With a shake of her head, Tilly turned back to the trunk and took out the only three books she owned, which were on top. The first was a hymnal, given to her before she was born by one of the neighbors, though she wasn't sure which. The second was The Book of Natural and Unnatural Fauna of Southeastern Grimland, a great big encyclopedia she had bought with her own money and read aloud to Booger every night after supper. Finally, careful of its wobbling spine and yellowed pages, Tilly removed the last one, which was Granny's pattern book.
The memories of her grandmother were blurry at best, patched by Mama's stories and the handwritten notes in the margins of the pattern book. But there was one particular recollection that never faded from Tilly's mind.
Granny had never gotten old. She just got tired. One day, when Tilly was the age of making mud pies, Granny had walked to the edge of their property where the garden stopped and the wilds began. The pinks and blues of her patchwork apron stood out from the treeline as she walked deeper and deeper, arms outstretched like she was meeting an old friend, 'til finally the forest swallowed her up. Tilly, too young to understand, sat in the yard and wailed until Mama ran from the kitchen, breathless. But no matter how much Tilly cried, Granny never came back. Like the True Fey that came before them, she had returned to the woods.
Sometimes, Tilly thought the woods were calling for her, too.
There was a frustrated snort from the bed as Booger shifted forms.
Most dogs, when bogged down by water or muck or anything else unusual, will shake off or scratch to rid themselves of whatever's got them so wound up. But she wasn't most dogs. As long as Tilly had known her, which was getting on two whole years, Booger had been able to change shape. Though she typically preferred to stay a dog, she'd make the occasional exception, like when she was suffering from the symptoms of a particularly ornery bee sting.
When she leapt down to the floor, Booger was a spotted cat. Then, with another snort, her fur fell fell off to reveal scales and she slithered in circles as a glass lizard. Both creatures had comically puffed up snouts. It seemed the bee's revenge was inescapable.
"You'd be a lot better off if you'd just let me get that stinger out," Tilly said.
"Yeah, well you'd be a lot better off if you just told Mama you're too scared to go to the fair by your lonesome," the lizard hissed.
Tilly stiffened. "I ain't scared."
"Are too." The lizard rolled its head back and forth mockingly. "'It's so loud?' When you ever been fretted by something being too noisy?"
"I guess you're right." A smile edged at Tilly's mouth. "After all, I been putting up with you for a while now."
"See, that's—" The lizard's jaw dropped, tongue rigid with the realization. "Hey!"
Tilly laughed behind her cupped hands. Booger coiled up on herself and, in a moment of inspiration, turned into a chickadee. She fluttered to the brass footboard, singing of her triumph over the bumblebee's stinger.
"Guess that's one way 'round it," Tilly said.
"Ain't got a snoot to sting," Booger tweeted.
"Wish my problems could be fixed as quick as yours." Tilly looked to the book in her lap, carefully turning the first few pages. "If I could just close my eyes and will myself into another form that's better suited for the chore at hand."
There were a lot of secrets in Granny's pattern book; stitching spells, ways to imbue the thread with magic, dresses to bring love and cloaks to defy death. Tilly had tried a dozen of them and knew those well-practiced spells by heart, but there was still a good portion of her grandmother's magic that eluded her, using stitches beyond Tilly's skill level or components they were too poor to afford.
For the most part, that was fine by Tilly—if Mama was right, the magic would come in time—but there was one pattern, near the back of the book, that she always came back to.
ᴀ ʀᴇsᴛᴏʀᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ sᴛɪᴛᴄʜ, ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀsᴇ ɪʟʟɴᴇss ᴀɴᴅ ʙʀɪɴɢ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴇᴀʀᴇʀ, the page read in Granny's tight cursive. The pattern called for thread made of silver and unicorn hair that was boiled with the peel of the first unblemished white apple of the harvest.
By itself, a spool of real silver thread was worth half of what the family made in a year, she'd read in one of the special-order catalogs on the counter of the general store. That aside, nobody carried unicorn hair, a beast once native to Southeast Grimland that had been pushed out by logging and land developers. And magic, well, it was mighty persnickety when it came down to brass tacks. Tilly was so scared of how the spell might backfire if she asked Booger to turn into one and used her hair instead that she didn't even dare try.
The hardest ingredient on that list, though, was the white apple.
