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TWO

The beautiful dress was designed for courtship, not for broom flying in rainy weather.

When drenched, the layers of Thorn’s petticoat got so heavy that she accidentally steered herself toward a billowing chimney.

But in the nick of time, she swapped being flattened against bricks for careening downward.

She clung on for dear life as the broom took her spiraling past someone’s bedroom window.

And she got an eyeful. By the roaring fireplace, there was a couple in an amorous state, holding hands and sipping from their steaming mugs.

Thorn tore her eyes away from the carnal sight. She steadied her ride and zoomed on, over the boundary wall of the town just as the rain let up. In no time, her feet were skimming over the canopy of Thimble Woods. To the west, purple and orange rays broke through the clouds.

“This sunset would be beautiful if I were enjoying it from the blacksmith’s embrace.” She dove through a small break in the canopy and glided low along a narrow dirt track. It was a route she could navigate with her eyes closed.

She analyzed how it had all gone wrong. The True Love potion she had fed the blacksmith was based on the even more powerful one that Mother had been working on when she died, forty years old and alone.

Mother had toiled over that potion ever since Thorn could remember. When Thorn was seven and Rose eight, Rose had finally asked, “Mother, why is the Forever True Love potion so important?”

Mother didn’t look up from her spell book. “Because without a man, a woman isn’t complete.”

“A woman without a man,” Thorn whispered to Rose, “is woe.”

But Mother heard that, and she glanced at Thorn. Her green eyes were so cold they looked blue. “Don’t be glib.”

Rose saved the day by putting on her winsome smile. “Thorn’s just trying to make me laugh. But, Mother, I’m curious. What do we need men for?”

Mother huffed as if she’d just been asked the stupidest question in the world. “To chop the wood, to fix the roof, to cuddle with at night.”

Thorn thought that the first two were things she could do herself once she was a little bigger. And the last one was something she could do with Rose or with her cat familiar, Turnip. Luckily, this time she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

Then Mother added, her voice gentler this time, “And to be loved.”

Rose threw her arms around Mother. “ I love you.”

Mother smiled, but her voice sounded sad as she said, “It’s not the same as the love between a man and a woman. One day you will understand.”

When Thorn was twenty, she did come to understand that love between family and between lovers was different.

And after her first lover dumped her, she was sure she’d find another.

But somehow, amid cleaning the house, chopping firewood, brewing potions, and cleaning the house again, time flew by.

A Spick and Span potion existed, but a single dose required two months of constant brewing and stirring.

There was to be no escape from cleaning.

In the blink of an eye, it was already last spring at the Sunday markets.

Thorn had refused to discount a hex ball for the seamstress who then called her a hundred-year-old crone.

Thorn had yelled back, “I’m only thirty-nine!

” At that moment, she realized she was already thirty-nine.

It had been almost twenty years since she’d had a man.

Now she didn’t have much time left. Most of the townsfolk keeled over in their sixties.

Then the seamstress had gotten the last word by spitting out “Spinster!”

Thorn didn’t have a comeback for that. It was a fact. And the only good reason for someone her age to not have a husband was having been widowed. Otherwise, as Mother used to say, Only the bad fruit are left on the shelf.

But that penny-pinching woman had lit a fire under Thorn’s butt, and she spent the next four months neglecting the cleaning to tinker with Mother’s recipe for True Love for a Day potion.

It was an impractical potion that had to be fed daily to the man for eternity, which was why Mother had been trying to improve it into a Forever True Love potion.

But Mother had died before she’d succeeded.

Thorn had managed to tweak the True Love for a Day potion into one that only had to be fed daily to the man until he said, “I love you.” An unfortunate downside of the change in recipe was that until those three words were uttered, the spell remained breakable.

“I have to fix this chink in the armor,” she muttered as she hopped off her broom to traipse down the last stretch of the moonlit lane.

A little cottage came into view. The windows were darker than the night that the lone chimney was reaching for.

The fig tree at the side of the cottage seemed to merge with the building, making it appear misshapen and monstrous.

Thorn imagined what it’d be like to one day return home after a hard day of gathering ingredients to find the windows lit and the chimney billowing.

Perhaps the kettle would already be on the fire and a freshly plucked basket of figs on the table.

People did it all the time—get married, live together, have children.

Mother had done it. It was the natural order of things.

Surely Thorn could achieve these milestones, too, even if she hadn’t exactly lived like most people.

It would be an adjustment, but it would be worth it.

Thorn pushed the arched door. “I’m home,” she called out.

The darkness did not reply.

“Welcome home,” she moaned as she struck the flint.

The oil lamp took a few attempts to light.

It was shaping up to be one of those nights.

She was desperate to shed the soggy gown.

Undoing the laces at the back of her rigid bodice required some acrobatic twisting and turning that her muscles would regret tomorrow.

This dress was clearly designed to be undone by a lover.

Thorn’s usual uniform was a shift dress made for the single woman—one swift slip to get in and out.

It was also very comfortable and came without the threat of suffocation or exposing oneself.

In addition, the black color was perfect for communing with the forest spirits at midnight, and handy for hiding dirt from ingredient-gathering and any spills from potion brewing.

After extricating herself from the lacy contraption, she untied her waist pocket and transferred its contents to the pockets—plural—of her shift dress. “A cup of tea would be so nice right now.”

But, of course, her water jug was empty, and she had to collect water from the well outside.

A little later, as she hoisted the pail, she caught sight of her own reflection in the water.

On her neck where the blacksmith’s hand had lingered, there was a small blotch of poison ivy rash. What a sad substitute for a hickey.

Back inside, Thorn hung a kettle—her own—under the mantel and stoked the fire.

