CHAPTER 11

“I like him,” Germ says wistfully. “He’s moody but he’s kind of cute.”

We’re rambling back along the uneven cliff-side trail toward home, and I realize, after puzzling over it for a minute, that Germ is talking about Ebb—who leads the way, his head hanging low. This makes it official that Germ thinks every boy on earth is cute, even dead ones. And also that Germ can face anything in the world, even the news of a magical unseen layer underneath all existence, and still stride through life like usual.

“Though, I guess he’ll be thirteen forever,” Germ muses. “Then again, we’ll catch up to him in a couple of years,” she says brightly. “Then again,” she says flatly, “we’ll get older than him really fast.”

Up ahead, Ebb is gloomy, lost in thought. And then he pivots suddenly toward us.

“You should run, Rosie, like Homer says. I don’t think you understand what you’re up against. You only just learned about all this stuff and you have no idea how terrifying it can get. Even if you had a weapon…,” he says, and gets lost in a thought for a moment, then refocuses, shaking his head. “I can’t help you when she comes. We ghosts are useless, like Homer said. We can’t affect anything, really. And if we tangle with witches—” He stops himself.

“What?”

Ebb doesn’t answer. He looks down at the ground, thinking. All the while, he seems to be patting something in his pocket, checking on it occasionally.

“Maybe we can get someone living to help us,” Germ says. “Like someone… adult.”

I nod in agreement. “And I can show my mom the book she hid. Maybe things could come back to her if she sees what she wrote with her own hands.”

Ebb looks unconvinced. “Trust me, none of it will work. Nobody will believe you. And your mom won’t understand. That piece of her is gone.”

“Ebb,” Germ ventures, as if she’s going to say something profound. “You can be kind of a downer,” she blurts out instead. “I’m just being honest.”

Ebb brightens and fades momentarily. I suppose it’s the ghost version of a blush. Then he goes blank, like he’s given up. He pulls whatever it is out of his pocket, cupping it gently in his hand—and I finally see what it is. A spider. Or at least, a ghost of one. Germ and I exchange a look.

“Is that your… little friend?” Germ asks softly, casting me a look.

Ebb glances back at us. “We died on the same day,” he says curtly. He replaces the spider in his pocket and floats on in silence.

“And it talks?” Germ asks, never one to pick up on subtle social cues, like when people don’t want to discuss something.

“All of nature talks in its own way,” he says, but won’t elaborate further. Germ looks at me like she’s not so sure that Ebb isn’t crazy.

As we linger for a moment, I look to the horizon for any sign of the memory moths returning or a witch approaching (though, I’m not sure exactly how witches approach places—on brooms?), despite Homer’s reassurances about witches steering clear of moonlight. Dread sits heavy in the pit of my stomach.

But then, something else in the sky takes my breath—not a witch, but something even more stunning and strange.

I don’t know how I could have missed seeing it. It lies low over a cliff that juts out into the ocean: the bright crescent moon and something—a ladder, as impossible as that is—dangles down from its edge, just grazing the clifftops.

Ebb and Germ both follow my gaze.

“What is that?” I ask, nodding toward it.

Ebb is quiet for a moment. “It’s an invitation, to any brave enough to accept,” he finally says.

“Invitation to what?”

He shoots a look at me as if I’ve asked a really obvious question. “To the moon.”

I think back to what Homer was saying about the Moon Goddess. It’s hard, in a way, to believe she really exists. But the ladder makes it suddenly real. I think for a moment about astronauts, landing on the moon and not knowing there’s an invisible Moon Goddess hovering around them.

My heart leaps.

“Why don’t we just climb the ladder? We could ask her what we should do about the Memory Thief. She could help us!”

I feel sudden hope flooding over me, but Ebb is shaking his head.

“It’s probably been centuries since anyone’s climbed up there,” he says. “You can only climb it if the Moon Goddess allows it. Otherwise, when you get about halfway up, the ladder disappears and…” He whistles and makes a plunging motion with his hand. “Nobody ever really tries it.”

My spirits drop. “That’s terrible. I thought she was supposed to be good.”

Ebb flickers as he thinks how to explain. “The Moon Goddess is a force of good, but she keeps her own plans, and she’s very exacting, and I suppose only the pure-hearted and brave can make it all the way to her. Otherwise the witches would probably climb up.” His shoulders droop with gloom. “Anyway, she wants people to help themselves; she can’t fight their battles for them. At least, that’s what all the legends say.”

I look up at the moon, anger prickling. What’s the point of being a good and wise Moon Goddess if you don’t help? But Germ’s mind is on another tack.

