“What took you so long?” Gabe said, touching his fingers to a braid that had come loose near the back of her head. The hair there was streaked with gray.
“That happens sometimes, getting lost, I mean. Besides, there was more than one flame.”
“How many?”
“Four.”
“All at the same time?”
Wynne nodded, and then she slumped back on the grass and closed her eyes. “I think I need a little rest. Just for a few minutes.”
“Let me help you back to the house,” Gabe said, but she was already gone, dead to the world. Using the skills Wynne had taught him, Gabe conjured up a pillow and placed it gently under her head.
He tried to stay awake, to make sure Wynne was really okay, but with her snoozing next to him and Ollie snoring away on his lap, he slowly let his body drop to the grass. Despite his best efforts, he drifted off to the soft rustling of leaves and the gentle whisper of wind rippling across the pond.
When Gabe woke up, sunlight spilled across his face and he was pretty sure he was drowning.
“Okay, okay, I’m awake,” he spluttered, pushing Ollie and his slobbery tongue off him. Ollie loved to lick inside his mouth and nostrils every morning. It was one of their not-so-fun rituals.
“How are you feeling?” Gabe said, but Wynne was gone. He searched the skyline for any sign of a flame but didn’t find one. Maybe it was too far away. “I hope she’s okay,” he said aloud, and he did. Even if he didn’t understand why she had to do what she did. Not really.
A chilly breeze blew in across the pond, ruffling Gabe’s shirt. He peeked down at the wound on his stomach, except it wasn’t a wound anymore. It didn’t even look like a second belly button, just a small purple pinprick, not even big enough to call itself a mole.
Gabe felt around on his back, and that side had healed up, too. As if that tornado and that weather vane and that gosh dang chicken had never even existed. And maybe it was a little like Miss Cleo had never existed, too. She hadn’t been very kind or very friendly, but Gabe had to admit he was a little sad at the thought of never seeing her again. A little, but not a lot.
Ollie set about licking Gabe’s belly clean, paying extra attention to his used-to-be hole. While he was distracted, Gabe took the opportunity to reexamine Ollie’s leg. It had healed, too. The swelling was gone, and the hair around the wound had even grown back. It was a dang near miracle.
“What do you think about that?” Gabe said.
Ollie answered by slobbering his face one last time, and then barking and wiggling his tail in excitement.
“Alright, already. We’ll go find Wynne. Who knows, maybe she’s back at the cottage making breakfast.”
Together, Gabe and Ollie headed back to the cottage, finding the pathway through the garden had changed once again. The tall hedgerows that lined the paths, turning the garden into a sort of maze, kept moving. At least, they must have moved, because each twist and turn looked different than it had the day before.
They passed a row of tall purple plants with petals like mouths. Ollie went up to sniff one, and it snapped half-heartedly at his bottom. Sticking closer to Gabe’s ankles, Ollie wound through ivy-covered arches and rosebushes full of plump buds the size of cantaloupes, with Gabe close on his tail. Finally, they came upon a small window of branches, climbed through, and emerged in Wynne’s front yard.
“That’s some garden,” Gabe said as an extra-chilly breeze lifted up his hair. He was just sliding off Ollie’s new leash when a voice nearby got his attention.
“Over here,” said the voice, or maybe it was the wind.
“Did you hear that?”
Ollie barked in response, and then Gabe heard the wispy voice again.
“Other way.”
Gabe spun around. “Wynne?”
The air stood still for a moment, and then a fresh breeze whizzed past his ear. “What are you waiting for? Come and find me!”
Ollie barked and sniffed and then took off running into the mist, and Gabe had no choice but to follow.
“Getting closer,” Wynne said, her voice like a spring breeze flitting over his shoulder.
He turned and slapped the air, but there was nobody. Then Ollie tensed up, and his tail started wagging, and he leapt. “What’s gotten into you?” Gabe said, but before he could finish, a pair of thin arms materialized out of nowhere to catch his dog.
Ollie barked and slobbered the air, and Wynne started to appear. She showed up in sections, first her neck, then her chest, then her legs. Every time the wind blew it revealed another part of her.
