I run to catch up with Harry and Jed where they wait still and silent. Here the path is wide enough for us to stand shoulder to shoulder all in a row, Jed taking center position.

He lifts the scythe, pointing down the path, and then lets it drop as if the effort is too much.

I take a step closer, not sure of what I am seeing, not sure if my eyes betray me. I can hear Harry's breathing, ragged from running all the way down here.

I sink to my knees; the sharp sting of a rock digs into my flesh, causing a small trickle of blood to mix with the rain slipping down my shin.

It's the end of the fence. The end of the path. There's nothing beyond but Forest. Another dead end.

My shoulders slump, my fingers trailing in the mud.

“I'm sorry, Mary,” Jed says. Because he knows that this was my hope.

“I guess we wait through the rain,” Harry says. “Hope that it kills off the fire. And then retrace our steps, go back to where the path splits and take another route.” I shake my head, drops of water falling from the ends of my hair and my ears.

“This was the path,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.

“We will find another one,” Harry says, trying to calm me. Trying to make me feel better. But it doesn't help.

I believed so strongly that this was the correct path. That this would lead me out of the Forest and to the ocean.

“Maybe …,” I say, standing and wincing as the pain from my knee slices up my leg. I take a step forward.

“Don't do anything stupid, Mary,” Harry says. “This is just another dead end. We've encountered them before. No doubt we will again. This path wasn't anything special. None of them is.”

I shake my head again. There is something about this path that's different—something about this dead end that looks different from the rest.

I trace my fingers around the edges of the fence until they brush against the metal bar. “It's a gate,” I say as thunder booms overhead. I turn back to Harry and Jed, their figures obscured by the thick rain.

“It's a gate!” I shout. I feel for the metal bar to find the letters and turn it until I can read what it says: I for the number one. This is the first gate.

They glance at each other and then come to stand beside me.

“But the fences don't continue past the gate,” Harry says. “It just opens into the Forest—why would there be a gate if this is the end of the path?”

My heart hammers hard in my chest, thumping so fiercely that my breath comes out in puffs at the same rhythm. If this is the first gate it has to be the beginning and the end.

“Because we're supposed to go out into the Forest,” I say. With every beat of my heart I know this to be true.