Lyla pressed her mother's worn dress to her nose and breathed in. The smell was almost gone now. She wore the dress every day because it was the last piece of her mother she had left. A man had stolen Lyla and her brother and sister from their home weeks ago. He locked them in a sagging shack deep in a swamp, far from any town. Lyla had promised herself one thing. She would get out and find her mother. Henry sat in the corner, scratching at the holes in his pants. He was eleven and smaller than the others. "The door's nailed shut," he said. "I already tried." Clara stood at the broken window, staring at the brown water outside. She was fifteen and the oldest. She had kept them alive by giving them her share of food. "The man rows out every morning," Clara said. "He's gone now. This is our only chance." Lyla crossed to the window. The glass was gone. Only a few rotten boards blocked the gap. She gripped one and pulled. It cracked. She pulled again, and it snapped free. "Help me," she said. Clara grabbed the next board. Together they tore it loose. Henry worked beside them, his thin hands bleeding on the splinters. One by one the boards came away until the hole was wide enough. "I'll go first," Clara said. She climbed through and dropped into the shallow water. It reached her knees. She held up her arms. "Henry, now." Henry squeezed through. Lyla lowered him down to Clara. Then she climbed out herself, careful not to tear her mother's dress on the broken wood. Her boots sank into the mud. They waded away from the shack. The water was dark and cold. Bugs sang in the reeds. Clara led them toward a line of trees on higher ground. Then Henry stopped. "Clara. Which way is home?" Clara turned in a slow circle. Swamp stretched in every direction. There was no road. There was no sign of where the man had taken them. Every direction looked the same. "I don't know," Clara said quietly. Lyla looked back. The shack sat small and dark behind them. They had gotten out. But now they were lost in a swamp with no food, no path, and no idea where their mother waited. A bird screamed somewhere in the trees. Lyla took Henry's hand and held it tight. "We keep moving," she said. "We find her. That's all that matters." They pushed forward into the water, leaving the shack behind. The way home was gone. But so were the walls that held them.

The light ahead was warm and yellow. For a moment Lyla thought it meant a town, a road, their mother. Then a hand closed around her arm and yanked her sideways into the reeds. She screamed. Henry and Clara spun toward the sound, but the dark had already swallowed her. "Hush now," the man said. His voice was low and tired. He was tall, with a scraggly beard and a long coat stained dark at the hem. A round gut pushed against his dirty shirt. He held Lyla's arm the way you hold something you don't want to drop. "You'll draw every gator in the marsh." Clara charged through the water. "Let her go!" She grabbed a broken branch and swung it at his head. The man caught it with one hand and tore it away. "Stop," he said. Not angry. Just firm. "My name's Wade. I'm not him." Lyla went still. "Not who?" "The one who kept you in that shack." Wade jerked his chin toward the yellow light. It came from a sagging cabin on wooden posts, its roof green with moss. "I've seen his place. I've seen kids come out of it before. Never seen three get this far." Henry crept closer, his thin shoulders shaking. "You're lying." "Maybe." Wade let go of Lyla's arm. He stepped back and raised both hands, empty. "But I've got dry wood and a pot of beans. And you three are about to walk into the deep part. Water goes over your heads thirty feet that way." He pointed into the black where the children had been headed. Lyla looked where he pointed. The reeds ended. The water turned flat and still and bottomless-looking. She had almost led them straight into it. She stared at Wade. His face was dirty and his eyes were red, but he wasn't reaching for her again. The man in the shack had never once let them go. "How do we know?" Lyla asked. "You don't." Wade turned and walked toward the lit cabin. He didn't look back. "Door's open. Stay in the swamp if you'd rather." Lyla's heart pounded. Clara gripped her hand hard. "Lyla, no." But Lyla thought of the cold water and the long dark and Henry's shaking hands. One night. One meal. Then they would ask this man which way led out of the marsh. Which way led home. "We go in," Lyla said. "But we watch him. All night." They followed Wade up the sagging steps. Inside, a fire burned in an iron stove. A pot steamed on top. Two narrow doors opened onto two small bedrooms. Wade handed Lyla a bowl. "Eat. We'll talk roads in the morning." Lyla took it. For the first time in weeks, a grown man had opened a door for her instead of locking it. She did not trust him. But she was no longer lost.