“You found me,” she said once she was well and truly there. Her smile shone a little brighter than the night before, and Gabe couldn’t help but smile back. “Now it’s your turn to hide.”
“Hide? Why?” Gabe said.
“Hide-and-seek, obviously.”
Wynne took a seat in the grass, pulling Ollie into her lap. The mist cleared around her, like it knew she was sitting there and wanted to make sure Gabe could see. She looked much less tired than earlier, and she was smiling again. “The first step is to forget about your skin,” she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “Come on, sit down over here. Close your eyes, too, at least until you get the hang of it.”
Gabe sat down and closed his eyes. “But why?”
“Shush, you’ll see.”
“And how, exactly, am I supposed to forget my skin?”
“It helps to think about the wind. At least, it did for me, back when I was still learning. The important part is to imagine the breeze covering every inch of your body, snaking around your ankles and falling over your shoulders like a cloak. A see-through cloak made of air and sky and nothing at all.”
“If you say so,” Gabe said, but already his body felt different. Lighter, as if Wynne’s words had a magic touch that could make him disappear.
He focused on the air blowing over him, washing everything solid away like the rush of ocean currents. Picturing the ocean always made him relax and forget everything around him, and it worked even better than he’d expected. His body swayed slowly back and forth in rhythm with the waves.
“You can open your eyes now,” Wynne said, a good deal later.
Gabe opened his eyes. When he looked down at his body, he smiled so wide he almost spoiled the effect.
“I’m invisible,” he said, holding out his arms and waving his hands. Except, his arms and hands weren’t there. There was nothing where his body had been except for air and trees and grass.
“You’re hiding,” Wynne said.
And he noticed she was looking at him, but not in the eye. He waved a hand in front of her face and she didn’t even flinch.
“This isn’t hide-and-seek,” Gabe said. “It’s magic.” And he couldn’t help but laugh. He looked down and his body flickered in and out of focus. The laughter was ruining the illusion, but it didn’t really matter. Ollie squeezed out of Wynne’s arms and jumped into Gabe’s lap. His focus faltered and just like that the illusion collapsed. He fell back onto the grass laughing harder than ever.
They practiced hide-and-seek for the rest of the afternoon, even though Wynne was still tired, so she mostly just watched and gave instructions. Hiding in plain sight was a lot harder than it sounded. It required pure focus, for one thing, and Gabe’s mind had a tendency to wander. Ollie licking him and jumping on him all the time didn’t help matters much, either, but Gabe couldn’t get mad at him for being a good dog.
“You’ll get better at it,” Wynne said when the sun started to fall in the sky and the air turned cold.
She stood, her gaze falling on something burning far away on the horizon.
“Do you have to go?” Gabe said, realizing they’d been sitting there together the entire day. They hadn’t even eaten.
Wynne nodded. “They need me.” She stood up, though it took her a long time. Her eyelids drooped, and she was shaking so much Gabe was afraid the wind might knock her over. He’d been hav
ing so much fun, he hadn’t noticed her strength starting to wane.
“Maybe you should stay home, just for tonight,” Gabe said, ready to catch her if she fell. “You look like you need some rest.” Who would’ve thought Death could be so weak and frail?
Wynne smiled, and then walked away. She disappeared into the woods without saying goodbye.
That night, he and Ollie slept on the sofa, surrounded by quilts and flickering candles. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the old cabin with Gramps. Gramps coughed and stared at the door like he kept expecting Gran to walk through, only this time she never came. He waited and waited, and after a while, Gramps sat up even though his body stayed behind.
“It’s alright,” Gabe said. “Gran’ll be here soon.” And he found himself hoping she would come, even though he knew it was really Wynne and he knew that her coming meant Gramps would leave him behind for good. But Gramps looked so sad and lonely and scared. Somebody had to come. They had to.
