I consider the times I’ve seen the Memory Thief. Her empty eyes. Her grasping hands. And I realize, Ebb is right. She’s clinging to all this stuff, and I suppose to memories that don’t belong to her too. Like she’s trying to fill a hole that is too big to fill. Maybe all the witches are trying to fill something that’s empty inside them; maybe they are all an absence of something beautiful.

Ahead, Ebb floats on, rounding a curve and disappearing from sight.

The minutes pass, and I don’t see him again, and I start to worry. “Ebb?” I call, in a loud whisper. But no one replies.

And then I catch sight of him. He’s come to a standstill and is looking down on something. Only when I’m standing beside him do I see what it is.

It’s a canyon—enormous, seemingly bottomless—opening out in front of us. And it’s full of moths. Bright, beautiful moths, pulsing with yellows, oranges, and golds. Millions of them, maybe billions of them. A multitude.

A gossamer bridge made of silk is suspended over the canyon. And out above the abyss, at the middle of the bridge and towering several stories into the sky, is an enormous cocoon.

My body swims with chills. I know, without even having to question it, that that’s where I’ll find the Memory Thief.

We stand silently, staring. I glance again down at the canyon below, full of moths and therefore full of lost history, lost love, repeated mistakes.

“So many memories,” I say after a moment’s shocked silence, anger pulsing from my head to my feet. “These belonged to people. They were never supposed to be hers. All because she’s too empty to have her own.”

The more I stare at all the countless memories taken, the more enraged I get. The more I hate this witch and all the other witches too.

There’s something I’ve noticed over the years. When I’m angry, I’m especially clumsy. I bump into walls. I crash into things. It’s like my negative thoughts drive me to run into the closest thing I can find.

And now is no exception. As I turn abruptly away from the canyon, in a cloud of rage, I twist off kilter on one foot and lose my balance, and then stomp against the ground to right myself. I don’t mean to kick anything out of place. But there’s a tiny pebble right where my shoe lands, and it goes flying out into the void below us. It clatters along a rocky outcropping as it falls downward. For a split second, Ebb and I go still, and wait.