CHAPTER 26 
The sounds of Seaport—the occasional hum of far-off cars, the ever-present sound of the sea—fall away behind us as we walk deeper into the woods. Soon all we can hear is the rustling of leaves and the occasional but reliable woo-wup-woo of Little One as she finds another memory moth. Up above, the stars look as if someone has thrown a handful of bright seeds across the sky.
Occasionally we cross a road cutting its way across the forest, or pass a remote house nestled in the trees, but mostly we are on our own.
At dawn, we come to a stop, as the memory moths and Ebb and Little One—all the invisible world—disappears.
“I’ll wake at my grave at dusk,” Ebb says. “And get here as soon as I can.” A moment later he fades and then is gone. Germ and I sleep in a patch of sun for most of the day, our sleeping bags huddled together, trying to keep warm.
At dusk we rise. Fred has crawled out of my pocket and made a web in the tree above us, with a half-finished picture of a flower. I gently reach up to where he sits and drop him back into my pocket. We eat, and wait for Little One to come to life in the beam of my flashlight and for Ebb to return.
It doesn’t take long. By the time the growing sliver of moon is rising above the trees, we see his luminous form coming toward us in the dimness. He’s not winded, of course, but looks more pained than yesterday. The separation from home is clearly wearing on him more tonight. We don’t say much to each other as we pack up and begin again.
As we make our way along the miles in the night, and stop to eat now and then, we quickly realize that what I thought was a month’s worth of jerky and peanut M&M’s is not going to last that long at all. The more I think about it, the whole thing—setting off to find a witch who could be anywhere in the world—seems like a crazy idea. I think reality is sinking in for Germ, too. I’m starting to get blisters, and even Germ has been limping a little. Turns out Keds are not the best hiking shoes.
“My mom’s gonna be so mad,” she says glumly. “I’m sure she’s called the police by now. What if they send bloodhounds after us?”
“I think that was only in the 1950s, they did that,” I say, but I’m not sure.
The one bright side is that as we walk, the number of memory moths appears to be growing. Instead of flying so far ahead that she’s almost beyond hearing distance, Little One is now finding the luminous moths more and more frequently and closer together as the night stretches on. It’s as if they are gathering, all moving in the same direction toward some common destination. Then again, that could be wishful thinking.
But by three a.m. by Germ’s watch, there are so many of them that we can follow the moths ourselves without Little One’s help. They look like clusters of stars on the trees, crawling along the ground. Ebb takes to floating on ahead of us, to see if he can find out anything interesting in the near distance.
He zips back a few times, but then he doesn’t come back at all.
And then the sky begins to get light. We realize we are not going to see Ebb again this night, and keep exchanging worried glances.
Finally, legs aching, feet sore, exhausted from walking more than we’ve ever walked in our lives—we nervously go to sleep and hope he’ll come back at nightfall.
We wake well past dark. Ebb is there waiting for us, perched on a rock and staring into the distance ahead. He turns as I rustle awake, and his face is hard to read. Something has happened.
“What is it?” I ask, sitting up and rubbing my eyes, the cold outside of my sleeping bag a rude awakening. Beside me, Germ stirs too.
Ebb looks at me a long time, and then says, “I found something last night, just before I vanished.”
“What?”
“Better if I just show you, I think.”
We follow Ebb through the woods. At his urging, I leave my flashlight off, so we only have the moon and the stars and moths and Ebb as light. Finally he leads us into a thick scrub of bushes and thorns. On and on we go, picking our way slowly through the dense, forbidding undergrowth, through ravines and crags filled with thorns. I wonder if maybe he’s forgotten we can’t float through obstacles like he can. My hands, even through my mittens, are pricked, my clothes torn.
But then, pushing prickers and scrubby bushes aside, I see that he’s come to a stop—and that he’s staring at something ahead of him that’s hard to make sense of. It looks like a big glowing, fluttering mouth looming up from the dark ground, its lips squirming with glowing light, purple, yellow, deep pinks, blues.
A few steps closer, and I see that it’s not a mouth at all—but an opening into a rocky outcropping, every inch covered in moths. It’s a cave.
Moths are crawling in and out of it. It’s covered in a kind of strange material, and I realize it is the gray, silky fabric of a cocoon. The silk is so thick that, if it weren’t for the illumination of the memory moths, it would blend in and just appear to be more rock.
Nobody has to tell me that the Memory Thief has been here.
“But how… so close?” I wonder out loud. Not three nights’ walk away from my house, and we’re at the entrance to her hiding place? It’s too much of a coincidence.
Ebb already has this figured out, however.
“She must have these entryways all over the world,” he says. “Hidden where no one ever finds them. This must be how she comes and goes. I’ll bet there are thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands. I bet they all lead to one place.”
We stare at the cave for a long time. A slight, cool breeze emanates from inside—it smells old, a stony, musty breath of the earth.
“She’s in there somewhere,” I whisper.
We stand there several minutes before it really sinks in that this is a place I have to enter. And one I have to enter without Germ. Who knows how much farther and longer the journey will be once I’m inside?
I turn to look at her, and by the pained, confused expression on her face, I can see she’s thinking the same thing. She opens her mouth to say something, but I say it for her.
“You can’t come with me,” I say.
Germ looks torn, like she thinks this is the truth but also doesn’t want it to be.
“This is something I have to do. Nobody else,” I say. “This is my fight, not yours.”
Germ nods, but there are tears squeezing out of her eyes.
“Will you be okay to get home on your own?” I ask.
“Oh sure,” she says, “definitely.” But she’s bluffing. I can see that a solitary, three-day hike in the woods is not exactly an easy thing to contemplate.
“Will you start back now?” I ask. She nods.
“If you need me…,” she says. “If you need anything at all, send Little One for me.”
I nod. And then I reach my arms around her neck, hugging her hard. She squeezes me back fiercely. I don’t want to let go, but finally I do.
We all stand there, waiting for someone to make a move first. And then I realize that that someone has to be me.
I take one last glance at the beautiful, full-of-life, outside world, and the sky full of stars. I look at Ebb, and he nods at me sadly. I wave good-bye to Germ, and I guess to everyone and everything else, too. And then I step across the threshold, pushing my way through the thick silk of the entrance. It gives and comes apart around me as I enter, and I brush it off me with a shiver.
Ebb puts his hand over his heart, gives a gentle smile to Germ, and then he follows me.
I turn on my flashlight and shine it down into the dark. Little One flutters ahead, though she flutters lower and slower than before, pausing here and there to perch and look around her. Even she looks scared and uncertain.
Together, we enter the cave and leave the world behind—only one of us with a beating heart that pounds as we move forward—enter the cave and leave the world behind.