The Miraculous Page 11

  “What’s in the envelopes?” he asked.

  She opened one. It was empty.

  “I couldn’t think what to write, even to pretend,” she said.

  They walked around the gym, getting candy from the plastic cauldrons set up here and there. Everyone was in costume except for Wunder, but even in masks and face paint and wigs, he recognized each kid there. By now, he had delivered letters to dozens of their family members: to Charlotte Atkins’s mother and to Ivo Reis’s grandfather and to Mason Nash’s uncle. And if he kept delivering letters, Wunder realized that eventually, at some point in their lives, every single one of his classmates would get their own. Each person in this room would experience a miracle, maybe many miracles. And each, he knew, would experience a terrible, terrible loss.

  “Oh, hey, Wunder.”

  Wunder turned from faces he recognized to one of the faces he knew best of all. Davy was wearing a trash bag filled with crumpled-up paper. It was, Wunder realized, the same costume he’d worn last year.

  Davy was rock.

  Last year, Wunder had been paper. Tomás had been scissors.

  “I know it was probably dumb to wear this costume,” Davy said. “No one knows what I am without scissors and paper. But I couldn’t think of anything else. You usually plan our costumes.”

  Suddenly, Wunder felt guilt, hard and knotted, in the pit of his stomach. Davy was his friend. Davy had been his friend for his whole life. And he had yelled at him and ignored him, and now here he was wearing a costume meant for three all by himself.

  “It’s not dumb,” Wunder told him.

  “You look like a bag of trash,” Faye said. “Is that what you’re supposed to be, David? A bag of trash?”

  “No,” Davy said. He sounded miserable. “Rock. I’m a rock.”

  “You haven’t been very nice to Wundie,” Faye said, holding up a white-gloved finger. “He’s had some hard times. Some extremely hard times. And what did his friends do? They turned their backs on him, abandoned him, left him no choice but to become friends with me, et cetera.”

  “I don’t know if that’s how it happened,” Wunder said.

  But Davy was gnawing on his lip and gripping the sides of his trash bag. “It’s true!” he cried. “I’ve been a terrible friend. I know it and you know it! When my mom was sick, you always talked to me about her, Wunder. But I was—you know I get nervous. I didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Davy,” Wunder said. “I guess I didn’t know what to say either.” It felt, as he said this, like the gym grew a little brighter. He glanced around. “Where’s Tomás? I haven’t seen him.”

  Davy shrugged. “Tomás doesn’t hang out with me anymore. Did you know he made the soccer team? He’s got a lot of new friends.”

  Wunder felt the knot of guilt return. Davy had lost both of his best friends at once. “I’m really sorry, Davy,” he said.

  Davy shrugged again. “I kind of saw that one coming,” he said.

  “Me too,” Wunder said.

  They headed over to the refreshment table. Vice Principal Jefferson was there, serving punch with floating eyeballs. He was dressed as a vampire, including a long red cape.

  “Nice mummy costume, Miss Lee!” he called to Faye.

  “Nice cape-not-cloak, Mr. Jefferson,” Faye said. “But I’m not a mummy. I’m a witch.”

  Davy gripped a skeleton-print paper plate and gawked at Faye as if he were seeing her for the first time. “A witch? Are you the DoorWay House witch?”

  Faye smiled smugly at Wunder. “See? Everyone thinks she’s a witch.”

  “What have you two been doing over there?” Davy’s voice was shaky. “That place always gave me the heebie-jeebies, even before she showed up. And then she started asking about Wunder—”

  “Asking about me?” Wunder said, confused.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you—I deliver her paper. She’s always out on her porch. I keep trying to go earlier and earlier so I don’t have to see her. Today I went at 5:00 a.m., but she was already out there! I mean, it was dark and everything!”

  “Get to the point, David,” Faye said.

