“Take care of this place for me,” I tell her. “And make friends with the Eadar. I only pulled the nice ones from Wentworth’s book.”

“Will you come back?”

“I don’t know that I’ll ever be away, but yes, I’ll come visit you.”

“Why did you trust me?” she asks. I can tell from the look in her eyes that she’s genuinely puzzled. “I’d just tried to kill you.”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it, exactly.”

It was just something I knew I had to do.

“I think it was important to offer you trust and kindness,” I say finally. “To make up for how I hurt you before. And it was really important for me to believe that you would do what was right.”

“You didn’t use magic?”

I shake my head. “Not for that. Never for that. It had to come from you or it would mean nothing.”

“I think you are brave,” she says. “I would never have trusted me.”

“You would have, if you were me.”

“That makes no sense.”

I smile. “I often don’t.” I wait a beat, then ask her, “Why did you change your mind about wanting to kill me?”

“Because of what you wrote in the book. It made me realize that we both went through the same things, except you really did. I just thought I did.”

“Didn’t make it less real.”

“No. But I understand better now. I might have done the same thing.”

“Not knowing what you know now.”

She shakes her head.

“Because I know for sure that I couldn’t,” I say.

I kiss the top of her head again and stand up. I wave to the Eadar, then my gaze goes to Tom. The scarecrow’s painted features managed to look both solemn and cheerful.

“We’ll take care of each other,” he assures me.

Mattie looks up at me from where she’s sitting on the top step. She makes her teddy bear wave at me.

“Bye, Jilly,” she says.

“Bye,” I say.

Then I let go of this world and allow myself to fall back to the mesa where Geordie and the others are waiting for me.

Joe

If Joe had stopped to think of the scare they’d throw into Geordie and the others arriving the way they did, he would have taken man-shape and called out from the trail before stepping up onto the mesa. Instead, two dogs and a coyote suddenly appeared right in front of them, landing almost in the middle of a campfire.