In her day, Tilly had seen a great many apples; yellow was sweet and good for eating, green was fine for apple butter and fried pies, and red was, at least, nice to look at—but she had never once in her life encountered a white apple. It was such a vexing curiosity that Tilly had spent hours staring at that line in the pattern book wondering if it wasn't just a slip or smudge of the pen.
Whine apple.
Whitt apple.
Anything but white.
The spell was impossible, in so many words.
Downstairs, Mama coughed and coughed. Tilly's grip on the book tightened as she set it aside.
Somehow, she'd find a way. If they were lucky, the first step was outside, sitting in Sprout's pumpkin patch.
Next in the trunk was jumper dress made of denim, well-worn and much-abused, its hemline ratty in spots and creases yellowed with dirt. Folded alongside it was a work shirt that Tilly scrubbed the daylights out of come wash day but she swore always smelled of clean sweat regardless. They might not have been much to look at, but together, they were Tilly's most powerful magic.
Tilly undressed and wriggled her way into the work shirt, then stepped into the jumper. When hooking the last buckle into place on her chest, she took a shallow breath, briefly gobsmacked by the spell working its way through her.
She didn't look any different in the cracked dresser mirror. The fabric did not strain against any newly formed muscles and much to her relief, Tilly didn't grow any taller than she already was.
But she could feel the change immediately. Around her, the walls became brittle. The dresser and bed felt like toy furniture, small and hopelessly delicate, and Mama and Sprout were pretty little dolls.
The family might not have been able to afford a tractor like the tobacco barons that owned half the county, but the truth is, they didn't really need one.
"C'mon, Boogs." Tilly pulled her braid out of the back of the work shirt, then put on her boots. "Let's go load up the wagon."
It took real finesse not to rip the door from its hinges as Tilly opened it and tromped down the stairs. Mama was in the kitchen, cutting up a heap of rampion for a salad. Tilly gave her a peck on the cheek as she passed on her way to the backyard.
Their land had been little more than dry fields before Sprout was born. But from the moment Tilly's little sister gave her first cry, the plants had come to comfort her. Shade trees gathered around the home to shield her head from the beating sun. Rampion and wild strawberries cropped up in droves like pilgrims around a holy relic. If she wanted something to grow, there wasn't much more for Sprout to do other than plant a seed and ask nicely.
Some neighbors, the uppity, holier-than-thou ones, the bless-your-heart ones, with plows and machinery and time to care, whispered that they lived in unkempt squalor; a den for snakes and ticks, with tall grass and too much kudzu. But Tilly's family never went hungry and their garden always bloomed, even in the wintertime, so she wasn't rightfully sure who needed the pity.
"Tilly!" Sprout called. It was clear she'd been shouting for a while, her voice hoarse and tone irritated. "You coming or not?!"
"Hold your horses." Tilly followed a small path between rows of sunflower that bobbed just over her head. Booger, still a bird, lit on her shoulder with a chirp. "I had to help Mama."
"We're gonna run out of daylight," Sprout grouched.
They found her in the small, orange mountain range that the pumpkin patch had turned into over the summer. Her sister sat on a gourd roughly the size of a cow, so thoroughly overgrown that its bottom had flattened out under its weight, crossing and uncrossing her bare feet.
"Aw, c'mon, it ain't gonna take that long." Tilly circled the pumpkin once and let out a whistle. "She's a beaut, though, I gotta admit. Peter's gonna have a run for his money this time."
The smoked goggles Sprout wore outside made her smile all the more suspicious as she leaned forward with interest. "I heard it from Luke that Peter buried his last wife in the garden. That's why the pumpkins grow so big."
Tilly stopped her admiration of the pumpkin to give her a dark look. "You know it ain't nice to talk about people."
"May not be nice, but it sure is fun." Sprout kicked off the pumpkin and dusted off her hands. "Regardless—this ain't the pumpkin I'm taking to the fair."
"It's not?"
"Nope." Sprout started to trek towards the wood shed. "It's a little further on."
Bewildered, Tilly followed her. As they walked past the stump where Tilly split the firewood come winter time, she saw something orange peering just above the rusted corrugated iron of the shed's roof, like the sun rising on the horizon. "Great googly moogly."
The pumpkin was nearly as wide as the shed, and easily taller, so large that it had nearly lost all resemblance to its smaller, slighter brothers in the pumpkin patch proper. It looked more like a giant blob of raw biscuit dough, oozing across the ground in odd lumps and bumps.
Sprout hugged it affectionately. "Tilly, I'd like you to meet Mr. Tubbington the Third."