that Silas had taken away from her, from all of them.
The day had started off like any other Tuesday. She got up, poked Oswin to stop his snores from under the bed, and then she got dressed in her pond-green dress, the one that bubbled in crooked lines at the hem because it had been sown by Granny Flossy’s unsteady hands.
Breakfast was a slice of almost stale bread and a lick of her favourite jam and butter. Then she went outside to collect the eggs from the hens, which was when she saw Granny Flossy sitting in the garden chair outside. And suddenly, just like that, it was the saddest Tuesday of Willow’s young life.
Granny Flossy’s long green hair had winked in the morning light, and on the chair next to her sat her purple hat with its jaunty green feather. Granny’s faded patchwork shawl had slipped from her shoulders on to the ground. Fallen out of her grasp too lay the old notebook, the one she recorded her latest potion experiments in, and on her face was a small smile, as if she were only just resting a while.
Willow stood with sobs choking her while she clutched at the old woman’s hand, stroking her dear old cheek. She stayed that way for ages, before she finally went inside to tell her family what had happened …
Afterwards there’d been more tears … and the feeling that she may never be happy ever again, and when Willow got into bed that night she cried so hard that Oswin brought her every last thing that she’d ever made the mistake of saying that she liked, and, despite the smell, she hugged him close, and because she was very sad he let her. And while she sobbed Willow had wished with all her heart that it had never happened, and somehow, though not because of that wish, but because of a spell cast very far away by a Brother of Wol, who was born with magic in his veins, what she had wanted most had come true.
Willow, like everyone else in Starfell, had woken up the next day without any memory of anything that had happened that fateful Tuesday. She was only left with a feeling of something sad tugging at the sleeve of her mind, trying to get her attention, something just out of her grasp.
The worst thing was that there was a tiny part of everyone’s mind that must have known … because no one wondered where Granny Flossy was. No one thought it was strange that they hadn’t seen her … Everyone had just gone back to their normal lives as if nothing had happened.
Willow had wondered, though. She’d sensed that there was something wrong, something missing, and while it would have been easier to just pretend that it hadn’t happened she’d realised that it had been so much worse to forget.
But now it seemed like life had just reset itself, the way it should have been before the spell was cast.
It was three days after her grandmother had died. And Willow was now standing where she should have stood the day Moreg had come to find her, only now Moreg wasn’t coming to find her. The trouble was that Willow remembered both versions. The week when Tuesday had gone missing and the week when it hadn’t.
And just when Willow was wondering if she was the only one who remembered, if it was possible that the friends she had made didn’t even remember her, an enormous blue dragon filled the sky, coming to land with a deafening thud just outside the low garden wall, shaking the entire hillside.
Around them people began to scream.
Ethel Mustard fainted.
‘Feathering,’ breathed Willow.
Willow’s mother rushed forward, along with Juniper and Camille. ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic,’ she called. She was clearly panicking.
Feathering rolled a giant golden eye as Willow touched his silken, feathered face. ‘Honestly, I’m a cloud dragon … Have they so little sense?’ he asked Willow.
‘Well, you are a dragon,’ she said.
‘This is true, young Willow.’
Camille gasped, her emerald-green eyes huge. ‘He knows your name!’
Feathering shrugged a wing. ‘Of course I do. It’s her I’ve come to see,’ he chided.
Willow’s mother made a funny squeak.
Feathering ignored this. ‘It worked – you did it, look,’ he said, nodding his head towards the sky, where two dragons were approaching, one enormous and red, the other small and a pearly sort of blue, so much like his father.
‘Oh!’ She sniffed, wiping away a tear. ‘He hatched.’
Feathering nodded. ‘Thanks