Page 55

Epilogue

She’s never liked being alone. But here, for the first time in a month, she doesn’t feel the sting of it quite so keenly. Like a wound from a blade that never healed.

The girl steps into the clearing, and the light of the full moon sets her hair ablaze. She’s been here many times as the moon waned and waxed, finally whole again. Her fingertips are calloused, her nails dirty and ragged. She’s bitten them to the quick. But none of that matters.

She knows exactly where she’s going, and she walks there with the confidence she always had in life. She passes a forgotten radio on the ground, the battery long dead, but sometimes she thinks she can still hear phantom crackles in the woods of other radios far out of range.

A man stealthily follows behind her. He wears the same grim determination on his face as she does. In the time since his death, he has learned how to go unseen if he wishes.

He has made use of the cloak of darkness to disappear entirely, though there were a few times when he was almost caught by a girl he once knew.

A girl now ten years older than when he saw her last. His suntanned skin is older and more lined, but she would know him.

He couldn’t face her, not as he was now, not with the sour taste of death on his lips.

The wishing well is demolished. So much abandoned power. The girl doesn’t hesitate. After all, why should she? She’s only seventeen. She has much more life to live. She just has to undo a death first.

The girl is unaware of the man. She is set wholly on her task. There are, after all, only a few hours until midnight. She stoops to pick up a stone. And then another and another.

Finally, it’s time. Time for the last stone.

She doesn’t hesitate.

She slots it into place.

Maneuvers and adjusts.

The stone grinds against the others.

One side of it is engraved with a word.

She traces her finger over that word, brow scrunched, and fervently prays. Will it work? The well can undo a regret, yes, but can it undo an unintended accident? Well, she’ll soon find out.

She takes a step back and waits, blue eyes focused on that one word. Tries to quell the fear and doubt. Such a strange fate for her life to depend on this one little stone. This one word.

Diminish.