No one spoke the girl's name except her mother. Once each morning and once each night, to greet the day and end it. At all other times she was my mulberry, my sweetcake, my honeycomb, my treat. Sometimes woodspawn, wretch, mute, girl. Girl was a common one. The people of town seemed unable to categorize her, for even that moniker felt wrong and unseemly.

"Names are a shackle," her mother would say as she ran their deerhorn comb through her hair. "They have the power to bind, to leak, to entrap. Only I can be trusted with yours."

"And I with yours?" The girl would lean back to view her mother's vicious beauty upside down. The comb would catch and halt.

"No," her mother would whisper, soft like a cat's paw, "I would not ask you to bear that."

And they knew each other so.

The two lived alone and the girl had never known anything else. When she was small, their cottage was darkened by her mother's moods. Her agitation gathered at the ceiling in clouds as if to rain black beads upon them. The girl's earliest memories were of clambering over her mother's tensed lap, pulling at the skin of her furrowed brow, moving through the tension of their home like the deep, brackish water of the lake.

Life lightened in the girl's seventh spring. Her mother's anxieties had reached some climax --- or perhaps she had found a way to coagulate and stopper them in one of her many jars. The day after the girl's birthday, seven wax candles pooled to nothing at her feet, they walked the woods together. She had never been permitted to venture so far from home.

"Keep your heel tensed, like this." Her mother demonstrated, then adjusted the girl's stance. "We do not make noise in the woods." She took the girl's arms and guided her steps around twigs and loose stones. "Always feel before you place your weight."

They stalked between the blackened, peeling trees in silence. The girl listened to the sounds of the forest: wind through dried leaves, water over stones, sparrow chicks calling for their mother. At times she felt she were an extension of her own mother, another limb grown from hand to clasped hand. She breathed when her mother breathed, slept when her mother slept. She was lucky compared to the young of other creatures, left to fend for themselves.

"Stop." Her mother bent, so she bent. Long, dark hair ran over her back like ink from a brush. The tail of it pooled on the forest floor. "There. Do you see him, my dearest?"

Nestled between two trees was a tawny hare. The girl spotted it by the twitch of its nose. She nodded, her own nostrils pulsing. Her mother released her hand. She felt the ache of their separation even here, with nothing but pine-drenched air between them.

In a breath, her mother lunged forward. She wrapped her fingers, thick and strong, around the hare's mouth and throat. Another breath. Three. A kick. It was done.

"Come here."

The girl stepped forward. Her mother held out the body, limp and lifeless, nose still. The girl touched a hand to its ribs. Still warm.

"That's all it takes?" She had seen dead things before. Alive things, too. The gap between them was not so wide as she'd thought.

Her mother grasped her chin. The girl cried out but was held in place. "That is everything. We exist on the edge. I pushed the hare over. Something could push you just as easily."

There it was, the familiar unease. The sense her mother feared something, something large and incomprehensible. The girl began to cry --- thick, wet tears.

Her mother softened like fruit left to rot. "There, there." She swallowed the girl in a tight embrace before slinging her over her back. "No tears, my sparrow. I show you this not because it is easy, but because it is quick. It happens to those who are slow or unobservant. You have me, so there is no need to worry." The girl clasped her wrist around her mother's neck and dropped a wet cheek to her shoulder. She memorized the scent there, earthy and sharp. She could sniff it out across any distance, she thought. Any time. "You have me."

Time passed and the girl grew older, as girls do. By the summer of her twentieth year she was running errands into town. The town did not exist when she was born, but it had settled and grown, as towns do. No one there knew of her mother. The girl did not answer questions. The people in town, in their muddy, hoof-stomped slop, knew settling the wilds meant encountering its wildness --- though most kept from the depths of the woods out of superstition or fear. The girl acted as emissary between nature untamed and nature cautiously overrun.

The townspeople had access to materials mother and daughter did not --- distant plant-life, glasswork, metalwork, red bean pastries she consumed in large, powdery bites on her way home. Locals dedicated themselves to useful crafts. Traveling merchants came to trade faraway treasures. Though many cursed and avoided her, she purchased an uneasy rapport from the most tolerant townspeople with rabbit, fox, and mink. Her wares had no unseemly slashes or holes, no meat tensed up in fear. She gave each willing vendor a different name at her mother's instruction, though she suspected they did not speak to each other of her. Her presence brought a wariness, a sense of closing inward.

