It’s actually really weird seeing another person here who isn’t Gram. But it’s nice to hear something besides silence in the glade again.

“I can see why,” she says, gazing around. “There’s something really special about it.”

So I tell her everything. About the first time Gram brought me here and what she said about the charmed folk who came over on the ships from Europe. About the stories Gram and I wrote together about them. About how, after Gram died, I started one last story, and how I opened the journal one day to find someone else had written in it, too.

Behind her glasses, Fina’s eyes grow wider and wider the longer I speak. When I’ve spilled out everything I know, she gazes around for a minute, thinking. The forest is silent once more.

“You really saw them?” she asks finally. “The charmed folk?” There’s something in her voice that sounds a lot like hope.

“I used to,” I say. “Not anymore, though.”

Her face falls a little. Then a wrinkle appears between her eyebrows. “But wait. So, you don’t know who’s writing to you?”

“No clue.”

“And that doesn’t, like . . . freak you out?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Whoever it is must have known Gram. Gram obviously trusted them enough to tell them about the hollow and how we wrote stories together.”

“But, Emma! We have to figure out who it is,” she says. “Aren’t you dying to know?”

“Um, I guess so.”

Actually, I’m not sure I have been dying to know. Because having my mysterious pen pal felt like having a little bit of Gram back. Because maybe even after everything that’s happened, I still wanted to believe in that last shred of magic.

“Emma?” Fina murmurs. “I know you said you don’t see them anymore. The charmed folk. But do you think—could we maybe just pretend? Could we pretend that this is the Goldengrove, and we’re Jack and Sarah? Or are we too old for that?”

“No,” I say. “We’re not.”

She beams. “In that case,” she says, “I’ll be Sarah. You be Jack. Boomer, you get to be the hobgoblin king.”

And we spend the rest of the morning running around the Spinney, pretending it really is the Goldengrove, climbing the Council Tree and waving sword sticks at Boomer, who seems to be having the time of his life playing the hobgoblin king.

When we finally leave the glade, we’re both out of breath. We have dirt on our cheeks and twigs tangled in our hair. And neither of us minds a bit.

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