As they started through town, Wunder was trying not to do three things.
He was trying not to hear Faye’s words in his head: He saw those spirals moving.
He was trying not to notice the stone of his heart, still not-so-cold inside him.
He was trying not to wonder if the witch would be on her porch again, waving at him.
He was trying, but he was failing on all three counts.
But Faye, unsurprisingly, was not going to let him stay in his own thoughts. “Where are we walking, Wundie?” she asked after less than a block of silent strolling.
“Just around,” Wunder said vaguely.
“Around? What for? Exploring? Meditating? Achieving enlightenment? I know a lot about enlightenment. My grandfather and I talked about it sometimes. My mother didn’t like that, but my grandfather was very open. He said that if you want enlightenment, you have to accept that nothing in this life is permanent.” She paused. “I don’t think I’m very enlightened.”
Wunder thought about his sister. What was more impermanent than an eight-day-old baby? But did he accept that?
“I’m not trying to achieve enlightenment,” he said. “I’ve been—” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “I went back to the cemetery yesterday. I was thinking about going again.”
“Three days in a row among the dead?” Faye shook her head slowly, her bangs brushing past her eyebrows and back. “That’s pretty morbid, Wundie.”
“No, it’s not,” Wunder protested. “I’m not—I had something to leave there, and I didn’t get to—”
“There’s nothing wrong with being morbid,” Faye said. “Why not spend time in a graveyard?” She spread her arms out, a side of her cloak clutched in either black-gloved hand. “Let’s go.”
In the woods, the tips of the leaves were just beginning to turn red and gold. It was quiet there, and Branch Hill Cemetery was empty too, as usual.
“So what should we do?” Faye asked as they passed through the iron gate. Her voice was hushed, and Wunder wondered if she was feeling the same way he was—like they really shouldn’t be there. “Aren’t you supposed to visit graves all the time and pray for the dead in your religion?”
“I guess,” Wunder said, although so far Faye’s family was the only one he had seen there. “But I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to pray.”
“I’m not here to make you pray, Wundie,” Faye said.
Now that they were there, Wunder felt like he wanted to leave. The feeling of loneliness, of separateness he’d felt yesterday came over him again. All around were hundreds of monuments marking hundreds of dead bodies, each one sealed off, each one alone. It was terrible, almost too terrible to stand.
“We’re surrounded by dead people,” Faye said, almost as if she could read his mind. She pulled the hood of her cloak up.
“We are,” he said.
“What’s even stranger to think about,” she said, “what I thought about when I saw you at the funeral, is that almost everyone buried here has a family living in this town. Branch Hill is filled with families of the dead.”
Wunder nodded, remembering. He remembered what he’d thought yesterday—that each grave was its own sad, lonely story. If each of those stories belonged to a family in Branch Hill, then his town must have hundreds of people like him and Faye, hundreds who didn’t get their miracles.
Which was further proof, Wunder thought, that miracles didn’t exist.
They were near the base of the hill now. This was where he had dropped The Miraculous yesterday.
But it was nowhere in sight.
He was turning in a slow circle, searching for it, when Faye interrupted him.
“What’s up there?” She was pointing to the treeless Branch Hill. Her cloak caught the wind, making her look like some great bird. “A grave? That wasn’t there the other day.”
At the top of the hill, there was a shining spot, a glimmer that Wunder hadn’t seen before.
“It can’t be a grave,” he told her. “There aren’t any graves up there.”
Faye didn’t respond. She was already heading up the hill. Wunder followed her, trying not to think about his lost book, trying not to feel such a terrible weight in his stomach as he realized that it was gone, really gone.
They climbed the hill, Wunder gaining on Faye and her slow gait. As they neared the top, Wunder saw that the glimmer came from a stone, like a gravestone, with silver writing on it and carvings of flowers in the corners.
“It’s that verse!” Faye had reached the stone. “‘Behold! I tell you a miracle,’” she read aloud. “‘We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. Let us, then, change together. With great love, Milagros.’”
Wunder was right behind Faye, but now he stopped. He gaped at her. Then he gaped down at the stone.
The sun shone on it, like a spotlight, and the letters seemed to glow white-hot. The words were right there for him to see.
“Wundie. What’s wrong?”
Faye had come over to him. She held on to his arm and peered into his eyes. Her bangs were pinned back.
Wunder pointed to the stone. “The verse,” he said. His voice sounded high and thin now, like he had suddenly become smaller, shrunken. “Milagros.”
Faye gripped his arm even tighter. “Yes. Who’s Milagros?”
A cloud passed over the sun and the words stopped glowing. In fact, Wunder couldn’t even make them out anymore. He squeezed his eyes closed. He blinked them open, hard. But the words were still a smudge of silver.
“My sister,” he said. “My sister was named Milagros.”