The witch was sitting at the table in the kitchen, a candle in front of her. In the flickering light, her hair looked gray. Her face looked crumpled and sunken, like a mummy’s, like a corpse’s.
“You have come,” she said in her faraway, low voice.
“I’m here,” Wunder said. His voice was high and quavering. Now that he was here, he was afraid of what might happen. Now that he was here, he wished he hadn’t come.
“You are the last one,” the witch said. “I have your invitation.”
She took an envelope from the white cloth that shrouded her and held it out to him with hands that seemed to tremble.
Wunder took the letter in both hands. It was the same as the others but with his name instead of someone else’s. He traced the tree on the wax seal, the DoorWay Tree. His fingers moved down the roots and then up the branches, to the flowers.
When he looked back up, the witch was watching him intently through her black eyes.
“You have something to say, Wunder,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes. Tell me what you have come to say.”
Wunder felt like he had when he went to see Mariah Lazar, certain that he was at the end, certain that he was about to learn everything he so desperately longed to know, everything he was so utterly terrified to know.
Only instead of asking question after question, he couldn’t seem to get even one out.
“If you’re not her,” he finally said, “if you’re not my sister, then you’re a terrible person. A horrible, terrible person. It’s not right to do what you’re doing.”
“What do you think I am doing?” the witch asked.
“I don’t know,” Wunder said. “I don’t know what you’re doing. Officer Soto said—my mother thinks—”
“Whatever your mother thought,” the witch said, “she does not think anymore. She has come to visit me twice now. In fact, she left just before you arrived.”
Wunder stared at her, stared straight through the light and into the dark of her eyes. “My mother? My mother came here?”
The witch nodded once. “Yes, yes, yes. She is very worried about you.”
“She’s not.” Wunder shook his head. “She’s not worried about me at all.”
“She is,” the witch said. “And she had many questions to ask.”
Questions. Wunder thought of his mother here, in this kitchen, and he realized what it meant. His mother, who had been so paralyzed by grief that she had hardly left her room in weeks, his mother who had fled the house shoeless at the sight of his sister’s crib—his mother had been with the witch.
The witch who read the obituaries and spoke about the dead. The witch whose name was Milagros.
The witch who Faye and Davy were convinced was Wunder’s dead sister.
“What did you tell her?” His voice was suddenly loud, hard, the shakiness gone. “Did you tell her your name? Did you tell her who you are? What did you say to her?”
The witch smiled, a sad smile. “I gave her an invitation, and I answered what she was ready to ask. But some things—some things can never be said. Some miracles must be understood without words.”
Wunder felt the stone of his heart go horribly still at this, go cold at this, cold as the grave, cold as death.
“There are no miracles!” he cried, his words both a challenge and a plea to the witch to prove him wrong.
The witch moved back from the light. In the shadows, she pressed her fingers to her temples. “How to explain it?” Her voice seemed to have grown softer, farther away, but it was heavier too, weighed down. “All around us are miracles. Most are marvelous and wonderful and bright and so clearly seen. But not all. Because there can be miracles even in the midst of unfathomable sadness and anger, even in the depths of grief and confusion. And these, these are the hidden ones, the ones we must search for.”
“The minister isn’t searching for miracles,” Wunder told her. “Neither is Eugenia Simone. And neither is my mother.”
“Maybe they weren’t,” the witch said. “But after talking to you, they may feel differently. A long-loved wife recovering from an illness, even if only for a short time; a family saved from a fire; two tiny babies coming into this world to stay: You reminded so many in this town of their miracles, bright and shining. And you have also begun to show them the hidden miracles, the ones that are so hard to see, the ones that are so often forgotten: the never-ending memory of a cherished one; the hands of friends, new and old, reaching out to hold you up; the love you give, the love you receive, even when that love comes from someone you cannot see or hear. Wunder, even in death there are miracles, for the living and for the dead.”
“Then why did you want the DoorWay Tree?” Wunder demanded. “You said the town needed it. You said the dead needed it. If death is so miraculous, why does anyone need help? Why do you need help?”
The witch smiled her sad, sad smile. “Because sometimes all that we can understand isn’t enough. It is easy to see the beautiful in happy times. It is easy to reach for one another in the brightness. But so many things get lost, lost in time, lost in the dark spaces between sorrows. That’s what the DoorWay Tree is for, what it has always been for. The roots of the tree reach deep down into the earth, and the branches of the tree reach high up into the sky. The tree is a way to bring the hidden miracles into the light, to connect us, to show us what has been there all along.”
Wunder shook his head. “It’s just a tree,” he said. “Nothing more. What can a tree do?”
“All that it was meant to do,” the witch said. “The dead are not gone, Wunder. The living are not alone. This world is not all there is. There is more, yes, yes, yes, there is more. But sometimes we need help to see these mysteries, to reach beyond our sorrow, beyond time, beyond death. Just as a tiny hand reached out to you, reached out and held on so tight.”
When the witch said this, Wunder felt as if there was a pressure on his pointer finger. He looked down, sure he would find four small fingers and a thumb wrapped around it.
But there was nothing.
There was only the witch, watching him from across the table with her black eyes.
“Who are you?” he whispered to her. “What do you want with me? What do you want with us, with all of us?”
“Only to help,” she said. “Only to show you—” She stopped and pressed her temples again. She shook her head slowly, back and forth. “Maybe it is wrong, maybe it is more than I am allowed, but I couldn’t go on without doing this. You may not understand, but I want you to believe—I want you to believe that there are miracles.”
“I don’t,” Wunder said. He was holding on to his right pointer finger with his left hand, squeezing it as if to stanch blood flowing from a cut. The stone of his heart was so heavy and so cold and his thoughts were spiraling, and he didn’t understand, and it wasn’t enough. “I don’t believe in anything!”
He fled from the room, fled into the darkness. He could hear the witch behind him, calling his name—“Wunder, Wunder, Wunder”—but her voice had grown so soft that it was only a whisper, a faint sound that the pounding of his feet covered up.
He was going so fast that he crashed into the dining room table. He struggled back to his feet and kept going. Through the parlor and into the hall where, off balance, he careened into walls that he could not see.
Outside, the weather had grown even wilder, the winds gusting even more strongly. Rain poured down and thunder cracked, close now. If the bird was still cawing, Wunder could not hear it over the storm.
He ran past the DoorWay House sign and down the dirt trail. He ran down the paved path and back into the neat row of homes that bordered the woods. The streetlamps were on there. The world looked so ordinary.
He stopped under a light and he took out the envelope. The rain turned his name into a blurry gray puddle, then erased it entirely as he opened the flap and removed the letter:
“Behold! I tell you a miracle. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.”
Come to the highest point of Branch Hill Cemetery at sunrise on the second of November. In this place of remembrance and love, we will experience miracles, and we will all be changed. Together.
It was the same as the other letters. Exactly the same. Except for two words, scrawled at the bottom.
For Milagros.
Wunder put the paper, now soft and soaked, back into the envelope. He put the envelope into the pocket of his jeans.
He walked back on the main street. He didn’t care if anyone saw him.
When he got home, he climbed the stairs to the porch. He dragged the DoorWay Tree branch down the porch steps and to the side of the house. His bicycle was leaning there. The wagon was there too, the rope still hanging from its handle. His father had picked both up from the police station.
Wunder tied the wagon to the bicycle. Then he hoisted the branch into it, first one end and then the other.
Then he started to pedal back down the street.
Back toward the woods.
Back toward the DoorWay House.
Back to the cemetery.