Vika normally avoided the orchard, but it wasn’t because of the ghost. The ghost mostly kept to herself. It wasn’t even the apples, although they did remind Vika of her more irritating siblings. A grove should be a wild place, not one where the trees are forced into neat rows and held in place with wire. It was unsettling.
But when Ben showed her the owner’s post on social media of the early blooms with the caption suggesting it was because of “The Orchard Ghost Bride,” she couldn’t say no to having a quick look. It was that time of year when winter slips into spring. There were still patches of snow in the shady parts of town, and everything was a brown, gray, slushy mess of dried brush and mud. There should be no delicate pink flowers like the ones in the picture Ben said was circling the Internet.
Something wasn’t right. The sight of the blossoms gave Vika a hollow feeling in her stomach, the seeds of a drama she would need to deal with. As she walked up the muddy path into the orchard, she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her worn leather jacket, although the bite in the air didn’t bother her. Ben did the same, though Vika suspected it didn’t bother him either.
“Whose idea was it to come out here at dawn?” she asked.
Ben shot her a grin. “I thought you’d want to be here when it was calm. Besides, I brought coffee.”
He held up the thermos and she shook her head. Near the middle of the orchard, they stopped in front of a single twisted apple tree, its pale pink blossoms almost silver in the morning light.
“What is up with you?” Vika mumbled, studying the tree, which was blossoming about a month early. The rest of the trees sported plain branches, barely even a bud. Yet this one was all decked out in pink.
“What do you think is going on?” She turned to Ben, but he was gone.
She found him crouching at the base of a large oak tree in a clearing between rows. The roots of the surrounding trees stuck out of the ground, intertwined in a circular knot around the oak tree. Moss and wild violets gathered at the base of the trees.
“Do you know what this is?” Ben asked as she approached. He was animated, talking fast, almost to himself. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. But the Carsons, who used to own this orchard, didn’t open it to the public. They were closed off. You would have liked them.” He flashed her another smile.
“What are you talking about?” Vika asked, trying to remember if she’d ever met the Carsons. She must have at some point.
Ben’s face was flushed with excitement. “I think this is a wyrd knot.”
“What?” Vika looked closer. She blinked, and a vision of hands planting a sapling flashed through her mind, followed by the echo of someone crying. “It’s been here all this time? How did we not notice?”
Ben shook his head. “You feel it too?”
“Yes,” Vika said, her breath tight in her chest. “Time feels squishy here.”
A wyrd knot was a trick of the Fates, a place where the past, present and future were all interconnected. It was unsettling that she hadn’t known it was here. Worse, Vika could picture Lachesis herding her toward this town specifically to be near it and then teasing her for not noticing a wyrd knot right under her nose.
Ben’s fingers trailed over the braided tree roots. “There’s something else here. A spell. Can you see it?”
Vika shook her head. Her Kere magic didn’t work that way. It was just a part of her. She didn’t pay attention to spells and bindings, or magic grimoires, but Ben seemed to know a lot about them. She looked at him closely again, his storm-gray eyes and angular jaw softened by a hint of stubble, and wondered what he was hiding from her.
Before she could ask, a cold breeze swept through the orchard, rustling the pink blossoms. The feeling of being watched prickled over her. Vika spun around as something darted past.
“Did you see that?” Vika asked.
Ben looked up from the roots. “No, what was it?”
Vika moved closer to the tree. “Hello?”
A flicker of white drifted between two apple trees ahead and slipped behind a tree, which wasn’t big enough to conceal it. Vika could make out the silhouette of a woman, her edges bleeding into the air around her. A ghost.
“You can come out,” Vika said, using her best gentle voice as she moved toward the tree.
The ghost pressed herself unconvincingly into the tree.
“I can see you,” Vika said.
There was a sharp intake of breath, and the ghost peeked around the tree, her gaze meeting Vika’s and then widening in terror.
The ghost shook her head no. When she spoke, it came out in a ragged whisper. “I can’t go yet, Kere. I have to stop it from unraveling.”
Then she vanished in a swirl of fallen leaves.
Vika stared at the empty space where the ghost had been. She was used to being feared. Spirits tended to give Vika a wide berth, which was fine with Vika. She normally liked to avoid their drama.
I have to stop it from unraveling. What did the spirit mean by that? What was she protecting?
“What happened?” Ben asked, coming to stand beside her.
“I think that was the famous Orchard Bride,” Vika said. “But she didn’t look like a bride.”
“Did she say anything?”
Vika told him what she’d said about the unraveling and how she ran away, but she left out the part about the ghost being afraid of her.
Ben considered this, but his attention was on the wyrd knot. He crouched before it as if looking for clues.
Kneeling next to him, Vika reached out a hand to touch the springy moss at the base of the tree. An image of blood soaking the ground flashed through her mind, and she yanked her hand back. “There was violence here,” she said. “Blood.”
Ben’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t question it. “Is it the past you saw or the future?”
His eyes met hers. Vika shook her head. “I don’t know. I just saw blood.”
Ben stood and wiped the dirt from his jeans. “If her fear is that the knot will unravel, this is a bigger problem than a rogue ghost.”