“Please calm down.” Gabri kept her voice low and soothing as she faced the irate witch who had just stormed into the little storefront.

 

“Pretty hard to calm down when you’ve just spent a fortune on a familiar who up and runs away the first chance he gets.” Noxious spittle flew at Gabri, but she forced herself not to flinch. Just like when he came in looking for a familiar a few days ago, the witch facing her looked like a boiled tomato, red with skin that didn’t fit quite right. Too many appearance charms could do that. Gabri figured he was the type to insist on being called a “warlock” rather than a witch, too. The problem was he had every right to be upset.

 

“Yes, I can see that, but I’ll give you the full refund I promised.” There was nothing else to do. Her reputation for finding familiars was already deteriorating. She couldn’t afford for this latest dissatisfied customer to make it worse. Maybe she should at least try to fix it. “If you prefer, I could offer a replacement?”

 

“Not likely. I’ll take my money. Now.” Gabri thought the raccoon who had decided to take off rather than bond with this witch had been quite clever. She went to her desk drawer and removed the refund.

 

Gabri absently rubbed at the ache in her chest as the boiled tomato witch left with his refund. Her business was failing. Rosalind would let her stay in her rented room even if she couldn’t pay, but Gabri didn’t want to be a burden to the older witch.

 

Before she could sink too far into despair, the door creaked open to reveal Eva, a young witch from two villages over who had taken a woodpecker a week ago.

 

“This bird is useless. He refuses to bond and can’t even get his own food.”

 

Gabri looked at the birdcage dangling at Eva’s side and sighed. At least this one hadn’t taken off.

 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Gabri liked Eva, who was building a reputation for being a potent healer. As Eva placed the cage on the table, the woodpecker cocked his head so one eye seemed to be looking directly at Gabri. He had done that before, too, and Gabri had been relieved to send him away with Eva. “Can you tell me what happened?”

 

“Nothing happened! That’s the problem. I admit the bird is gorgeous. Those little red patches on the back of his head are stunning, and he’s just big enough to be intimidating when necessary. But none of that matters if he won’t bond.”

 

“He hasn’t even given you a name?” Eva shook her head. Gabri was starting to feel desperate. “Have you given him every opportunity? Have you let him get to know you out of his cage? You know he’s young and might need a little time to be comfortable.”

 

Eva let out an impatient breath. “I know what I’m doing, Gabri. I already have a frog familiar, as you well know. He’s had plenty of time out of the cage. I even let him fly outside, figuring you’d reimburse me if he flew away. We visited oaks and pines, but after a few quick pecks he didn’t even try to feed himself. I should have asked before, I guess, but where did you get him?”

 

“From a summoning up near Hawk’s Ridge. He flew right to me without any hesitation. I stayed there for hours, but he was the only one to come.”

 

Gabri carefully kept her gaze on Eva and away from the bird, who was still looking at her.

 

Eva’s face softened. “How long has it been, Gabri? He won’t make eye contact with me the way he is trying to with you right now. Maybe he responded to your summons because of you.”

 

Gabri forced her voice past the tightness in her throat to say, “Just over a year,” but her gaze slid away from Eva to the door. There was a board nailed over the bottom where Dahlia’s entrance had been, but Gabri still felt like her beautiful familiar might slink in at any moment and mew up at her.

 

Eva’s voice quietly cut through Gabri’s thoughts. “Maybe it’s time. And maybe this bird is meant for you.”

 

Gabri shook her head but didn’t look at Eva.

 

“I’ll leave him with you, and you can let me know when you have another familiar who might work for me. Maybe birds aren’t right for me and my magic, anyway. I know that’s what I said I wanted, but I think a more grounded creature would be a better fit. I’ve got Fern for water magic,” Eva’s eyes crinkled as she mentioned her frog familiar, “but healing takes a lot of earth work.” The woodpecker let out a sharp, bright note and both witches turned to it.

 

“I think he approves.” Gabri’s tone was still wistful, but thoughtful, too. “I’ll work on it for you.”

