never makes her pay for his kindness. She has the magic she keeps hidden, because visibility has always been expensive.

At eighteen, Maren petitions the village council for legal control over Faye's money and her health. They grant it. The village nods.

At twenty-four, a stranger passes through Maplebrook on the way to somewhere else and looks at Faye - really looks - and says:

You don't have to be.

Faye has spent twenty-four years being told who she is by someone who has never been right about it.

Cade is only staying four days.

It changes everything anyway.