Lyla woke with her bowl empty and the fire low. Clara sat upright against the wall, awake all night, watching the door. Henry slept curled on the floor. Wade stood at the stove, stirring the pot. He did not look like a man planning harm. But Lyla had promised herself she would not trust his face. She would test him. "You said we'd talk roads," Lyla said. "Which way is out?" Wade set down the spoon. He wiped his hands on his stained coat. "You want the truth or the easy answer?" "The truth." "Then come look." He opened the door and stepped onto the sagging porch. Lyla followed. Clara grabbed her arm, but Lyla shook her head and kept going. Outside, the marsh stretched flat and gray in the morning light. Wade pointed across the water. "Firm ground is that way. Half a day of walking. The road sits past it." Lyla studied his face. "Prove it. Show me he's real. Show me the man's shack." Wade went still. He understood what she was asking. She did not believe he was separate from the one who had caged them. He could lie and lead them anywhere. So she had named a test he could not fake. "That's a dangerous thing to ask," Wade said. "If he sees us, he takes you back." "Then you're scared of him too." Lyla crossed her arms. "A man who worked with him wouldn't be scared." Wade looked at her a long moment. Something shifted in his red eyes. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a small thing wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it. A child's shoe, worn through at the toe, the leather gone stiff and dark. "Found this on my porch last spring," Wade said. "A boy came through. Younger than your brother. I gave him dry clothes and pointed him to the road. Two days later the man came looking. Stood right where you're standing. Asked had I seen a child." Wade's jaw tightened. "I said no. I've kept this since. To remember I didn't stop him sooner." Lyla stared at the shoe. A liar would have shown her a map, a smile, an easy promise. Wade had shown her his shame. That was harder to fake than any kindness. "The boy got out?" she asked. "I don't know," Wade said. "That's the part that sits in me." Lyla let her arms fall. The suspicion that had held her tight all night loosened. "We'll follow you to the road," she said. "All of us." Wade wrapped the shoe and put it away. "We leave within the hour. Wake them. Eat first." Lyla went inside and shook Henry's shoulder. Clara watched her face and read the answer there. The question of Wade was closed. But a new weight pressed on Lyla now. Somewhere across that water stood the man who had kept them. And to reach the road, Wade would lead them back toward him.

Wade packed their food before they left. He wrapped bread and dried fish in cloth and pushed it into a sack. Then he handed the sack to Henry. "You carry it," he said. "Keeps you honest about the pace." Henry took it and stood straighter. Clara watched Wade's hands the whole time, still not easy with him, but she said nothing. Lyla checked that her mother's dress was cinched tight for walking. Then they stepped off the porch into the water. The swamp fought them all day. Mud sucked at their boots. Branches tore at Clara's arms, and Henry stumbled twice into water up to his chest. Wade pulled him out both times without a word. He led them in a crooked path, never straight, steering wide of one dark stretch of trees. Lyla understood why. The man's shack sat somewhere in there. Wade kept them clear of it. By dusk her legs shook, but she kept Clara and Henry moving ahead of her. Night fell and the frogs started up loud. Then one sound cut through the rest, a deep wet croak close by. Wade stopped. "Don't move." A toad the size of a dog rose out of the reeds, green with bright blue spots across its back. Its throat swelled. Henry froze with the food sack clutched to his chest. The toad lunged for him. Wade threw himself between them. He swung his coat and caught the thing across the face. It struck his arm, and he grunted and shoved it down into the mud with both hands. "Go," he shouted. "Past it, now." Clara grabbed Henry and dragged him through the muck. Lyla followed, heart slamming. Behind her Wade pinned the toad until the siblings were clear, then backed away and left it croaking in the dark. They walked the rest of the night. Nobody spoke much. Wade held his bitten arm against his side. Lyla matched her steps to his and did not let herself think about her mother, only about the next patch of firm ground. Then the trees thinned. Gray light spread across the water, and Lyla saw solid earth rise ahead. Past it stood a road, and past the road, rooftops. A town. She stopped and stared. Clara came up beside her and gripped her hand hard. "I don't know this place," Clara said. "Neither do I," Lyla said. But she knew what it meant. Houses meant people. People meant someone who could point them home. Wade stayed at the swamp's edge. He would not step onto the firm ground. "This is as far as I go," he said. "From here you ask your way. Tell them your town. Somebody will know the road." He looked worn and gray in the dawn. "Keep moving. Don't look back at the marsh." Lyla wanted to thank him, but her throat closed. She nodded instead. Then she took Henry's hand and Clara's, and the three of them walked out of the swamp toward the strange town, one step closer to their mother.

