Green Witch

by Alice Hoffman

  Down from the tower, down from the cells, out the door, into the grass. There is a dark sky tonight. There are a thousand stars up above. We see the Horde and their stockpiles of gunpowder. We see our village on the other side of the river. It looks as though fireflies have flown into the houses. The generators are working. There are lanterns, candles, flickering lights. The world is returning on the other side. Little by little. Bit by bit. Tonight the river is beautiful. Stars reflect in the black water as if they are a thousand boats that have set sail.

  We have to hurry, I tell Heather.

  Diamond leads us through the tall grass. We’re so close to the gathering of the Horde we can feel the ground shake beneath us. We can hear their raised voices. They have spied our boat and now race to bring cannons out from the storehouse. One cannon is quickly set up in the field and positioned toward the river. If fired, it will go right through our sails, our ship, our lives.

  Heather pushes her baby into my arms. When he gazes up at me, I see that his eyes are green. He isn’t as scrawny as he first appeared.

  If anything happens to me, give him a name, Heather tells me.

  I couldn’t do that, I sputter. Who am I to do so? Only Green. Not an aunt or a sister or even a cousin.

  Of course you can. I think Heather smiles. It’s difficult to tell in the dark, but I feel her warmth when she embraces me. That’s what a godmother does, she says.

  Everything happens at once. Heather disappears into the meadow before we can stop her. The Horde has left to bring out the rest of the cannons. As we clamor into the boat, we see that Heather is pushing at the cannon in the field, turning it around.

  She is much stronger than a sick, feverish woman should be. She’s stronger than she looks.

  Some people would no sooner put themselves first than a hawk would choose to stay on the ground, or a dog would refuse to run, or a sparrow would decide to make its home in a cage rather than in the open sky. That’s not Heather. She thinks only of us.

  She lights the fuse of the cannon. She has turned it toward the storehouse where the weapons are kept. The Horde began this battle. Now the death they wished to offer us is aimed right at them.

  Some people understand the will to love someone. They’re not about to give up easily. Heather runs back to us as fast as she can. People watching from the boat later say she was flying. Most believed she would never make it, flying or not. The boat is already leaving the shore, the water is between us, the waves, the black water. Still, Diamond and Troy reach out. They grab her and manage to pull her on board.

  When the cannon goes off, there is a moment of quiet. Then the storehouse of gunpowder and weapons is hit. There is a roar as everything on the island disappears in an instant. The tower, the cells, the skulls, the blue flag, the heartache, the Horde.

  All of it, up in flames.

  The people who destroyed our city have been destroyed by their own weapons.

  We close our eyes so they won’t fill with ashes. We say a blessing, thankful that we are still alive. Some of us speak one language, some speak another. But that doesn’t matter anymore.

  I sit with Diamond in the dark as we cross the river. He shows me that he finished the heart tattoo I’d begun on his chest.

  It is then I can feel something burn inside me.

  Without needles, without pins, without any ink at all, my heart is completed now, too, the color of a rose.

  Green Witch

  This is what I believe

  Someone promised me that we all have our own path and that mine could be found in the garden. She said I was the one who was needed most of all.

  It was my mother who said that, but I turned away. I didn’t believe a word she said. I thought my garden was the last place that would bring me happiness. I thought I was invisible, on my own, meant to be an outsider. Green, who had no life. Green, with no future.

  I had no idea that anyone would ever need me.

  Now I understand that my mother was right. Once I’d feared that when I finally wrote about the day my family left for the city, it would be the end of the story, the very last page. But that isn’t the way it’s turned out. My life is opening like a book. It’s growing like a garden without any boundaries.

  Heather and Troy and the baby moved into our cottage deep in the woods. There are rooms that hadn’t been used for so long the doors had to be pried open. It was a pleasure to clean the windows, to wash the sheets and hang them in the sun, to sweep the floors, to make pies and let them cool on the table, to light candles at dinner-time.

  We were all so busy I didn’t even notice I had turned seventeen.

  All through the summer, my neighbor who lived in the stone field brought Heather nettle soup to help bring back her strength. In autumn, the woman who had lost her children brought a cradle and a high chair. That winter, the red-haired woman who still believed in love came to tell stories and Uncle Tim came with her, bringing a toy dog he made out of acorns and reeds. The next spring, the fisherman’s wife who had always sewn fishing nets brought a dozen blankets and hats she had knitted.

  Every single one was green.

  As it turned out I had a gift for Heather as well. I named her baby. I called him Leaf because he had grown from the love all around him. Leaf, because he liked nothing more than to play in the garden. Leaf, with his green eyes and his quiet disposition. Leaf, who was his mother’s heart’s desire.

  All through the year, as we’ve worked in the garden together and set right the house, I’ve often said to Heather, Aren’t you lucky I was sent to find you?

  She always laughs out loud.

  I am lucky, she agrees. But he was the one you were meant to find.

  She means Diamond, and she’s right about that. I cannot have enough of him. I love the half of his face that is beautiful and the half that was burned in the fire. Most of all I love the part I can’t see. The part deep inside. The boy who learned my language, gave me my heart, never left me even when he was so far away.

