Chapter 1: Rory

CHAPTER 1 Rory

Stop following me,” Wynne said, not bothering to turn around.

Rory took another step, his small shadow licking over his sister’s heels.

“Rory, I’m serious. Stop. Following. Me,” she said over her shoulder, stepping into the back garden.

But Rory had nothing to do but follow. It was midday, the early summer heat lying heavy on the meadow, lush and golden. He had already eaten lunch, and the house behind them was silent but for the soft, lonely sounds of the dinner stew simmering on the stove. The afternoon was an infinite stretch, and the forest a cool pool of shade at the edge of the garden, emerald green and pine dark. What could he do but dive in after his sister?

For all eight years of Rory’s life, it had always been Wynne and him. It never mattered before that she was six and a half years older. The two of them crisscrossed the meadow in pursuit of bunnies and crouched over mushrooms in the forest; waded in forest pools after frogs or lay down among the nodding white heads of daisies. For as long as he could remember, between the bunnies, the meadow, and his sister—big and brave and brimming with marvelous ideas—his days were full.

But for months now, Rory had felt a change creeping. Wynne started disappearing for hours at a time, then days. A new generation of bunnies dotted the grass by the heather, but Wynne wasn’t there to give chase. She was in her room, or the back garden, or nowhere at all. Saying “I’m busy,” or “Not right now,” or “Go play somewhere else.” Not always. But enough that Rory could feel the ground shifting under his feet.

He started bringing her offerings. A fistful of dandelions. A cup full of tadpoles. Two white branches with a keen resemblance to swords. But she would only glance down at whatever strange treasure Rory was extending and say, with the new and lofty disdain of her fifteen years, “I’m too old to play with that.” Rory was reduced to slinking behind his sister, following sometimes close by, sometimes at a distance.

His sister was almost to the back gate. Rory crouched to pick a strawberry that was only a little bit eaten, and doggedly followed.

Wynne whirled around in a maelstrom of dark hair and flashing eyes. “What do you want from me?” she demanded. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” She was formidable when she stretched herself to her full height, as she did now. But Rory refused to cower.

“I want to play.”

“I’m too old to play with you.”

While Rory had heard this plenty over the last months, this time felt different. This, right now, somehow felt like a demarcation. So instead of wheedling or begging or any of the other things Rory had tried lately, he said, simply, “But I have no one else to play with.”

Wynne considered this for a while.

“If I find you someone else to play with, will you stop following me?”

Someone else? Rory’s eyebrows creased. There were no other houses for miles around, only the green of forest and meadow, and the village was endless fields away, a whole afternoon’s worth of walking. So Rory couldn’t fully comprehend the notion of finding “someone else,” but he nodded anyway.

“You promise? If I give you a playmate, you’ll stop begging me to play with you?”

Rory nodded again.

“You triple promise to leave me alone if I get you a companion to play with?”

He hesitated. A triple promise was a capital-lettered Promise. And what if the playmate she procured didn’t like his games, or turned out like his sister and, without warning, stopped wanting to play?

“The… companion,” Rory asked hesitantly, stretching the unfamiliar word taut before discarding it for another. “Will the playmate play whatever I want with me?”

His sister tilted her head to the side. “Within reason.” She paused for a moment, then added with an air of immense generosity, “It’ll play whatever game you want for as long as you want to play. Now, do you triple promise to stop bothering me if I make you a playmate?”

So Rory nodded a third time, sealing the bargain.

His sister sat down on the back gate’s stoop, chin in her hand. “Let me think.” Her fingers were stained green, as if she had spent all morning, all summer, weaving flower crowns.

Rory settled down and occupied himself with eating his strawberry—carefully eating around the spoiled part until he was left with the burrowed hole and a soft, pink worm peeking out of it. He got so absorbed in watching the worm wriggle that he was almost surprised when his sister clapped her hands and said, “Yes, okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

She went back to the house and brought out a large book, sun-faded spots dappling the green cover like a fawn’s fur. She went around the garden, collecting leaves and flowers from every bush and plant. She got on her tiptoes and plucked oak flowers from the low-hanging boughs and crouched down to pick up fallen branches. She gathered soft, white meadowsweet from the meadow and sweet-smelling broom from the hedges. Picked the last of the ripe-red strawberries and all the violets reclining between the grass blades. And when she had a big enough pile, she sat on her heels and started weaving them together.

Before long a little girl lay in front of her, with skin the milky color of meadowsweet and slim limbs tapering into branch-thin wrists and ankles; hair the vibrant yellow of broom and a round, ruby-ripe strawberry of a mouth.

Rory didn’t know how this transformation from pile to girl happened. His sister’s hands flashed too fast to follow, weaving over, under, turning and entwining—glimmers of white fingers rising and falling among soft petals and supple branches. She was muttering a steady stream of words, but whenever Rory tried edging close enough to hear, she’d shoo him back, sending him for white flowers from the far edge of the meadow, for a handful of moss and honeysuckle vines from the forest, for an old dress from the attic. All the while, a girl made of flowers was taking shape under her hands.

Finally Wynne sat back on her heels and looked at the creation arrayed in front of her, doll-perfect and Rory-sized. She looked just like a girl, fast asleep in the tall summer grass. Yet somehow the impression of blossoms lingered in the pansy-roundness of her cheeks and in the petal-like suppleness of her skin, and the shadow of ivy seemed to curl in the tendrils of her golden hair, despite her looking nothing like vines or flowers at all.

There was a self-satisfied twist to Wynne’s mouth. Rory’s eyes were round with wonder.

“Wake up,” she told the flower girl.

The flower girl opened her eyes and smiled.