Underneath the high, leafy canopy, the world was even darker than out by the road. Although most of the ground was solid enough, I had a hard time seeing where the forest floor was dirt and where it was mulch. My shoes squished as my feet sucked at the mud.

One sneaker sank at least two inches into the muck.

I lurched forward, grabbing a tree for support. A slick salamander, red and black and brown and a little bit gold, scurried up the trunk, away from my falling hand. I watched with relief as it shimmied higher, hiding itself on a low branch. For a dozen reasons, I was glad I hadn’t crushed it.

I looked back towards the road. With a twinge of alarm, I realized I wasn’t sure which direction I should be checking. The disorientation was dizzying, and my inner panic button was dangerously near to being pushed; but they wouldn’t leave me here. The women had never proved anything but helpful before. They wouldn’t let me die out there in the woods.

I hoped. I prayed. I even asked it aloud. “Mae? Willa? Luanna? I know you’re here. You have to be. Oh my God, don’t leave me out here. I don’t know where I’m going.” And I’m sore, and I’m tired, and I have no idea what I’m doing, I thought, but I didn’t add that part. They probably knew it already. I clung to the trunk with one hand while the salamander’s oil-black eyes stared down.

Yes—there, through the trees. A flash of color. A smudge of light or motion.

Then again, very distinctly, I saw yellow, a tall streak.

I staggered towards it. “Mae?”

But this was no ghost. And it was not Mae. A woman in a corncolored dress knelt at the foot of a tree, the trunk of which was as big around as a toolshed. She was using a dull knife to scrape greenish-brown moss from the trunk, collecting it in a cloth bag in her lap. Patches of sweat dampened her dress from her shoulders to the small of her back, and her feet were bare, sticking out from underneath her thighs and twitching as her arm worked the blade.

“Hello?”

She didn’t answer.

“Hello?”

The woman’s head lifted, and cocked to the right. She’d heard something, but it wasn’t me. I was staring down at Willa. Not the ghost Willa, who had come to my dreams, but the living, breathing woman Willa. Her flesh did not hang loose off her cheekbones, and her lips were full and firm. Her eyes and skin were not the pasty, postmortem gray I’d always seen. She was the color of black tea with a small spoonful of cream, and her eyes were olive-brown. A sudden swelling in my throat reminded me of the obvious—she looked a great deal like Lulu.