“She raised him. She can damn well babysit when he’s imploded things. He better not have mortgaged the house again. If I have to return that new dress I just bought, I will not be happy.”

Stella had felt the fingers in her mind as her mum had read her vision for herself. In a way it was one of the few times that Stella was glad that her mum was a mindwalker. It meant she didn’t have to explain what she’d seen. It also meant she was believed. Not every vision was as clear as that one though. Sometimes things could be misinterpreted. Furthermore, what meant one thing to Stella might mean an entirely different thing to her mum.

Grandma’s house was in the country, nestled comfortably at the edge of a forest of beech trees. A winding gravel drive took them past horse-filled paddocks and right up to the one-story red-roofed white-brick cottage. Stella tried not to look at the horses as they passed. Some of them were technically ponies but to Stella they were all the same, terrifying, unpredictable beasts. She always dreaded her weekly riding lessons. She hoped her grandma wouldn’t want to take them out while she was here.

Soft, white smoke was rising up out of the chimney. Evidently, someone was home.

Her mum pulled the car up parallel to the front door. Through the windows of the cottage, Stella could see the the lacy curtains that adorned the windows of the guest rooms. These at least gave her some comfort, although she couldn’t have explained why.

“Right, out you get.”

Stella glanced briefly at her mum. She had been just dropped off like this before and yet every time a small part of her wished she wouldn’t just leave her like this. She hated walking up to the front step alone and knocking on the door. What if it wasn’t her grandma that answered? She knew that was unlikely, but she also knew that her grandma was going to have a lot of questions and Stella hated answering questions. Why couldn’t her mum come with her just for a second to do the talking? Stella hated herself for the thought, however brief it was. Had her mum caught it too? She hoped not. She would be disappointed in Stella if she had.

Stella climbed out of the car. Before she’d even reached the little alcove at the front door, her mum’s car had already disappeared from sight.

Stella rapped the big silver wolf knocker that adorned the brightly painted red front door. The shape was a nod to her dad’s family’s last name, Wolfe. Her grandma liked little things like that. Stella liked the sound it made, a big deep bellow.

“Stella! My merry munchkin! My gracious goblin! Where is your mother? Has she left you all alone on my doorstep again?”

Stella loved her grandma but she hated the way her grandma asked her questions. The tone was so babying and the fact that she often voiced all of Stella’s fears accurately but without knowing for sure made Stella feel like she had no control over her own self. Everything was known. How could she surprise anyone if they already knew all about her even without reading her mind?

Stella didn’t answer. She just nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

There came a sigh. “Well, are you hungry? It just so happens there’s some fresh gingerbread in the kitchen.”

Stella’s heart fell. She had known that this was coming from the moment she’d seen the smoke coming out from the chimney. There had been a flash of a vision, of sugary bread and a cozy creaking armchair, even a glass of milk or something similar. And Stella would say yes to it all. She didn’t want to disappoint her grandma after all. Unfortunately, that meant her mum would not be pleased when she returned. Stella racked her brain trying to think how she might make them both happy.

Stella’s grandma was her dad’s mum, and everything her own mum wasn’t. Stella’s mum was slim, tidily dressed, always with a new haircut, and a fashionable pair of shoes. When she moved she strode so fast that Stella often had to trot to keep up. Grandma was round and comfy with loose clothing. Her hair was frizzy and grey and on her feet she never wore shoes, not even in winter, except when working around the horses. When she walked she glided at a glacial pace such that if Stella stopped paying attention sometimes she would accidentally walk into the back of her and bounce back like little a rubber ball.

“And how about a glass of milk?” grandma asked as they reached the kitchen.

Stella didn’t think she had much of an option. Grandma already had the milk half out of the fridge and she could just foresee the look of disappointment if her offering was refused.

“Oooh or a hot cocoa?” Grandma’s eyes widened like dinner plates as the idea popped into her head. She gave Stella a conspiratorial look like they were being so naughty and it was such fun. But Stella just felt guilty.

Still, Stella nodded more eagerly at this. She liked her grandma’s hot cocoa’s. They always had a slight bite to them, a tingling spiciness. It was better than milk.

