Everlasting

by lunarlychallenged

Maybe if the Man in Yellow had died when Mae hit him, Winnie could have gone home. But he lives, so Winnie has to run away with the Tucks.

Eleven

Angus is pressing her face into his chest, but he doesn't need to. She saw Mae hit the man in yellow with the butt of the shotgun, but she hadn't been able to bear to watch him fall.

"Is he dead?" Mae's voice is aghast, but there's a hint of something else in it. It would be years before Winnie could understand why a twisted sort of longing had laced itself through Mae's question.

There's a pause. Winnie pries her eyes open to look at the man, just laying there. She shouldn't feel bad, not really, but a part of her regrets all of this. Everything about this day is her fault. If she hadn't run away from home, the Tuck's would never have been within reach of the charlatan. If she hadn't gotten Jesse to fill a vial with the spring water, the man in yellow might have wandered aimlessly in the forest until long after the Tucks had run.

Angus moves a little closer to the man, handing Winnie off to Miles, but the man in the yellow suit gives a low groan. His hands go up to his head to grip it, eyes squeezed shut in agony.

"We have to run," Winnie says in a tremulous voice.

"What?" Jesse is the one to speak, but all four of them look at her as though she has lost her mind. Maybe she has.

"We have to run, now, before he can follow us."

Mae shakes her head vehemently. "No. You have to go home. You're mother must be so worried."

Winnie smiles a little, but it isn't the same smile she wore when she met them at the tree just a day earlier. That's the point, she supposes. "It's not safe for me to go back. He won't stop looking for the spring, and all of you are still in danger if he can get to me."

Angus hesitates for a second, looking at the body. "If you tell them that he kidnapped you-"

She shakes her head. "He won't let you go, not if he has a way to find you. The woods are too big for him to find the spring by himself." That probably isn't true, but if he can hear them, Winnie needs to dissuade him while she still could. "Take me with you."

Miles' eyes are wild, but Jesse grins. "This is a great plan."

"It's a terrible plan!" Miles hasn't looked so upset in the entirety of the time that Winnie has known him, and a hysterical giggle bubbles up at the thought of it. He had kidnapped her a day before, and now she's forcing him to bring her along.

"Do you think he came out here alone?" she demands. "Do you think that nobody knows he came out here? Somebody will come looking for you, and if I'm here alone, they'll come after you."

"Over here, Hugo!" Winnie knows the voice of the sheriff, and Hugo is his son. She'd heard him brag about trying his hand at deputy a few weeks before.

There is a moment of silence. It's just a second, just a breath, but Angus grabs her by both shoulders and looks into her eyes.

This is the only way, she urges him silently. You have to run, and your best bet is to take me with you. Leave Treegap forever. Make a new forever somewhere new.

"Let's go," he whispers. He takes her hand and the family runs deeper into the wood. Winnie can feel her hair pulling out of its braid and catching in the branches as they breeze past, but she can't bring herself to care. She had been speechless on the way to the house because she was scared. Now she is breathless because for the first time, she is truly running away. She is running and and running and shedding the good girl, Winnie Foster, to become someone much different than she had been. Someone different, and maybe not all that much better.

They hadn't had time to stop and grab anything from the house, but the Tucks are resourceful. They are near silent as they split up to set up a ragtag little camp for the night. Miles is furious; she can feel waves of anger and grief pouring from him as he stalks back and forth with firewood.

"It's okay," she tries to tell him from her stump, but he cuts her off.

"It isn't fine, Winnie. How do you think your family feels right now? How do you think they'll feel tomorrow, when you still aren't home? What about a week from now, or a year from now, when they've forgotten what you smell like?" His eyes are bright, but not like Jesse's eyes get bright. They are shiny and a little wet. Winnie has to look away.

"It wasn't safe to stay."

"Didn't you think of how they would feel later? How they'll blame themselves when the girls your age start getting married? Don't you think they'll blame themselves because you never came home?"

He stalks away, leaving Winnie speechless. She's thought of all of those things. She didn't leave because she doesn't love them. She left because she loves her mother and grandmother very much, and she cannot bear to put them in any danger. He will leave them alone if Winnie is gone, gone for good.

It's been a week, and Winnie has cried more than she expected. It had been easy the first few days, wading through that baffled fog that always comes after making a quick decision. She had been fine until two nights after they left, when Mae sat next to her to lean against a tree.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly.

Winnie wants to brush it off, but she suddenly can't look at the older woman. She twists a piece of grass around her fingertips.

"Oh," Mae says gently. "And now I've upset you. I'm sorry for that too."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Winnie replies stiffly. "It's all my fault."

"It's not your fault, and I'm sorry."

Winnie wants to look at Mae, but her eyes are starting to burn. She nods jerkily. The tips of her fingers are turning an angry maroon, but the blade of grass snaps and flutters to the ground.

"I'm sorry," Mae says again.

"Stop saying that!" Winnie whips her head around to look at Mae, but Mae just smiles sadly. Mae is very pretty, really, but Winnie thinks for a moment that she can see every decade on Mae's face. The moment passes when unshed tears blur the world around her.

"I'm sorry," Mae says once more, and grabs Winnie by the shoulders to lower her head onto Mae's lap.

Winnie is uncomfortable for a second. Her mother loved through actions, not through touch. Winnie isn't sure that she's been touched like this since her father died a year ago. That, above all of the other things that are ruining her heart, makes her shoulders start to tremble.

"It's okay to miss them. I never wanted you to leave them, Winnie; you have to understand that. We always wanted you to go home. Even Jesse."

"What will they think of me," she whispers to herself. Her hands grip the skirt of Mae's dress tightly enough that the fabric groans, but Mae just strokes Winnie's tangled mass of hair.

"They'll think that you were a perfect daughter, and they'll be right," Mae says resolutely. She holds Winnie long into the night, uninterrupted by bickering boys and absent-minded husbands for what is probably the first and the last time.

As is their usual pattern, Winnie wakes up in the middle of the night to see Jesse's impish face peering closely into hers.

She doesn't scream, like she might have done a few months ago, but she gives a sigh so long and slow that he splutters away from her.

"Jeez, Win, what did you eat last night? Something dead?" He makes a face and grabs at his throat, giving an exaggerated gagging sound, but she shushes him with a giggle.

"Nothing you didn't kill. Don't wake any of them up!"

She takes his hand and drags him out of their partially completed cabin. The boys have been doing most of the building, in between giving Winnie lessons in various life skills. Miles is her most diligent teacher, bringing books back from rare expeditions into town to make sure she doesn't spend the rest of her life acting like an eleven year old. Angus and Jesse are better at teaching her physical skills, like fishing and finding the berries that straggled into the end of Autumn. She and Mae spend their days in town, searching for anything that can make a cabin feel like a home. Miles says that the cabin should be finished by the first snow, but Winnie isn't so sure that having a house counts as having it finished. She doesn't think it will feel finished until the clutter takes over the way it had in the old house.

They settle back in the long grass, lying on their backs with their heads tilted back to look at the sky. The stars are bright in the sky, but Jesse doesn't point out constellations like he usually does. He hasn't taken her on an adventure tonight either, which seems more suspicious to Winnie.

He reaches his hand across the grass to press against hers, and her heart speeds up. It's an odd feeling, but it feels even stranger when she realizes that he's trying to give her something instead of trying to hold her hand.

She sits up, ignoring the pieces of plant sticking out of her mane of hair. She hasn't been brushing it, so it grows wildly in any direction it can reach. In her hand sits the glass vial. She hadn't forgotten it; how could she? She had assumed that it had been lost in the mad dash away from the forest and the body and Treegap and-

"I didn't want to bother you with it while you were still, you know, mourning," he says softly. His hair sticks out haphazardly and his eyes glow in the night. The moon is so big and yellow that it almost feels like day out here, in the clearing by their new home.

"You still have some of the water," she says dumbly.

"Yes," Jesse says eagerly. "Six years from now," he begins, but she cuts him off. Winnie holds the bottle back out for him, and he stares at it.

"I'm not sure," she says. "I don't know if I want it."

Jesse gapes at her, looking every bit the seventeen year old he had claimed to be when they met. "You don't want it?"

Winnie scooches closer to him, reaching for his hands. "I think I might want a life, Jesse. A full life, with a clear beginning and end. A life with changing and growing. Life is a wheel, Jess-"

"Don't quote my dad at me, Winnie," he says. "We have lives. We can go where we want, do what we want. We've changed plenty, believe me. That's why we need you. You are the best change we've ever had, Winnie, and if you drink, you and me can have a full life. Anything you want."

She falls silent. It has all been for them. She ran away from home for the last time because she wants to protect them. She has stayed with them, following their every rule, because she loves them. She would give her future to them if they asked it, but Jesse is the only one who has ever asked. The others are desperate to see her grow up.

"I need to think," she says slowly.

He gives the bottle back to her eagerly. "Yes! Think all you want, Win. You've got years to grow and change before you're seventeen. Just think on it, and keep the water safe until the time comes to choose."

He flops back down into the grass, relieved that she's at least willing to consider it, but with old, troubled eyes. Winnie is slower to lay back down. The glass of the vial warms rapidly in her small hand, but it sits like ice in her heart. It isn't that she wants to live forever. She wants the Tucks forever. She doesn't want to be the new Thomas, leaving them behind to lay stagnant, but she couldn't make them watch her wither away either.