 

“Thank you. And please think about what I said.” Gabri didn’t look away from the woodpecker as Eva left, finally letting his piercing gaze make contact for an instant or two before she moved his cage to the back, near two more cages housing a snoring owl and an aging crow. She also had a rat, two toads, a mink, three snakes, a squirrel, and a chipmunk, all waiting for witches.

 

Matching a familiar with a witch took insight, talent, and luck. Without Dahlia’s help, it seemed to be impossible.

 

Gabri had longed for a familiar when she was a little girl. When she was old enough to read, she feigned sleep and pinched herself to stay awake until the dead of night when she could sneak into her father’s library to look up summoning spells. She tried for years to summon a familiar without so much as a cricket showing up, and then one frosty spring morning when Gabri was sixteen, desperately lonely, and had all but given up on the idea of finding a familiar, she enacted a self-designed summoning that worked. A white fluffball emerged from the woods, having left a neighbor’s barn in response to the spell, and Gabri and Dahlia bonded within the week. Gabri’s father hated Dahlia, as he hated just about anything to do with Gabri, the girl child who had magic when his only son and heir had none. To keep Dahlia safe from him, Gabri left home.

 

Gabri and Dahlia discovered the summoning spell worked to gather potential familiars, and Dahlia had a knack for matching those familiars with witches. One powerful witch bonded almost immediately with a crow Gabri summoned, and in return the witch sent Gabri and Dahlia to their new home. Rosalind, already bent with age when Gabri showed up looking for a place to stay, owned the building where Gabri set up her business and still occupied the apartment upstairs. Gabri was her helper and cook, and Rosalind let her use the downstairs front room for her familiars.

 

Finding potential familiars was going fine for Gabri. The animals who responded to her summoning spells were willing to be bonded. She just didn’t have the knack of making matches without Dahlia.

 

Gabri put on the soup pot for dinner in the kitchen at the back of the house. While it bubbled away, she made sure all the familiars-in-waiting were fed. It was not Gabri’s favorite part of the job since she herself never ate flesh, but many of the animals in her care required sustenance in the form of other creatures. Some, like the owl and the rat, hunted on their own and came back, but others had a harder time finding a meal in a strange place. For them, Gabri kept a charmed chest out back, magicked to stay cold.

 

She filled it with potential meals using a variation on her summoning spell that drew creatures who were already close to death. It was the best way she could devise to keep everyone fed without causing harm, but it meant she herself sometimes had to help the creatures cross into death, which was not easy for her.

 

Once the turnips and carrots were nearly ready in her latest batch of mushroom broth, Gabri went out back to cast a summoning for some dinner for the woodpecker. When she brought the insects to him, he cocked his head up at her and gave a brief, chirpy song that Gabri found truly charming.

 

“Yes, well, you’re welcome. A shame about Eva, but we’ll find someone for you.”

 

~ * ~

 

Rosalind was mostly confined to her sitting room and bedroom on the second floor. She was not ill, but she was very, very old. Her familiar, a squirrel called Sasha, stayed on her shoulder or knee nearly all the time. Deeply bonded as they were, they conversed without needing verbal language. It seemed to take more and more effort for them to bring Gabri into their world.

 

Gabri served the soup to both Rosalind and Sasha at the small table near the front window. No matter what else she could or could not do, Rosalind made a point of sitting down for her three daily meals at that table and surveying the village road out front. Evening meals crept earlier and earlier as the year wore on because Rosalind liked to eat when it was still light out and she could see her neighbors’ “comings and goings.”

 

Tonight, as they slurped their soup and enjoyed fresh rolls, Rosalind and Sasha had one of their silent conversations before both turning to Gabri.

 

“Sasha tells me you’ve had two more familiars returned.”

 

“One, actually. A woodpecker. The other one ran away.”

 

“Oh, dear. Gabri, what will you do? You can’t go on summoning familiars and then not knowing what to do with them.” Rosalind’s face was kind as she said what Gabri knew to be true.

