Chapter 55
Fifty-Five
You know your husband well enough to know where he would have taken two children lost in this part of the wood.
When you have recovered enough to travel again, you find him back at the lake, with the girl and the boy playing in the shallows. He sees you first and runs to you. Seeing the ashes of your eyes, he smooths your hair behind your ears and asks no questions.
“It’s over now,” you say. “For good.”
“Hello!” calls the boy. Ankle-deep in the water, he waves to you with his arm over his head. “Mr. Cyrus said you’re going to help us safely through the wood.”
“Yes,” you say. “That we will.”
“Could we eat something first?” asks the girl. “Roland and I haven’t eaten in days.”
“Or drank,” says Roland. “Well, that’s not right, I did drink the lake water, but not until I got here!
I nearly drank from a river that told me it would make me into a tiger, but Else stopped me.
Then I almost drank from a river that told me it would make me a wolf, I was so thirsty I didn’t care but Else stopped me again.
Then we met Mr. Cyrus, and he said he knew a lake that wouldn’t turn me into anything, and I didn’t believe him at first because I thought it would make me half-bird, but he was telling the truth! ”
You smile, despite yourself. A grim smile. How close Roland and Else were to repeating a terrible story. They have no idea how close it was. You think, perhaps, it’s best to keep it that way.
“Sounds like you’ve had quite the adventure,” you say.
“I don’t want an adventure,” Else murmurs. “I want to go home.”
“No one wants us there, Else,” says Roland. “If we can’t have a home, we might as well have an adventure.”
Cyrus looks at you, and you look at him.
Maybe, you say without saying, and he nods, feeling the same.
Maybe, just maybe, a ghost of a maybe, a maybe made out of mist. Maybe.
And every day for the next six months, as you travel home, that maybe becomes more solid, more real, until it becomes a Yes in your heart, in Cyrus’s heart, in Else’s heart and Roland’s heart, and your garden suddenly has two more sets of hands to help it grow.