The nature of this arrangement had changed as time passed. On her first errands she was overcome by chatter, footsteps, elbows. She ran home through the brush in a panic. Her mother soothed her only with lavender tonic and the comb through her hair. It took seasons for her to feel comfortable with the crowds, the children, the old, the sick. Loud lives multiplied beyond her own insular quiet.

Her shock matured into curiosity. She began to linger, to listen. Her mother disapproved. She began to conceal her lingering.

Hiding in town was not so different from hiding in the wood. She listened to people murmur from behind corners and boxes, her knees bent, her breath slow. Before they were townspeople, they were city people. Citizens. They spoke of being citizens with the sighs of dreams. The girl learned cities contained many people, many more than towns. Those who lived in them rarely left. Those that ran them had power only whispered of beneath tables and down alleys. To speak openly of a metropolitan past would corrupt the pastoral present. To speak openly of a witch would summon a witch.

Her mother shared their reticence on the subject. When the girl asked about these whisperings she squeezed her tanning knife until it broke skin. She reached for the girl's face with bloody palms. We do not speak of that, my starling. And so they did not.

They were different from the townspeople. Her mother was different from their mothers. Her mother was strong and sinewed, fierce. She was marked from forehead to toe with long, forked lines of purple ink. Other mothers were distracted, naive. With each new arrival, they bore a plumpness, a cleanliness, a looseness they lost over time. They thinned, dirtied, tensed. They clung to old traditions to stave off the wilds' chew. The girl could not imagine her mother tied up in an apron like trussed chicken or strolling the street in a sensible skirt. She did not fit outside, so it made sense she lived inside --- inside the woods so dense they were dark even at noon, inside their home so packed with charms she could not step without hearing something rattle.

On one such errand, on one such day in summer, the girl encountered something unusual. The path to town was winding and untrodden. Despite her efforts to forge a trail with each trip, the undergrowth of the forest was too hungry to be displaced. She had never traced her own tracks, only followed the call of her home to its stoop. Once she exited the wood, however, nature cleared. The flat valley and bustling homes appeared so suddenly, so clearly, the edge of the trees served as windowsill to a strange and distant life.

Unlike any day before, there was a figure ahead of her. It cut through the window with a flash of ripe persimmon. Most travelers entered the area from the opposite side, closer to the sea. Few felt safe hugging the line of wooded darkness. Yet, trudging through the tall grass was a tall, sloping shape like the breast of an oriole. The girl bent and softened her footsteps the way her mother had taught her.

"Well, come out then!"

The girl froze. The voice was a higher pitch than she expected with a strange, rolling accent.

"I know you're there."

The figure had also stopped. Wind blew between them smelling of dry grass and goose. The girl rested a hand over the hunting knife in her boot.

"I'm only seeking directions. A helping hand would be more than welcome."

There was something disarming in the woman's voice, something thick and sweet like jam. The girl stood slowly. She felt grass pull and stick in her hair.

"There you are."

Framed by shifting stalks of green was a tall woman. Her hair was combed flat to her head, almost wet, wrapped with a length of orange silk. The girl's gaze traced the fabric in awe, watched it drape over the woman's shoulder and around her waist like rainfall. Its ornate gold stitching curled like oil on water.

"I like your dress," the girl blurted. Though she was not supposed to speak, the garment was unlike any she'd ever seen. It glistened brightly, too brightly, flooded her sight like raw sun.

"My what?"

The girl's eyes dried and she blinked once, hard. When she refocused she saw only unremarkable traveling clothes, tan pants and a dirtied orange blouse. "Oh."

The woman tilted her head. Though she was beautiful, her face was bare and her demeanor unremarkable. Her eyes narrowed.

The girl only stared.

"What, you don't like my ragged ensemble?" the woman laughed, the tension in her face dissolving. "I'll admit it isn't my best." Her laughter was sweet, pitched high like birdsong. The girl felt wrapped in it. She wanted to be wrapped in it forever.

She giggled as well. The whole thing was silly, so silly. Of course the sun played tricks this time of day. She couldn't even remember the strange clothes she had seen.

"Do you live in town here?" the woman asked.

"No."

"Is there an easier way to get there?"

"Yes." The girl gestured to a path beyond the field used more often by others.

"See you around, then." The woman waved and turned.