The town looked wrong the moment they reached it. A tidy row of little huts lined the street, each one bright and matching, but no smoke rose from any chimney. Lyla knocked on the first door. Nothing. She knocked on the next, and the next. Henry tried too, hammering with both fists. Doors stayed shut. Half the windows were dark behind dusty glass. "Nobody lives here," Clara said. She hugged her arms across her ragged dress. "Or they won't open for us." Lyla looked down at herself. Mud caked her mother's dress to the knees. Henry's shirt was gray with swamp filth, and Clara's hair hung in dirty tangles. "We look like we crawled out of a grave," Lyla said. "That's why. Come on." She led them to a shallow creek past the huts. They knelt in the cold water and scrubbed. Lyla wiped the dress until the worst stains faded. She washed Henry's face while he squirmed. Clara wrung out her hair and stood straighter. They looked like children again, not ghosts. Farther on, a weathered cottage sat with red tiles on its roof and a stone chimney. Smoke curled from it. Someone was home. Lyla's heart lifted. She climbed the step and knocked. The door opened and a small old woman peered out. White hair piled on her head, round cheeks, a flowered dress under a cream sweater. She did not flinch at the sight of them. Instead she clapped her hands to her chest. "Dear me," she said. "Three little ones, and all skin and bone. Where did you come from?" "The marsh," Lyla said. Her voice shook. "We're trying to get home. We're looking for our mother." The woman's face softened. "Agnes Holloway. Now you come inside before you catch your death." She waved them through the door. Henry hesitated, but Clara nodded, and they went in. Agnes set bread and broth before them and watched them eat. Lyla told her the name of their town. Agnes nodded slowly. "I know the road. But it's a far piece. Three days on foot, through the hills." She frowned at Henry's thin wrists. "You'll never walk it hungry." She stood and shuffled out back. When she returned, she held a lantern. "Come," she said. Behind the cottage stood an old wooden wagon, its boards cracked, its iron fittings worn smooth. A gray donkey waited in the harness, calm and patient. "Take him," Agnes said. "He's slow, but he's steady. Load up and ride." She packed blankets into the wagon bed, then bread, cheese, and a jar of water. "Three days with the donkey. Less walking for those little legs." Lyla's throat tightened. "Why would you help us?" "Because somebody should," Agnes said simply. They climbed onto the wagon. Agnes handed Lyla the reins and pointed up the road toward the hills. The donkey stepped forward. Lyla gripped the reins and looked ahead. Three days now. Three days to their mother.

The road wound through dark forest for three long days. Lyla held the reins while the old donkey plodded on. At night they slept in the wagon bed, wrapped in Agnes's blankets. They ate the bread and cheese until little was left. Few travelers passed them, and the trees pressed close on both sides. To fill the empty hours, Clara told stories. She invented knights, lost kings, and talking crows, her voice rising and falling until Henry laughed despite the cold. "You made that one up," Henry said, grinning. "I never make things up," Clara said, lifting her chin. "I remember them perfectly. That is a gift of the eldest." She snapped the reins and the donkey flicked an ear. On the third evening, the forest thinned. A tall stone church rose above the rooftops ahead, its spire sharp against the sky. Lyla sat up straight. She knew that spire. She had counted its bells every Sunday of her life. "That's ours," she whispered. "Clara, that's our church." Clara's hands tightened on the reins. "Faster," she said to the donkey. "Go on, you stubborn thing, faster." The wagon rattled over the cobblestones. Lamplight glowed in the windows of clustered homes. People they half knew turned to watch the ragged children roll past, but Lyla did not stop. She fixed her eyes on the hill beyond the town. The manor stood where it always had. Ivy climbed its stone walls, and roses trailed over the garden arch. Lyla's throat ached at the sight of it. Home. Mother would be inside. She would open the door and see the worn dress and know her at once. The donkey labored up the slope and stopped at the gate. Lyla jumped down before the wheels had settled. She ran up the path and pounded on the great front door. No one answered. She pounded again. Henry came to her side. Clara stood back, staring at the windows. Every one of them was dark. No smoke rose from the chimneys. The rose beds had grown wild and tangled, choked with weeds no gardener had touched in weeks. The door swung open under Lyla's fist. It was not locked. She stepped into the front hall. Dust lay thick on the floor. White sheets covered the chairs. A pile of old letters sat scattered by the door, unopened. "Mother?" Lyla called. Her voice echoed and died. "Mother, it's us. We came home." Nothing moved. Clara picked up one of the letters. Her face went pale as she read the name on it. "These aren't addressed to Mother," she said quietly. "They're from people asking where she's gone." Lyla pressed her hand flat against the wall. The house was empty. Her mother was not here. She had crossed a swamp and three days of hills to reach this door, and the one person she came for was gone. "She's not here," Lyla said. "But someone knows where she went. And we're going to find out."