It was the roots that really mattered.
“I think so.” May reached into the pocket of her pink pajama shirt and pulled out the Deck of Omens, then knelt at the base of the tree. “I can do my best.”
Augusta’s lips pursed, and May knew exactly what her mother was thinking—that her best was not a guarantee of victory. That it had never truly been good enough. But she sat beside May anyway.
The Deck of Omens was the Hawthorne family’s greatest heirloom, crafted by the family’s founder, Hetty Hawthorne, from the bark of this very tree. In most hands they were useless, but in May’s grip they contained the power of possibility—the ability to gaze into the past and future of a living focal point, assuming she asked the right question. The cards changed over time, evolving with each generation to reflect the town and allow for more accurate readings. The only person May couldn’t do a reading for was herself.
May’s hands shook as she began to shuffle the deck, searching for the connection that always formed in the back of her mind when she touched the cards, the opening of a pathway that only she could travel down. Lives were complex, twisty things, brimming with a myriad of possibilities. It was her job to follow the pathways most likely to occur, to use the cards as a guide that would cut through any internal turmoil. People, she had learned, were often in deep denial about where they had come from and where they were going.
But it wasn’t her job to fix them. It was her job to tell the truth, whether they liked it or not.
For a moment, the pathway resisted her, and panic swelled in May’s chest, a bubble that burst a moment later as the familiar feeling coursed through her. May gasped with relief. It was not dead, then, merely hurt, and that meant she could find a way to heal it—she would find a way to heal it. Because without this tree her family would be broken; without this tree, she would be nothing at all.
“How can we fix what happened to you?” she asked the stone trunk in front of her, addressing her question directly to the gnarled, half-shut eye. A path unfurled in her mind, and she followed it, images rushing through her brain, as the cards in her hand began to disappear.
During May’s first few readings, the images had been overwhelming—people she didn’t know, symbols she didn’t understand, coming at her so quickly that it was impossible to process them. But she had learned to channel her thoughts and merely let them flow through her, a vessel for the Deck of Omens, for the Hawthorne family. It was almost like watching a slideshow. Now she saw a traffic jam on Main Street, a puddle of strange iridescent liquid, a flash of the Carlisle lake. And then suddenly one image, stronger than all the others: a tree with the bark half melted away. Something wrong was stirring in the wreckage of the collapsed trunk. May’s heartbeat sped up as a wisp of gray extended outward from the tree like an unfurling hand.
The vision faded, and May was left clutching three cards, the taste of decay in the back of her throat. Things were rising that should have been long buried—bodies and broken promises, betrayed friends and dishonored families.
Across from her, Augusta was staring intently at the cards. “Three seems low for this sort of reading.”
“I don’t control how many are left. You know that.” May pushed down her annoyance at how much Augusta always questioned this, questioned her, whenever she did a reading. Screaming would change nothing, and so all she had was this: the satisfaction that nobody else knew what she was thinking.
She inhaled shakily, then laid the cards out on the grass and pressed her palms to the earth, her fingers digging into the loamy soil. May pictured herself grasping the roots that tunneled beneath the ground, roots that had long ago taken up residence in her soul.
Some of the founders’ descendants wanted nothing more than a way out of this town, but May Hawthorne had never once considered it.
This was her home. This was her birthright.
And this moment, of dawn breaking, earth on her palms, hope in her heart—this was what she was meant to do.
May reached forward and flipped over the first card.
It was her card. The Seven of Branches. A girl with her arms lifted above her head, her face tipped back toward the sky. Branches wove around her body and rooted themselves in the earth; her fingers elongated into tendrils, leaves budding from the edges.
The card frightened Justin. He’d told her multiple times that he found it unsettling, the way the tree had taken her over. But May saw it differently: the serenity on the girl’s face, the peace in her posture. She belonged to the forest, and it belonged to her.
“Interesting,” Augusta said softly, across from her.
May tried to understand what the cards were telling her. She rarely pulled her own card in readings that weren’t for a family member—but maybe the tree was as good as a family member. Maybe that was why.
She flipped over the second card, and her heart twisted in her chest.
It was the Two of Stones. Harper Carlisle’s card. The art showed a single hand breaking through the surface of a lake, a stone visible in its clenched fist.
May’s gut had been right. This was her fault, and she had to clean up her mess before it got even worse.
“I think Harper can fix it,” she said. “I guess that makes sense.”
Augusta’s jaw twitched. “I suppose so.”
May sank her fingers into the dirt again and thought of the roots, felt the path in her mind unfurl a little further. She could feel the hawthorn more clearly. Another vision—herself, standing in the same place she was kneeling now as the tree changed from stone to bark. And yet it didn’t feel like a victory. The vision May had seen a moment ago tugged at her mind, a deeper dread, a bigger problem. Something she needed to solve.
“I don’t think my card is just here because I’m doing the reading,” she said, frowning.
Augusta raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“No.” May swallowed. “The tree is asking me for help.”
The doubt on her mother’s face hurt. “Are you certain?”
“Would you have said that to Justin?”
May hadn’t meant to put it so bluntly. She knew from the thinness of Augusta’s lips that she would pay for it later somehow, in a privilege taken away or an unpleasant patrol schedule for the next week. But it wasn’t fair—it wasn’t. That nobody seemed to believe she could be that important. That, deep down, May worried they were right.
“Justin isn’t here,” Augusta said. “And you still have one card left.”
May stared down at the all-seeing eye. It was easier to look at the card than her mother’s face. Her hands trembled as rage, hot and heady, swirled within her. Rage for her tree. Rage for her mother, still desperately chasing down the child who could not help her and ignoring the one who could.
Deep in her mind, the pathways spiraled and wound. May felt something unfurling—a path that was hers. Thin and spiky, coiling around itself like a tangled knot of possibilities that could not yet be unraveled.
It pulsed in her mind like a beating heart, and for the first time, May reached for it. She grasped at the tendrils and pulled that path into focus, letting the roots worm their way into her mind.
It’s mine, she snarled, at the cards, at Four Paths itself. Whatever happens next belongs to me.