Their eye contact broken, the girl felt ill and dazed. She wasn't meant to speak to strangers, let alone tall ones with sharp eyes wandering in places they shouldn't be. She resolved not to tell her mother about it. She and the woman had spoken very little, after all. Exchanged nothing.

It had been years since her mother spent the night outside their cottage clutching an axe in the moonlight. Longer since she was confined to bed, breathing erratically and retching with tears. They did not speak of those years. The girl understood her mother's omission to be a kind of protection. There was a week where they were not permitted to light any flame and lived only in the dark. Another where her mother smashed all their glassware in the yard to form a glittering moat of shards.

For a long while the girl feared what kind of creature might materialize --- many limbed, many teethed. But nothing ever came for them. Only silence. Only daybreak. Now, the girl feared the trigger of the outbursts more than their substance. She feared what kind of force tugged at the strings of her mother's past, its reach. She did her best not to pluck them.

The girl gave the woman a long head start. By the time she reached the market, all was as usual and she could believe their meeting to be a mirage --- beauty blurred into nothing. She traded a raccoon pelt for satchels of seeds, a basket of eggs, and skeins of colored yarn. She searched for goods she thought her mother might enjoy beyond the reach of their hunting and garden. She hid herself the same way she always had: a light walk, a turned head, quiet.

"I don't believe you," a voice cut through the crowd. She recognized the roll of it, the sweetness. She turned to see the woman from the field leaning across the blacksmith's wooden stall. Her body curved like a sigh into a conspiratorially placed elbow. "Show me, show me." The blacksmith blushed as he fumbled through his wares. The man was muscled and firm as rock. The girl had never seen him blush. He proffered a hammered, twisted piece of metal. The woman cooed, "Oh, marvelous. And where did you learn that?" They exchanged further conversation that the girl could not make out. Then the woman waved goodbye and floated across the market. The blacksmith blinked into the air left in her wake.

Without thinking, the girl followed. Where she skulked, the woman shined. She encountered people with her entire body. She leaned forward when she spoke, her hands found people's shoulders, the sides of their arms. She smiled and laughed. She absorbed attention with the ease of exhaling.

The girl watched the people of town relax into her. She had never seen them like this. Where she found only suspicion and fear, the woman reaped gifts, jokes, whispered gossip. Beyond initial charms, she was curious. Where did you find it? How long were you there? What brought you here? The final question was the tensest. The girl watched the people's unease fight against the woman's allure. They spoke cagily, in broad strokes. If this bothered the woman, it did not show. She changed topics with the ease of the fiddler shifting string to string.

"What is your name, young one?" A voice spoke from behind the girl. She jumped. When she turned, the woman was ducked in the shadow of the alley beside her. She was wearing the elaborate silk fabric again. Close up, her eyes were lined with a dark powder, narrowed and intense.

"How did you do that?" the girl gasped.

"Do what?"

"Get over here so fast."

"I asked first. Name?"

The girl thought of the syrupy tart she'd had for breakfast. "Fig."

"Fig," the woman repeated, lip curling in some hidden amusement. "Charmed. Why are you following me, Fig?"

For that, she had no answer. She had never been caught.

"Let's start someplace easier. Do you live here in town?"

That was not at all easier. "No."

"You and your family live in the wood?"

"Me alone." The girl kept her voice steady.

"Poor thing," the woman clucked. "That must be difficult."

If it were true, surely. She hoped the woman would take her silence for pitiable agreement.

"Fig, will you indulge me for a second?"

The girl found herself nodding, her brain at a delay behind her body. With each repetition of her false name, the woman's voice fogged her caution. Her gaze was intoxicating.

"What is this, Fig?" The woman unsheathed a dagger from the folds of her silk.

The girl blinked but did not recoil. She knew what it felt like for someone to mean her harm. "A dagger."

"What kind of dagger?"

It was a nonsensical question. The girl had seen it clearly, it was --- well, it was hazy. The air around the dagger folded and fogged like hot glass. The shape of a bottle melted inwards. The girl squinted and leaned forward. The bottle took form, more solid now, but wrong. She raised her forearm as if to wipe it clean. Yes. There it was. A dagger with a blade of curved steel like calm waves.

"A curvy one."

"Good," the woman grinned as she sheathed the blade. "Have you ever seen something like that before?"

"No." It was the truth. Her eyes ached as if she had strained to make shape of something very far away. The alley took on an unusual blur.

"I didn't expect to find someone like you here."

