Mother's gravestone is pale as the moonlight and flush with the ground, so I only see it when I right myself in the deepening hole I have dug.

Beloved wife and mother, it says. One of those is true.

I did love her. She's the last person I recall loving. I'd have done anything for my mother. And this is my last effort to get in touch with that part of me, one last quest to rescue the princess.

My first quest didn't go well. And it's haunted my dreams since. I killed my mother. I killed her with my faith in something magical saving her. Is it possible that, now, I can trust the same magic to save us both?

This is why I left my house before dawn, leaving my would-be fiancée Jason asleep in bed. I drove back to the town I've been dying to forget. It's why I've ignored Jason's calls--how can I speak to him before I have an answer? It's why as soon as I arrived, I drove to Elaina's house. I sat in my car for a good twenty minutes, bent over the wheel, contemplating fleeing.

When I finally stepped out of the car, a faint scent of wisteria and grass registered. Only it wasn't the right time of year for either. It was like my memory had taken physical form and was trying to remind me of something. It had been a long time since I'd even recalled those pleasant smells which brought back long hidden memories of sitting on the porch with my mother, watching our neighbors mow.

We had wagers on which neighbor would win some days. Usually losing the wager meant having to go inside for two glasses of chocolate milk or apples from the fruit bowl.

I smiled and inhaled deeply. No more grass. No more wisteria. All that entered my nose was a garlicky smell from dinner being cooked in a nearby house.

Someday, I wanted a house of my own. A family of my own. That desire drove my feet to move, and I hurried to the head of the drive and gazed toward the witch's house.

Everything was as I recalled from when I was ten. This floored me, as part of me always believed Elaina and her home were figments of my imagination. An extraordinary explanation for a traumatizing event. Every therapist my dad sent me too told me this was the case. I hadn't thought I'd actually find anything but evidence of my own mental instability.

But there the house was, seemingly rundown and shaded past the long drive. Even the rows of vegetables were the same. The fir trees heaved and sighed beside me, warning me in their ghostly voices to flee.

I couldn't flee. I was empty, no more than a vessel for resentment and rage. I couldn't spend my whole life like this. I wouldn't. How would that be a life worth living?

I tried to find Elaina on the porch as I approached. Like last time, it appeared empty. Though the rocking chair creaked as the wind moved it back and forth. My feet refused to step onto the wooden steps, and at the mincemeat odor, I gagged. That smell... it never left me, when I woke from nightmares the smell always hung in the air, a promise of true evil. Real evil.

I stopped, stomach rolling and stared at the porch.

"Elaina?" I called. My voice warbled, and I blamed the wind. Certainly it wasn't fear that corrupted and warped my call.

"Selene," she said from behind me. "You've grown, and yet you are unchanged. Frozen as if the river of time flows on without you."

I spun to see her standing under an overhang of fir branches. This placed her several yards from me, with a patch of zucchinis and pumpkins between us. Yet I saw her perfectly as if with a magnifying mirror. She hadn't aged a day. Not a single wrinkle marred her wicked face. Her acid eyes were wide, sorrowful.

"You killed my mother." The accusation had weighed on me for years. Burning a hole through my heart until there was nothing left. Yet I felt no more complete having voiced it. An empty hole carved where my heart should be ached as the anger drained away.

"Did I?" Elaina asked. The wind whipped her hair into an intricate dance, obscuring her face for a moment.

"Why punish her? She didn't deserve it." I took a step away from the porch and toward the specter.

Elaina swept her hair back with one ancient hand and leveled a glare at me. "Deserve? Next you will tell me 'Life isn't fair.' Life is not about what you deserve, girl. It's about what you learn. She didn't learn, neither did you... but you can still teach her."

"I don't understand."

"Have faith. This has always been about true love, Selene. I've been clear about that." Elaina lifted a hand to her lips and blew me a kiss. Just like she'd blown a kiss into the cauldron that produced the candied apple.

And that is what drove me stumbling from Elaina's house, here to the graveyard. Covered in dirt and sweat, I continue to dig.