As a child, Margaret had met Uncle Clarence a handful of times, and always under unfavorable circumstances.

There is an old woman in the village who can smell death.

She lives in a hut in the lee of the mountain, sheltered from the wind. Mothers bring their sick children to her, creeping in with swaddled bundles and whispered prayers. They say the witch-woman crouches over the child and presses her swarthy nose to his skin before speaking his fate. Her words are written on the mothers’ faces when they leave: sometimes relief, sometimes sorrow.

They say she is never wrong.

The three sisters at 710 Wayward Street pedaled in prophecies. Their tidy yellow house had a glass door in the back with springs coiled tight enough to remove stray fingers. The door looked like it should open into the sisters’ backyard, but it hardly ever did. Sometimes it opened to the proper year, but very rarely the proper place.