  “She—she asked about Wunder,” Davy said. “The day the obituary—after your sister was in the paper, Wunder. She asked me if I was your friend, and she asked if you believed in miracles. And then she had me bring an envelope to the town hall. I don’t know what it was.”

  “For the memorial stone!” Faye shrieked.

  Wunder was trying to understand what Davy was telling him, but ghosts and angels and demons and goblins were running all around him and the gym was so loud and suddenly darker again.

  “You deliver the paper there?” he asked. “Since when?”

  “Maybe a month,” Davy said.

  “When exactly?” Faye demanded.

  Davy looked uncomfortable. “The day after—after Wunder’s sister—after she … died.”

  “She showed up the day after Wundie’s sister died?” Faye shouted.

  “I—I guess so,” Davy said, bewildered. “That’s the first day I delivered her paper, anyway. And since then, she’s had me deliver a million letters. And look”—he pulled an envelope out of the pocket of his gray sweatpants—“when I brought her the paper this morning, she gave me this one. It’s for my mother.”

  It was a cream-colored envelope with a black wax seal. And scrawled across the front: Tabitha Baum.

  For weeks, Wunder and Faye had delivered letters that they had not opened. They had waited for their own. For his part, Wunder had been afraid to know what was inside, afraid to solve the mystery, and it seemed like Faye must have felt that way too, because she hadn’t pushed him.

  But this new information from Davy seemed to be her tipping point.

  “Open it!” she screamed.

  Davy was so startled that he fell backward into the punch-and-snack table. His paper-filled trash bag suit crinkled and crunched. Faye snatched the envelope.

  “That’s my mother’s!” Davy protested, knocking over a bowl of chips in his effort to right himself. But Faye was already ripping it open.

  Inside was a piece of the same worn paper folded into thirds that everyone else had received. Wunder and Davy gathered around Faye as she unfolded it. There, in the same sprawling black handwriting, were the words:

  “Behold! I tell you a miracle. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.”

  And under it:

  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.

  “The cemetery?” Davy asked. “What does it have to do with my mom?”

  Wunder shook his head, eyes on the letter. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess because she’s a miracle.”

  “A miracle? You mean the cancer? Because she got better? But why—”

  “The time for wondering is over!” Faye tossed a scrap of white cloth over her shoulder. “We’re going to the DoorWay House. Now!”

  Part Five

  THE BRANCH

  Chapter 30

  The woods were a different place at night. By day, the branches seemed to stretch toward the sun. By night, they seemed to reach out toward the path, wooden fingers ready to snatch. By day, the remaining leaves were small brown hands, waving gently, whispering crinkly hellos in the wind. By night, they were black, still whispering, but darkly, warningly. And the Spanish moss that danced by day wriggled like spiders’ legs, beckoned like witches’ fingers by night.

  Faye and Wunder didn’t talk as they hurried down the path, but Davy kept up a squeaky ramble of terror.

  “I don’t know about this, you two,” he kept saying. “I just don’t know about this.”

  Wunder didn’t know about it either, but he knew that there was nothing else to do. He couldn’t put it off any longer. The questions that had been building and building for weeks—the questions he had been too afra
id to ask anyone, even himself—it was time to ask them.

  The sight of the house rising up beyond the live oak and the nearly bare trees, bone white in the moonlight, made Wunder shiver inside. The house seemed to tower above them, higher and higher the closer they got, all sharp points and odd angles.

  There were no lights on. It was a house of shadows.

  But the witch was on her porch. It was dark, so dark, but she was there. Rocking in the chair, her white clothing the only break in the blackness.

  “I wasn’t expecting you tonight,” she said in her faraway voice. “Have you come for your letters?”

  Wunder stood at the base of the porch steps. Faye was on one side of him, Davy on the other. He shook his head. “We read Mrs. Baum’s,” he replied. “What’s going to happen on November second?”

  “That,” the witch said, “is up to you.” She stopped rocking. “Perhaps we should go inside. Tea, I think?”