  Diamond’s people have moved into villages up and down the river. They are quiet people, brutalized by the same army that brutalized us. Some of them have moved into the city. They have opened shops, markets, concert halls. We listen to their music. We use their recipes, just as they use ours. Our children are in schools together. Our brothers have fallen in love with their sisters, and theirs with ours. We now speak a language that is half and half. The word for husband is ours. The word for wife is much more beautiful in their dialect. Adoreé. We don’t seem very different from one another. We have all lost people we love.

  On my eighteenth birthday we decide it’s time for a party. Two years have passed since the disaster. Two years since I hid under my bed, refusing to face daylight, no longer believing in anything.

  Diamond’s family crosses the bridge from the city to come to the celebration. His mother has long black hair like mine. She’s shy, but wise and proud of her children. She brings along little treasures for the occasion: strong coffee, apple tarts, sesame candies.

  Everyone from town has come to celebrate with us. Onion barks at each and every one. The shopkeeper and his wife. My old teacher, the one who remembers every book she’s ever read, brings the orphans, dressed in their best clothes. Uncle Tim and the red-haired woman and the white greyhound come up the road together. The fisherman’s wife has fixed a stew. The woman who lost her children sings a birthday song. My dear neighbor from the stony field has brought a green nettle cake that is so tall four strong men have to carry it through the field. When it’s set on the picnic table outside, the table teeters under its weight. Everyone who eats a piece of my neighbor’s cake cries, moved by the sheer emotion of such a fortunate day. We all look at one another and laugh, then toast each other’s good health.

  Troy Jones has hung strands of white lights all along the fence. He gives some of the orphaned boys the job of turning the hand-cranked generators. Diamond’s mother applauds when she sees the lights. It’s so glorious to see, li
ke fireflies in the garden. She leans over and whispers in a language I’m beginning to understand. She wishes us happiness for the rest of our lives.

  Diamond gives me the best gift of all. A strand of pearls. They are the pearls my mother had planned to present on my sixteenth birthday, the ones I gave to the shopkeeper’s wife in exchange for seeds and a warm jacket for Diamond before he went away. He’s traded a season’s worth of blueberries and two of his paintings to get them back, but the steep price is more than worth it.

  Leaf is in the center of everything, there in his carriage. I notice there are vines growing around the wheels, unfolding by the minute. Little seedlings pop up around him. The lilacs bend in his direction, drawn to him. He is my godchild, so I’m not surprised. I am the Green Witch, after all, the one who can bring your heart’s desire. In time I’ll teach Leaf everything I learned from my mother. How to bury old boots beside pear trees so they will bear the sweetest fruit. How to spray roses with garlic so aphids will go elsewhere. Before long, Leaf will only have to whisper and the wisteria will bloom. He’ll laugh and the tomatoes will ripen overnight.

  But I will have to come back to teach him these lessons. Diamond and I are leaving for the city. The world that was so ruined is growing brighter. It shines like silver at night, gold in the sun. The city was always my garden, the people there like flowers, the traffic like a river, the lights of the buildings shining as if they were a hundred white tears. Our stand will be set up in the square where my family was selling vegetables on that day. We have already chosen the space. Troy and Heather and Leaf will bring us lettuce and string beans and baskets of pears. They will tell us stories about the village and we will show them all that’s brand-new in the city. At night we will sit at one of the cafés, my sister’s little dog, Onion, beside us. We will know how lucky we are.

  I am the last person anyone would have expected to believe in the future, but I do. I am not hurrying toward it anymore. I am inside of it. A lifetime, after all, can be spent in a single afternoon. A world can exist in a kiss, a rose, a leaf, a heart. On my window ledge I will always keep three stones: silver for my mother, black for my father, white as the moon for my sister, Aurora.

  Late at night, when the marketplace is quiet, when the boy I have always loved is asleep, I will sit in my kitchen with my typewriter. The city is not what it once was—buildings have fallen, parks have burned, trains still don’t run. All the same, it’s filled with stories, far too many to count. Too many to ever write down in a single lifetime.

  Some people say there’s nothing but piles of bricks here. They say we’ll never be able to build our city again. They say our gardens are gone, but they’re wrong.

  There are already roses growing outside my door.

  Acknowledgments

  With gratitude to my brilliant editor, David Levithan, who knew exactly how Green’s story should be told; to the amazing Elizabeth Parisi, art director and magician who created Green’s world; and to the extraordinary artist, Matt Mahurin, who brought Green to life.

  To my readers, thank you for telling me the story wasn’t over.

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The events described are imaginary, and the characters are fictitious and not intended to represent specific living persons. Any similarity to real events or persons is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Alice Hoffman.

  First Edition, March 2010

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data · Hoffman, Alice · Green witch / Alice Hoffman.—1st ed. · p. cm. · Summary: A year after her world was nearly destroyed, sixteen-year-old Green has become the one villagers turn to for aid, especially to record their stories, but Green will need the help of other women who, like herself, are believed to be witches if she is to find her best friend and her one true love.

  [1. Storytelling—Fiction. 2. Missing persons—Fiction. 3. Grief—Fiction. 4. Supernatural—Fiction. 5. Gardening—Fiction. 6. Orphans—Fiction.] I. Title. · PZ7.H67445Grg 2010 · [Fic]—dc22 · 2009017606

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  eISBN 978-0-545-28311-3

  Cover art © 2010 by Matt Mahurin

  Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi