Fern shrugged. “I just thought there might be some.”
Whatever was in the cabin was definitely not a bunny. “No, but I’ll let you know. What about you two?” Baz asked Declan and Lexie.
Declan grunted, and Lexie shook her head. “I did go looking for the wishing well,” she said. “I couldn’t find it. Maybe it’s overgrown.”
“Wishing well?” Fern asked, looking curious.
“Doesn’t anyone but me remember it? It was behind these houses, along the creek somewhere. I just can’t figure out exactly where.” Lexie waved a hand. “I swear it’s like we all have different recollections of this place.”
Declan spoke up. He had been so quiet that Baz was slightly startled to hear his voice. “I do remember. We all threw coins into it and made wishes.” Declan smiled lopsidedly. “We had to keep our wishes a secret, or they would never come true.”
“I still remember my wish,” Lexie said quietly. She looked down at her plate rather than at the others.
And suddenly, sharply, Bazdidremember. The vague recollection spurred by Lexie’s earlier mention of the wishing well crystalized into a clear memory from their tween years, maybe even earlier. No wonder Fern didn’t remember; she must have been quite young. He was a little surprised that Declan did.
It had been a warm summer day, not too different from this one. Their parents must have brought them here; he had a vague sense of the adults being around somewhere, but the kids had been allowed to run wild between the old houses.
And they had found what they decided was a wishing well. Looking back on it now, Baz didn’t think it could have been a real well. It might have been someone’s old garden ornament, all grown over with vines and brambles. It had looked like something out of a storybook. They all stood around it, and since they didn’t have any money to put in—they were just kids—they decided to each leave a toy that they had brought with them instead.
And each of them made a silent wish.
Maida was there too, Baz recalled; she used to play all those old imagination games with them, until she felt like she got too grown-up and dignified.
Baz’s wish danced somewhere out of reach, and then he remembered that, too.
I wish I had a true purpose in life.
As an adult, he now recognized this as every child’s search for where they truly belonged. But there was truth in it, too. He still didn’t know for certain what he was meant to be doing. Could this town be that for him?
“Do you all remember your wishes?” Lexie asked.
“I don’t even remember the wishing well,” Fern said, flushing.
“I remember mine,” Declan said softly.
“Me too,” Baz said.
Fern looked more cheerful. “Did any of them come true?”
Declan looked away. So did Lexie.
Baz said, “I think if we’re done with lunch,nowit’s time to start getting things settled for evening.”
With four pairs of hands,it was quick work to divide the pile of gear, sort it out, and get it put away where it belonged.
Since the country store was right there, and it was big, the old building seemed like a natural place to put their communal supplies. While the others fanned out to take their own belongings to the houses they had identified as “theirs,” Baz walked around in the old store, feeling a paler ghost of the compulsion that had led him to wander the entire town in search of whatever it was that he or his bear were looking for.
The store had been mostly cleaned out before it was abandoned, but some clutter remained in the corners and on a few of the shelves. Technically it was junk: old cans and bottles, a wooden cigar box, a rusty wrench, a pair of gold-framed eyeglasses that no longer had their lenses. But most of it (barring a few recent beer and soda cans) had reached the antique point where even ordinary things became interesting.
Baz began to line items up on the old wooden store counter. Perhaps it would be fun to create some kind of display, a museum in tribute to the hardy miners and farmers who used to live here long ago, before the place was bought up as a failed tourist attraction and then passed into the hands of his clan.
He found himself liking the store as a space. Everything was big and heavy in a way that appealed to his shifter side: wide floorboards polished by the passage of many feet, a large store counter, and a solid iron stove in the corner.
Baz pushed his way through an old-fashioned swinging door into the back. With no lights and the windows covered with dust and cobwebs, it was almost too dim to see, but he made out a small office that still had an old wooden desk, as well as a storeroom. He walked through the storeroom and another doorway, and found himself in a small house attached to the back of the store, where the storekeeper must have lived. It still had some furniture, even dishes on the shelves.
Baz opened the back door. Overgrown grass, dotted with wildflowers, stretched to a nearby wall of trees.
Here,he thought with an abrupt sense of rightness.I think I’ll stay here.