  “We don’t want any tea,” Faye told her. “Not even one drop. We just want to know the truth.”

  The witch began to rock again. She considered them from her chair, her eyes two dark holes in a shadowed face.

  “Did you deliver the letters?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Wunder said.

  “And?”

  “We know that they’re for people who’ve had miracles happen to them,” he said. “And also had someone they love die.”

  “That is a good theory,” the witch said. “Although not quite correct.”

  “What’s incorrect about it, then?” Faye demanded.

  “Who has experienced a miracle?” the witch said. “Everyone. And who has lost someone? Everyone. Everyone, everyone.”

  This was what Wunder had been realizing as he delivered more and more letters, and as he stood in the school gym that night.

  Everyone was connected to the miraculous. Everyone was connected to the dead.

  But there were more questions, many more. He took a deep breath, steeled his heart, and asked, “Did you order that memorial stone—the one in the cemetery?”

  “I did,” the witch said. “I did.”

  “Why?”

  The witch kept rocking. “I sit here on this porch, and what is just beyond the trees?” She gestured ahead with one hand, into the darkness. “A cemetery. For many reasons—many, many reasons—death is on my mind. I read the paper every day—”

  “You read the obituaries every day,” Faye corrected her. “We saw them on your kitchen table.”

  “I do,” the witch agreed. “I do. I do. And there is so much death in the world. Every day, every day, every day. And so many who believe they have lost the ones they love forever. I cannot change the world. But this town, perhaps that is in my power to change.” She leaned forward in the chair and her face caught the light of the moon above. She was staring right at Wunder. “The memorial stone is only the beginning of what I want to do, what I want your help to do.”

  “But why did you make it from Milagros?” Wunder asked. “Why did you write it that way?”

  “Ah,” the witch said. “You see, my name is Milagros.”

  She leaned back. The rocking chair began to move again, back and forth, the sound of its rails against the uneven porch planks the only noise.

  Then Faye let out a scream. Davy screamed too.

  “You’re Milagros? That’s your name?” Faye pointed a white-gloved finger at the witch. “Who are you? Who are you really?”

  The witch sighed a long deep sigh. “That will be hard to understand. So many things in this life and after are difficult to understand. I do not know why it has to be so.” She rose from the chair. “But come inside. I will explain as best I can.”

  “Really don’t drink a single thing,” Faye hissed as the witch opened the door. “What if she stole your sister’s soul and she wants to steal yours? What if she’s a demon? Do you have your amulet? I have mine.”

  “Who’s stealing souls?” Davy whispered frantically. “And what about omelets? What’s going on?”

  Wunder didn’t have his amulet, but he didn’t care. He had done it—he had asked his questions at last. Whatever price he had to pay for the answers, it would be worth it.

  He climbed up the porch steps and crossed to the waiting pitch-black of the open door.

  He followed Milagros inside.

  Chapter 31

  As soon as Wunder stepped over the threshold of the DoorWay House, the stone of his heart grew not just warm but hot, began not just to shiver, but to crack.

  Like it wasn’t a stone at all. Like there was something inside that wanted to come out.

  The witch carried a single candlestick as she led them through the house. The flame illumined only the space right around her. Outside of its glow, it was dark, dark, darker than dark. Wunder followed behind her, watching as the wall lit up one piece at a time, the bright white spirals seeming to blossom out of nothingness. He listened to the witch’s footsteps, which seemed strangely slow, labored, not like the quick, graceful movements he was used to from her.

  In the kitchen, the witch sat across from Wunder, Faye, and Davy. She set the candle on the table, and the flame danced up at her, lighting up the crags and cracks of her skin, making it look as though she were wearing a mask.

  “This house,” she said. “Do you remember what I told you this house is made of?”

  “DoorWay Tree,” Wunder replied. “But what we want to know—”

  “DoorWay Tree,” the witch continued. “And do you remember what I told you about that tree?”

