The Concrete Grove

EPILOGUE

HAILEY WALKED AWAY from her mother, remembering the dream she’d once had — the dream that had now become real. She entered the dense shadows between the oak trees, and was lost in darkness for a little while. But when she came out on the other side, free from the grove at last, she was bathed in bright sunlight.

It’s like a dream. I don’t hurt anymore.

Far off in the distance, down a vast hill and across an expanse of low-lying open woodland which lay at its base, there was a dense forest of younger oak trees. And beyond that — who knew? Perhaps there were vast cities to explore, deep oceans to navigate. Monsters she might need to fight. Or perhaps all that existed was the eternal forest, and the primeval oaks, and the baleful shadows they cast.

Beautiful, she thought. It’s beautiful.

Finally Hailey realised that none of this really mattered. Whatever was out there was out there, and all she needed to do was be willing to discover it all. There was nothing left for her where she had come from; all she had, everything she would ever need, lay ahead of her, in the trees and the shadows of her new home.

She had somehow come upon the central truth of this place, this grove within the Grove. At last it all made sense, and she repeated what she had learned silently inside her head, like a mantra to keep her company on the long journey that lay ahead of her:

Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.