Her happiness, though it has only been a few months, is irrevocably linked to theirs. She smiles every time Miles laughs, and he has laughed more now than he ever did when she saw him in Treegap. She laughs when Mae and Angus dance with the fireflies, singing a tune with Jesse for them to sway to. And Jesse, her dear friend, makes her heart soar when nothing else can budge it.

She'll have to think carefully as she changes. She cannot make all of them happy, so she'll have to figure out what makes her happy, too.

Twelve

"Don't be afraid if it kicks, Winnie," Angus coaches in a low voice. The butt of the gun presses firmly into her shoulder; she has to take a deep breath to keep her stomach from flipping.

It has taken a little over a year for Winnie to see the gun without thinking of yellow suits and beloved faces frozen by fear, but she finally agreed to let Angus teach her just to see his eyes light up. Mae left for town this morning with Jesse to get a new supply of sugar, salt, and flour. Back in Treegap, they had all grown comfortable at the thought of going to town. Cautious, certainly, but never afraid. Many things changed when they were discovered, and Winnie tries to alleviate the stress when she can.

She takes a deep breath, squeezes her eyes tightly shut, and jumps about a mile in the air when Angus yelps at her about watching where she shoots.

"Okay! Okay, I'm looking," she soothes. She looks down the barrel of the rifle. It's just a tin can in her sights, but the gun feels too big for her small frame. Sticking her tongue out a little, she squeezes the trigger. Squeeze it, don't yank on it.

The kick of the gun sends her shoulder rocketing back, and the can sits serenely on the log. Leaves behind it scatter, offended, but Winnie is a little relieved. She would love to please Angus, but she isn't sure that she wants to be a good shot. She isn't sure that the best role for her is huntress. Maybe she could sew something to sell in town, or garden.

"That was a good first try," Angus says encouragingly. He reaches into his pocket for more ammunition, but Winnie leans the gun against a tree.

"We could go fishing for supper," she suggests. "The pork'll be going bad soon."

He looks at her, a little confused, before his eyes land on her wringing hands. "The gun isn't going to hurt you," he says.

"I'm not worried about it hurting me." Not entirely a lie. She's more worried about what guns do to other people than what they could to her.

"You aren't going to hurt one of us on accident, either. You can't hurt any of us." Angus' words are light, but they both know that they aren't true. Physical hurts are the least painful kind.

"That's not it."

"Winnie," he says gently. "I hope you never have to shoot a gun. I hope that you are never put in a position that relies on knowing how to shoot. But I need to know that you can defend yourself if you need to, and you've already been put in danger because of us. If something else happens, I want you to be ready."

This is the closest she's come to talking about her mortality with him. Winnie suspects that Jesse talked to the Tucks after he gave her the water. All of them have avoided the subject in its entirety, avoiding talks about the future. Now, hearing Angus talk about self-defense, she thinks that they are all assuming that she'll leave them in a few years.

Her hand rises to clasp a smaller vial, one with just a swallow of the spring water, that is hanging securely on a necklace. She only takes it off to bathe, and even then she keeps it in sight. She keeps the larger bottle in a chest in her bedroom. It feels to risky to keep it all in one place. It's been over a year and she still doesn't feel like she's any closer to making a choice. Angus looks at her hand. He has always had sad eyes, but the grief in them is so deep she could drown in it.

"Let's go fishing," he says.

In the early hours of the morning, Jesse had shot a turkey. The find sent Mae into a frenzy of activity.

"If we're going to have an entire turkey, we'll make an occasion of it," she had said while whipping potatoes in a large bowl. The business makes Winnie's heart race the way it always had on big holidays or when her mother had family come to visit. Mae sends them all on little errands to look for wild carrots, berries, and to clean the house.

It all seems like an awful chore to the boys, who don't see the point in making such a big deal out of it, but Winnie's excitement grows exponentially throughout the day.

"You're humming," a surprised Jesse notes. He is wiping down the glasses from the night before while she washes the strawberries she brought in in her skirt.

She jumps a little. "Am I?"

He grins. "You sure are. You've been going at it all day. Happy?"

She shrugs, but her smile is large enough to make her cheeks ache. "It's been a while since I had something big to look forward to."

"Dinner is something to look forward to?"

"A big dinner is," she says with surprise. "Isn't this exciting to you? We're making all of this food, just because we can. It's like a party."

His face softens, the affection on his face warming Winnie all the way down to her toes.

She looks down at the fruit again, cheeks going a little pink. "What?"

"You just get so excited about the littlest things. The others hardly ever get excited about something. It's nice," he says.

Later in the day, when Mae sets them to work setting the table, Mae watches them with a sort of longing.

"What is it," Angus murmurs to her in a low voice.

"I'm just going to miss this when the boys leave."

Winnie fumbles the bowl of bread, giving Miles and Jesse a hurt look. "You're leaving? Is that why we're having the party? A goodbye party?"

"This isn't a party," Miles says firmly. He turns a confused eye to his mother, who is wiping at hers sheepishly. "What do you mean, when we leave? Is something happening?"

"You never told us we'd have to leave," Jesse adds with raised brows.

Mae looks between them. "You always leave. We always split up for ten years-"

"Do we really have to do that again? With Winnie here, maybe nobody will notice if the rest of us don't change," Jesse pleads.

Angus is grinning, a little hopeful and a little surprised. "You two want to stay?"

"Sure," Jesse says eagerly. "It takes a village-"

"They know the phrase," Miles says roughly. Looking to his parents, he says, "I want to be here while Winnie grows up. It'll take all of us to teach her everything she needs to know."

Winnie is hopping from foot to foot with delight. She hadn't even thought about the boys having to leave, but with the rollercoaster of thinking they'd go and now the possibility that they'll stay, her heart is in her throat. "Let them stay, Mae! We'll be careful with the townspeople. I'll only go into town with you and Angus except on special occasions, just so nobody notices the boys don't change. Please!"

A bewildered grin has spread across Mae's cheeks. "I didn't think you'd want to," she says softly.

Jesse wraps an arm around her shoulder and beams. "Of course we do. I couldn't leave Winnie alone with you two to die of boredom."

Mae gives a throaty laugh that is thick with happy tears, but none of them fall. The dinner really does feel like a party now, for all of them. Good food, good company, and something to look forward to. Winnie is almost foolishly happy, and she hums for the rest of the week.

It's the middle of the night, and Winnie is hardly awake. She is resting in the beautiful, eerie place between consciousness and possibility where reason feels flimsy and imagination is infinite.

Some part of her is aware of a low ache below her belly, but it takes her a great deal of sleep-heavy thought to figure out that her nightgown is clinging to her thighs in an awkward, almost painful way. She reaches down to adjust it, but her hand comes away wet.

Her eyes shoot open when she brings her fingers to her face. The coppery scent is unmistakable, and she does not think before screaming.

Jesse is the first to burst into her room, eyes wild as he searches for whatever had scared her. Nothing seems amiss in the room aside from the frantic girl, so he throws himself onto her bed.

"Winnie?" He grabs her outstretched hand and recoils when he feels the dampness. The room is dark, but she can still see panic grow as he looks at her hand. "Winnie, oh, god, are you hurt?"

Miles runs in, closely followed by Mae and Angus. Mae had stopped to light a candle, so when the three adults look in on the room, they can clearly see everything. Jesse, panic-stricken and confused, pressing himself against the wall. Winnie, plastering herself against the headboard of the bed, tears streaming down her face and a bloody splotch against the crotch of her nightgown.

Miles' face goes crimson. Angus grabs his arm to drag him out of the room while Mae hustles Jesse out the door.

"Ma, what happened? Ma, wait-"

She closes the door in his face and turns to face Winnie.

"Am I dying?" Winnie can hardly speak through the tightness in her throat. She doesn't want to die. She isn't ready. Her stomach doesn't even hurt that badly, but the pain is in a part of her that she has never been conscious of before, so maybe she's broken something deep inside.

"No, child, you aren't dying. Not at all," Mae says. Mae is smiling a little, rueful and weary. "This is another conversation I don't have planned out. I'm going to have to have all sorts of talks with you like this, aren't I?"

Mae tells her about "becoming a woman." She tells her about the monthly bleeding, about what it means and what it means if she doesn't bleed. All of the conversation happens while Mae tears old fabric into strips to wrap around Winnie's undergarments until Mae can buy something called a "Lister's Towel". She helps Winnie strip the bed and get a clean nightgown, but Winnie isn't sure she'll be able to sleep again. Her hands tremble. Even knowing that this is natural, that this is supposed to be happening, her blood buzzes through her veins.

"I'll have Miles make some coffee," Mae says with a grin. "He can make it with enough of a kick to get us through tomorrow, I think." She goes to leave, but with her hand an inch from the doorknob, she looks back. "I would have told you about this before, just to get you ready, but I thought that your mother would have already."

Winnie shakes her head wordlessly. Her mother probably thought that they had plenty of time for talks about growing up. Time has a funny way of moving unevenly amongst folks, but Winnie hopes that it always spreads itself out where it needs to be.

