“No,” Honey whispered, breath tearing through her lungs as she ran. “Please, no.”
Branches whipped at her arms as she broke through the orchard’s edge. The storm raged around her, wind shrieking through the trees, but then, across the clearing, she saw her.
Emma, draped over the stone lip of the wishing well, her arms reaching deep into its mouth.
“Emma!” Honey screamed, but the wind swallowed her words.
Emma leaned farther.
“No! Emma, stop!”
Her feet came up onto her tiptoes, stretching, stretching?—
Honey couldn’t breathe. Her legs churned through the mud like in a nightmare where nothing moved fast enough. Her lungs burned. “Emma!”
She barely slowed as she approached the well. Flinging herself forward, she grabbed Emma by the waist and yanked her back with every ounce of strength in her body. They tumbled onto the wet grass.
“Emma!”
“I’m sorry!” Emma burst into tears. “I didn’t mean to.”
Honey gathered the little girl in her arms. “You’re okay.” She held her tight, clutching her like she still might slip away. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Emma pulled back just enough to look up at her, eyes wide and shiny with tears. “No, you don’t understand. Pickles is in the well.”
For a second, Honey couldn’t quite make the words make sense. Then, when it clicked, her stomach dropped.
Thunder cracked above them, so loud it rattled Honey’s teeth. The sky split open, and rain fell harder. From the trees, Ethan’s voice cut through the storm. “Emma!”
He burst into the clearing, panic written across his face. The second he saw them, he lunged forward and scooped Emma out of Honey’s arms.
“Oh, thank god,” he breathed out, cradling her.
Honey backed away, her heart still thudding in her ears. She peered into the well. It was impossibly dark, the clouds in the night sky turning everything to shadow, but when shesquinted down into the deep opening, she spotted a tiny, shivering shape. She pulled herself up, swung one leg over the moss-slick stone, and jumped in.
Chapter 20
Ethan
“Dammit, Honey,” Ethan said as she disappeared over the edge of the well.
Rushing up to the rim of the well, he leaned over. Peering down, he could just make out the top of her head. “Are you alright?” he called.
“No, I am not alright, thank you for asking.” Her voice floated up, echoing and shaky. “I am, however, alive, which is a respectable consolation.”
He huffed a shaky laugh despite himself. She was fine. Emma was fine. Everything was going to be fine. But Ethan knew as well as anyone that being in a well during a rainstorm was not fine. It may be a shallow, nonfunctioning well of the magical variety, but it was still a hole in the ground rapidly filling with water.
He pressed a kiss to the top of Emma’s head, breathing in the scent of her hair. “Go back to the house, baby,” he said, keeping his tone steady even though his pulse was running wild. “Call Marlene and ask her to come sit with you. Honey and I will be right in.”
Emma sniffed once, then noddedand took off. He watched her run toward the house until he couldn’t make out her form among the shadows of the trees.
He turned back to the well and lowered the bucket. “Alright, put Pickles into the bucket and hold on. I’ll pull you up.”
“He’s very frightened,” she called back. “I’m afraid he’ll jump out.”
“Then you both sit on the bucket.”
“I don’t think?—”
