Her eyes went wide. “An Asking!”

“Yes, and I used my hair. The most powerful tool. And it worked. I bonded them to me.”

Mama’s mouth hung open.

Her surprise made Raven feel strong. “I go to their house,” she said. “I made friends with their mother. She’s a teacher at the school. She told me I’m far in my lessons. She said I can go to second grade.”

The storm in Mama’s eyes was as bad as Raven had ever seen.

“You went to their house and spoke to their mother?” she shouted. “This is reckless! She might have stolen you and made you live with terrible people!”

“She doesn’t know anything about the spirits. None of them does! Like you said!”

“Yes, and you’ll become like them! You’ll want nothing but TVs and video games! They’ll undo everything I’ve taught you!”

“They won’t! I’m good at what you taught me. I work hard at it. Yesterday and today I did Askings!”

“For what did you ask twice?”

“To go to school.”

“To influence me to let you go to school?”

“Yes.”

“You would use my spiritual knowledge against me?” she shouted.

Raven’s heart pounded so hard, it made her body shudder. She wanted to run away from Mama’s fury. But she thought of Jackie and tried to be strong.

“Mama . . . you said I should practice. You said when I knew with all my soul what I wanted, I could make an Asking.”

“You’re a child who doesn’t know what her soul wants!” she shouted. “But even worse, you’ve been lying to me all these days! I saw something was different with you, but I thought it was maturity. And all this time it was these stupid boys!”

“They aren’t stupid! They’re smart and they’re nice!”

“Get away from me!” she shouted. “I want you out of my sight!”

She had never said that. Not in the worst of her moods. Tears seemed to squeeze out of Raven’s heart all the way up to her eyes.

“I said go!” Mama screamed.

Raven ran out of the house. Toward the stream. She had good moonlight to see by.

She stopped running when her feet stung from pounding over stones and sticks. She had only socks on. She walked to the stream and sat on the bank with her knees under her chin.

She didn’t understand how two Askings she’d made with all her soul could have gone so bad. Mama hadn’t been at all giving. Not the tiniest bit. It made no sense. She was the daughter of a powerful earth spirit. Why hadn’t he helped her?

She got up and walked to the place where she’d made her first Asking to go to school. Moonlight glowed upon her careful arrangement of stones, flowers, and leaves. She kicked and made it all scatter.

She stepped into the creek and walked downstream. The water was cold, made her feet numb. When she came to the Wolfsbane, she walked to its front side. The moon shined on it. The deer skull in the TV shined brightest because it was white, and the black holes of its eye sockets were a little scary in the moonlight. Raven thought maybe the deer spirit was mad at her for using Mama’s spiritual knowledge against her.

She looked at Madonna’s face, but it was almost too dark with moss to see. Raven took off one of her wet socks and gently scrubbed at the moss on the lady’s face until she could see it. When she was done, Madonna’s face glowed pale gray. It had creek water shining on it like tears. She looked as sad as Raven felt.

“I only wanted to go to school like everyone else,” Raven told her. “I thought Mama would see that if I told her about the Askings. She would know I wanted school as much as she wanted a baby.”

Madonna had nothing to say.

The creek was the only spirit in the forest that spoke to what Raven had said. Its trickle sounded like it always did, in a hurry to go where it was going. It didn’t seem mad at her, but it didn’t comfort her either. Creek water moved too fast to much care about anything it passed.

A dog barked far away in the direction of Jackie’s house. Raven thought of the werewolf. Since she’d gotten to know the boys, she’d learned a werewolf was a person who turned into a wolf on nights of the full moon. It was only a made-up story, the boys said. But if they believed it wasn’t real, why had they built the Wolfsbane to scare away the werewolf?

The dog kept barking. Raven wanted her bed. She was cold. The warmth of summer had gone away with the boys.

She looked toward home. Mama had told her to go from her sight. Raven couldn’t go back or even be seen.

She walked toward Jackie’s house. When she got to the fence between Hooper and Taft land, she sat in the tall grass. She stayed on Hooper’s side, looking through the fence at the glowing windows of Jackie’s house.

She woke shaking with chills. She couldn’t stop her jaw from bouncing her teeth together. They rattled like a woodpecker drumming on wood.

Jackie’s house was dark. Only the front porch light was on. Raven imagined Jackie asleep in his bed with the fake stars shining over him. She imagined getting under his blanket and feeling how warm he was. She imagined him saying, “It’s okay, Raven. Everything will be okay.”

She slid through the fence rails. She was so cold, she could hardly think what to do. She only could go to Jackie.