At dawn, we come to a stop, as the memory moths and Ebb and Little One—all the invisible world—disappears.

“I’ll wake at my grave at dusk,” Ebb says. “And get here as soon as I can.” A moment later he fades and then is gone. Germ and I sleep in a patch of sun for most of the day, our sleeping bags huddled together, trying to keep warm.

At dusk we rise. Fred has crawled out of my pocket and made a web in the tree above us, with a half-finished picture of a flower. I gently reach up to where he sits and drop him back into my pocket. We eat, and wait for Little One to come to life in the beam of my flashlight and for Ebb to return.

It doesn’t take long. By the time the growing sliver of moon is rising above the trees, we see his luminous form coming toward us in the dimness. He’s not winded, of course, but looks more pained than yesterday. The separation from home is clearly wearing on him more tonight. We don’t say much to each other as we pack up and begin again.

As we make our way along the miles in the night, and stop to eat now and then, we quickly realize that what I thought was a month’s worth of jerky and peanut M&M’s is not going to last that long at all. The more I think about it, the whole thing—setting off to find a witch who could be anywhere in the world—seems like a crazy idea. I think reality is sinking in for Germ, too. I’m starting to get blisters, and even Germ has been limping a little. Turns out Keds are not the best hiking shoes.

“My mom’s gonna be so mad,” she says glumly. “I’m sure she’s called the police by now. What if they send bloodhounds after us?”

“I think that was only in the 1950s, they did that,” I say, but I’m not sure.

The one bright side is that as we walk, the number of memory moths appears to be growing. Instead of flying so far ahead that she’s almost beyond hearing distance, Little One is now finding the luminous moths more and more frequently and closer together as the night stretches on. It’s as if they are gathering, all moving in the same direction toward some common destination. Then again, that could be wishful thinking.

But by three a.m. by Germ’s watch, there are so many of them that we can follow the moths ourselves without Little One’s help. They look like clusters of stars on the trees, crawling along the ground. Ebb takes to floating on ahead of us, to see if he can find out anything interesting in the near distance.