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At the well, they found nothing. Just a circle of stones and wind-scoured bones from some animal long dead.
Van shook his head weakly. “You did. You just didn’t know you remembered.”
“It’s never wrong,” Sybil whispered. She looked at the watch again. 11:47. Then she turned it over. On the back, scratched in tiny letters she’d never noticed before: When I’m gone, follow the second hand.
“No,” Van said, looking at Sybil. “I left a trail.”
They called him Van because no one could pronounce his full name—a jagged collection of consonants from a dead language. He was their third. Their anchor. The one who remembered routes when the sky erased the stars.
She pried open the back. Inside, instead of gears, there was a folded slip of paper. Sybil unfolded it with trembling fingers.
Ariana kicked a stone. “The X is wrong.”