"I don't feel like a woman," Winnie says weakly.

"Neither do I," Mae replies. She opens the door, knocking Jesse's head with the door on the way out. His face is ghostly white and his lips tremble a little when he grips Mae's arm.

"Is she-"

"She's fine, boy. If you aren't going to make yourself useful, move out of my way so I can be."

Jesse stands in the doorway, looking anxiously at Winnie, until she smiles at him. She doesn't feel much like smiling, but when a relieved grin graces his handsome face, hers comes a little more naturally.

Thirteen

Winnie has grown, and Mae loves it. The front door of the cabin has little chalk marks to chart her growth. She has grown three inches since they bought the door; she is plateauing with the top of her head running even with Jesse's. He pouted about it the first day Miles pointed it out, but she could see the way he glowed over her aging.

She's grown in other ways too, ways that require new dresses and corsets. Angus rolls his eyes when Mae takes Winnie shopping again, swearing that she'll bankrupt him soon, but she can see the relief. A part of her had struggled to understand what they all meant when she first arrived at the house all that time ago. They had seemed so excited to finally have a real, growing child around, but as she continues to grow, she sees that it was sincere. All four of them are invigorated by her aging. The delight is contagious.

"Miles," Winnie croons at breakfast one morning. He looks up at her with surprise, mouth frozen halfway through chewing a mouthful of flapjack. There is an unspoken rule at the Tuck house: they don't speak while they eat. Winnie struggles with it constantly, but only Jesse has the real patience to listen to her chatter while they eat. "Miles," she continues, "I have a surprise for you."

"Nothing for me?" Jesse looks a little surprised, almost hurt, but nobody pays him any attention.

"A surprise," Miles echoes doubtfully. He has never much liked surprises, but Winnie is eager enough about this one for his lips to tick upward.

"Yes! You, you lucky dog, are going into town with me tomorrow to go to a museum."

Miles looks conflicted, delight and confusion warring on his face. "You don't like museums, Win. You get bored after ten minutes."

He's right. Everybody in the room knows it, pursing their lips to stifle smiles and avoiding each other's mirthful eyes when Winnie gives an offended gasp.

"I do not! I just wasn't in the mood that one time. Or that other time," she admits. She really doesn't see the appeal of big buildings like museums, filled with old people and dusty air. She would rather run around barefoot, finding caterpillars and trying to catch fish with her bare hands. But Miles' birthday was the week before, and he had refused to let anybody get him anything. Winnie had tried to knit him a pair of mittens, but the thumbs were just another set of lumps in a set of very lumpy balls of knotted yarn. She has been saving up nickels and dimes that she finds on the road every time she goes into town and she has just enough for two passes to the local museum.

"And you want to go to the museum with me," he says slowly. He is definitely smiling, not because he doesn't understand her plan, but because he knows exactly what she's doing.

"I would love to go to the museum with you," she says emphatically.

She does go to the museum with him, after spending the day cooking things for them to eat on the way to and from town. None of it is very good, all of it is messier than it ought have been, but he eats some of everything without complaint. She buys his ticket with a jaunty wink, sliding a small pile of coins across the counter with pride. Miles is in awe of the museum; even after years of seeing more impressive compilations of history, even after having lived through some of the events, he is in love with the stories and the artifacts that survived. Winnie is, as he predicted, bored minutes after arriving, but she spends the day memorizing the smile on his face. She seldom sees him happy without reservation, so she swears to herself that if all it takes to make him happy is one subpar day, she can do it every now and then.

Having Winnie around has made things easier for the Tucks in one respect: since she ages normally, they can take trips into the town near their cabin without too much worry. They keep their distance from the townspeople, of course, but the people are so busy watching the exuberant teenager that they hardly notice whoever accompanies her.

Her thirteenth year has introduced a problem, though, and only Jesse really seems to mind it. Winnie is growing lovelier by the day. That isn't the issue for Jesse, though he is a little bewildered by it. In asking her to wait to drink until she was seventeen, he had known that she would change, but he hadn't fully comprehended what the changes would mean.

They would mean, he learns, that other people would notice her. Other boys. There is one in particular, the baker's boy, who has taken a real shine to her.

Winnie is unfazed by it, maybe even a little flattered, and she laughs at him when he complains after a trip to town.

Mae and Tuck have set them all to work on dinner. Jesse is supposed to be chopping carrots, but he ends up waving the knife around in distress more than cutting anything.

"He brought her a cupcake! For free! And Winnie, and you," he pauses to jab the knife at her. Winnie gives a little shriek of laughter as she dodges. "You ate it! And you smiled at him!"

"What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't I smile at a boy who gives me a cupcake?"

"She's right," Mae agrees. "It's only polite."

"Oh, no," Jesse intones solemnly. "He might get ideas."

Miles snorts. He's supposed to be preparing strips of deer to fry, but he has abandoned the food to watch Jesse with raised brows. They all have. "What's wrong with him getting ideas? Boys are allowed to look at Winnie, you know."

Jesse gapes at them. "Pa! Tell Miles he's wrong! No boys can look at Winnie."

Winnie is giggling hard enough to double over. Mae and Miles are smiling, but Angus looks nearly as gleeful as she feels. He says, "you look at Winnie all the time."

"It's different!"

"You're a boy, aren't you?"

Miles lets out a guffaw at that. Jesse elbows him. "It's different. If I look at Winnie, nothing changes. If the baker boy looks at Winnie, she might leave."

The room sobers a bit. It's the tabooed topic, rising to the surface after a long slumber.

"That's a part of life," Miles says. "Leaving home is a part of life."

"Besides," Winnie interjects. She is not bothered by Jesse wanting her to stay, but she is bothered by what he's saying. "I wouldn't leave just because a boy talks to me. He'll have to be a little better than that."

"I would leave for a boy that gave me cupcakes," Mae says thoughtfully.

Angus throws a hunk of bread at her and the tension breaks. Still, Winnie lays awake that night and thinks about the baker boy. He is rather handsome, she supposes, but there is a part of her that recoils at the very thought of living in a home with him. He probably wouldn't want her to run around barefoot. He would probably expect her to entertain guests and brush her hair and have children. She's not sure she wants that, not now. She has years ahead of her before marriage will be on the horizon, but she doesn't think that she wants a marriage like her mother and father had. She doesn't think that she wants a life like her mother and father had, and most baker boys probably do. Winnie is not quite sure about him.

Even if he does make good cupcakes.

Fourteen

Winnie spends her fourteenth year with Jesse, travelling through Europe. She has no idea how he convinced his parents, but they agreed to let her go so long as Jesse promised to keep up her schooling while they were away.

He leaves all of her books in the cabin, but doesn't tell her until they are already on a ship to France.

"You'll practice reading on street signs," he tells her as the waves crash around them. Their little cabin only has one bed, so they end up sleeping curled around each other every night. "You'll do math when we pay for meals and housing. Cooking is kind of like science, right?"

He teaches her about trees and animals. They scale mountains and attend festivals and try exotic foods. Winnie glows the entire way, writing letters to the Tucks in each city they visit. Only Mae reads them, she knows, and she tells the men what they need to know.

Mae, she writes after they visit France. I've never had food like this in my entire life. Everything is so rich that my stomach can hardly take it. I threw up in the Rhine, then pushed Jesse in when he laughed at me.

Mae, Greece has the most beautiful sunsets. Some nights people go out to the beach to watch them together, then applaud once it ends. It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.

Italy was wonderful, Mae, but my favorite part was climbing the chestnut trees. It's funny how sometimes the new things are less memorable than the things that you've always done.

She doesn't write about the people she meets. She treasures them inside, in a place that even Jesse can't see, because seeing all of these strangers living lives that she doesn't understand makes her want one too. She sees newlyweds going shopping, the cautious light of young love growing brighter as they peek at each other over boxes and bags. She sees old women spreading bread crumbs for birds, sometimes talking to themselves as though they have wonderful things to say. She sees parents with their children, grandparents with grandchildren, and people by themselves. Winnie loves to watch, and sometimes she finds herself making notes to herself to remember in the future. She has vague ideas of what her wedding dress should look like, how she'll deal with her children if they beg for sweets, and what kind of vacations she'll take with her family.

She doesn't tell Jesse. He might get that kicked puppy look, and that would taint all of the memories she's making.

Jesse is totally different when he travels, and it's kind of amazing to watch. Winnie knows that he's charming; he did charm her into being kidnapped when they met. She just hasn't thought about how that translated to other situations. He can flirt free drinks out of waitresses and charm discounted rooms off of the crankiest landlords. When he smiles, people move to give them a better view of Greek sunsets. When he asks a girl to dance at a festival, she always says yes.

The funny thing about watching him work crowds is that Winnie realizes that he doesn't treat her that way anymore. Jesse has stopped trying to charm Winnie, and she thinks that she might like it that way. She is already thoroughly charmed, of course, but she likes the Jesse that has bedhead and butchers the French language more than she liked the boy that who flattered her and refused to argue back.

She is fourteen, growing wiser, and is very, very happy.

Fifteen

She begins her fifteenth year in bed, with a fever high enough to rack her with chills and lungs that burn when she tries to breathe.

