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water.” The little boy tugged at the hank of hair covering his eye and scooted back to the circle. He grabbed hold of his mother’s hand. She leaned down, and he whispered into her ear. Neither looked Moire Ain’s way, but she was certain he was reporting back to his mother.
    Moire Ain dropped out of the tree and ran fasterthan she ever had. The villagers were distracting the witch so she could escape, and she would. When the river came into view, she hesitated. If she jumped in and swam, she’d damage her precious book. She looked around. Nearly submerged in racing water, spanning the river from one side to the other stretched a slippery road of boulders. In the late summer, the boulders weren’t wet, rising above the river in that dry season. But today the high water made the rocks too dangerous to use as a bridge. Moire Ain looked for another way to cross the river while protecting her book. She spotted a bright rag and hemp rope hanging from a tree branch that nearly stretched all the way across the river. She’d watched the village children play here, swinging out on the rope and dropping into the deep middle of the river.
    If the branch had only grown out over the river a few more feet, she could have used it to cross. Moire Ain would have to use the rope to swing far enough out that she could let go and sail over the river bank onto the other side.
    Trees had always been special to Moire Ain, so she was sure this was the answer she was meant to find. She climbed out onto the overhanging branch, her hands in front and her toes gripping the thick branch as best she could. She inched along like a woolly caterpillar.
    Halfway across, still three feet from where the rope hung down, the limb cracked. Moire Ain froze. Shewilled the branch to not break. There was silence. She took a relieved breath and inched again, but the limb cracked again. She had to get to the rope and swing as hard as she could. At worst when she got close enough, she could throw her book to the opposite bank and drop into the river to swim.
    Before she stretched to the rope, a soft chirrup made her look up. Above her a big branch stretched from a different tree on the opposite side of the river. The higher branch was thicker than the one she was on. If she could reach it and climb up, she could shinny over the river and not risk throwing her book.
    She stretched her arm up, and the branch under her snapped louder. Sitting back, she pulled the book out of her bag and clutched it close, sighing. The plan wouldn’t work; her arm was too short.
    Her branch cracked and creaked again dropping another inch. She couldn’t imagine how her slender weight could be too much for the branch she was sure the Greenfield children had just played on. It didn’t make sense until a tingling in her nearly asleep arm made her look at the book. No bigger than her two hands, the book no longer felt light as a leaf. Trapped over the river, her precious book was becoming too heavy to hold. Too heavy for the branch.
    She didn’t dare move for fear she’d break the branch. She couldn’t think what to do. And then a very strangething happened. A whisper snaked into her ear. “Awake.”
    She stared at the book, but she wasn’t surprised. Why shouldn’t a magick book speak? She asked, “Are you ready to do magick?” She waited, but the only sounds around her were the distant yelling from the village and the chirp of the tree frogs above her.
    She was disappointed that the book didn’t answer, but she believed in it. There had to be an important reason that she’d found it just when Hedge-Witch was about to force Moire Ain into being a murderer. It was like its title:
Magicks Mysteries
.
    Maybe it was not a chatty sort of book, but she was certain it was reaching out to her, to teach her magick. If the book didn’t like to talk, maybe it could read her thoughts. She concentrated hard on what she needed