She couldn’t wait to plop down in her favorite armchair next to the fireplace.

Hands around her favorite cup, the fragrant steam of tea wafting around her, her mind would clear, and the solution for how to improve her True Love potion would surely come to her.

But a face appeared in the fire. Thorn almost impaled herself with the poker. “Rooting hog!”

“A lady doesn’t use such language.” Madam Maude’s voice crackled in the fire. “How about sunset pink for your wedding dress? And what are your measurements? Thirty-seven, thirty-seven, thirty-seven?”

“You do wedding dresses on top of matchmaking?”

“I would like to pass on your details to the best seamstress. And this time, please do not give me grief about the neckline as you did with that courtship dress. A wedding dress is for beauty and elegance, not for running around the woods digging for grubs and bulbs.”

“I won’t need a dress.”

“Patience, Thorn. Wedding before consummation.”

“There won’t be a wedding. My potion failed. I mean, it worked. For a while.”

The fire roared along with Madam Maude. “I warned you not to use that potion. It’ll be near impossible to find you another match. Your suitability is abysmal.”

“But you give your other clients potions! That you buy from me,” Thorn said. Madam Maude was a witch, as well, but she found gathering ingredients and brewing concoctions too tedious and lonely. She much preferred gossiping with the townsfolk and using the information she gleaned to create couples.

“Those are minor potions. A bottle of No Sweat, or a vial of Bouffant Hair. A little aid to set the mood. Like a beautiful dress or a luscious wig. They don’t manipulate emotions like a True Love potion.”

“Same difference.” Thorn huffed like a petulant child.

As Mother’s old friend, Madam Maude was something like a distant aunt to Thorn, one Thorn saw mostly at family reunions.

She had come to help Thorn when Rose and Mother died, but they’d drifted apart in the years since.

Thorn’s recent quest to find a husband had closed that distance a little.

“Thorn, love comes from the heart, not from a cauldron.”

No man has space in his heart for an almost-forty-year-old, slightly humpbacked woodland creature with hair like straw , Thorn thought but didn’t say. There was no point. Madam Maude had married her childhood sweetheart and had no firsthand experience in the hell that was courtship.

“I’m out of firewood.” Thorn stabbed the poker into the pyramid of burning wood and flattened it. Madam Maude’s face disappeared along with the flame.

If tea wasn’t in the cards, maybe the spirits would at least let Thorn go on a walk. A few paces away from the house, she fished out her dagger from her pocket and unsheathed it. The amethyst blade gleamed as bright as the steel hilt. She bent down and swung. Stalks of rosemary hit the ground.

The dagger was overkill, but it was Mother’s, and wielding it for even the most mundane task made Thorn feel like her family was still close by.

She picked up the bunch of rosemary and stalked off into the woods. As the forest echoed with the crunch and squish of wet gravel under her feet, she focused on how to make her True Love potion more potent.

To bake a pie crust that was more crumbly and golden, one would replace the water in the dough with milk.

And magic was like that. Seasoned witches understood ingredients.

Thorn had a hunch that all the True Love potion needed was a small tweak.

A substitution of one of its ingredients.

The weakest link in the recipe was probably the raven’s feather—perhaps a feather from a different bird would work.

As she did a mental inventory of all the birds she’d come across, her feet took her down a well-worn path. The forest was so thick, and the path so winding, that it wasn’t until she arrived that she saw the river.

Close to the water was a fir that towered above the others.

Underneath it was a pyramid of stones. She brushed the dried rosemary off the top of the cairn and placed the fresh bouquet down.

Scouring the ground, she picked up a small rock and added it to the stack.

The grave marker was now taller and wider than her hat.

It had been thirty years, after all. But sometimes it felt just like yesterday that she was nine years old, so terrified that she didn’t even scream.

She could only stare as the red-specked white feathers of vampire parrots fell around her like snow.

The more experience a witch had, the faster they perfected recipes.

Most of the time. But even the most exalted witch would come across potions that escaped cipher.

By the same token, every witch would have moments when all the stars aligned and all the spirits were invoked to give them the epiphany needed to make their recipe work.

Right now, Thorn was having one such moment.

She sprang to her feet and whooped. Owls hooted back.

“Feather of vampire parrot! That’s it! The perfect substitute for the raven feather.

” Brewed with this, her True Love for a Day potion would become much more robust—each dose could even last up to a month.

And once she brewed this new-and-improved batch, she would be ready for another session of courtship, then marriage.

She pressed the tip of the dagger into her finger. Vampire parrots avoided people, except when they smelled blood.

It wasn’t long before a flurry of beating wings came from above. Thorn gulped. She’d expected to lure a bird or two, not a whole flock.

Then came a cacophony of squawks. Leaves rustling. Twigs snapping. Green leaves and red-specked white feathers fell around her. Through the dark canopy, a pair of blue eyes shone. Pinned underneath the claws of that beast was a white bird.

“Bandit!” she moaned.

The blue eyes looked down at Thorn, and the vampire parrot seized the moment of distraction. It wrenched itself free and shot off into the sky.

Witch, you ruined the hunt.

“Would you mind sticking to the pigeons and magpies?”

With a soft thud, the beast landed in front of her. He stalked forward, the tips of his white fur violet in the moonlight. His tail swished slowly. His whiskers pulled back tight against his cheeks. He was annoyed. You were just screaming that you needed a feather of vampire parrot.

“Thank you.” Thorn picked up the feathers. There was a handful. Enough for hundreds of vials of her New-and-Improved True Love potion.

I guess the blacksmith dumped you.

“I guess you don’t want a hot dinner.”

Meow.