Wynne didn’t come back the next morning. Gabe fed Ollie some scrambled eggs from the tray, then stood on the cool kitchen tile with a puzzled look on his face. Strange as it sounded, the cottage had changed since the last time he’d seen it, too. The quilts looked thinner, more faded somehow, as if whatever magic had created them was starting to wane. The back garden visible through the kitchen window had become overgrown with vines, the blue flowers closed up, their petals wrinkled and wilting.
With nothing much to do but wait for Wynne, Gabe decided to fill a teapot with cool water and see if a drink might help the flowers bloom. Ollie followed on his heels as he wound around the garden path.
He drizzled the sleeping flowers with water, and to his surprise they began to open one by one. Ollie barked and slobbered Gabe’s ankles. As the petals stretched up toward the sun, their centers started to glow. Blue at first, but then slowly changing to a smooth, creamy pink.
Strange, because that exact shade had been his mother’s favorite color. He only remembered because he’d bought her a birthday present once, a leather coin purse, dyed that very same shade.
Gabe blinked again and the flowers turned a deeper red, the color of Ollie’s favorite stuffed lobster. Laughing, he watched as the color turned back to ocean blue, and he thought of Gramps and how they’d always said one day they’d go swimming with the dolphins.
The color changed once more, this time to a pale, chilly white. The light glowed strongest over to Gabe’s left, and he bent down to see a flat stone set in the dirt.
It was a grave.
The inscription, etched in shallow block letters, read:
WINIFRED WIST
BELOVED BY ALL WHO KNEW HER
1898–1910
MAY SHE LIVE ON WITH THE ANGELS
Once he had deciphered it, Gabe sat back on the earth, only half aware of Ollie chewing on his fingertips. Winifred must be Wynne, no doubt about it, which meant she was born in 1898. That made her over eighty years old.
No wonder she was so tired. She’d been helping people like his gramps for nearly a century. And he knew now that she was helping, in her own way, even if it still creeped him out.
He sighed, and to his surprise his breath turned to smoke on the wind. Now that he thought about it, the air was colder than he’d expected, and was that frost clinging to the treetops in the distance? He could hardly believe that much time had passed since he’d arrived in Bone Hollow. Hadn’t it still been summer when he’d left?
Prickling with curiosity, Gabe jogged toward the hilltop where Wynne had disappeared into the woods the night before, Ollie on his heels. Sure enough, not only were the treetops frosty, but a thin layer of snow covered the ground. How could that be? Just a few days ago it had been raining, chilly but definitely not snow weather.
“Time must be different here,” he said to Ollie, who shrugged and decided it would be a good idea to lick between Gabe’s toes. “I guess a lot of things are different here.” He laughed and tried to distract Ollie with a stick, but he wasn’t having it.
“Come on, boy, let’s get you back before you freeze.”
A bitter wind tickled Gabe’s nose hairs and burned his cheeks, but it didn’t hurt. Not the way it would have before. He picked Ollie up and hugged him to his chest, but Ollie didn’t feel cold, either. In fact, he was still panting and wiggling his tail, despite the snow.
Back in Bone Hollow, the air was still warm, and Gabe and Ollie spent most of the afternoon exploring the gardens and waiting for Wynne to return. When the moon rose, glowing like a giant orange pumpkin in the sky, Gabe started to worry. Wynne had been so weak when she’d left. What if she was hurt and needed his help?
He searched the horizon and wasn’t surprised to find several flames burning faintly over the treetops. That meant Wynne must still be hard at work. “We’ll wait out here, right, boy? That way we’ll see her when she comes back.”
So Gabe started a fire in a small clearing not far from the cottage, and he brought out an old quilt for him and Ollie to sleep on. “She’ll be home soon, now, don’t you worry.”
But Ollie did look worried, and Wynne didn’t come back the next morning or the next night. By the third day, more flames had popped up in the distance, and Wynne still hadn’t returned. Gabe was about to start walking in the direction of the nearest flame to try and find her when a pale figure emerged from behind the mist. He was wearing tiny spectacles, a long robe with no shoes, and he was bald except for two puffs of hair sticking out on either side of his head.
“You’re the ghost friar. From the tunnel,” Gabe said, blinking hard to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
“I prefer Brother Patrick,” said the friar.
