The rose is gone, the rose must be here somewhere, the rose isn’t anywhere, the rose is cleverly hidden, and they can’t both be true but Maria knows they are. Some roses flourish and others wilt, but that’s true of children and witches and versions of the story as well.

Is it any wonder that a nine-year-old who’s still a kindergartener inside her head, whose mother imposes rules and habits that don’t make it easy to have friends and then yells at her for not having any, whose spells to make the world a little brighter have turned dark and jagged over time, should decide that the flower with a bruised stem marked with gold foil is the only one that will do?