 

“I know. I’ve been thinking about other ways to support myself and to pay my way here. My cooking’s gotten better, don’t you think?”

 

Sasha chittered and Rosalind smiled, “It could hardly have gotten worse.”

 

“I think maybe I could open a little eatery? There’s room downstairs, and we wouldn’t be competing with anyone. The pub only serves meat and potatoes, and they have no skill with medicinal herbs.”

 

“I suppose we could consider it, but it’s not a way to make use of your talents. You realize how rare it is to be able to summon potential familiars as easily as you do? Many witches never manage to find a familiar. Or they, you know,” Rosalind’s voice dropped to a whisper, “force a bond.” Sasha squeaked in alarm. “Quite right, darling. I’ll say no more.”

 

Gabri knew what Rosalind meant about forcing bonds. Her father had made dozens of dogs and horses into his personal army of “familiars,” but they weren’t truly bonded. They just did what he told them to do, and it was awful.

 

Rosalind continued in a thoughtful tone, “I’ll have to ask my nephew Archie about the eatery, though.”

 

“Archie? Why?” Rosalind’s nephew was a weak-willed man married to a strong-willed woman who did not approve of magic or Rosalind’s “choices.” She and Archie came to visit during the summer each year for exactly one day and night.

 

“Because this will be his house one day, not too long from now.” Sasha curled up on Rosalind’s shoulder.

 

Gabri had never expected Rosalind would leave the house to her. They were not family and Gabri had only lived there for six years. But Archie?

 

“You should leave your home to whomever you wish, but don’t you have some nieces who are slightly more, er, likable?”

 

“Oh, this house already belongs to Archie. My brother let me move in when he inherited it from our grandparents, but it never belonged to me. I thought you knew! It’s an absurd male heir thing. My father left me some money, but no property. Archie has every right to the place. Otherwise, you would get it from me when my time comes.”

 

Gabri took the news with as much calm as she could muster, but she was feeling battered. After she and Dahlia had left home and struggled to find a place, she had hoped she would never again feel so adrift as she had then. To have to go through it all again, but without Dahlia, was gutting.

 

“It won’t be long, dear.” Rosalind’s voice was quiet now, and both she and Sasha were looking at Gabri. “I don’t want to go in the middle of the cold winter, and I don’t have it in me to make it to spring. It can’t be long.”

 

Gabri hated herself for the flash of self-pity that came before the wave of anticipatory grief. Witches knew when death loomed, and Rosalind deserved to move on without the encumbrance of Gabri’s sadness, or her fear.

 

“I understand. What can I do?”

 

A smile cracked across Rosalind’s face, crinkling it in all directions. “Nothing. I have a little time and I will enjoy it. I anticipate visits from a few old friends. You might want to spend some time with younger folks, like Eva or young Worrell. You’re not the same frightened girl you were when you came here. Remember that.”

 

In other words, get your life together, Gabri. She stood to hug Rosalind and give Sasha a gentle kiss on the head.

 

~ * ~

 

The next morning, Gabri woke to a brilliant sunrise streaming through the changing leaves to the tiny window into her room next to the kitchen. A lingering dream of flying through the treetops made her smile, but leaden reality quickly set in. She ached with the need to run her fingers through Dahlia’s thick fur.

 

What kind of witch couldn’t heal her own familiar? How could she possibly continue summoning and doling out familiars when she couldn’t even keep Dahlia safe? Familiars who came to her summons were willing to bond with witches who would give them access to new lives, and who would presumably keep them safe and healthy, even long past their usual lifespans. That’s how it worked. Rosalind’s Sasha had been with her for over forty years. Forty! Gabri didn’t know how long squirrels usually lived, but she knew Sasha had stayed vital and healthy for far longer than she would have without Rosalind.

 

At her worst moments, Gabri wondered if Dahlia would be alive and happy today as some other witch’s familiar if she had ignored her and stayed at home with her father.