  “You said every town should have one. You said they can last forever. But Davy says that you—”

  “That is right,” the witch said, cutting him off again. “That is right. And I have been thinking, Wunder.” She bowed her head forward, farther into the light. “This town … this town needs a DoorWay Tree. Your family needs a DoorWay Tree. So does yours, Faye. And yours, Davy. And so do I. Yes, yes, yes, so do I.” The witch’s black eyes met each of theirs in turn, then came back to Wunder’s. “Will you get one for us?”

  No one spoke. The flame flickered. This wasn’t what Wunder had expected, this talk of trees. What did it have to do with the letters? What did it have to do with his sister?

  “Why?” Faye finally asked. “Why do we need it? What does it do? Is it magical? Are you magical?”

  “I believe,” the witch said, “you asked that once before.”

  “And you never answered me,” Faye said. “And you still haven’t.”

  The witch leaned back, her face shadowed again, hidden. “I told you the trees are special. Their roots go down deep. Their branches reach up high. They are trees of life and trees of death, connecting worlds, connecting souls, in many ways, many mysterious ways.” She nodded, as if to herself. “Yes, yes, yes, it would be good for this town to have a DoorWay Tree again. A DoorWay Tree is a marvelous thing indeed.”

  And suddenly the witch’s request made sense to Wunder. This house, the DoorWay House, this was where it had all begun for him. This was where he had seen his first miracle, where he had become a miracologist. And this was where the witch, whoever she was, had appeared. If the house was so special, how much more powerful must the source of the house be, the DoorWay Tree?

  “We’ll do it,” he said. “We’ll get a DoorWay Tree.” He could feel Faye giving him the evil eye. He could hear Davy making little noises of dissent. But he didn’t care.

  Time after time, he had been drawn to this house and to the witch, even when he didn’t want to believe, even when he was trying to stay away. After these weeks of delivering letters, of reading The Miraculous, of feeling his heart telling him what his head didn’t want to hear, Wunder knew he couldn’t deny anymore that something was happening here, something that was too great, too overwhelming to be a coincidence.

  And now the witch had promised a miracle. She had promised it in writing in a letter delivered all over Branch Hill. And Wunder believed her.

  He believed in mir
acles again.

  And if the witch needed a DoorWay Tree to do one, then he would get her a DoorWay Tree.

  “We’ll do it,” he said again. “But how?”

  The witch nodded her approval. “We are not gods,” she said. “We cannot create something from nothing. We must use what exists already, change it to something new.”

  “So we need … a seed?” Wunder guessed.

  The witch shook her head. “DoorWay Trees cross-pollinate, you see. That means they need each other to create seeds. But there are so few of them now, too few. Until there are more, there is only one way left to grow a new DoorWay Tree. You must plant a piece of the tree itself—a piece that connects to the trunk. A branch.”

  “But how can we get that?” Wunder asked. “If there are hardly any left.”

  “There is one I know of,” the witch said. “In the town of Benedict. That is where you must go.”

  Faye, her wig askew, her white clothing unraveling, spoke up. “These trees,” she said. “They sound pretty powerful. Pretty … paranormal. Who planted them?”

  The witch lifted her white-cloth-wrapped shoulders once. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have not been so far. I know more than you, I am sure, but still very little.”

  “But are we allowed to plant another one?”

  The witch smiled. Her perfect teeth were tiny points of brightness gleaming in the candlelight. “So much is left up to us. More than we realize, often more than we want. There was a DoorWay Tree here once, long ago. And now there will be one again. For this town. For them.” She waved in the direction of the cemetery. “For me. But I am getting to be an old woman. I need help. You three, you are my help. You are my miracles. Yes, yes, yes. You are my miracles.”

  Chapter 32

  In the end, they all said yes. And on Sunday morning, early, early, early, Wunder snuck out of his house for the second time in his life.

  This time he left a note taped to the front door:

  Went to help Davy deliver papers. Be home tonight.