When the symptoms began, she insisted that she was fine. She told Mae that she didn't have a fever; it was just too hot outside and she sweats a lot. Jesse wasn't too concerned about her headache, not once she offered to play cards with him.

After a week, Winnie felt so poorly that she started to worry. She had trouble walking around, and Miles and Jesse were afraid when she could hardly stand long enough to brush her teeth. Angus wanted to call for the town doctor, but Winnie insisted that she would come 'round really soon. It was just a fever, she said. The Tucks, after so many decades of perfect health, had trouble remembering what to do with a sick child. He agreed, hesitantly.

Finally, two days before Winnie's birthday, Mae decided to change Winnie's nightgown while she slept. Upon seeing the rose colored spots that Winnie had so carefully concealed, she sent Miles for the doctor.

Angus can't be in the room with Winnie while they wait for the doctor to come. He spends hours on the pond, fishing pole in hand but not in the water. Jesse tries to call him inside when the doctor shows up, but he shakes his head.

"Pa," Jesse says anxiously. "Winnie would want you there. She's gotta be so scared, and she would want you there."

Angus shakes his head. "The doctor will think it strange if we all crowd her. Most people aren't so casual about being around typhoid."

He's right, of course, but Jesse can't stay away. He stays in the corner of Winnie's room and watches as the doctor vigorously cleans the area around Winnie's bed. He watches Mae mop Winnie's forehead with a wet rag, supposedly to keep the fever down.

After hours of the doctor hovering and doing, in Jesse's opinion, nothing to help at all, Mae tells the man to go downstairs to sleep. She swears that if something changes, one of them will wake him.

Angus and Miles file in, slowly, wearily, when the doctor falls asleep. They all just stand there, looking at Winnie. It couldn't possibly be her, Jesse tells himself, though there is nobody else it could be. She just looks so small, so fragile, and Winnie has not been fragile a day in her life. She is supposed to be larger than life. Some people cannot die, Jesse knows, and though Winnie is not one of them, she has always given off the impression of invincibility. Now, looking at her pale face and sweat soaked hair, she looks like she's half gone already. Maybe she is half gone, slipped into a feverish coma while they stand by and guard whatever is left behind.

Miles is the first to speak. "How is she?"

Mae has spent the day working hard, but a steady stream of silent tears have poured since the doctor gave his diagnosis. "She's not doing well. Doctors don't - there isn't anything to be done, really. Not way out here. We just have to keep the fever down and keep everything clean to keep it from spreading."

"That's not the only thing we can do," Jesse says, striding to Winnie's side. Even now, she has her little vial fastened around her neck. His fingers brush against one of the pink splotches on the column of her throat as he takes the water away.

"No," Angus says. It's the first thing he has said since the doctor arrived six hours ago. He looks nearly as wretched as Winnie, though none of them have gotten sick in a very long time.

"She's dying, Pa! We can save her. We can save her, and then we'll never have to worry about losing her again."

"She doesn't want it, Jesse," Miles snarls. He has large half moons under his eyes. He has done nothing but pace in the hall, uselessly angry when there was nothing to be angry at.

"Maybe she does," Jesse says. "She's so sick, and she must feel so terrible, and maybe she wants it to stop."

"Yes! Maybe she wants it to end! All of it! Do you think she'll thank you for taking away her choice? Do you think she'll ever be able to thank you enough for condemning her to the half life we're living?" Miles makes a mad swipe for the vial, but Jesse is faster.

"I can't lose her," he whispers to them all. "I can't be alone, not again, not now that I've found her."

Mae comes up to him slowly and wraps her arms around him, taking the spring water from him and slipping it into her pocket. "You can't try to keep her like this. You can't own a human being, dear. You wouldn't want to live knowing that you forced her into this, and you know that she wouldn't want to live without a choice either."

"I can't lose her," he says again. Jesse has watched the others lose so much, and he had sworn that he wouldn't put himself in the same position, but Winnie snuck up on him. He was going to send her home to live out the six years so that if she said no, he wouldn't be so broken by it. Now, having lived with her for four years, he loves her too dearly. She has already broken him, and she doesn't even know she has the ability.

"That's not up to us," Angus finally says. He shuffles over to Winnie, an old man in a middle aged body, and smooths her hair away from her face. "You have to fight for us, Winnie. Hang on a little longer and live. Not forever, but long enough to build a life."

Winnie is laying on the cold November ground with her arms and legs splayed out to cover as much area as she can. It's the first snow of the year, though it isn't quite cold enough for it. Massive fluffy flakes are falling from the skin, swirling and weaving their way to the ground, where they immediately melt on contact.

"I think you're supposed to wear a coat when it's this cold," a dry voice says.

Winnie opens her eyes to see Jesse, who holds her fraying jacket.

"I don't want my coat," she says. She likes the way it feels when the flakes hit her, and she likes it even more when she can feel them melting. It's chilly outside, but it's worth it when she feels like this.

He gives a little humming sound before shrugging out of his own coat and laying down beside her. "Ma says that I'm going to walk you straight into your own death," he says. She can't see his face, but she can hear his smile.

"She talks as though I throw myself headfirst into danger all the time. I've had, what, two near death experiences since meeting you? And one of those hardly counts. Typhoid, maybe, but we don't know if the yellow man could really have pulled the trigger." They do know for sure, she knows, but it's easier to joke about it than to acknowledge the truth. Winnie knows well enough that Jesse would never have bargained for her life if he hadn't realized that she was in danger of actually dying.

"What about when you wanted to jump off the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland?"

She scoffs. "You were right there with me, and it isn't near death if we don't even try it."

She can hear his smile growing with each word he says, and hers grows in answer to it. "When that branch broke out from under you at the top of that huge tree? When you told me you could reach into a beehive for honey without getting stung? When you-"

"That's enough," she says crossly. "I get your point. But death doesn't exist on days like today."

She hears him shift to look at her, but she doesn't look back. She stares up at the sky, watching the haphazard plummet of the snow. She wonders if the clouds feel like they're losing something when the snow falls, or if it feels like a burden being lifted. She thinks it must be a loss, the same kind of loss she feels when the flakes melt away.

The same kind of loss she feels when she watches one of the Tucks ride away on the horse, or when Jesse lets go of her hand after giving her a hand up on a particularly challenging tree or ledge.

"No," Jesse agrees. "Death has no place for Winnie today."

When Jesse said her name on the silo in Treegap, he said her name like it was a miracle. It had made her feel weak in the knees in the way that only eleven year olds can understand. Now, he says her name like it is a revelation, and she feels lost.

Sixteen

Winnie ties her hair back with a ribbon. She hasn't worn a dress that fits this well since she was eleven. Mae tries to get her good clothes, but Winnie isn't interested in bankrupting them just so she looks good to the people who hardly matter. The Tuck men probably couldn't tell the difference between a paper sack and a wedding gown half the time, and Mae would call her beautiful if she left her room wrapped in newspaper. The ends do not justify the means, so Winnie is happy to run around outside without stockings and in dresses that ended mid-calf.

If she enjoys it when Jesse looks at her legs, she certainly doesn't admit it to herself.

Looking in the slightly warped mirror on the wall, Winnie smiles to herself. She had finally caved and bought herself a new dress when Mae and Tuck agreed to let her go to the fair with Jesse. For old times sake, she had pleaded. If they see somebody with an atrociously yellow suit or who looks into the eyes of an immortal boy, they will leave immediately. Maybe buying the dress was an unnecessary expense, but she thinks that she has never looked so beautiful.

Mae is making dinner when Winnie skips down the stairs. Winnie pauses at the bottom, waiting for Mae to turn around and look at her. When Mae doesn't turn, Winnie gives an exaggerated cough.

"Do you need a glass of water?" Mae's voice is absent. Her head doesn't turn in the slightest.

Winnie gives a louder cough, followed by excessive gagging sounds when Mae continues to ignore her.

"Winnie, if you need something-" Mae stops and covers her mouth when she looks at Winnie. "Oh, my dear." The words are spoken so softly, so reverently, that Winnie looks down at her feet.

"Do you need any help before we leave?"

Mae smiles, but her eyes have tears in her eyes. Winnie sometimes catches Mae looking at her like this, and every time she wonders if this is how her mother would have looked at her if things had gone differently. It was the face Mae made when Winnie made her first cake successfully, when she knitted a scarf on her own, and when she came home from town with a bouquet of flowers from Henry, the baker's son. It was the face Mae made when Winnie was able to walk for the first time after she got sick.

"No," Mae says. "I can manage. When you're at the fair-"

"Be careful, I know," Winnie says with a crooked smile.

"Have fun," Mae corrects. "You have never looked more beautiful in your entire life."

Running outside doesn't feel right when she's wearing good shoes. She has grown too used to feeling the grass beneath her toes or the give of the soft leather boots Tuck gave her for her fourteenth birthday.

"Jesse!" She can't see him in the fields, and it doesn't look like he's out by the pond either. "Jesse! Are you ready to go?"

"I'm coming," he grouses from behind. The kitchen door slams open again, and she's wondering why he was in the house at all until she turns. She almost doesn't recognize him. Jesse is wearing nice clothes, for one thing. He has a fancy jacket and unscuffed pants, his hair is brushed out of his face, and he has a tie on. She freezes, looking at him, until he breaks through the tension with a mischievous grin. "Think I'll fool them all into thinking I'm a good boy?"

