There lay before me a black and empty hole. I took a step forward, my hand to my mouth. Below that careful marker, below the earth, there lay a blank Nothing. Nobody. I stared and stared down into that hole as if I might see it into some kind of sense. Along the sides, small cascades of dirt tumbled down. There were chips of granite cast up into the light.

“Tonight is the second time I have unearthed this … grave.” Cook spoke low, as if to pull me back slowly toward understanding; gently, easily, she came and stood by me.

I stared down into the empty hole, hardly hearing her words, just the quiet of her voice, the quiet steel of her voice.

“Where is the body of Perdita Grange?”

Now Cook faced me squarely. “She was given to her father.”

I could not lift my eyes from the gaping hole, a blank eye staring back up at me, unmoving. “My father?” I asked, trembling.

“Yes.”

“Then—”

She did not move.

“Where is my sister?”

She did not answer, only watched while I struggled to understand. “Please,” I asked her again. “Have I a sister?”

“Nay,” she said with a sorrowful kindness, and looked back through the trees.

“But she was there on the page.”

“There was nothing on the page.” She shook her head at me. “It is all in here.” She tapped upon her heart. “Can’t you see, my dear? It was I gave you life.”

I sprang from her, my heart pounding.

“All my life …” She gazed upon me. “All my life, I disbelieved her, and now I must atone, by teaching her own child—”

My heart beat fast and thick and all my leashed senses strained forward, waiting for the flick of her words upon my flesh.

“To see true.”

I raised my eyes to hers.

“When you were born, it was I wrote your father, and later I took you from your mother’s arms—when she would bury you alive—and wrote him once again.”

“And?” I hardly breathed.

“It was I knocked down his weightless objections and formulated the plan; and when he came, it was I delivered you into his arms.”

“I don’t understand. I cannot understand.” I stood before her, utterly quashed, my voice smaller and smaller as I spoke.

“But you must see at last, my girl. You must see: I am your Author.” She smiled sadly. “I wrote the story that brought you from the ground. It was I, in the end, who told Nell you had … died.”

“But I am my Mama’s child,” I protested. “She told me herself of her sickness after bearing me.”

“Your mother never had a child,” Cook replied slowly. “It were hysterical from the first.” She nearly put her hand upon my shoulder, but stopped her hand between us in the air. “She were hysterical. A weak and ordinary woman.”

Speechless, I took a step backward from the hole.