I make my way to the very end of the hall and the last room. After looking side to side to make sure it’s empty, I cross to the one small opening that looks down to the canyon below. This is where we saw the flickering, but now the room is only shadowy and dark. Ebb must have left, because I can’t see him where I left him at the edge of the bridge.

And then I hear it.

Creak, creak, creak. Right behind me.

I turn and see what I missed—tucked just to the side of the open door and obscured by it.

A rocking chair. And a woman sitting in it.

She’s covered in cobwebs too, and is so still, she looks almost petrified. Her face is neither young nor old, beautiful nor haggard. She is all in purple, and she looks—not terrifying like she did the last time I saw her, when she was reaching out to curse me, but—lost. On her lap is a blanket covering some shape I can’t make out. There’s pain on her face, and her fingers are grasping, grasping at the air as if plucking at invisible mosquitoes.

“You’ve come to take something from me,” the Memory Thief says.

Little One, who’s been fluttering about the room, alights on my shoulder and perches there making a click, click, click sound with her beak—either for fear or warning.

I try to take courage from the fact that she’s with me, but she’s agitated like me.

“I only want what belongs to my mother,” I say.

The Memory Thief frowns softly, and looks down at her lap. She pulls the blanket aside. As she does, chills swim up and down my arms, because there in her gnarled hands is a metal cage. And in the cage are hundreds of tiny purple and blue and yellow and pink and orange moths. I know in my bones what they are.

My mother’s memories.

“I’ve been looking them over for the first time,” the Memory Thief says, “all these memories. I steal so many—millions, billions—even the interesting people are hard to get around to. Though I should have looked, I suppose. I would have known about you even before you had the sight.” She sighs, low and deep. “These ones are lovely. There is so much love, so much courage. Your birthdays, your milestones—they’re here too.” She waves to the air, indicating the world at large. “I may not ever get to see even a fraction of the memories I’ve collected, but every single one is precious to me. I’m afraid I can’t give these ones back to you.”

She looks so fragile, sad and wounded. Not the vicious witch I’ve been so afraid of meeting.