She smiles. "Until you open your mouth. Think I look like a good girl?"

He gives her an exaggerated once over, and her chest squeezes. "You look a bonafide lady, Winnie Foster. It's like seeing you for the first time all over again."

She offers him her arm. He takes it with a low bow and a smirk. His hair, though combed into submission, is showing signs of rising back into its usual disaster. "I hope I look a little different than I did then," she teases.

Jesse considers, and she takes the time to look him over. He really does look exactly the same. Even knowing that he doesn't age, a part of her is still shaken when she remembers how much age has changed her. Time has taken a toll on her.

"You're a little taller," he says thoughtfully, mockingly.

She bumps him with her hip and he gives an over the top stumble, dragging her with him. She squeals a little, but giggles lace themselves throughout.

"What's with the getup?" she asks breathlessly. He straightens and pulls his arm from hers to adjust the vest.

"What? Don't you like it?" He gives her a humorously pained look before shrugging. "Ma thinks that I'll blend in better if I dress like I live "in the area." Apparently "the area" wears nice clothes and takes baths."

When town comes into view, Winnie stops to take it all in. She hasn't been to a regular travelling fair since Treegap, and a part of her falls back in time. For a second she would swear that she's wearing trousers and has her hair pulled back in a tight braid. Her heart starts beating with the exhilaration of breaking the rules. When she turns her head to see Jesse, she almost forgets that she isn't eleven and running off with him.

"Are you okay?" His brows are high and he holds out a hand to her.

"Yeah," she manages. "It's just been a while."

He doesn't have to ask what she means. He just laces his fingers through hers. "A lot really has changed, huh?"

"And nothing, somehow," she replies. And then they are enveloped in the smell of funnel cakes and the sounds of falling bottles and ringing bells.

Winnie and Jesse had gone to plenty of festivals while they travelled two years ago, but a part of her loves this more than any of those. The deep fried foods fill a hole in her chest that she hadn't known was there. The smell of horses and food and people seems so uniquely fair.

In the distance, a band starts to play. Winnie grabs for Jesse, who is aiming a ball at a stack of bottles. He looks back at her and his head tilts to catch the tune. A waltz. His eyes light up and he tosses the ball carelessly, but the bottles fall perfectly anyways. He grabs a teddy bear and tucks it into the pocket of his coat, letting the head poke out cheerily.

Jesse loves to dance, and Winnie loves to dance with him. He has an eerie ability to keep time and foresee what's coming, so he loves the complicated square dances that have fallen out of style since he was young. She saw him by the pond once, doing the polka by himself. She watched him for a long time, but never told him that she saw. Winnie, who cannot dance without looking like a young giraffe learning to walk, is better suited for the slower dances. They waltzed all the time in Europe, and she is eager to do it again with music playing and strangers having as much fun as they are. They dart out to the square, but just before they reach the circle of dancers, a hand brushes Winnie's arm. She turns back and sees Henry, dashing in his suit.

"May I have this dance?" His grin would be blinding, but Winnie isn't really looking at him. She's already turning back to the music.

"I'm sorry, but I'm dancing with Jesse!"

Henry calls after her, and she regretfully pauses to listen. Jesse hops from one foot to another impatiently until he sees the younger boy. His face goes carefully blank. "We could dance once you've finished with you brother, then," Henry offers hopefully.

"Oh," Jesse cuts in. "I'm not her brother."

"What?"

Winnie gapes at Jesse, aghast. Is he trying to ruin everything? If people start asking questions about the Tuck family, they might have to leave. "No," she says hurriedly. "The Tucks are my foster family. Jesse isn't my real brother."

Henry is perplexed, but doesn't ask anything more about it. "So, the dance?"

"Absolutely," she says.

She drags Jesse into the square, stepping into him to put one hand on his bicep and the other in his free hand. She doesn't look to see if he is ready; she knows he will be. When they turn so she knows her back is to Henry, she scowls at him.

"What?"

His hand cradles her left shoulder blade, creating a warm pocket. Though his skin is not touching hers, her back buzzes with it. "What was that about? I'm supposed to be Winnie Tuck here. What good could saying that I'm not your sister possibly do?"

His face is indecipherable, but she thinks he might be upset. "You aren't my sister, Winnie. He should know that."

"But why?" She's a little breathless, but the waltz is one of the slowest dances in her collection. It's a dance that the fair plays for old people and couples. Is she really so out of shape that it's tiring her out? And her cheeks feel warm, but she would swear that she doesn't feel exerted.

"Why are you dancing with Henry?"

She gapes at him. "Because he asked."

Their voices are dropping lower and lower, going from baffled anger to scathing hisses. With each word, they come a little closer together. If Winnie leaned forward just a touch, her chest would press against his. HIs hand has dropped from her shoulder blade to her waist, and she hates herself for noting how hard his bicep is and how sturdy his hands are when she should be focusing on the dance and the conversation.

"What are you expecting to happen, Winnie? He gives you flowers. He gives you bread and cupcakes. He's courting you."

They're spinning in faster, tighter circles now. If they go much faster, they might be spinning as fast as she thinks her head is. She feels like she's missing a part of the conversation, but she's pretty sure that she knows all of the facts. "And?"

"Courtship ends in marriage, Winnie. Do you really want to marry Henry? Be a baker's wife?" Jesse's eyes are wide and bright, and she isn't sure that the pink of his cheeks is all from the dancing.

"I don't know," she says honestly. Her heart is beating. Her focus is on her waist, where his hand is resting. The music has come to a stop, and the dancers have frozen. Jesse's face is inches from hers, eyes locked onto hers, and she isn't breathing. His face is shiny with sweat. Winnie's brain feels like it's turned to mush and the only information that's getting through is the fact that he has a little powdered sugar on the corner of his mouth.

He takes a step back in time with the other men, head dipping into a bow. "You have to know, Winnie. It isn't right to string a man along."

Henry has put his hand on her elbow, timing impeccable, as always. She turns away from Jesse with a plastered on smile, but she can't help but wonder if she's been incredibly blind.

A two step starts to play. Henry is delighted, but Winnie still isn't totally present. She goes through the steps and the twirling in a haze, utterly unaffected by Henry's nearness. Perhaps that should be answer enough to Jesse's question. She wouldn't want to marry somebody who inspires absolutely nothing in her heart, would she?

"I didn't know you were a foster child."

It takes Winnie a second to understand that he means that she is a foster, not a Foster. "Yes," she quickly agrees. She hasn't planned out the lie, so she decides to stay vague. "There was an accident in my childhood home. The Tucks are old friends, so they took me in."

"That's terrible," Henry says genuinely. "How long have you lived with them?"

"Five years." Five wonderful, painful, confusing years.

"You seem very close to them," he says. She can't tell if there's an accusation hidden in his words, so she pretends that there isn't one.

"I am," she says with false cheer. "I love them very much."

"I'm sorry about your family, but I'm not sad that you came here." His words have just the right amount of shyness, but she isn't charmed. A week ago, she would have been. Last time she came to town, she had been pleased to see him. Had there been butterflies in her belly? Had her eyes automatically searched for him? Did her heart sing in response to his?

No. No, none of those things.

When the dance ends, she tells him that she needs to get back to Jesse. The Tucks have told them to stick together, she says, and it is hardly a lie. Henry leans in to ghost his lips against her cheek. She tries to smile at him, but the intimate touch leaves her feeling hollow.

It is the middle of the night, and Winnie cannot sleep. She has hardly slept a wink in weeks, not since the fair. She just lays there, thinking of how Jesse is laying in bed just across the hall.

This is a terribly new feeling, the ache below her stomach. She's had it before in a vague way, but it usually goes away if she ignores it. But since that waltz, that infuriating, exhilarating waltz, she hasn't been able to ignore it. It comes when she looks at Jesse's hands while he ties a hook to her fishing pole. It came when he and Miles came out of a swim in the pond, clothes clinging tightly to muscles that she had never paid much attention to before. Every night, it comes roaring to life. She lays there, trying to ignore it, but instead she thinks of Jesse's deft fingers. She thinks of the way his bicep felt under his jacket, of the way his smile speaks volumes of mischief. She thinks of Jesse, and she aches something fierce down there.

She wonders if he ever feels the same way.

She doesn't think herself a fool, though Miles would probably contest that a good half of the time. Eleven year old Winnie knew that Jesse loved her when he said he would marry her once she was seventeen, but she also knew that he wasn't in love with her. She knew that he wanted to marry her because it would look better to travel with a wife than some girl. But now, laying in bed, she wonders if he sees her differently than he did then. She certainly sees him differently.

Winnie crawls out of bed and adjusts her nightgown. She looks at the door. If she opens it, there's no turning back. Her body doesn't feel like her own as she walks out the door.

Out in the hallway, she looks at Jesse's door. If she opens it, there's really no turning back. For keeps, this time. Her pale hand wraps around the doorknob, her heart in her throat, and turns it.

His room is dark, but the moon shines through his window. She can see him, sleeping peacefully. He looks younger when he sleeps. The lines on his forehead have smoothed out and his mouth is slightly open.

