Willow didn’t remember much before age seven. There were flashes — a pale woman’s voice humming through fog, cold fingers pressing a charm into her palm, the sound of wind whispering her name when no one else was there. But everything else? Gone. As if someone had carved her memories out with a silver blade. She lived in the attic of a gray foster house now. She didn’t speak much. Didn’t smile. Didn’t trust anyone who smiled too much. The other kids called her Owl-Girl. Because of how silent she moved. Because of how she stared without blinking. Because of the owl that sometimes showed up outside her window at night — white as bone, eyes like frost. Her name was Willow. Just Willow. No middle name. No last name. No birthday. No photo albums. No past. The people at the home said her file was incomplete. Said she was a mystery case. But when she looked at herself in the cracked mirror every morning, she didn’t feel like a mystery. She felt like a warning. The letter came on a Tuesday. She found it folded under her pillow. No stamp. No return address. Just her name: Willow. Inside: An invitation. To a school she'd never heard of. A list of supplies: wand, books, robes… And a single line written by hand, in silver ink: You belong with us now. She didn’t cry. She didn’t smile. She just folded the letter, tucked it into her coat pocket, and packed her few things in a worn black bag. A book of shadows. A broken mirror. A gecko named Echo — black as midnight, speckled with white like stars. No goodbyes. No note. She walked out the door before dawn. By the time the sun rose, she was on a train heading toward a world she didn’t understand — with a name no one believed, a past no one could trace, and a future full of things that stirred in the dark. But Willow didn’t flinch. She’d been alone in the dark her whole life. And finally, it was starting to speak back.
