They spoke only to her, they said. When she asked them what they wanted, they retreated into the bark of their tree, and the night turned back to black. Sometimes she just watched them where they congregated in that old ailanthus outside her window, and didn’t ask them questions. They would do as they pleased, whispering in hostile tendrils of crackling light words she often couldn’t understand, or tracing curious cartoon figures on the pane with mercury and yellow sparks, or bursting into a cloud of crystals when at last she told them to go away. She alone knew them in the beginning, though she hadn’t known them well enough to be able to say, in her child’s voice, “Such and such took place.” But now, because of what she had done, and after they had warned her not to, others would know they were there, and that meant there was going to be a problem. It was late when the knocking was heard. Her father found her in her room standing at the third story window, slapping her palm against the glass, which was luminous with the light that came from a window across the back yard.
What do You think about The Almanac Branch (2010)?
