Mae sat up in bed, staring at the stone in her hand. Bright green, flecked with gold, shining despite the low light. It was dark outside, and the apartment was quiet.

She tucked the stone under her pillow, turned the lamp off, and lay flat. She could feel the stone, round and hard against the back of her head. What if Lena was lying? she thought. What if she was trying to trick her? She’d wake up with a headache and a sore neck, feeling embarrassed for having slept with a rock under her head.

But before long, the thought passed. She could feel the world around her growing hazy, her mind drifting off as sleep began to overtake her.

She blinked once, twice….

In that brief moment before she opened her eyes again, she felt something grab her shoulders and jerk her upright. Her eyes shot open. She was no longer in bed, in her bedroom. She was standing in the woods. A cold wind chilled her skin. Twigs and fallen branches bit into her feet. Just feet away from her, eleven children sat in a circle, evenly spaced throughout the small clearing. There was one wide gap between two of them, a space left for one more person.

Slowly, Mae approached the gap. Most of the children kept their heads down, their eyes closed. One of them, however, looked directly at her. Her eyes were completely black. Mae tensed up, but she maintained eye contact. The instructions that Lena had given her swam back into her consciousness. She winked three times, first with her right eye, then with her left, then her right again. Then she tilted her head sideways and spun counterclockwise. Then she stood motionless, staring into the girl’s dark eyes, waiting.

The girl nodded slightly. Mae nodded in return and sat down in the empty space.

She bowed her head and closed her eyes. She wondered what to do now, what would happen.

A voice spoke in her mind, soft and high. Empty your mind, it said. A memory will come.

Emptying your mind was easier said than done, Mae thought.

If you lack the strength, the voice said, then I will help you.

Without warning, everything fell away. The cold ground under her legs, the wind against her skin, all of it was gone. An image, hazy and washed out, played before her like an old movie. She saw herself standing on a rocky shore, staring out at a long river. Dad was standing next to her. The two of them were skipping rocks, handing each other small stones and tossing them into the water. Dad’s stones bounced lightly across the surface of the river, while Mae’s plopped heavily without a single jump. At one point, Dad set a hand on her shoulder and said something. Mae couldn’t hear what he’d said. For some reason the memory didn’t have audio. Whatever it was, it must have been encouraging, because with her next toss the stone managed to skip three times before it sank. Dad’s face lit up, broke into a wide smile—a cheer, Mae assumed—and he grabbed Mae and lifted her up.

Now a sound did break through, though it didn’t match with what Mae was seeing. She opened her eyes. Everyone in the circle had their heads up, their eyes open. All their eyes were black, but Mae could tell exactly where their gaze was set. In the center of the circle, a stem was growing, bright green and as thick as a tree trunk, with a large bulb set at its top. The stem grew rapidly, lengthening and thickening, with large leaves popping out at even intervals along its height, until finally the bulb burst open, and a huge yellow sunflower bloomed, far bigger than any flower Mae had ever seen. She stared at it, her mouth agape.

This flower is the child of your memories, fed and fertilized by their warmth, the voice said. Should you return, this garden will thrive. And so shall you, in your mind and your heart.