Soon, dessert was served. Her grandma dumped a large dollop of cream on top of the gingerbread without even asking. Stella bit her lip to suppress the worms crawling inside her stomach. She tasted blood and immediately felt calmer. When her grandma next glanced up with a smile, Stella was sitting up nice and straight and smiling sweetly back, not a blemish on her newly healed lips.

Her grandma didn’t boil water for the cocoa; instead she filled the mug with milk, and using her temperature magic, warmed the entire thing up with her hands. At the end she added the cocoa and gave it a gentle stir before handing it to Stella. All of her grandma’s mugs were some weird shape or a depiction of a creature. This one was a pig. Its front trotters curved under its belly to meet the rear ones, forming the handle. Stella liked to run her fingers over the small curly tail on the other side. She found the rough features calming. Sometimes her visions stole her senses but it was rare that she couldn’t feel the original world at all. Capturing detailed things like this, that she could run her hands over and store in her mind, helped make reality much more distinguishable.

Her grandma prattled on, asking questions but only sometimes waiting for an answer. Stella didn’t mind. She liked not having to talk too much and her grandma’s tangents were sometimes quite interesting.

“And how is school?”

“Good.” Stella didn’t elaborate. What could she say? That the other kids made fun of her? It wasn’t entirely true, really it was just the one boy. The other kids mostly just ignored her, but somehow that was worse. Less justifiable to complain about, though. That her grades were perfect as usual? Except in art which her mum said was a useless subject anyway. And her natural skill at math didn’t feel like it was related to anything specific she’d done, so Stella worried that one day she’d wake up and suddenly be terrible at it. Maybe she was already bad at it and it was just luck that she managed to get the answers right? What if she was using her powers without realising? Except that the testing rooms were always surrounded in a binding spell cast by a sorcerer. No one was supposed to be able to break those. Which meant if she was using magic she was also cheating. She wished she was good at art instead, to be able to paint such fantastical scenes that could take people away even if just for a moment. But nothing ever came out like how she saw it in her head and no one ever praised her drawings.

Her grandma sighed. With caring, hazel eyes, she looked at Stella. “Your mother has such high standards, doesn’t she? You know, it’s okay to fail at things some times. It’s part of the process of growing up.”

But Stella knew it wasn’t okay at all. She shook her head. “I’m not failing; I have perfect grades in math.”

Her grandma smiled. “I’m sure you do. Just like your daddy. Tell me, do you know what he’s working on these days? He’s so busy, he hardly ever calls anymore. Is he still working on those cars of his?”

Stella nodded. “He’s working on a silent engine, one the dragons can’t hear.” She faltered. Was he? Or was that the project that had failed? It was hard to know. Her dad had so many different projects, and new ones all the time. Brilliant ideas, some that took off and made the sky rain cash, some that drowned them in debt. The one constant was the cars. It was the only thing that lasted through all their ups and downs, the only thing he ever put his foot down on. He’d sell the clothes off his back before he’d sell those cars. Stella understood why. They were beautiful, elegant things. Things that could take you places, show you new worlds around every corner, or softly rock you to sleep. But Stella wasn’t allowed to ever touch those cars. They were not for young girls. Once, and once only, he had taken her for a drive in one. That had been the best day of her life.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“A silent engine, huh? You know back in my day, we just rode horses everywhere. None of that fast paced stuff. There was this one freezing cold morning, me and my friend Daisy were riding our ponies to school. It was wintertime but near the end of the season when some of the early flowers start poking their heads through the soft snow. Well, on this particular day-”

The phone rang. Stella knew already that it was her mum. They were coming here, both of them. Her dad was fine. But they were poor again. There would be shouting later, and a broken vase. She could hear it all already and smell the apples baking. That gave her pause. Her mum rarely baked anything, but she was pretty certain it was her mum she could see in the kitchen, and wearing her grandma’s bright red apron. There would be another phone call later too, but from who she wasn’t sure.

Her grandma paused in her story to glance toward the phone.

