Jill laughed—a startled, petal-muffled sound. She reached over and took his hand.
Jack reached the well first. The old stone rim was now dusted with purple. He leaned over to drop the pail, but the petals had clogged the mechanism. The rope slipped. The pail tumbled into the lavender-slick darkness.
The hill above the village of Witherwood was never green. It was a soft, shifting purple, a sea of lavender that bloomed in defiant waves against the grey sky. For generations, the villagers had whispered that the lavender grew not from soil, but from the memory of a storm.
