The elm tree in the yard had lost its leaves early. Not all of them, but enough. Enough to make the bare branches look like skeletal fingers scratching at the low, gray sky. I stood at the kitchen window, holding a mug of tea that had gone cold in my hand. The liquid was dark, bitter. It tasted of the earth I had left behind and the soil I could no longer afford to tend.
My father had planted...
The dream came not as a vision but as a sensation, a heavy, wet pressure against the left side of Edward’s chest. He woke in the dark of the stone dormitory, the air thick with the smell of damp wool and old iron, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He pressed his hand to his sternum, his fingers splayed wide, feeling for the familiar, jagged topography of his own bones....
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, the ink still wet with the smell of the river mud. It was addressed to the Keeper of the Threshold, a title that had not been used in the village of Oakhaven for three generations. The postman, a man named Silas whose knees clicked like dry twigs in the cold, dropped it into the iron box with a grunt. "For you, Margaret," he said, not looking up. "Weird old...
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