It was a long time before Sylvia's screams faded behind the trees. Flora's boots caught over roots, her hair tangled in branches, her hands scraped over bark. The forest had fallen to silence. Sylvia's yowls had startled even the wind from the leaves.

A bramble scratched her palm. Blood. She stopped, bunching her skirt into her hand and listening to the ragged drag of her breath. The cool air shocked her lungs, and she realized she hadn't left the cottage since Sylvia arrived. How long had it been? It could have been weeks, months. The days and nights had been a mere formality. Even now, time was moving around her and she was not saddled to it.

She dropped her skirt and started running again, making her way towards the sound of the stream. All she knew what that there was a monster in her house, and Felix was there with it.

The smell from Madrigal's chimney nearly brought tears to her eyes. The smoke curling into the sky carried with it a tinge of cedar, herbs, and spices that carried with it the connotations of childhood and its easiness. Felix was right. She should have come sooner.

She jumped across the stepping stones, the slippery bank, raised her fist and knocked frantically against the door.

It remembered her and opened at her touch. She let herself in.

"Madrigal? Madrigal!" she gasped, breathing heavily.

"Hello to you, too, I suppose," a voice called from somewhere in the kitchen, "No cakes, no gifts of any kind, and yet you barge through my door..."

There was a shuffling sound, then Madrigal rounded the corner. Her hair was in its same, loose, grey topknot, her shoulders wrapped in her warmest shawl. She was placid and stern and warm and everything Flora hadn't realized how badly she'd needed until just that moment.

"Thank skies," Flora sobbed out, quickly crossing the threshold to give her a tight hug.

Tears spilled out of Flora's eyes and Madrigal held her shaking shoulders. She thought of Vita clinging to her skirts and only cried harder, allowing herself to acknowledge what she'd known since the beginning. She didn't know what happened. She didn't know what to do. She knew nothing. She sunk into the pressure of her shoulder.

"Yes, I'm glad to see you, too," Madrigal replied, patting her hair. "What happened? Are you alright?"

"No!" she cried out, "Felix! He's trapped in the cottage, with Sylvia, and-!"

"The village woman?"

"Yes! But she's not alive, she's horrible-."

"She died?"

"And now she's a ghost!" Flora exclaimed. "And Felix, I have to protect him! What if his spell fails?"

Madrigal shook her head in confusion, then picked up Flora's hand. She flipped it over, tracing the lines on her palm searchingly, tilting it in the light.

"No," she said finally. "I think you are the one who most needs help right now."

"But Felix-!"

"Made it out of the house?" she asked. Flora nodded. "Then we have plenty of time."

"But–!"

"Felix is an all-powerful being with the claws and the attitude of a house-cat. Take a seat, dear. I'm going to boil some tea."

Too frantic to argue, Flora tried pacing in front of the fireplace, but even that proved difficult. The room was cluttered in every direction with books, dried plants, strange rocks, crystals, and glass vials. Every surface burst over its edges with parchments and quills and leaky bottles of ink, all scribbled and blotted with notes and spells. Occasionally there were animal bones, or lunar charts and brass devices which glinted by the light of the fire. And always, her familiar Pax skittering about, his skinny mouse tail whipping in and out of sight. With each movement, Flora knocked something to the floor or nearly tipped a pile of papers.

Listening to Madrigal methodically brew her tea, Flora gave up. She flopped into an armchair with sweaty palms and tapped her foot.

"How long has it been since I've last been here?" Flora croaked. Pax skittered onto her lap, looking up at her with round eyes.

"You don't remember?" Madrigal asked. Flora didn't reply.The sounds of porcelain and tin clinked from the kitchen. "Well, dear, it has been nearly two weeks since our last visit."

"Two weeks?" Flora cried out. "Surely not."

"It has," Madrigal replied. The teapot floated over and poured Flora a steaming cup of chamomile. "I could see from the cards that you would not be coming for a while, but I didn't expect for it to be quite so long..."

Flora brought one hand to her forehead, staring into the fire. Pax curled under the other one in sympathy.

The blend of spells and days started to telescope themselves out in her memory. She counted the nights, the workings, the meals, the waxing of the moon. She was sure it couldn't have been at the same she was sure that it was.

"But I've barely eaten, barely slept."

"Yes, you look terrible," Madrigal said. "Eat some cake."

Flora ate one, two, three slices ravenously, remembering for this first time in days the comfort and necessity of a full stomach. Immediately the frothing in her head started dissipating, the weight of her exhaustion pulled at her eyes. All of her shaking steadied. She felt more solid than she had in days.

Madrigal watched her carefully.

"So," she said after a moment, eyes narrowed uneasily. "What happened?"

Flora sighed. "I hate to bother you with village matters, but this has become rather urgent."

Madrigal pulled her chair closer, giving Flora her full attention. And so, Flora relayed the whole story. For nearly half an hour, Madrigal listened with deep intensity, and when Flora had finished, she sat in silence, still contemplating.

She sipped her tea, looking into the floor distantly, and Flora waited, petting Pax's head with the tip of her finger. The silence was punctuated by the snap of her fireplace, her occasional clarifying question. And this is was right after she died? Is she solid or transparent? You said it was raining? Can you touch her? What does her voice sound like? Flora allowed herself to sink into the cushions, feel the pull of her body to the earth. After a long while, Madrigal nodded to herself, then stood and went to her bookshelf.

"The only thing I can think to do now is a resurrection spell," Flora said. "But I would need at least two other witches, I barely have the strength for healing magic now."

"No point in that," Madrigal replied, squinting into the spine of a book. Flora frowned.

"Why not?"

"A resurrection spell will do nothing, because this Sylvia is not dead," Madrigal said, running her hand over the spines of her library. Flora blinked.

"No, everyone's seen her body. I saw her ghost just this morning! She's dead, for certain–."

"My dear...just because it looks like Sylvia does not meant that it is."

The meaning of Madrigal's words didn't hit Flora right away. They trickled down her neck like ice-melt, slowly raising the hair on her arms. It. Just because it looks like Sylvia. Looks like her.

Looks like, but not is. Her muscles tightened in on themselves as Madrigal watched her realize what that meant.

"Then...what's in my house?" she asked quietly.