 

But even Gabri couldn’t believe that. She and Dahlia had bonded without even trying, when both were younger than they should have been to bond. If Gabri’s father had allowed her to apprentice with a witch, she would have known better, would have waited until she had more control of her magic before she bonded. But there was no denying the bond once it formed, and no choice but to find a way to become the witch she knew she needed to be.

 

The awful day Dahlia died, Rosalind and Sasha had sat with Gabri for hours, until she finally accepted there was nothing she could do. Rosalind had done everything she could when Gabri’s magic hadn’t been enough, but Dahlia couldn’t be revived. One moment she was there, then she was gone. Gabri could sense enough to know her heart was the problem, and Rosalind was certain there was a defect there that could not have been healed.

 

“She reached out to me, and I felt something, knew something was terribly wrong, but then she pulled back. I think she must have known she was going.” Rosalind had listened with sad eyes, had recognized Gabri’s anger as well as her pain.

 

“She couldn’t take you with her. Not now. You’re so young and there’s much for you still to do.”

 

Usually, familiars died with their witches. Sometimes, rarely, a familiar died and brought the witch into death with them. Rarest of all was when a familiar or a witch lived on when the other died. It was an agony Gabri didn’t think anyone should be asked to tolerate.

 

~ * ~

 

Gabri brought breakfast to Rosalind and Sasha and had some of yesterday’s bread soaked in rosehip tea to start her day. She put the owl and other nocturnals back after a night of hunting and offered breakfast to the others. The woodpecker continued to eye her, almost solemnly, but Gabri kept her distance.

 

Quiet reigned in the small house all morning. Gabri did some mending spells on the well-worn winter items she would soon need to begin to wear again. Archie’s smug face, framed by a sparse beard and sparser head of hair, kept inserting itself into her mind’s eye.

 

A few of the familiars-in-waiting had gone off to hunt or forage and returned around mid-day. The woodpecker didn’t budge when she opened his cage, giving him an opportunity to fly and feed. Gabri remembered Eva’s claim that he didn’t even know how to get his own food. Sometimes the animals that came to her summons were like that, unable to cope with their existence in the wild in some fundamental way. For them, the summons was a lifeline, but it wasn’t much of a life unless she could find them the right witch. Gabri brought the woodpecker some more insects for a midday meal.

 

The day was lovely and warm for this time of year. Gabri opened the woodpecker’s cage again in the afternoon, but this time she asked him to come out, and he did. Rosalind had given her an idea for another possible match for him. He perched on her arm and hopped up to her shoulder. She kept her mind carefully tuned away from him, but she couldn’t help but wonder what ailed him, why he didn’t try to get his own food.

 

She walked down the alleyway, away from the main street, and toward the wooded hills behind the village. The woodpecker was silent, a light presence on her shoulder, although she could feel his head darting about and taking things in.

 

Between one step and the next, a loud noise boomed through the woods. Everything erupted into movement. Birds flew from the boughs of the trees, chipmunks and squirrels scurried through the underbrush, and a rabbit bounced past. Gabri stayed calm, as did the woodpecker on her shoulder. The farmers were taking some trees down. Gabri strode toward the noise, casting a quick protection spell over herself and the woodpecker, just in case.

 

As she expected, Gabri found Worrell helping a handful of farmers. He was considered a young witch, though probably a few years older than Gabri, and had come back to this small village after an apprenticeship near the coast. His parents were farmers who couldn’t be prouder of their witch son. Gabri thought him kind, with his open smile and ready laugh, so she tried not to be jealous of the formal training he had received and the familial support he carried so easily.

 

What better familiar for a young witch who spent his time out in the forest than a woodpecker?

 

“Can we help?” Gabri called to Worrell and the others.

 

“Hello, Gabri! We’re just clearing this last bit of wood away. Tree was already gone and its sisters ready to part, so it’s been a simple doing.” Worrell smiled down at her. He was very tall, a bit tree-like himself, and had honed a gift for talking with trees. A precious gift, Gabri thought, but not one of high value to the wealthy city folk. “And who do you have there?”

