The Woman Who Had Lost Her Words

The house had belonged to their family for forty years, which meant that whatever had been under the floorboard had been put there by someone in their family.

Their grandmother was the only person old enough to know. She lived twenty minutes away by bus and was always glad to see them, though she said this by holding the door open wide and putting the kettle on rather than actually saying it, because she was a person who showed things rather than said them.

She was in her garden when they arrived, deadheading roses with a small pair of scissors. She looked up at them over her reading glasses and seemed to understand immediately that something had happened, the way grandmothers often do.

They showed her the book.

She went very still.

She took it from Asha with both hands and held it carefully and looked at the cover for a long time without opening it. Then she looked at them. Her eyes moved between the two of them in a way that was measuring something.

She pointed at Rowan and then at Asha and raised her eyebrows.

Asha nodded.

Their grandmother sat down on the garden bench and was quiet for a moment. Then she said: "I wondered when that book would come out." She said it quietly, more to herself than to them. "I put it away a long time ago. I thought I had put it away carefully enough."

"It was under the floorboard in my room," Asha said.

"I know which one," her grandmother said. "I loosened that board on purpose. Somewhere no one would find it by accident. Clearly not somewhere no one would find it at all."

Rowan wrote quickly on his envelope and showed it to his grandmother. It said: Did you use the spell?

Their grandmother looked at the writing for a long moment. Something moved in her face that was old and complicated.

"Yes," she said. "A very long time ago. Your grandfather and I had a terrible argument. I was angry and I did not think and I said the words." She paused. "We spent three days unable to speak to each other. It was the longest three days of my life."

Rowan wrote: How did you break it?

"We broke it on the third morning," she said. "We were sitting at the kitchen table, not looking at each other, and I reached out and took his hand. And at the exact same moment he turned to look at me. And we both knew, at the same moment, that we wanted to stop. That whatever we had been arguing about was not worth any of this." She closed her fingers around the book gently. "The silence broke all at once. He said my name. I laughed. We never argued like that again."

She looked at Asha.

"The spell is not cruel," she said. "It is just honest. It will not break until you both truly want it to. Not just want to talk again. Want to be right with each other."

Asha thought about this. She looked at Rowan. He was looking at the table.

"How will we know when?" Asha asked. "When it is the same moment?"

Her grandmother looked at both of them for a long moment. "You are siblings," she said simply. "You will know."