41. Mattias

Jessie caught my hand and held it tight on the way back outside. They'd asked me to help them find a bathroom in Peter's house, muttering something about forgetting about the bathroom, and how annoying it was, but we'd managed, and we were on the way back out into the yard.

"Cookies and lemonade probably make it worth the effort to find a bathroom," I pointed out.

They gave the deep sigh of the terminally put-upon and nodded. "I guess."

We stepped out of the house to panic.

"Where are they?" Connor was demanding from a slightly annoyed little blonde girl—no, the blonde girl. The one from the woods. The one who'd disappeared. "They were here just a minute ago. What did you?—"

"Daddy, how come you're yelling at 'Rora?" Jessie asked, letting go of my hand and sauntering over to where he was standing on the opposite side of the picnic table as the... little girl? Horrific monster? Unknowable godlike thing?

Connor spun and lunged at Jessie, picking them up and holding them against him, breathing hard. "Sorry," he muttered. "Sorry, kiddo, I just couldn't find you, and I—I?—"

"I promise, Aurora isn't going to take anyone away," Peter said, having come around the table to squeeze Connor's shoulder. "She promised me."

The girl-thing in question crossed her arms over her chest and gave a petulant huff. "Peter said it's wrong. But I'm just making friends. I'm... It's..."

"Lonely," Peter offered, when she seemed at a loss for how to finish her next sentence, trailing off and glaring into space.

She scrubbed one hand over an eye and nodded, looking to the ground instead of up at us, and for the first time, I got the impression of vulnerability from her. Of sadness.

"Oh honey," Grandma said from her spot at one of the tables, "I understand that. But you're going at it all wrong, if what you want is friends."

As usual, when Grandma spoke, everyone listened.

Even the terrifying fae creature. "What do you mean?"

Grandma motioned to Jessie. "The people you've been taking have families. Lives to live. Futures. They have so much left outside the woods, they're bound to eventually leave you, even if you try to take away their memories. There are lots of people in the world who don't have that. Will, you remember? When you took him away, the people were sad that they'd failed him, but he wasn't leaving a happy family. He never wants to leave the woods; you didn't even have to take away his memories of his family to get him to stay, did you?"

Aurora hunched in on herself, staring hard at the ground, but gave her head a tiny shake.

"'Course not," Will himself piped up from across the picnic table, where he was chewing on a barbecued rib. "Families are the worst. Who'd want to leave the woods and stop playing?" He stopped to give Jessie a glare, then an even more pointed look at Ezra from the grocery store, who was sitting next to Grandma. He looked frail, more than I'd ever seen him look—like he'd lost weight. I wondered if his feeling "under the weather" was more than just a passing illness.

Ezra smiled at him, giving a little shrug, but then patting Grandma's hand. "She's right, Aurora. And then you've got people like me, who had their life. Their family. We'd love to come back and play in the woods, but I'm afraid we just don't have it in us anymore."

Aurora seemed unfazed by the notion, just stamped a foot and glared more. "Well why not? You always found the best pirate booty. You should come back."

Ezra gave her a soft smile. "I did, didn't I? But I can barely walk anymore. Sure couldn't swing from the trees."

Grandma nodded. "Sounds like fun, but I think I'm going to end up in a wheelchair in a bit. Hurts more to walk every day."

"Grownups," Aurora muttered, like it was some kind of slur. "Then stop it. Just be a kid again."

"As much as I'd love to, that's not something I can just do," Grandma told her. "Wake up every morning in my seventies, want to or not."

"And I'm five thousand," Aurora said, with all the scorn a seven-year-old girl who was actually older than freaking Western Civilization could muster. "Just don't be old."

And with that, she marched over and snatched up Grandma's hand, pulling her to her feet. I lurched forward, afraid I'd have to catch her to keep her from falling and breaking her hip again, but the person who stood up was... a child. My grandmother, wearing a tiny child-size version of the sweater and slacks she'd worn to the barbecue, but six or seven years old.

Silent, everyone stared.

"This is why you didn't explain what happened," I heard Trevor say to Connor behind me. "Fuck me."

I didn't think Trevor and I had a lot in common, all things considered, but I had to agree with him on that.

"Grandma?"

She turned to me, looking confused. "Mattias?" Her eyes rounded and she put a hand to her throat, then looked down. Then up at herself. Then up at Aurora, blinking in shock. "I'm..."

"A kid again. Duh. So can we play now?"

I could have broken down sobbing for the relief that coursed through me. She was okay. More than that, she was... healthy. But also, like Jessie for the last three years, I doubted I'd see much of her if she was going to disappear into the woods with the scary fairy.

But she'd be alive.

She turned to look at me, breathing shallowly, and I could sense a panic coming on. Understandable. I was about ready to panic too.

"I could go back into the woods?" Ezra asked, almost apologetic, like he'd done something wrong.

"Of course," Aurora said, exasperated. "All you ever had to do was ask." She turned to look at Connor. "This is why you human parents are always annoyed, isn't it? They don't ask simple stuff."

Connor ducked his head and gave a half shrug like maybe, and maybe he didn't want to either agree with her or piss her off, but she wasn't wrong.

Meanwhile, she grabbed Ezra's hand and yanked him up too, leaving him a gangly kid with black hair and bright eyes.

"Okay," Will said, "But we gotta eat first. No cheese potatoes in the woods."

And that, well... that was that. Oh, we had a lot of discussions left to have about this whole thing, but just maybe, we'd found an answer that literally everyone could live with. No more disappearing kids, and I'd never truly have to let go of my Grandmother. Or Ezra. Or who knew who else?

Connor came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me. "Are you okay?"

I turned to meet his gaze, concerned and beautiful and fuck me entirely, but—"I love you."

His breath caught, and he smiled back. "I love you too, Mattias. But are you okay?"

"I... no. I'm not. But I think I will be. I think maybe... everything will be?"