“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,” I tell her. “It’d be up to you.”

“Up tome . . . “ Then she gets it. “Are you saying I could be the Conjurer now?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“But I don’t want to hurt people.”

“You don’t have to be that kind of Conjurer.”

“So, you’ll just let that happen?” she asks. “You’ll write it in the book and that’s the way it’ll be?”

I nod.

“What if once I’m the Conjurer I put you in the deepest darkest dungeon, and you have to stay there forever and a day?”

“I don’t think you’re the kind of person who would do that, but it’s the chance I have to take. I just hope you’ll look out for the others.” I nod toward the yard. “They need someone to protect them and keep them safe.”

“You mean me?”

“Well, I would think that’s what a good Conjurer would do.”

Mattie turns to look at the scarecrow.

“How would you feel about that?” she asks him.

“We just want you to be happy again,” he says. “To be one of us.”

“And . . . and the old Conjurer?” Mattie asks. “What happens to him?”

I tap the book. “This doesn’t change.”

She actually smiles now. “Because you’re the Conjurer, too. You have to be, because all of this is inside you.”

“So we’ll both be Conjurers,” I say, “though you’ll probably make a better one than me.”

“You’re just saying that,” she says, but I can tell that she’s pleased, nevertheless.

“We already know you’re braver.”

She shakes her head. “I never could have done what you did.” She smoothes a palm over the open pages of the book.

I take a chance, then.

“But you never made somebody else’s life a nightmare,” I say.

Her gaze clouds for a moment and I hold my breath. But then she shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “I just tried to kill you whenever I could.”

“So, shall I finish the story?” I ask her.

She nods, reading over my shoulder as I write the ending into the book. The last thing I do is draw a picture of her, but she’s older in it. A young woman.

“Is that me?” she asks.

I nod. I close the book, lay it on the porch behind me, and put the pencil on top. I turn to her and open my arms.

She lets me hug her.

“You have at least one person now who loves you,” I say into her hair. “And I won’t ever hurt you again. I really would die before I’d let that happen.”

Her arms come around me and hold tight.

“I was wrong,” she says, her voice soft, muffled against my breast.

“About what?”

“It turns out things can get better.”

I kiss the top of her head.