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too.”
    It was as if Isabelle had just realized this very fact herself, as if the thought—
I’m not from here
—had only now occurred to her. She’d felt at home all day, wandering down the path that split the woods, all sorts of nice smells and sounds popping up everywhere, pine and lilac and cedar and honeysuckle; birds chirping, water splashing over rocks. She felt as though she’d been sent on the best field trip in the world. Maybe not her world—or maybe it was her world?
    Isabelle looked around and wondered again,
Where am I? And where is everyone else? Has Charley Bender gone back to PE? Is she at home in bed thinking over the day, explaining to herself again and again what happened? Are the authorities involved? Has my mother submitted a missing person’s report?
    Isabelle found that the more she let her thoughts wander in this direction, the fuzzier her immediate surroundings became. Two thoughts about her mom phoning the police and Hen became unfocused around the edges. A little snippet of worry about Charley Bender in the principal’s office trying to explain what had happened, and the shadows beneath the trees deepened into an inky black. Could she worry herself into nothingness?
    It was decided, then. She wouldn’t worry. Because Isabelle liked to think things happened for a reason, she decided there must be a reason she was here at the edge of this green and sweet-smelling forest chatting with the interesting and somewhat unusual Hen. She’d learn more, she was sure, as the days went by, about where she was and why. Maybe abird would whisper the news in her left ear. Anything was possible, or at least that’s what Isabelle hoped.
    Hen stretched, then propped herself on her elbows. “I guessed as much that you wasn’t from here, miss. Just by your clothes. If you don’t mind me saying so, they’re a bit odd for these parts. Are ya from Aghadoc? I’ve heard tell that folks from Aghadoc go about things different.”
    “I’m from somewhere else,” Isabelle said. “If we could just leave it at that.”
    Hen nodded. “Everybody’s from somewhere else these days, seems like. Me too, I suppose.” She took a quick swipe at her eyes with the back of her arm. “I couldn’t believe it when the signs came. Ignored them at first, we did. And then last night, a shadow crossed the moon, and Mam pushed me and the little ones out the door.”
    “And the other kids in your village got pushed out of their doors too?”
    “It’s our season, ya see,” Hen said. “The witch’s season. She’s come to us now, to eat all the babiesand hang the children from nets in the trees around her house, starving ’em until they’re nothing but bones clattering in the night when the wind blows.”
    The night air fell around Isabelle’s shoulders, and she pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater to keep them warm. “Why does she do it?”
    “Some children killed her baby,” Hen answered, and gave a great shiver before she continued. “Years and years ago, when they used to have the summer festival, and all the five villages gathered. The witch lived in the woods outside of Drumanoo then, and folks left her alone. But then word came she’d had a baby, and that it was the devil’s child. A group of ’em—one child from each village—snuck into the woods that night to see Satan’s spawn for themselves. It was out there in the yard—in the middle of the night!—sleeping in a sling tied between two trees. One boy threw a rock at it, and then the others did, and the baby bled something fierce—”
    “And it died,” Isabelle finished, her voice barelya whisper. “That’s a terrible story. That’s the worst story I ever heard.”
    Hen shook her head violently. “No! What’s worse is now. She chases us from our villages. She eats our babies! She won’t ever stop seeking revenge, and it’s been near fifty years! I didn’t kill her baby. I’d nothing to do with it.”
    Isabelle leaned her