Willow Marsh had watched the stranger three times now, and three times he had vanished before she found the nerve to call out. She crouched low in her canoe, brown hair stuck to her neck, green eyes fixed on the far bank. He poled a flat boat through the reeds, tall and quiet, a man who belonged to the swamp the way she wished she did. Her heart beat too fast. She had never wanted anyone before. But wanting him was useless, because she had no idea where he lived. The swamp was wide and full of hiding places. A boat could slip into a hundred channels and disappear. Willow had asked no one about him. Shyness glued her tongue whenever she imagined the question. So she kept watching, and he kept leaving, and nothing changed. Today she decided to follow him. She dipped her paddle slow, careful not to splash. The stranger rounded a bend ahead and slid behind a curtain of hanging moss. Willow pushed after him. Her sundress snagged on a branch. She tugged it free and paddled harder. When she cleared the moss, his boat was gone. She drifted, searching the water for a ripple. Nothing. The channel split three ways, and each looked the same. Her chest tightened. She had lost him again, and this time she had chased so deep she no longer knew her own way home. Then the water near her canoe rose. An alligator surfaced an arm's length away. Willow froze. But this was no ordinary gator. Pale pink marks glowed along its back, shaped like hearts, curling into patterns that pulsed with a soft light. It did not snap or thrash. It watched her with a calm, almost gentle eye. Then it turned and swam slowly down the middle channel, pausing to look back. Willow understood. It wanted her to follow. She should have been afraid. Instead she paddled behind the glowing creature, deeper into water she had never seen. The gator led her past a floating tangle of ferns, reeds, and wetland flowers, pink and orange and yellow blooms woven thick as a garden. Someone had planted them. Someone cared for this place. Beyond the flowers, the trees opened. A house stood on tall wooden stilts above the water. Moss wrapped its walls. Green shingles sagged under creeping vines. A ladder hung from the porch down to the surface, and the stranger's flat boat was tied to a post below. The alligator stopped beneath the ladder. Its heart-marks dimmed, their work done. Willow stared up at the mossy house, her hands shaking on the paddle. She had found where he lived. Now she had to climb the ladder and knock. And she had never been more afraid of anything in her life.

Willow gripped the ladder, but the ladder hung too high above the water. Her canoe drifted beneath it. When she reached up, her fingers brushed the bottom rung and missed. The deep water spread black between her and the house. She could not climb from a boat that would not hold still. She needed something to bridge the gap, or she would never reach his door. She tried to pull the canoe closer with the paddle. The hull bumped a stilt and spun. Her paddle slipped. She grabbed the post with both hands and held on, breathing hard. The ladder still swung out of reach. Climbing it from here was impossible. Then a splash sounded behind her. Willow turned. A great blue heron landed on the floating garden of ferns and wetland flowers that ringed the house. She knew this bird. It was her own heron, the one that trailed her canoe most mornings and stole fish from her bucket. It must have followed her all this way. The heron stepped onto the tangled mat of blooms, and the mat held its weight. Willow stared at the floating garden. The plants grew thick and woven, matted root to root. The heron stood on them without sinking. Maybe they would hold her too. She hated the idea. One wrong step and she would drop into deep water. But the ladder gave her nothing, and the flowers gave her a chance. She tied her canoe to the stilt and tested the mat with one sandal. The woven roots pressed down, then pushed back. They held. Willow stepped off the canoe. Her heart slammed. The garden sank under her, cold water rising over her feet, but the tangle did not break. She crept forward, arms wide, following the heron across the floating flowers. A reed snapped. She froze, then kept moving. The mat carried her to the base of the stilts, close enough now. She reached the ladder and grabbed the rung above her head. This time her fingers closed tight. She pulled herself up and out of the sinking flowers. One foot found the lowest rung. Then the next. She climbed, sandals slipping, until she stood on the mossy porch. Willow had crossed the water. She stood at his door at last. But the door hung open on a dark, empty room. No lamp burned inside. No fire, no voice, no stranger. His flat boat was gone from the post below. She looked out across the swamp and saw only her tied canoe and the heron preening on the flowers. She had fought so hard to reach this house, and he was not in it. Wilbur was somewhere else in the swamp. Now she had to find where.