She crawls onto his bed. She knows that Jesse is a light sleeper, but he doesn't wake until she has one leg on either side of his waist. He rockets up, eyes wild as he takes her in.

"Winnie," he whispers. "What are you doing in here?" She notes that he sleeps in his trousers and his shirt, though his shirt has come partially open. She touches his chest with one finger, and he inhales sharply.

Jesse looks hopelessly bewildered, and that gives Winnie the resolution to follow through with what she has imagined nightly since the fair. She puts a hand on each side on his face, takes a deep breath, and kisses him.

It is a hard kiss, one with knocking teeth, but it makes the monster in her belly roar with approval. She has never kissed somebody before, but she doesn't think that he is making it any easier. It seems like it ought to be a two person effort, but his lips don't move against hers.

"Winnie-" His voice is muffled by her lips, but he valiantly continues. "Win, what are you-"

"Please," she breathes. She is near bursting with that horrible, delicious ache, and his breath falters a little. When Winnie kisses him again, Jesse's hands rise to grip her. One buries itself in her red hair, tangling into the curls that he likes to tug on when he makes a particularly vicious joke. The other grips at her waist, pulling her against his chest.

With his participation, the kiss shifts to something perfect. His lips are warm and soft and she is burning alive. She yanks her lips from his to trail them along his smooth jaw, to brush her hands down the opening of his shirt. His hands are probably leaving bruises on her waist and thighs, but she thinks that she will like seeing his fingerprints on her body tomorrow.

Her hands go to the buttons on his pants, fumbling to open them in the dark. She knows that if she slows down, she might open them faster, but the eagerness is stronger than her reason.

"Wait!" Jesse's gasp is quiet, but deafening. She freezes, looking at him with wide eyes. "Winnie," he whispers. "Stop. What are you doing?"

Her eyes meet his for the first time tonight, and what she sees makes her recoil. He looks hurt. He does not look eager or hungry. He looks grief-stricken, and a part of her thinks that he looks just like his father when he looks at her like this.

Winnie does not answer. She stares at him for a second longer, hoping against hope that he will pull her back to him. He is leaning away from her, almost afraid, and that breaks her. Truly, she thinks that she hears her heart shatter into a million pieces, so she runs. She runs out of his room, out of the cabin, and out into the open.

She is a deer, gracefully bounding through the field. She is a mountain lion. She is a snake. No, she tells herself bitterly. She is a coward. She is a thief. She is a fool.

She does not turn back when she hears the door open again. She is pushing the rowboat into the pond when he calls after her in a low voice. She is rowing quickly toward the middle when he reaches the edge of the water.

The night feels too calm around her while she watches Jesse pace around the pond. Crickets chirp a welcome to them. The sky is bright, and she thinks of the night on the silo. She thinks of the night she laid in the grass with him on the night he gave her the vial and told her to consider drinking when she turns seventeen.

She buries her face in her hands, letting her hair fall into her face to block out the night. She is so angry. Not angry that he said no, of course. She is angry that she went into his room at all. She is angry that she thought he would say yes. She is angry that she did not talk to him about the feelings she was having, about everything he said at the fair. If she had changed any of those things, she would not be sitting in the middle of a lake in the middle of the night, listening to the sound of Jesse swimming out to her.

Wait, what?

Her head jerks up to see him, just a few feet from the boat. His hair is slicked back from his face. Her eyes are immediately caught on his lips. They are very swollen and she wonders if hers are the same. Even now, she wants to kiss him again.

"Can I come in the boat?" he asks. He swims a little closer, but she recoils.

"No," she squawks. Winnie is mortified. Mortified that she kissed him, that she tried to undo his trousers, that she ran from him when he tried to talk to her about it. If he comes in the boat, she might explode.

He swims back a little. "I'm sorry," he says quietly.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, but I just can't do it."

"Why not?" She really isn't angry that he said no, but she needs to know why.

"I can't be with you, not like that," he says. He isn't meeting her eyes, and that makes a different, furious monster come to life inside her.

"Why?" The word is a snarl, and he flinches. "Why can't you be with me? Don't tell me that you haven't been with somebody after all this time."

He huffs, treading water quietly. "I have, but that's not it. I did it to feel alive, understand? But if I'm with you, and then you leave, I'll never feel like I'm alive again."

Suddenly, Winnie is a different kind of fool. She is a fool that did not think of his feelings. She thought of how his body felt against hers. She thought of how his eyes flickered down to her lips while they danced. She thought of his body, but she did not think of his heart.

He continues, voice going a little higher. "It's just, I am so in love with you. I fall more in love with you every day, Winnie, if that's even possible." He takes a look at her stricken face and backtracks a little. "I'm not trying to talk you into anything. I promise I'll let you choose on your own. You can leave, and I'll move on, but I won't fall out of love with you. I can't give you everything you want. I can't give you a normal life with me, but I can give you a normal life if I'm out of your life entirely."

"Maybe I don't want a normal life," she says softly.

"Maybe," he agrees. His face dips a little lower in the water and bubbles rise to the surface when he exhales. "Maybe, but you aren't sure yet. And Winnie, I can give you everything but this, because once I've given you everything, your leaving will totally destroy me."

"I'm sorry if it seems like I'm stringing you along," she whispers. A tear streaks down her cheeks and she wipes it away.

Jesse pretends not to notice, making her heart ache even more. "I didn't mean it when I said that. You aren't stringing me along. I told you what I wanted, and I told you to think about it. I know that if you decide to leave, you won't pretend otherwise."

The crickets have quieted. The only sound is of moving water, and Winnie's heart is deafening. "You can come in the boat now," she tells him.

He crawls in and hunches on the bench opposite her. This is never how they sit when they fish; he always squeezes onto the bench beside her so their elbows bump when they cast. She hates herself for not having decided how long her life will last. Whichever way she chooses, at least it will cut them both free. She cannot tell him she loves him, no matter how high her heart has risen into her throat, because she cannot bear to hurt him more than this night already has.

She had not understood, when she was eleven, why he insisted that the difference between eleven and seventeen would matter when she drank the water. Now she does, and while she is sure she'll appreciate the difference when her feelings can be put to use, she thinks that the difference will be the death of her now.

Seventeen

"I could live a day like this forever," Jesse says dreamily.

They are laying on the grass again. The sun burns hot and high above them and the grass is lush and green. It is what Angus calls an Indian Summer, and the two teenagers are making the most of what is probably the last beautiful day before the leaves change. Winnie looks over at him to see his contented smile and closed eyes.

"Really? Not climbing trees, not going to exotic places, just laying here in the grass?"

"Sure," he replies. "Knowing that Ma and Pa are in the house, happy. Knowing that Miles is content on the pond. Knowing that you're here with me. It's a perfect day, and if I could come up with a way to make time stop, I would do it."

She smiles over at him, and though he cannot see it, she thinks he feels it. He reaches over and tugs affectionately at an auburn curl.

"It's a good day," she agrees. "This would be a good place to stay."

His breath slows a little, and she knows that he is thinking about the vial that still hangs around her neck. She is seventeen, the same age as him, but she has not made up her mind. She is hung up on the concept of forever. Does she want a life that does not end? Does she want to risk having children that will die before her? Does she want to be stuck at seventeen, young and vibrant but with so many years and experiences lost?

Every day, she feels Jesse looking at the vial. Every day, she pretends not to see. He never says anything about it, and neither do the rest of the Tucks, but they all know that their lives will change one way or another, within the year. Once she's eighteen, though she would still be young enough to drink and marry Jesse, they will all know that she has chosen to grow up and change.

If only she could figure out what she wanted for sure, that would be great.

It is too early in the morning for Winnie to be awake, but she wakes up at sunrise with an unignorable need to pee. She tries to fall back asleep, but she finally gives in and tiptoes out of her room to go outside.

She freezes at the end of the hallway when she sees Angus and Mae there. Normally, she wouldn't have hesitated to walk into the middle of whatever they were doing, but the silence feels heavy. She worries that if she breaks it, something important will be ruined.

Angus is up early to hunt, she knows, and Mae is probably awake to pack him a lunch to bring along. Her back is to him, but he watches her carefully.

"Can I say something selfish?" Mae is speaking quietly, but Winnie still catches it.

"Of course," Angus replies.

"Sometimes I hope that Winnie will drink from the spring, and not just because of Jesse."

Winnie inhales softly. She doesn't want them to notice her, but this is a topic that Mae has never broached with her.

Angus sighs a little. "Can I say something selfish?"

"Of course."

He wraps his arms around Mae's waist from behind and rests his chin on the top of her head. "I hope she drinks it too. It was so much easier to tell her not to when we hadn't expected to keep her. I was so much wiser with her when I wasn't her father, but I am a much better man because I am."

Winnie tiptoes back into her room, ignoring her protesting bladder. Her cheeks are wet when she sits on her bed. Hearing Mae and Angus will probably make choosing for herself much more difficult, but she feels like an unnoticed crack in her heart has healed. She has not thought as much about her father and mother in recent years, and now she sees why. She has new parents. She does not love her birth parents any less, but she finds herself thinking now that the Tucks have been more than enough for her to grow into a good woman.

Winnie kisses Mae and Angus on the cheek when she gets up later in the morning, but does not tell them why.