 

The woodpecker chirped in response to Worrell’s query. “This young woodpecker is a new friend, summoned up on Hawk’s Ridge, and looking for a witch.”

 

Worrell’s eyes lit. He made no secret of his longing for a familiar, but he’d been reluctant to come to Gabri. She suspected he was a romantic who hoped to find his familiar all on his own, and she couldn’t blame him for that.

 

Gabri lifted her arm to signal the woodpecker to jump to Worrell, but as she did so, she was seized by panic. The woodpecker made a quiet chirping sound, soothing, and nuzzled against her neck.

 

“Hm, he seems to prefer your company. Can’t blame him,” Worrell joked, but then he must have noticed something. “Gabri? Are you alright?” Worrell bent at the knees to peer into her face.

 

“I’m fine. Just a little magic weak.” Worrell nodded. Being weak from doing too much magic was a common problem, but it was not Gabri’s problem. All she knew was she needed to get away. “I’ll just go back home and rest a bit. Maybe you can come by later to see if you and the woodpecker like each other?

 

~ * ~

 

The rest of the day crept by while Gabri tried to gather herself together. She put the woodpecker straight back into his cage when she returned. He went reluctantly but without a fuss. It seemed he really did think he was meant for her, and she just didn’t know what to do about that because she couldn’t bond with him. She’d never be able to live with the fear of another loss. Gabri knew it was cowardly and selfish when there was a beautiful little bird just for her in the world, but she couldn’t help it, and she was sure he would be better off with a different witch.

 

Just as Gabri prepared to lock up and turn to dinner, Worrell ducked under the door frame and into her little front room.

 

“I wanted to make sure you were feeling better.”

 

“That’s very kind of you. I am much better. Foolish of me.”

 

“It is very unlike you. You’re always so, uh, composed.”

 

Gabri laughed. “I don’t think you know me very well if that’s what you think.”

 

Worrell didn’t laugh in return as she expected. He seemed to consider his words carefully. “I don’t think the woodpecker much liked me, but you know I’m always hopeful. Maybe while I’m here you can see if you have any familiars who might be interested?”

 

She couldn’t turn down that invitation. The one gift she had in the world that was truly exceptional was her ability to locate familiars who wanted to be joined with witches. Beckoning Worrell to follow her to the back where the familiars-in-waiting rested near the heat of the kitchen, Gabri took a deep breath to steady her nerves. All the familiars were awake now, even the nocturnal ones, feeling the energy of a potential match, and probably Gabri’s nerves as well.

 

Nothing. She closed her eyes and reached her hands out, one toward Worrell and one toward the animals waiting for a match and a home and a life, but there was nothing clear or definite. This was the moment Dahlia had lived for. She had been able to use her delicate little nose to sniff out a potential thread of binding even before it existed, and to help Gabri find it, too. Without her, Gabri felt Worrell’s longing and the animals’ willingness, but no link.

           

In the months since Dahlia’s death, she had tried various ways of establishing matches. First, she thought just to let the familiars decide, but some were always eager and others unfailingly reticent. Next, she tried letting the witches decide, and one good match had even resulted from that strategy, but most witches didn’t understand themselves or their own needs well enough to choose wisely.

           

Gabri let her hands fall and prepared to tell Worrell she just couldn’t help him, but as she blinked her eyes open her gaze collided with the woodpecker’s, and before she could glance away or shutter herself, a connection zinged between them, and a name sang through her.

           

“Pom,” slipped through her lips with her breath.

           

“What was that? ‘Pm’?” Worrell still looked hopefully at her when she turned away from Pom.

           

“I’m sorry, Worrell. I--”

           

Pom emitted the loudest woodpecker trill Gabri had ever heard. Over and over. She covered her ears as some of the other animals responded with calls of their own. Worrell’s face split into a grin and she heard his deep laughter even over the cacophony.

