The Cottage on Willow Lane

Chapter One — The Cottage on Willow Lane

The rain had followed Rowan all the way to Mystic.

It streaked down her windshield in silver ribbons as she crossed the drawbridge, the town unfolding before her like a painting—salt-stained docks, crooked shingled rooftops, and lamps glowing soft in the fog. Windy’s ears twitched in the passenger seat, her bright mismatched eyes tracking the shadows between the buildings as if she saw something Rowan couldn’t.

The sale had finalized on October twenty-first, one week after Rowan’s eighteenth birthday. It felt poetic somehow, the way the tide of her life had turned right on time. She had bought the little seaside cottage with a portion of her inheritance—money left to her by her late parents and her grandmother, Isolde Blackwell. The house had come furnished, every lamp and teacup waiting as though someone had known she was coming.

“New start,” Rowan murmured, resting a hand on the dog’s head. “Just you, me, and the sea.”

Her GPS announced the turn to Willow Lane, a narrow road lined with sagging maples. The cottage sat at the very end—ivy climbing the porch rails, wind chimes whispering from the eaves. Inside, it smelled like rain, old wood, and something faintly sweet—herbs, maybe. She’d always loved that smell.

She walked the rooms slowly, as if not to wake them. Dark wood tables. A velvet armchair by the hearth. Brass lamps with scalloped shades that flickered when she passed. In the kitchen, a row of mismatched teacups waited on a shelf; in the bedroom, quilts folded in a cedar chest breathed out the scent of a life half-remembered. The house felt less like a purchase and more like a welcome.

Rowan unpacked the same way she lived: quietly. A stack of books. A tin of loose tea. A few crystals she never admitted to believing in. Windy’s worn toy. The small altar she’d kept hidden since she was a child.

Back home in Ashwood, people had called her strange for talking to animals and walking barefoot in the woods. They’d whispered “witch” like it was a curse. Here, the word felt softer. Maybe even like home.

Windy had already curled herself into a neat circle by the hearth—her full, feathered tail (a rare grace for her breed) wrapped protectively over her paws. Her coat gleamed black as midnight, touched with faint silver where the firelight brushed it. When Windy lifted her head, the flames caught in her eyes: one a clear, oceanic blue; the other marbled brown with the tiniest speck of blue that flashed when the light found it.

Windy had been with Rowan for five years now—though with her never felt like the right way to say it. It was more like they had found each other.

Rowan still remembered that morning back in Ashwood—her thirteenth birthday, gray sky, frost curling on the grass. The night before, her grandmother had passed away in her sleep, and the house had felt hollow ever since. Rowan had slipped out before dawn, barefoot and shivering, needing air that didn’t smell like sorrow.

That’s when she saw her. Standing at the edge of the cornfield, black fur rippling in the wind. Watching her like she’d been waiting forever. When Rowan whispered “Hey,” the dog trotted up and leaned against her legs as if they’d known each other in another life. The porch chimes at home sang when the wind rose, and the name arrived as naturally as breath: Windy.

Now, as the new fire took hold in the cottage hearth, Rowan knelt to stroke the soft fur behind Windy’s ears. “Well, girl,” she murmured, “it’s just us again.”

Windy’s head lifted, gaze fixed on the window.

Rowan followed her eyes. Through the glass, the fog pressed thick against the night, curling around the lampposts and dripping from the trees like silver threads.

Then—movement.

A figure, half-shadow, half-mist, paused at the corner of Willow Lane. He didn’t move like anyone she’d ever seen—not hurried, not quite human, but deliberate, graceful, ancient.

Rowan’s breath caught. Windy gave a low growl, quiet but certain.

The figure looked up—and though the distance between them was too far for reason, she swore she felt his eyes meet hers. A pale glint flickered through the fog. Then he was gone, swallowed by the mist as if he’d never been there at all.

Windy huffed, curling tighter beside the fire. Rowan watched the slow rise and fall of her breathing, the glint of mismatched eyes dimming into sleep, the long tail settling like a dark ribbon on the hearth rug.

It was then, in the soft hum of the cottage, that Rowan’s thoughts drifted—as they often did—to the parents she’d never known.

She had pictures, a few old photographs tucked in a worn leather box: her mother with kind eyes and dark curls; her father laughing, his arm around them both. They looked happy. Alive. Real.

She wondered what it would’ve been like—growing up with them instead of in a house full of rules and quiet judgment. She wondered what her mother’s voice would have sounded like, what her hugs would’ve felt like after bad dreams.

And she thought, too, of her grandmother—her gentle voice, her herbal tea that always smelled of chamomile and honey, the way she’d hold Rowan’s hands and whisper stories about magic when no one else would.

Her grandmother had died the night before Rowan’s thirteenth birthday. The morning after, Windy had appeared.

Rowan had never dared to believe the two things were connected. But sometimes—on nights like this, when the firelight flickered like candle flames at a wake—she wondered.

Windy’s ear twitched, and somewhere beyond the fog, the tide whispered back.