“Now, I wonder who that might be.” She turned back to Stella. “When you’ve finished your gingerbread why don’t you go into the back garden, just through the rear gate, and pick me some mushrooms for dinner. You know how to tell the right ones don’t you dear?”

Stella nodded. Even if she couldn’t, a glimpse into the future could usually give her an answer. But that shouldn’t be needed. Her grandma had once shown her how to tell which ones were safe to pick and which ones weren’t.

While her grandma answered the phone, Stella stared down at the remains of her gingerbread. Should she finish it? Her grandma had told her she should. It actually tasted quite nice too. But she knew she shouldn’t be eating it; so much sugar was bad for you. It would make her fat, and nobody would like her if she was fat. The longer she stared at the gingerbread the more distressed she got until she decided that the best thing to do was just to get it over with. She couldn’t leave it there; that would be wasteful—another thing her mum didn’t like, even though she was regularly buying new things, and throwing old things out. But that was different, wasn’t it? And the sugar might make her fat, but she could go outside, practice her dancing, and burn it off that way right?

As fast as she could, she shovelled the rest of the gingerbread into her mouth, not pausing to enjoy the taste at all. Once it was gone, she slipped off her chair and disappeared into the back garden. There was a little basket for foraging just by the back door, which she collected on her way out.

A half-sized white picket fence surrounded the rear of the property. From somewhere nearby, she could hear chickens squawking. A few autumn leaves littered the ground but most of them still clung to the trees, glowing gold and red in the bright sunlight. The air was fresh and the world open before her. Stella felt free.

She lifted the latch on the back gate and stepped into the forest. She skipped down a small path coated in a dew-soaked orange carpet of leaves.

She swung around the trees as if they were her dancing partners. On other days, she had given them names and personalities and carried secret messages between them.

She leaped over roots and skidded down little muddy slopes, imagining she was on some grand adventure. Sometimes, she wondered what would happen if she just kept running. She supposed the woods ended somewhere and she would get tired eventually. And then where would she sleep? The bushes with their small red berries might look comfy but that was a deception. She knew from experience that if you lay down on one, it was spiky and not soft at all. Out here nothing was as it seemed. Like the little rings of mushrooms that the humans sometimes called ‘fairy rings.’

They weren’t fairy rings, of course. They just grew like that, something to do with the nutrients. It was a good thing too, because the guardians help anyone who ran into a real fairy. A girl in Stella’s class had been attacked by a group of them last year. She hadn’t smiled for several weeks, not until her parents had bought her some temporary dentures, to be used until her adult teeth came in. Fairies didn’t typically bother adults. Apparently they liked baby teeth best. This was why despite some fairies being tool wielders, capable of picking the locks on windows and sneaking down chimneys, no one really worried about them too much. No one except children, that was. Most fairies weren’t that intelligent anyway, although they did have a tendency to bite if bothered, and their teeth were as sharp as steak knives.

Stella paused before one of the rings. This ring lay right across the path, made up of closely pressed tiny little tan heads. These were the edible ones. She was pretty certain.

Not far away lay a ring of a different type. The wrong type. Her grandma had said they were poisonous and from her visions she was pretty certain this was the case. Although, this often confused Stella, not because she couldn’t tell them apart, but because she was pretty sure she could remember her mum once feeding them to her when she was very young.

She was probably just mis-remembering though, besides, the mushrooms would not do much to Stella. They might make her a little sick temporarily, if she ate enough, but her healing powers prevented them from killing her. Anyone else, however, would not be so lucky.

She went to stand up and found herself suddenly falling forward instead. The ribbon on her white ballet cardigan had come loose and caught beneath the toe of one red shoe.

Afraid of squashing her newly collected mushrooms she only threw one arm out. She came down hard on her left hand. There was a sharp snapping sound like several twigs being stepped on. She rolled to her side and onto her shoulder as pain shot through her hand. But the mushrooms, at least, remained unsquashed.

