Ari spent three days crying for her sister, and not even Gran’s kisses could quiet her. Then, when she was ready, she spent the next three days sleeping. On the seventh day, she got up to fulfill Dee’s wishes. She sat in front of Dee’s last portrait of the two of them for hours trying to decide if she should paint them in a cavern or a palace. She ultimately gave her sister the setting of her daydreams, but changed the color of Dee’s hair from blond to black, because she could not pretend that it was really happily ever after. She turned then to the stage she had left waiting to be filled. It was late, nearing midnight, and Ari decided that in order to paint the singer, she would need to see her, so she climbed out her window and got on her bike.

As she’d promised, the white-haired girl who now wore Ari’s grandfather’s ring waved her right through the door. Ari stood at the back, watching her singer and absorbing the power of her song. When the set ended, she walked right up to the edge of the stage. The singer was the nervous one this time. “I didn’t think you’d come back,” she said.

“To see you? Or…at all?”

“At first, the latter. But then I knew…” The singer touched her pearl necklace—the tattoo at her throat, like Ari’s, had faded. “And I wondered about the former. Maybe you’d blame me, and if you did, I’d understand. By choosing to leave, you also set me free, but I’m so sorry that you couldn’t do the same for your sister. You must know…”

“…That she made her choice,” Ari finished for her.

The singer took Ari’s hand and Ari squeezed it tight. Their foreheads touched and then so did their lips. It was a soft, short kiss, and afterward Ari smiled at the singer. “You still haven’t told me your name,” she said.

“Call me Wendy,” the singer decided. “The one in the story cared for lost boys, but I will watch over the girls who wander.”

“Even though you don’t have to anymore?” Ari asked.

“I never had to,” Wendy told her. “It was him you freed me from, not that.”

And so, through Wendy’s music and Ari’s art, through dreams and keeping them company on long rides in the darkness, the pair helped the girls who wandered, the girls who got lost, and the girls who sought their missing sisters. Not every girl chose it, but for those who did, they helped them find their strength and what would bring them back into the light. ♦