CHAPTER 27 
We are in a narrow tunnel of rock stretching back into the dark, on a slight tilt downward.
Ebb at first trails along behind me, but soon he passes through me and takes the lead. He begins disappearing around curves up ahead to scout things out. Moths line the way, fluttering along the walls, but with Little One close by, they stay away from me. With each step, the air gets cooler.
I haven’t been walking long when Ebb comes drifting back to me, looking at me strangely.
“What is it?”
“Well, the tunnel sort of ends up ahead.”
“Ends?” I ask. This can’t be the end.
“Sort of ends,” Ebb says, but with a nervous look, full of dread.
“What do you mean, ‘sort of ends’?”
He simply turns, and I follow.
I see what he means a few moments later, when we reach a dead end with only a small hole in the rock wall ahead of us. It’s just big enough for a person to fit through but not by much. It’s covered in the same silky cocoon material as the cave mouth. As I shine my flashlight deeper in to take a look, my heart quickens.
“It’s not a path anymore,” I whisper to Ebb. “It’s a slide.”
“I tried floating down a bit, but I didn’t get to the end. It just seems to keep going and going down. So I floated back up.”
“But…,” I say, staring down into the darkness into which the slide plummets, “if I slide down, there’s no way to get back up. Not for me.”
This, I realize, is why Ebb looks so filled with dread. He nods solemnly.
My heart is beating so hard, it feels like it could stop as I force myself to move the silky covering of the slide aside, and climb up—crouched—into the hole.
My fingers clutch the rock wall on either side of me to hold me still. The slide is so steep that already it’s hard to keep myself from sailing down into the darkness.
“Will you go first?” I ask breathlessly. “And meet me at the bottom?”
Ebb nods.
I peer down into the silky, slippery tunnel. I remember a lake Germ’s mom used to take us to as kids, and how it felt for us to jump in—those first days in late spring when the water was still so cold. How Germ would take the leap right off the bat but I would linger, scared of that first moment of being airborne, when I couldn’t turn back.
“You’ll be with me down there?” I ask Ebb.
“Yes,” Ebb says. “I will.”
“Okay,” I say. I try to slow my breath, but it’s coming fast. “Go ahead.”
Ebb nods, floats down into the darkness, then disappears. Soon even his glow is gone.
I hold my breath, and think about my mom.
And then I let go, and slide.
At first I think I’m imagining it. Far below me in the dark as I slide, a haunting, scratchy music echoes. An old-timey voice croons,
“We just discovered each other
Tonight when the lights were low.
One dance led up to another
And now I can’t let you go.”
I’ve been sliding down and down and down for what seems like forever, my stomach lodged in my throat, my legs numb with the feeling of cresting the peak of a roller coaster. As the time has ticked by, I’ve steadied myself a little so I’m not slipping around so much. I’ve pointed my feet, with my hands at my sides to stabilize me. The slide twists and turns, it spirals, it dips so steeply at times, I almost lose contact. It feels like I’m sliding right down under the ocean, right down to the center of the earth. I try to remember if the core of the earth is hot or cold, but I can’t. I shouldn’t have daydreamed through geology. How far and long have I gone? Hours? Miles?
But now, the music. And—if my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me—a glimmer of something far below me. A flickering of light.
And then seconds later, with a shock, I’m truly airborne and out of the darkness, falling through nothing but empty air.
I land, and bounce, and land and bounce again.
After a few moments, I’m still enough to see what, exactly, I’ve landed on, but I can’t quite make sense of it. I’m on the top of a huge pile of… old mattresses.
I stare up at the stone ceiling high above, and the hole out of which I’ve fallen, in a daze. With a sinking heart, I know I’ll never reach that hole again. Then I look down and see that Ebb is hovering near the ground below, staring up at me, a mixture of relief and fear on his face.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod.
I roll onto my side, and off the mattresses, tumbling down little by little till I reach the ground. The music is still playing.
“So tell me I may always dance
The ‘Anniversary Waltz’ with you.
Tell me this is real romance,
An anniversary dream come true.”
We’re in an enormous craggy underground space. There are cobwebs in the upper curves of the ceiling and memory moths fluttering around, but there are also signs that there is someone in these underground caverns besides us. The space is lit by torch-lined walls, and I see that everywhere inside the cavern there are piles and piles of things: books, old bicycles, video game cartridges, old clocks with broken faces. And far off along one of the craggy walls, an old record player is spinning its scratchy tune.
I crouch next to the nearest pile of books and sift through it. They’re books written in languages I don’t know, books of Greek mythology, coloring books, old romance novels.