She winced as she set the basket down. Then she lay on her back, breathing hard, and tentatively raised her injured hand above her so she could look at it. For a moment she didn’t think it was her own at all. The angles of the fingers were wrong, all bent and twisted. But then, they started to shift, to mend on their own. Illuminated by golden-red rays of sun that penetrated the canopy, the joints of the shadow clicked back into place one by one. A fiery heat made her hand throb. Her bones were too tight for her skin. A cold chill started at the top of her head and sunk down and in to choke her. She could not have screamed even if she’d wanted to. The sky above went black.

When she woke up again, the pain was gone and her fingers felt and looked fine.

She sat up and could feel the weight of the leaves clinging to her back.

For some time, she just sat there. She wondered if she remained still long enough, would she grow roots, just like the mushrooms? Perhaps if she wished hard enough? And then maybe she’d be able to talk to the trees for real?

Her thoughts were interrupted by birdsong and the sudden flap of wings nearby.

A tiny, red-tailed fantail danced around her head.

Cautiously she reached out a hand for it, but it dashed away just at the last minute before deftly dancing in close again.

She laughed and was surprised at the way the sound echoed in the forest. She listened carefully. She could hear more birds now, and the rustle of other things among the leaves. Something bigger?

She giggled again, quieter this time.

“Come out, come out, where ever you are,” she cooed softly.

But what ever it was was too afraid to show its face. She studied the bushes around the area the sound had come from. There were dark patches among the undergrowth. Was it just the shadows or were those eyes watching her?

She blinked and they were gone. Probably just a trick of the light?

The fantail danced in front of her face again, inviting her to dance. She felt only a tinge of fear, but the bird was reassurance enough. If it was not afraid then neither was she.

She curtsied graciously. “Why of course I’ll have this dance with you Mr. Fantail.”

Picking up her basket of mushrooms she twirled her way back to the garden gate. The bird followed her the entire way, darting around her and in between the trees, as she spun and skipped with shiny red shoes though the mud.

She stopped briefly at the apple tree, which dangled a big bushel of red, ripe-looking fruit over the gate, at least they looked like apples. But her grandma had once told her never to eat these ones. They weren’t deadly like the mushrooms but they would knock a person out for a few days. But not Stella. This she knew because she had eaten these before, back when she had been very small. She had been mad at her parents. She no longer remembered the reason, only the angry feeling. Thinking that she’d show them, she’d come out to this tree—to the poison tree, as her grandma had called it—and she’d picked and eaten three whole apples. Despite the poison they’d actually tasted surprisingly sweet. But all it had done was made her feel mildly ill for about an hour.

Stella knew better now.

Grandma’s garden contained an awful lot of poisonous things and not a single one could harm Stella. But not everything remained poisonous once it was cooked or mixed with something else, and not everything was for eating. Her grandma sold various potions and ointments to help people, at the local market.

The fantail darted into Stella’s sight once more reminding her it was there. As she opened the garden gate and saw the lawn spread out before her she felt another compulsion to dance. Not like she had at the ballet recital this afternoon. This time she made up the steps. She started up as she might for the actual dance but then she lost herself in the invisible music. She imagined she was on a grand ballroom floor with men and woman in beautiful gowns all around her. She spun, and she twirled, and she leapt. The world drifted away. She was free like a bird. But something felt wrong.

Someone was watching.

She stopped and looked up.

There was her grandma.

As Stella set eyes on her and faltered in her dance, her grandma clapped.

“Beautiful, you’re so graceful. That was lovely, all flowy. You looked so relaxed when you dance.”

At first Stella felt a little like she did when her mum read her thoughts. At recognising the praise she beamed but then felt immediately guilty for not spending her time practicing the dance she was actually supposed to be doing. She tucked one toe shyly behind her other ankle.

“Oh, did you get some mushrooms?”

Stella held out her basket so her grandma could see.

“Yes, that’s them, how lovely. Now come inside. I better get dinner started. Your parents will be here soon. Looks like you’ll be staying the night. And take off your shoes at the door, they’re covered in mud my dear girl.”

Stella glanced down at herself. Her nice, white cardigan and tights were white no more, and her red character shoes were coated in thick, soggy dirt.

She didn’t need to be a psychic to know there was trouble was in her future, and that there was nothing she could do to stop it.