Wunder tied the wagon to the bicycle. Then he hoisted the branch into it, first one end and then the other.

Then he started to pedal back down the street.

Back toward the woods.

Back toward the DoorWay House.

Back to the cemetery.

Part Seven

THE TREE

Chapter 44

At the cemetery, Wunder flung open the black iron gates, then rode through them. He rode up the paved path, rode as far as he could, until he came to the base of Branch Hill.

Then he got off his bike. He pushed one end of the tree branch from the wagon, then lifted the other end. He started up the hill, dragging the limb along behind him.

He didn’t have a shovel. The shovel was in the duffel bag along with his father’s other tools that had never made it back from Benedict. The earth was hard at the top of the hill, but the rain had softened it. He pressed his hands into the mud and began to dig.

It was hard work because for every handful of dirt he scooped out, the rain washed some back in. But he didn’t stop. Down into the earth his hands went, down and down and down, until he had a hole that he thought would do.

Now the tree branch seemed even heavier. He wrestled one side into the hole, then put his hands under the other end and pushed up. But his fingers slipped and the branch came crashing to the ground.

He bent down again. He wrapped both arms around the branch and pulled it close. Then he lifted it up, all the way up this time, and he settled it down, the branch of the DoorWay Tree, down into the earth.

Into the earth that held the dead. Into the earth that held Florence Dabrowski and Quincy Simone and Avery Lazar and Faye’s grandfather. Into the earth that held the hundreds of loved ones of the people of Branch Hill.

Into the earth that held Milagros, his sister.

He held the branch there, upright, reaching high above his head. He held on to it as tightly as he could, with all the strength he had, as the rain fell and the moon shone and the gravestones around him looked on.

And then he had to let go.

Because the branch began to spin.

It was like the world was on fast-forward, like time-lapse photography. The branch rotated, slowly, then faster and faster, shedding its sickly gray bark. Underneath, the wood was a vibrant, dark ebony. Underneath, the spirals that covered the wood were as white as ever, as bright and light as ever. Wunder watched as the branch spun. He watched as the spirals began to spin too.

The branch grew taller, thicker—a trunk. And then limbs unfolded, as if they had been inside the whole time, waiting to stretch upward. Branches sprouted from the limbs, twigs from the branches, until there was a tangle of wood, a maze of new growth, extending out and up, high, high, higher than high. And Wunder couldn’t see it, but he could feel the same thing happening under the earth, could feel the roots tunneling down deep, deep, deeper than deep.