WELCOME TO WILDE GROVE

Erin followed the map laid out for her on the Mini’s computer, though she’d turned off the voice directions after getting back in from The Copper Kettle. She wanted to go
as slowly as she pleased, and she felt the voice of the GPS, no matter what setting she had it on, always wanted to hurry her, judged her silently for dawdling. It was merely a fancy, of course, but she turned it off anyway.

The road swept out of the village and wound itself around a
hill, rising gently towards the sky. Free of the village, the trees crept as close to the road as they dared, sneaking their roots under the asphalt, lifting the pavement at the edges, covering it with their fallen leaves. Erin smiled at them, peered in between them, gratified to see only more trees, a great congregation of oak and alder and birch, the ground beneath them a thick carpet of mulch. She’d always loved forests, woodlands, anything of the sort. It was her favourite thing to draw. Forests and the creatures that lived in them. And a great many nobody believed in did.

The car drove through something in the road, and Erin put her foot to the brake, frowning. The little Mini Countryman slowed. Erin pulled over to the side of the narrow lane and parked, sat with her hands resting on the steering wheel, a frown creasing her brow. What had that been?

A leaf wafted down on the unseen breeze and flattened itself
against the glass in front of her; a perfectly formed oak leaf stuck to her windscreen. She opened the door and got out of the car, stood for a moment in the light of the early afternoon and listened. Wondering what it was that she’d felt, what she’d driven through suddenly, as though a gauzy net had been strung across the road.

The wind rustled around in the branches above her head and she looked up, but it wasn’t the trees that had made her pull to the side of the road, perplexed.

The door made the softest thunk as Erin closed it and she picked the oak leaf from the windscreen and held it in her hands as she looked around.
It was quiet here, only the whisperings of wind in trees, and somewhere back there in the forest, a jubilant song from a bird perched high in the branches.

But it wasn’t the trees that had made Erin get out of the car, or the wind, or the birds, or the oak leaf in her hand. Her frown knotted tighter, she turned and walked back the way
she’d come, not sure what she was doing, but feeling her way to…something.

When she looked, there was nothing strung across the road.

But she felt it, right…there…and it made her hand tingle when she held it out.

The tingling rode up her arm, into the bones of her shoulder, spread along and through her. She swallowed, breathed deeply in, because something in her recognised this…this…magic.

Yes. It was magic.