“Ghosts have legends?” she asks.

“Sure,” Ebb says. “Like that beyond that pink haze is a paradise for all the souls who’ve moved on. And like the sea contains all the time that’s ever existed and you can travel through it in the mouth of a magical whale.”

“Is that true?” I ask.

Ebb considers for a moment, then shakes his head slowly. “It’s just wishful thinking.”

“Wishful why?”

Ebb shrugs.

“Ghosts and time. It’s the thing that torments us. Too much of it now that we are dead, too little of it when we weren’t.” He smiles ruefully. “The Time Witch has a lot to answer for with us.”

I remember skimming past the Time Witch in The Witch Hunter’s Guide, a woman with clocks dangling from her neck. But the Memory Thief is the only witch I can think about.

We stand gazing at the setting moon—which glows, aloof and distant, above the mirror of the sea for a few more moments before it sinks out of sight. I think of my mom and dad, meeting somewhere out at sea so long ago—somewhere in the time when the ghosts lost track of her, before she showed up in Seaport with me in her tummy. And then a spark ignites inside me.

I turn to Ebb, try to grab his arm, but my fingers, of course, slip through him instead.

“My mom likes to say, ‘He’s out there swimming, waiting for me.’ I used to think she was talking about my dad. Do you think he could be a ghost, out there somewhere, swimming? Do you think she’s talking about him?”

Ebb looks at me for a moment. He glances sadly up to the glowing haze above.

“I’m sorry, Rosie. I’ve heard nothing about your dad except what Homer said, that your mom met him on a freighter while crossing the ocean back when she was chasing witches.” He squints as if trying to remember. “And that he drowned before you were born. Not because of witch mischief or anything like that, I don’t think. Just because… bad things happen.”

Unanswerable questions rise up one after the other about my dad—What was he like? Did he have the sight too? Did he love my mom from the moment he met her? I feel an empty place inside ache. Ebb waits for me to say something, but I’m silent, so he continues.

“The ghosts who stay behind are a rarity, Rosie. Most times people are just gone, Beyond. Your dad—if he were out there somewhere, I think we would have heard about it by now.”

I stare down at my feet, crestfallen. But why would my mom always talk about someone waiting for her in the sea, if it’s not him? I tuck and fold the hope inside me to think about later in secret. Maybe that feeling of always missing another half—maybe that’s my heart knowing my dad is somewhere out there, trying to find me and help me.

There’s a deep kindness in Ebb’s voice when he speaks again.

“I know it’s not the same as having a mom and dad who are really there for you, but you were never alone, Rosie, even though you felt like you were. The times you’ve woken up from nightmares and your mom wouldn’t comfort you. The times you’ve fallen and she didn’t get you a Band-Aid. Your first steps that she ignored. I’ve been here through all of it; all of us ghosts in your house have. You just couldn’t see it.”

I stare at him quietly, feeling my face flush. Even though he’s trying to be nice, I don’t like the idea of ghosts lingering around for my whole life without me knowing it—not at all. I’ve always been a secretive kind of person—especially about my feelings. I like to keep myself a secret from pretty much everyone but Germ. And now I wonder, how many of my secrets does Ebb know?

---

The night is just beginning to fade when we see the warm lights of my house up ahead, glowing through the dark wet dimness. Several ghosts are floating across the lawn as if leaving after a long night’s haunt.

A small creature, all fangs and claws, is running across the grass toward us, and he lunges at my leg, though he passes right through it. He growls and snarls up at me before lurching away.

“What was that?” I ask, shuddering. An evil creature? I wonder. A witch’s familiar?

“Just the ghost of a rabid possum,” Ebb says. “He’s a mean old thing, tries to bite everybody. We all wish he’d move on, honestly.”

We are just venturing onto the grass when I almost walk right into a flesh-and-blood, breathing man.

I stumble back, shocked. It takes a few moments of staring and getting my bearings to realize it’s only Gerald, the guy who sometimes fixes things around the property, whom I pay with my mom’s checkbook.

Germ and I stand frozen in our tracks, Ebb hovering between us. We stare at Gerald and Gerald stares back. And then he smiles.

“You two are up early,” he says. Neither Germ nor I can find words to reply, because we are waiting for him to notice Ebb.

“Um,” I say, “we were… bird-watching.”

Gerald cocks his head at me. “Birds?”

“You have to get up early to see the red-breasted, uh, warble… um… jay,” Germ puts in.

Gerald stares at us for a moment, then nods. At the same time, a translucent old woman—the washerwoman I saw last night—barrels through him with an arm full of filmy sheets, and Germ almost loses it, snorting into her hand.

