Faye pressed the flower to her heart, like she was giving it a hug, and she smiled.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew he wasn’t gone. But I couldn’t feel it before. I can feel it now.”

They were silent, watching as the breeze made the white blossoms dance, watching as sunrise light shone through the thin petals, showing the veins that flowed through them, showing the blank spaces between.

Then they heard footsteps.

Someone was coming up the hill.

Chapter 46

It wasn’t just someone. It was many someones—the women and men and children of Branch Hill. They had letters clutched in their hands. They had wide eyes. And they had questions for Faye and Wunder.

“The letter told us to come here,” someone said.

“What’s this about?”

“Who sent these?”

“Wunder! Wunder!”

At the bottom of the hill was the Minister of Consolation. He wore his white robe, and in the new sunlight, it looked bright white, as white as a DoorWay Tree flower.

“Wunder,” he cried, “this tree! Where did this tree come from? Did you do this?”

The questions stopped. Everyone looked at Wunder, silent, waiting.

And again, Wunder knew exactly what to say.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t me. It was a miracle.”

The word rippled through the crowd. Miracle … miracle … miracle. Here was the miracle that they had been told to come experience.

And now there were more questions.

“What do you mean miracle?”

“Why is it in a graveyard?”

“What does it mean?”

Wunder glanced across the cemetery to the DoorWay House. He wondered where the witch was. This was her moment. Everyone was here because of her. The awed peacefulness he had felt when he climbed out of the tree was fading in the face of his neighbors’ bewilderment. He hadn’t expected to do this on his own.

But he wasn’t on his own.

“Everyone! Listen!” Faye stood in front of the tree, in front of the crowd. Her bangs were back, and her wind-blown cloak made her look, Wunder thought, like a black bird about to soar. “We’re here to see the miracle of the DoorWay Tree. We’re here to be with one another. We’re here to be with the dead. Et cetera!”

Wunder nodded, Faye’s presence and words making him braver. “All of us here,” he said, “have experienced miracles in our lives, miracles that we sometimes forget. This tree is here to remind us. And it’s here to show us the miracles of memory and love. It’s here to connect us to one another and to the ones we’ve lost.”

“How?” cried the minister.

“Come and take a flower,” Faye told him. “You’ll feel it.”

He didn’t move. No one did. Wunder thought of the witch’s words as he picked one of the blossoms: It is easy to reach for one another in the brightness. There was a miracle right in front of them, so bright and clear and real. And there were friends and neighbors and loved ones standing right next to them, each their own point of light. But Wunder knew how sadness and loneliness could block out even the brightest light.