           

“Enough!” Gabri’s voice cut through the noise. “As I was saying, I’m sorry, Worrell. I don’t know if I have the right familiar for you. I’m not sensing correctly.”

           

“Your woodpecker there seems to think he knows.”

           

Gabri looked back at Pom and saw him pointedly pecking toward the young squirrel.

Of course. Gabri could feel it now, the tiniest touch of the tingling sensation that meant a potential bond. She closed her eyes again and reached to Worrell, touching his sleeve directly this time, feeling the course but warm fabric, and the calm, determined energy of the man beneath it. Her other hand gently rested on the wooden slats of the enclosure and the tingling grew to a nearly unbearable tautness across her body as the squirrel brought her nose to Gabri’s fingertips.

           

Gabri slowly brought both of her hands back to her body, opening her eyes to see Worrell looking adoringly at his new familiar.

           

“Vella,” he breathed, much as Gabri herself had uttered Pom’s name minutes before. It was an instant bond that Gabri knew would only deepen and strengthen with time.

 

~ * ~

           

Gabri stayed away from Pom for the rest of the day. Worrell and Vella had left with the buoyant joy of a new bond between them, and Worrell had promised to pay for her help with both food and some new spells she could use for foraging. Gabri felt so many things at once: relief, happiness, fear.

           

She did not want to bond with Pom. She didn’t even want to know his name, but she couldn’t un-know it now. Worst of all, she didn’t know if he would ever bond with anyone else, having so pointedly chosen her.

           

Gabri felt foolish and selfish. She had known the woodpecker was trying to bond with her, and instead of taking him home to the ridge, she had kept him there, with her, and a bond had begun to form. A bond she could not complete.

           

At dawn the next morning, before anyone else was up, Gabri and the woodpecker looked at each other. She called him out of his enclosure, and he hopped up onto her shoulder, just as he had the day before. They were going back to Hawk’s Ridge.

           

Pom came willingly, but Gabri knew he did not intend to leave her. She knew because they were already connected in that indescribable way that was not quite reading one another’s minds, but more like feeling one another’s sensations and emotions. As she trudged through the morning, crisp frost met her steps and the woodpecker nuzzled close to her neck for warmth. He also seemed to be telling her that it would be okay.

           

But how could it be okay? She had failed Dahlia, and she would fail this little woodpecker, too. Pom’s head brushed up against her cheek, telling her that it was his life to give to her or not. She had a choice, but he had already made his.

           

“You’ve made a stupid choice, little bird.” Gabri stopped and stood in the woods on the well-worn path and spoke to the woodpecker on her shoulder out loud. But as she stood there, Pom’s world took shape in her mind. His bounding flights between trees, his struggles to find food, the pain that seared through his dainty little head when he pecked.

           

“I don’t understand. You’re a woodpecker. How could you be bothered by pecking at wood?” Pom chirped and she was flooded by more sensations. Something was off for Pom and had been his whole life. He’d managed, scrounging for food and pecking through the pain when he had to, but it was a sad and meagre existence. Then her summons and his hope of a new life.

           

Pom hopped down her arm and Gabri lifted her wrist where he now stood, angling it so they could look one another in the eye.

           

“You can’t go back, can you? You can’t live a full life that way, and you’re marked for magic anyhow.”

           

Pom cocked his head but was otherwise still and silent. He didn’t want pity or rescue, something she understood very well. He simply wanted a chance to be himself in the world, and for that he needed her.

           

Gabri turned back the way she had come, and Pom hopped back up onto her shoulder. 

 

~ * ~

 

Gabri introduced Pom to Rosalind and Sasha, who welcomed him easily and joyfully. They all spent a cozy evening together, during which they talked about the paths open to Gabri and Pom. Yes, Gabri would most likely have to move come spring, and she would forever miss her mentor and friend, but the future held possibilities again.

 

In the morning, Gabri and Pom would bring a particular rat Pom had suggested to meet Eva, and then they would take the other familiars-in-waiting to market to see what bonds they could help to forge.

​