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Salem, Massachusetts

–Aspen–

“I SHOULD HAVE never come,”

I muttered under my breath to my half-sister Hazel. I tried not to scowl at the picture of my father propped strategically beside his closed coffin and pulled my long, black wool cloak more securely around the red dress he’d requested I wear to his funeral.

“Especially in this.”

“Right,”

Hazel mumbled, trying to hide the purple dress he’d requested she wear.

“What were we thinking?”

She was slightly less discreet about her dislike of our father when she eyed his picture.

“He didn’t deserve any last requests.”

“We both know we didn’t do it for him,”

I said softly, taking one last look at a man who had sired four daughters from four different women, then abandoned them to raise me and my siblings on their own. Granted, he had been handsome enough with his swarthy good looks, but still. If it weren’t for my sisters, I would have preferred any other father.

“No, I suppose we didn’t do it for him,”

Hazel agreed, relief in her large, thickly lashed emerald-green eyes as we left him without a backward glance, just as he’d left us in our youth. We headed outside, where the springtime air was crisp and welcoming. Far less cloying than being in our father’s presence, dead or alive.

“Why do you suppose Ellie insisted we honor our father's request?”

Hazel wondered.

“As far as I know, she was no fan of his either.”

Elowyn, or Ellie, was our oldest sister and predictably nowhere to be found. She ran an apothecary with herbs and other potions, a little witchy shop, if you will, in the heart of town, often using it as an excuse to dodge events. Even the ones she insisted we attend.

“I’m sure it had to do with one of her dreams.”

I gave Hazel a pointed look.

“Which we both know are worth paying attention to.”

“No doubt they are.”

She thanked me for the clip I handed her when her long, vibrant crimson hair blew in her face. A strange little light lit her eyes when they met mine.

“Do you think it has to do with Storm? With them?”

By Storm, she meant the mysterious woman who had been writing us letters since we were children. By them, she meant the dashing, heroic men she’d often written about, fueling our imaginations. Not a difficult thing to do, considering our mothers had been witches and our father was, evidently, half-dragon. We had never seen proof of it, but our mothers swore it was true. So, what did that make us? It was hard to know, but it was safe to say we all possessed various gifts.

I was about to respond to Hazel when a towering aspen tree I could have sworn hadn't been there when we arrived caught my attention from across the way. Normally, aspens grew in large clonal colonies, but this one was alone as if it had drifted far from its parent tree. Based on its darker trunk, it was also old.

“Do you see it?”

I asked softly, wondering if it had been there all along or if it was there for me.

Like my sisters, my father had named me after a tree. As it turned out, and with no real explanation from our father about why, other than it must have to do with our inner witch, my tree appeared to me on occasion just as my sisters’ trees did to them. Sometimes, we saw each other’s trees. Sometimes not.

“I do see it.”

Hazel’s eyes widened at the magnificent tree.

“And it definitely wasn’t there before.”

“I didn’t think so.”

As drawn to it now as I had been in my childhood, I drifted that way, wondering if it would precede a significant change in my life like it always did. It had never looked quite like this before, though. Never so rich with green leaves trembling in a wind that seemed to push us toward it, giving me the impression that it beckoned us. Beckoned me.

Caught by the strangest feeling, I slowed the closer I got. It almost felt like I was supposed to wait for something. Be patient. Steadfast. Practice the strength and independence of the tree I was named after, weathering the change coming with the same courage and perseverance I always did.

“Look,”

Hazel whispered, awed by the flickering light dancing in its leaves before the wind shifted in our direction and it drifted our way.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know,”

I whispered back, not wanting to disturb it any more than she did. Some might be frightened because it was otherworldly, but not us.

Oddities like this had long been part of our lives.

It drifted closer and closer as if drawn to us. Me. Within feet, the light faded, and we realized it was a rare seedling, as aspens typically propagate via their roots. A surge of unexplainable anticipation rushed through me, and I reached out, breathless and enchanted, when it caught more swiftly on the wind and slowly settled in my cupped palm.

“Look at that,”

Hazel exclaimed when the seedling did the last thing I saw coming.

Something that would indeed change my life forever.