"Like me?" she asked, dizzy.

"Attuned. Roughly, certainly. But attuned nonetheless." The girl felt a jolt at the word. "To most people, my dagger looks like a bottle. And my robes, a traveling outfit. But not to you. Look back over there."

The girl turned back to the market. Inexplicably, the woman was there in her plain clothes. She was chatting with the apothecary just as she had been before appearing behind the girl.

The girl reached out to touch the silk-clad woman in front of her, half expecting her hand to pass through. She was real --- or, felt real enough. The fabric was creamy and clouded with sandalwood.

"Look closer," the woman ordered.

If the girl focused, squinted her eyes until the world flickered, she could see a haze of orange around the plain woman's slick hair.

"It's an illusion," the real woman explained. "Not a very clean one, but serviceable."

An illusion. Even the word seemed to steam at the edges. How wonderful, how terrible. Curiosity wrestled and bested her fear. "Are you an illusion?" she asked.

"What do you think?"

The girl focused and unfocused her view of the woman until her head ached. "You aren't."

The woman only smiled. "Tell me, what's your real name?"

"Fig." The girl lifted her chin, defiant.

"Well, the baker calls you Ila and the tailor calls you Nor. And the innkeeper's sister whispered 'demon' in a language no one here speaks."

The girl flushed. "That woman isn't well. I scared her in the woods one time---"

"No matter." The woman held up a hand, her wrist clattering with gold bangles. "You keep my secrets and I'll keep yours. I return to my conversation and you stop following behind." She stood to leave.

The girl felt the force of something miraculous slipping away. It pulled at her like an undertow. "Wait!" she called.

"Yes?"

"I'll tell you what I know. About the townspeople. And you'll tell me more about magic."

The woman laughed. "Is that so?"

"You want to know things they won't tell you," the girl asserted. She felt the heat of her mother's blood against her cheeks. "And so do I."

"Aren't you a little dealmaker?" The woman looked at her with curiosity.

There was a part of the girl, a large part, that wanted to run as fast as the river in spring back to her woods, her house, her mother's embrace, where everything was contained and made sense. Then there was a smaller part, a louder part, that fed on the sight of that orange haze like sucking honey from the comb.

"I'll need to know you won't hurt me," the girl added.

"Fair enough. First lesson. I swear I mean you no harm." The woman held out her hand, middle two fingers folded down. She gestured for the girl to do the same. As they interlocked their first and last fingers the girl felt a rush of energy that pooled in her palm and solidified. Her arm dropped with the weight. "A witch's promise. That mass you feel is the oath binding us."

"This is the first I'm hearing of it. You could be lying." The girl heard her mother in her head, tugged easily on the vines of her suspicion.

"Sure, I could be. Do you feel that I am?" the woman questioned.

The girl clenched and unclenched her first. She felt the truth as easily as she weighed a peach in her palm. "No."

"This work is not possible without trusting yourself. I act on instinct before logic."

"Is that true for all of you?"

"All of whom?"

"Witches," the girl whispered.

The woman laughed again. "Skies above, no. I could throw a stone and hit a mage who would spend all summer debating me on the topic. Our work is often deeply individual. I can only tell you how I experience it."

The girl catalogued this information without asking further. She wanted to seem more knowledgeable than she was. "I believe you."

"Good!" The witch brightened. "Now we can really get to know each other. My name is Vaani. My current title in court is The Glossy Harp. I would go on, but I'm sure the specifics of enchantress politics would bore you."

"I don't---" The girl hesitated but the excitement of their meeting melted away at a long-held hardness. "I don't have a name the way other people do."

"Oh?"

"Everyone calls me something different."

"Everyone?"

"Yes, everyone."

"I see. Would you like me to keep calling you Fig?"

The girl surprised herself with how easily the answer rolled from her mouth. "Yes." Her brief time as Fig was already among the most interesting of her life. There was a kind of luck in that, a sense of possibility. She felt the name wrap around her shoulders.

"We shouldn't keep talking here," Vaani crooned.

Panic pierced the fog of their conversation. The girl's mother was expecting her home.

"Meet me at the alder after sundown tonight. I can extend my stay here by three nights, but that's all." The witch disappeared in a hazy blink.

The girl stood in the alley. She felt an energy burn from her feet up to her scalp. She vibrated with the force of it: the force of this present, this day, the person she had become in the span of a few sentences. Utterly alive, alone --- Fig.