It is a perfect day. Winnie has found that there are days that she knows will be perfect from the second she wakes up. It is as though the stars have aligned to allow her to have everything that she wants, just the way she wants it. Even the things that are less lovely are things she would never change.

When she wakes up, Miles is frying bacon and flipping flapjacks. He is the best at making breakfast; always frying the bacon so it is just crispy enough and finishing the flapjacks when they are a perfect, golden brown.

They are the only two awake, so Winnie grins at him when he sits down across from her. When they are alone, he always smiles back.

The silence is companionable enough, but when he swallows his last bite, he looks at her half-full plate. "Alright," he says. "You can talk now."

She beams at him. "Okay. I've finally figured out how to keep my flower crowns from falling apart."

She chatters, mouth full, about things that are of the utmost importance to her and of no importance to him. His lips are curled into the smallest smile. When she first moved in with them, she would not have caught the happiness in it, but now she recognises the slight raise of his eyebrows and the way the faint lines around his eyes have deepened. He is happy, and Winnie thinks that he's been this way for a while.

Mae and Jesse get up at the same time, though Mae is dressed for the day and Jesse looks like he has slept for a hundred years.

Mae smiles at Miles and Winnie, winking at them before ruffling Jesse's hair. "Who'd have thought that it would be Winnie and Miles that end up together? Miles is very handsome, I suppose."

"Definitely more handsome than Jesse," Miles agrees.

"And a better cook," Winnie adds. "He feeds me in the manner to which I expect to become accustomed."

Jesse scowls at them, stuffing an entire flapjack in his mouth. He chews it viciously. "I am way better looking than Miles," he says.

Winnie reaches across the table to place her hand on Miles'. She beams at him. "It's so cute that Jesse is so confident in himself. One of these days, he'll find a nice girl who appreciates that."

Miles and Mae roar with laughter when Jesse tosses a piece of bacon at her. When Angus gets up, he gripes that when three of his four family members are over a hundred years old, they ought to be better at being quiet in the morning. Still, when he turns to pour himself a mug of coffee, Winnie sees a smile grace his cheeks.

Mae sits next to Winnie with some toast. The room quiets again as the others eat, but Winnie looks a Mae eagerly.

"We should go to town next week for the farmers market."

"Why? We grow pretty much everything we need here," Mae says.

"Because I heard that the Johnsons' dog has puppies," Winnie says reverently.

Angus and Miles groan, but Jesse perks up. "Ma, we have to see the puppies."

Mae shakes her head, but her lips twitch a little. A weakness. "We don't need any puppies. I feed enough hungry mouths as it is."

Winnie leans in close to Mae's face. "Puppies."

Angus is shaking his head at Mae, but his eyes are filled with defeat.

When Mae says, "I'll take you down there, but I'm not promising we'll get anything," his shoulders slump. He knows that he has lost, and everybody else does too.

Winnie presses a kiss to Mae's cheek. "Thanks, Ma."

The sound of chewing and forks scraping against plates stops immediately. Jesse gapes at Winnie while Angus chokes a little on a mouthful of coffee. Winnie goes scarlet. She has never called Mae "Ma" before.

"You're welcome, dear," Mae says casually. She says nothing of it, so the sounds of a regular morning slowly begin again, but Winnie can see the tell-tale sheen of tears in Mae's eyes.

She spends the morning in the garden, alternating between weeding and going through a math problem set with Miles.

"Miles," she croons when Mae calls them in for lunch.

"Winnie," he replies, already sounding weary of the request she hasn't made.

"We should take the afternoon off. It's too nice of a day to do schoolwork."

He snorts. "We've been doing the work outside. Isn't that taking advantage of the weather?"

"No," she groans. "I need space. I need to run and climb trees. I need freedom, Miles. Free me from my academic prison."

Her figurative ears perk when he sighs. "Most girls your age aren't in school anymore," he muses.

"Yes," she breathes. She throws her hands up in a worshipful gesture, and he laughs.

"One afternoon off, Winnie. We're back at it tomorrow. I want you to be the smartest person you know. Smarter than all of the men."

"What happens once I'm smarter than you?"

"Impossible," he says.

"Jesse!" Her triumphant cry is answered by Jesse's head popping out from behind the front door, cheeks full of whatever Mae made. "I've got the afternoon off!"

His eyes light up. "No way! I thought your teacher was too boring to let you have fun!"

"At least I'm handsome," Miles says as he shoves Jesse out of the way.

Winnie lets the hours of the afternoon pass as she plays hide and seek in the forest with Jesse. He knows the better places, but she is better at staying silent. She can lay in wait for hours, but Jesse will hop out of his hiding spot the moment he sees her pretending to walk back to the cabin.

"Winnie!" He calls after her, appalled that she didn't find him, but she walks away as though she doesn't hear him. "Winnie, wait up!"

He jogs after her, and when she turns, she is grinning. "I win."

"What? No, you gave up."

"Did I say that I give up?" Her words are low and mischievous, and his jaw drops.

"Winnie Foster, you are a deceiver." He is gaping at her, trying to keep his mouth from curling into a smile, but she gives a delighted hum as she dances out of reach.

"Actually, I'm a winner. Winnie Foster is queen of the woods!" She screams the words at the sky, head thrown back and hair blowing wildly in the wind.

Tension builds within her as the day passes. It is an anxiety that stems from the agony of seeing the end of a good thing approach, all while knowing that nothing can be done to stop it. On perfect days, Winnie cannot bear to sleep. How is she supposed to turn her back on a day when ending it means that the world goes back to normal?

"We should play cards," she tells Miles when the sun sets.

He looks at the way she is standing, with her hands on her hips and her feet spread, and shakes his head. "Nope. If we start now, you'll try to stay up all night."

"I swear I won't," she tries, but knows that it won't work. She has kept them up for hours before, insisting on game after game and conversation after conversation. She just can't let the sun go down on something perfect. She can't let something wonderful end.

"Mae," she coos next. "We should have muffins in the morning."

"We don't have any muffins," Mae says without looking up from the blanket she's knitting.

Winnie stands from her place on the couch. "I guess we'll just have to make some."

Angus grabs her hand. "Winnie, it's too late. You'll be going to bed soon. Tomorrow is another day."

She cranes to look over her shoulder. "Jesse, do you-"

"No," Mae, Miles, and Angus say in unison.

Jesse, who had perked up at the sound of his name, slumps. "We lose this round, but maybe tomorrow."

She hadn't told him what she was going to suggest, but she nods anyway. There is always tomorrow. "I'll go change for bed," she says.

In her room, Winnie heaves out a huge sigh. It's a bittersweet sigh, like she's nostalgic for a moment that hasn't ended. Her eyes flick to the mirror in passing, but she freezes. She slowly turns and looks in the mirror again, peering closely at her reflection.

Her hair is a mess, flying out in frizzy curls. There's a leaf stuck in it too, a leaf that none of the Tucks had mentioned to her. Her cheeks and nose are sunburned. There is a smear of dirt on the side of her neck, probably from gardening or hide and seek. She is a mess, and Winnie doesn't think that she has ever looked so beautiful. She isn't a vain girl, and she has never thought that she was particularly attractive, but her eyes are bright and her lips are stuck in a perpetual smile.

Mae had told her that she would always remember the day and time she was most beautiful, and she is suddenly certain that this is it. She doesn't have to just remember it.

In this moment, Winnie thinks that she knows her choice. She sits on her bed and scrounges in the chest by her bed for a pencil and paper. She hates writing, but she writes down everything. She writes about going into the woods at the beginning of August in 1893. She writes about meeting the Tucks, the man in yellow, and running away with the immortal family. She writes about her travels, her illness, and moments that mattered with each of them. She writes it all down, partially because she wants to remind herself of all of the factors, but mostly because if she ever starts to regret her choice, she wants to be able to remember what she was thinking at seventeen.

Winnie grabs at the vial necklace, but stops herself. No, this isn't how it happens. Not sitting on her bed, alone in her bedroom. Chewing on her lip, Winnie lays back on her bed. She is afraid that if she tells everybody that she is going to drink the water, she'll second guess herself. Maybe her resolution is stronger than that, but maybe the disappointment or fear on the elder Tucks' faces would shake her.

She grabs the full sized vial, which has accumulated a heavy layer of dust over the years, and slips it into the pocket of her dress.

Winnie peeks into the hallway outside her bedroom and realizes that it's gotten awfully dark. She must have been in her room for ages, thinking and writing and wasting time for the last time. She jogs into the kitchen, grabs a glass, and after making sure that everybody else has left the kitchen area, she pours the contents of the vial into the cup. She doesn't want to drink it alone, but she doesn't want anybody to make her stop, so she will just have to drink it when nobody knows that she's drinking it.

She knocks on the door to Angus and Mae's room. She pokes her head in to see Mae reading by candlelight and Angus, blinking groggily at her.

"Is everything okay?" Mae looks concerned, and for good reason. Winnie has never come into their room at night before so something must be up. Something is up.

"Sure," Winnie says.

"I thought you went to bed hours ago," Angus says wearily. His eyes are already closing, though he fights to keep them focused on her.

"Oh! Yeah, I, you know." She bounces for a second. "I needed a drink." She raises the glass.

