"You broke it first," I said. "You broke everything that was supposed to stay the same."
"Maybe," she answered. "Or maybe I broke what needed breaking." i raf you big sister is a witch new
Her laugh rippled like thrown glass. "I never draw maps. I make signs." "You broke it first," I said
"You're doing it wrong," she said, but her voice was soft, as if correcting a spider weaving its web. Her hair smoked in the sun. Around her wrist a ribbon—green, frayed—gleamed like a small spell. "I never draw maps
"She followed the current," I would say. "She went where the river carries what we can't carry ourselves."
She knelt and pressed the seeds back into the mud, and for a heartbeat a pattern rose on the water—circles like ripples, letters that belonged to a language I had half-forgotten from bedtime stories. My name lined up with hers; mine was a dot trailing hers, a small comet in the wake.
When the sun dipped toward the shoulder of the hills she stood and spread her arms, and the sky listened. Her shadow grew tall and not-quite-right; it licked at the treeline like a tongue. I watched as something like a compass of stars spun over her head and the ribbon at her wrist braided itself into a loop and unlooped, a slow breathing. The canoe felt smaller then, as if we were children again and the world had folded up around us.