“There’s a path—but much bigger than the tunnel, more like a series of caverns. It just keeps spiraling down,” Ebb says, his glow still very dim, his face almost sick.
“It looks like,” I say, peering around, “she’s really… nostalgic.” Ebb is quiet.
“What’s with the music?” I ask him.
Ebb stares hard at me, then looks over at the record player. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so worried, if that’s possible.
“This was my parents’ song,” he says. “It was the song they played at their wedding. They used to play it for me, on their anniversary, and dance with each other.”
He looks at me.
“I don’t know if it’s a coincidence. But maybe she knows we’re here. Maybe she’s toying with us.”
A shiver runs through me. I wish I could reach for Ebb’s hand, but the distance between the dead and the living is too big for that.
“Well,” he says, glancing over his shoulder, dim and drained-looking. “We should be quiet, so that if she doesn’t know we’re here, she won’t find out.” He doesn’t look so hopeful about that, though. “Shall we?”
I follow him toward the opening of the next cavern, and we move ahead.
The more we walk, the more honeycombed and vast the caverns become. Smaller tunnels branch off from our main path in all directions, and everywhere there are things stacked in corners and pathways: old paintings, and ancient carved wooden figures piled up next to used tires, stop signs, model trains, all covered in cobwebs.
“She’s a pack rat,” I breathe in wonder.
Yellowing photos stand propped against walls. Ancient marble statues, beautiful illustrated books, woven silks, entire sections of elaborate tile walls. In one enormous cavern we come upon a weather-beaten merry-go-round, paint chipping off the ornate carved horses. In another, a rusted tugboat looms up above us, leaning against the enormous stone walls. It’s like a museum, or a big dusty closet, and beautiful in a way. Mementos of life on earth, hidden away inside of it. It doesn’t feel like a dark and terrible lair; it feels more like a melancholy person’s attic.
“Why would she want all these things if she hates people so much?” I wonder out loud.
Ebb shakes his head. “The same reason she wants their memories, I guess. She just wants to steal, and to desperately hold on to everything, I think.”
I consider the times I’ve seen the Memory Thief. Her empty eyes. Her grasping hands. And I realize, Ebb is right. She’s clinging to all this stuff, and I suppose to memories that don’t belong to her too. Like she’s trying to fill a hole that is too big to fill. Maybe all the witches are trying to fill something that’s empty inside them; maybe they are all an absence of something beautiful.
Ahead, Ebb floats on, rounding a curve and disappearing from sight.
The minutes pass, and I don’t see him again, and I start to worry. “Ebb?” I call, in a loud whisper. But no one replies.
And then I catch sight of him. He’s come to a standstill and is looking down on something. Only when I’m standing beside him do I see what it is.
It’s a canyon—enormous, seemingly bottomless—opening out in front of us. And it’s full of moths. Bright, beautiful moths, pulsing with yellows, oranges, and golds. Millions of them, maybe billions of them. A multitude.
A gossamer bridge made of silk is suspended over the canyon. And out above the abyss, at the middle of the bridge and towering several stories into the sky, is an enormous cocoon.
My body swims with chills. I know, without even having to question it, that that’s where I’ll find the Memory Thief.
We stand silently, staring. I glance again down at the canyon below, full of moths and therefore full of lost history, lost love, repeated mistakes.
“So many memories,” I say after a moment’s shocked silence, anger pulsing from my head to my feet. “These belonged to people. They were never supposed to be hers. All because she’s too empty to have her own.”
The more I stare at all the countless memories taken, the more enraged I get. The more I hate this witch and all the other witches too.
There’s something I’ve noticed over the years. When I’m angry, I’m especially clumsy. I bump into walls. I crash into things. It’s like my negative thoughts drive me to run into the closest thing I can find.
And now is no exception. As I turn abruptly away from the canyon, in a cloud of rage, I twist off kilter on one foot and lose my balance, and then stomp against the ground to right myself. I don’t mean to kick anything out of place. But there’s a tiny pebble right where my shoe lands, and it goes flying out into the void below us. It clatters along a rocky outcropping as it falls downward. For a split second, Ebb and I go still, and wait.
And then the entire abyss of moths erupts with the sound of millions of wings as the hoarde of creatures—all at once—lifts into the air, flapping all around us. They swirl and spin for several seconds and then settle back down as quickly as they took flight. Still, the sound has been deafening.
Inside the cocoon, a light flickers on.
We gape at it, and the long narrow bridge that leads to it. I feel like I’m going to be sick.
“I think she knows we’re here,” Ebb says.