“Bless you,” I say.

“Well, no rest for the weary,” Gerald says, after giving us another strange look. He then walks across the lawn to his truck to get his supplies, as the last of the ghosts but Ebb trickle into the woods beyond him. We let out the breaths we’ve been holding.

“Well,” Germ says, eyeing Gerald but turning to me. She has circles under her eyes. “I better get home. My mom wanted me there by seven. And maybe she will believe me, about everything. Maybe she can help.”

I look at her, feeling guilty suddenly—all the night’s seemingly impossible events catching up to me.

“Germ” I say, “I don’t know how you can see. But the witches… all of this is my problem. I don’t want you to be in danger too.”

“It’s our problem,” Germ says. “I feel like I caught the sight from you somehow, and I’m happy I did.” She frowns. “But, Rosie, I want you to be safe. I think you should really think about running like Ebb and Homer say.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say slowly, looking to Ebb, who watches us silently. It hurts a little, because I can’t imagine ever leaving Germ, and I wonder how she can encourage me to leave.

She gives me a quick wave and gets on one of the rusty old bikes that we share, by the shed. As soon as she’s gone, things feel emptier and scarier.

“Well, I’ll be back tonight,” Ebb says.

I turn to him. “From now on, maybe you could give me some privacy,” I say. “I really appreciate all your help, but would you mind just… staying outside the house from now on? I mean, you’re a boy, for one thing. It’s sort of…”

Ebb’s mouth drops closed, then straightens into a thin, embarrassed line. His glow dims a little. He nods. Then he turns and drifts across the grass without another word. A moment later, as the sun rises above the lip of the sea, he vanishes completely.

Inside, I climb the stairs and look in on my mom, who’s asleep.

She is peaceful in her bed, despite the wild night that’s passed.

When she wakes, I’ll show her the book and see if she can remember. But in my heart of hearts, I think that she’ll wake and look at me with foggy eyes and try her hardest to remember things, and fail, like she always does. She’ll go about her day as if I’m not here. She’ll sit and look out at the sea.

For now I crawl into bed and hope for a couple of hours’ sleep. I tap out on my fingers the four days till the dark moon. I have so much to find out before then. What secret saved me the night I was born? Is it the same secret my mom found out about fighting witches? What weapon can I use to defend myself?

I pull The Witch Hunter’s Guide into bed with me and flip slowly through the pages until I reach the section called “The Oakses and Their Weapons.”

As Homer warned, it’s a disappointment. There is only one simple paragraph about weapons, at the very beginning of the section. It reads: A weapon is as much a part of a witch hunter as her fingernails or her teeth. It is tied right to her heart, and that’s where she keeps it close. The secret of it is passed on from mother to daughter, a gift of magic and material combined: an embroidered dress for a shield, a sword made of song, a net knit from poetry.

It doesn’t make sense. How does anyone knit a net of poetry, or embroider a shield? It sounds simple and impossible at the same time. And one thing is for sure, my mother never passed on the secret to me.

Beyond this, there are old photos pasted onto the pages, from as far back as the days of blurry old black-and-whites of ladies in long dresses with bustles. My family—all the women. People I have never heard of, but whom I long for. A woman with a severe gray bun, Dorothy Oaks, cursed with madness—my grandmother? A woman with scraggly brown hair, holding a fine leather-bound dagger, Mary Lee Oaks, struck with babble and confusion. A woman in a beautiful dress stitched all over with pictures, Eugenia Oaks, cursed to forget. And my heart sinks seeing them, as I read the curses by their names.

Women who knew more than me, who never had their sight hidden from them, who grew up learning to fight, and were told the secrets of their family tree. They all met terrible ends. They were blotted out. Every single one.

Who am I—a girl who didn’t know even about the invisible fabric until this night—to think I can do what they couldn’t?

I look out the window, thinking about the Memory Thief. How she blotted my mom out—taking all the love out of her, and with it, all the fight. She is going to blot me out too, in four days, if I can’t figure out how to kill her first.

Maybe I should run.

But then I think again about my mom. I wonder if maybe the love Homer says she felt for me could be hidden inside her like a muscle memory, like the way a person plays the piano without thinking about it. Like if once she got a little of it, it would all come back to her.

And then it lands on me—the sudden, breathless, horribly hurtful hope. To have someone look at me like I’m a light their eyes are drawn to. To have a real mom, which would mean a real family, which would mean I, myself, am a real, lovable daughter.

If that’s not worth risking your life for, I don’t know what is.