"Okay," Mae says slowly. "That doesn't explain why you knocked."

"I just wanted to tell you that I had a great day." Winnie smiles at them, genuine and young. "Thanks."

Mae smiles back, a little confused, but touched all the same. "You're welcome, dear. We'll see you in the morning." Angus is already gone, but Winnie has gotten what she needed out of them.

Next she walks to Miles' room, but his is empty. She frowns. This isn't right. She has to say goodnight to him too, or it won't feel right. They all have to be a part of it. She pads back to the kitchen to look out the window, and sure enough, he is sitting out on the boat.

She jogs out, careful not to jostle the glass. "Miles," she hisses out onto the water. He looks up and moves to paddle back inland, but she emphatically shakes her head. "No! Everything is fine! I just wanted to thank you for the afternoon off. I had a really great day."

He raises his hand in acknowledgment, and that is enough.

Last, and perhaps most importantly, is Jesse. She is sure to knock on his door, smiling a little at the thought of the last time she went into his room in the middle of the night. It is definitely one of her most horrifying memories, but it doesn't have to stay that way. It has been a reminder of everything that she stands to ruin, but now it can be a series of firsts. Her first kiss. The first time he told her he loved her.

"Come in," he calls.

He is sitting up in bed already, but he pushes himself up farther when she walks in. She stands uncertainly. She knows what she wants to say, but now that she's here, she isn't ready to say it. She doesn't want everything to change at once.

"Winnie," he says. "Do you need something?"

"Do you still feel seventeen? Like, do you feel the same now as you did then?" The question pushes out of her without her thinking about it, but once it's been said, she feels like she's been wondering for ages.

He licks his lips, thoughtful. "Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think that I'll never learn from what's happened over the years. Sometimes I think that I'll get to live forever, but every day will be exactly the same."

She nods, her racing heart growing solemn, but he continues.

"And then I look at you, and I feel like I've totally changed. Everything changed when you came. I haven't grown up, but I've changed because of you. I feel seventeen, but only in good ways. I have been able to turn myself into some semblance of a man because of you."

Winnie grins at him. He smiles back, face clear of any suspicion. The vial around her neck is still full, so he thinks nothing of the glass of water in her hand. Her eighteenth birthday is only six weeks from now, and the hope has been gradually fading from his eyes, but the love has not. Even when he thinks that Winnie is going to leave him, he only has complimentary things to say about her.

"Cheers to that," she says, and takes a deep drink of water.

Epilogue - Six Weeks Later

When Winnie wakes up on her birthday, there is a peculiar tingle in her stomach. It is excitement, but of a sort she is not used to. She had thought that she would care less about her birthday since she wouldn't be aging anymore, but the thrill is still there. She hopes it never dies.

She lays in bed, though the sun has risen, to keep the birthday tradition alive. In her own home, her mother would treat the day like any other until suppertime, when the presents and cake would make the day brighter. The Tucks treat the entire day like a celebration, and not just because Winnie has been growing up to this point. Jesse convinces them to go to the sea for his birthday one year, and Mae always asks to do absolutely nothing. She sits on the couch all day, basking in the sight of watching her family do all of the cooking and cleaning without her help. Winnie's request always seems simple, but it never changes. She wants to have cake for breakfast. She lays in bed to give Mae more time to finish, but she can't wait once she hears birds singing.

All of the others are up, eating bits of toast or sipping at coffee.

Mae is piping frosting onto the cake. She pauses, surprised, when she sees Winnie in the kitchen. "I wasn't expecting you yet. You always sleep in on your birthday."

Angus walks by Winnie, pressing a kiss into the side of her head in passing. "Happy birthday, girl." The boys echo the sentiment, Miles with pride and Jesse with a barely hidden mask of grief.

Winnie beams at them. "How could I sleep in on a day like today?"

"The same way you do on other days," Mae teases. "This is just another day."

"It had better not be," Winnie replies earnestly. "Other days don't have cake."

Jesse raises his glass. "I'll drink to that. Bring on the cake, Ma."

"Give me a minute to light the candles," she chides, but she looks excited too. Cake is a luxury that they seldom allow themselves, and eating it for breakfast feels rebellious even when it's a part of the plan.

It's not a large cake, but Winnie still isn't sure if she'll be able to blow out all of the candles. If she can't, Jesse will tease her about it all day. When Mae lays the white cake to rest in front of the birthday girl, Winnie puts on a show of frowning.

"There are too many candles," she says.

"What?" All of the Tucks lean in to look.

"You put too many candles on the cake. It's an understandable mistake," Winnie adds. "I'm getting pretty up there."

"There are eighteen candles," Jesse says.

"Exactly," Winnie says, and pulls one of the candles off.

It's the big reveal, the reveal she's been planning since she drank from the spring, but the Tucks are taking longer than she had anticipated to catch on. The air is thick with confusion.

"You drank from the spring," Miles says. His voice is slow and heavy with horror. "You drank the water."

"I did."

Mae and Angus, bless their hearts, are conflicted. Should they smile? Should they be upset? Is there any point to being upset now that it's happened? Jesse has a slow, beautiful smile growing. Miles pushes his chair back from the table roughly.

"Miles, wait-" Winnie grabs at his arm, but he jerks it away from her. He walks out of the cabin, almost stumbling in his haste.

She runs after him, ignoring Angus' call to wait. "Miles, please, let's talk about this."

"What is there to say? You drank the water. You knew what there was to lose and you drank anyway," he says. His eyes are a little teary as he paces back and forth.

"Yes. I knew what there was to lose, and I drank anyway."

"Why?" He whirls around to look at her. "How could you do it? Haven't you learned anything from what we've told you? Or was it Jesse, telling you the easy parts without telling you what you're getting into?"

She scowls back at him, irrationally angry. There's no point in arguing, she knows that, not now that she's done the deed. Still, there's that part of her that wants him to understand. She wants him to be okay with it. She wants him to want her with him forever, or at least to be willing to see her sometimes for forever.

"I've learned plenty from what you've told me, and I don't agree with everything you've said," she says. He looks at her, aghast, so she hurries to continue before he can cut her off. "Life is the greatest wonder, sure, but if love isn't a part of it, life is empty."

"You could find love," he says. It's as though he thinks saying it now could change things.

"I already have," Winnie says softly. "I have love, all kinds of love, and it's the kind of love that is worth living forever for. If I lose it, my life won't matter."

"You can find love again," Miles says. His face has softened a little, but it's not a cheery look. He is softening like he is on the way to breaking.

"Maybe," she agrees. "Maybe if I was the only one who would be losing everything, I would have. But it isn't just me, Miles. It's me losing you. Losing Jesse and Mae and Angus. It's Jesse losing me, the first loss he's really had. It would be Mae and Angus losing a child. You would lose me too."

"I was ready," Miles says shakily. "I was ready to lose you."

"Were you?"

His lips trembles a little, so Winnie takes his hand.

"Maybe you were," Winnie says. "But I wasn't ready to lose you. I'm not going to lose you, ever. Maybe you don't like it, but it's done. It's done, it's my birthday, and if you aren't too mad, I want a hug."

Miles wraps his arms around her, holding her as tight. She squeezes him back, wondering if a hug can convey an apology and a lack of regret at the same time. Maybe it does, because Miles pulls away and wipes at his face. "Let's go eat cake."

By evening, the emotional rollercoaster has died down some. There has been spontaneous grinning, spontaneous crying, and spontaneous hugging. All in all, not a shabby birthday.

Winnie has been struggling between the urge to avoid looking at Jesse for the rest of forever and the ache to stare at him all day. Maybe it was fun for the others to watch for a while, but Mae decides to call it a day early.

"Happy birthday, Winnie," she says with a crooked grin. "Here's to many more."

Next is Angus, who has one eye on Miles. "I'm thinking of going fishing, if anybody wants to come along."

"Sure, Pa," Miles says. Winnie thinks that he's trying to be discrete, but his gaze is shifting between Winnie and Jesse so fast that she thinks his eyes may get stuck in that constant motion.

The men leave, and Winnie is sitting alone with Jesse in the living room.

"You drank the water," Jesse says. "You drank the water, and you did it all by yourself. I wanted to be there, stupid."

She shrugs. "You were there. I did it in your room, right in front of you. I just didn't tell you what I was drinking."

"You should have said," he cries, outraged. The smile on his face is large enough to make Winnie's cheeks ache in sympathy.

Her stomach is fluttering, but the words she failed to say six weeks ago come with surprising ease. "I don't know if you still feel the same way about me as you did a year ago, but just in case you do, I love you too."

Jesse is beaming when he walks over and takes her hands into his. "Of course I feel the same way. I'll always feel the same way."

This time when she kisses him, he kisses her back without hesitation. This time when he cuts the kiss short, she is not scared to pull back.

He is smiling, utterly alight with joy, as he pecks the tip of her nose. "I'm pretty sure that the next part of my plan was to get married."

He doesn't have a ring or a plan, not really, but when they get married in the fall, the wedding isn't the part that matters. It matters that Jesse didn't stop smiling the entire day. It matters that their first dance as a married couple is a waltz. It matters that when they go off to see the world on their honeymoon, Winnie's hand is in his as he tells anybody who will listen that she is his wife.