The Rest of the Diary
You read the green diary twice through by flashlight, under the covers, the way important books deserve.
Young Beatrix helped her unicorn all that long-ago summer. His name — she never writes it, only describes it: a sound like rain starting. Page by page they searched out the scar the lightning had left between the worlds, and page by page they worked to mend it, because his land was leaking into ours & mine into his, & doors left open let in more than weather.
The last entry is dated the first of September, fifty years ago: It is done. The tree is just a tree again. He gave me two gifts for payment & I gave him one & I will not write what mine was, because writing it would be like keeping it, & the whole point was the giving. I waved until the light was gone. I am going to be happy about this, I have DECIDED.
The handwriting on that page is very round and very careful, the way handwriting gets when its owner is trying not to cry on it.
The split tree. The same split tree — mended once by your own aunt, torn open again by Vespera's storm, and slammed shut behind the wolves. If anyone alive knows how that door works, she's downstairs right now, listening to the radio and pretending she doesn't check the orchard window every four minutes.