Another ghost stepped out of the mist, and Ollie bounded up to greet him, licking his fuzzy slippers and jumping on his jolly, round tummy. “Sir Carlton Stanley, cook to Her Majestic Countenance, the Duchess of Winlock.”
“Former cook,” said Brother Patrick. “He was sacked after two months,” he whispered to Gabe. His breath was so cold, tiny icicles sprouted on Gabe’s earlobe.
“What was that?” said the cook.
“No matter, Sir Carlton.” Brother Patrick held out his hand, his expression suddenly grim. “You’d better come with us, young man. You are the new one, aren’t you?”
Gabe looked from one ghost to the other. “The new what?”
“Oh dear, not the sharpest knife in the set, is he?” said Brother Patrick.
“Hush,” said Sir Carlton. “He’s only just arrived. We must give him some time to adjust.” He turned to Gabe, talking the way you would to a three-year-old. “The new Death, dear boy. That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no, you don’t understand.” Gabe stumbled back, tripping over Ollie and falling onto the soft grass. “That’s Wynne’s thing, not mine.”
Sir Carlton and Brother Patrick exchanged a long look.
“Well,” said Brother Patrick dryly. “Either way, you’d better hurry up.”
Before Gabe could stop them, they each grasped one of his hands, and he was sucked up into a tunnel of swirling gray clouds, leaving Ollie behind, barking frantically at the sky. The tunnel whipped left and right, and if he looked close he saw that the gray clouds had faces. Some were screaming, some laughing, others pointing as he passed.
“Did we have to go by ghost tunnel?” Gabe shouted.
Ice pellets pelted his face. Hands reached out of nowhere, tugging on his pants and his shirt, and something wet tickled the soles of his feet. Then, as quickly as it had started, the clouds fell away and his face squelched into a mound of fresh snow.
“Where are we?” Gabe sat up, wiping the snow from his eyes. A thick layer of white covered the brick building in front of him, the cars, the trees, the softly glowing streetlights. He blinked, and saw a sign near the front of the building: Whispering Pines Retirement Village.
“Why did you bring me here?” Gabe got up, more than a little annoyed. He had snow in both ears and up his nose
.
“Over this way,” said Brother Patrick.
He tugged on Gabe’s sleeve, and he had no choice but to follow, especially since Sir Carlton was prodding him from behind. “Hurry, hurry.”
They led him to the first in a long row of single-story apartments. The pale blue door hung open. Gabe could see a lamp on inside. A siren blared in the distance, moving away from them. “What are you doing?” Gabe said as Brother Patrick slid through the open door into the room. “Someone could be in there.”
“Quickly,” urged Sir Carlton.
So Gabe followed, inching through the doorway into the room.
“It’s empty; there’s no one here.”
And the small room was empty, apart from a bare mattress, a side table littered with used Kleenexes, and an armchair covered in plastic. On the wall, Gabe saw a picture of a thin woman with curly white hair dancing. Even though she was all alone, she looked so happy her face practically glowed.
“Why did you bring me here?” Gabe said. “If somebody’s passed on, you should’ve called Wynne. That’s her department. I—” Gabe stopped, the words getting all tangled up in his throat. Just then he saw a pair of tiny feet sticking out from the other side of the bed, wearing a familiar pair of lace-up leather boots. Wynne’s boots. All the worries of the past few days came roaring back, pressing down hard on his chest.
He stepped closer, and there she was, Wynne, lying face-down on the floor, her arms and legs gray as ash.
Gabe rushed to her side and turned her over. Her eyes were open, but cold and shiny as glass. “Is she … ?”
Brother Patrick shook his head. “No, but we need to get her back.”
“How did this happen?” Gabe said, thinking guiltily about all that time he and Ollie had wasted exploring Bone Hollow. He should have gone looking for her sooner.
“She’s tired, that’s all,” said Brother Patrick.
“Much too tired,” added Sir Carlton.
Gabe bent down and scooped Wynne into his arms. She felt even lighter than Ollie, and her bones were so thin and fragile, he didn’t dare hold on too tight.
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