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His eyes widen. “A fearsome creature with a head full o’ snakes!”
“You mustn’t fear her,” I say, taking the man’s hand and leading him toward the river. “She’s as tame as a pu**ycat. She’d probably lick your hand given the chance.”
“Didn’t seem harmless,” he whispers, shuddering.
“Yes, well, things are not always as they appear, sir, and we must learn to judge for ourselves.”
The ones who need my help come out here and there: This one wants to tell his wife he loved her, as he never could in life; that one is sorry for a falling out she had with her sister, a grudge she held till the end; still another, a girl of perhaps eighteen, is frightened—she cannot walk away from the past so easily.
She holds tightly to my arm. “Is it true what I hear, that I do not have to cross? That there is a place where I might live on?” Her eyes are wide with a desperate hope fanned by fear.
“It is true,” I answer. “But it is not without cost. Nothing is.”
“But what will become of me when I cross over the river?”
“I cannot say. No one can.”
“Oh, will you tell me which path to take, please?”
.
“Perhaps we shall visit you in your world sometime. Your world could do with a bit of magic.”
“I should like that,” I say. “But you will behave yourself, won’t you? No taking mortals for playthings.”
Philon’s lips twist into an enigmatic smile. “Would you come after us?”
I nod. “I would indeed.”
The creature extends a hand. “So let us remain friends.”
“Yes, friends.”
Gorgon accompanies me as far as the Borderlands. “The rest of this journey is mine alone, I’m afraid,” I say.
“As you wish,” she says, bowing. Her snakes dance about her head in a merry halo. She does not try to follow me, but she doesn’t leave, either. She lets me leave her. By the time I have crossed into the Winterlands, I no longer see her, but I feel her all the same.
Tiny blossoms have sprouted on the branches of the tree. Their defiant colors push up through the gnarled bark. The tree blooms again. The land is not what it was before. It is strange and new and unknown. It pulses with a different magic, born of loss and despair, love and hope.
I rest my cheek on the Tree of All Souls. Beneath the bark, its heart beats sure and strong against my ear. I stretch my arms round the tree as far as they will go. Where my tears hit, the bark glistens silver.
Little Wendy steps up shyly. She has survived. She’s pale and thin and her teeth are sharper. “It’s beautiful,” she says, admiring the tree’s majesty with her fingers.
I step away, wiping my eyes. “Yes, it is.”
“Sometimes, when the wind blows through them leaves, it sounds like your name. It’s like a sigh, then,” she says. “The most beautiful sound I ever heard.”
A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer—Gem-ma, Gem-ma—and then the leaves bend down and trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks.
“Wendy, I’m afraid I can’t help you cross over now that you’ve eaten the berries. You will have to remain in the realms,” I tell her.
“Yes, miss,” she says, and she doesn’t sound sad. “Bessie and me, we’re stayin’ on, makin’ a go of it. Can I show you sum’thin’?” Wendy asks.
She takes my hand and leads me to the valley where our battle was recently fought. Amidst the patches of icy snow, unexpected plants grow. Their roots burrow deep under the ice; they grow despite it.
“Tell me what you see,” she says.
“Lovely shoots sticking up. Like early spring,” I say. “Did you plant these?”
