Hello! Thank you for reading my story, and for reading the whole thing! As you will have seen, the previous chapter is the last chapter, and is the proper end of the story. However this epilogue came to me afterwards, and as I always felt the ending of this story was a bit unsatisfactory I thought I'd add it in. To juggle things up a bit I wrote it in second person. Hope you enjoy!

The day is cold and grey, as it always seems to be in this part of the country. On one side of you is a wide expanse of farmed fields, like a grey patchwork quilt of clumsily knitted squares spread lumpily over the landscape. Here and there, farm cottages are dotted, sheltered by dim trees.

On your other side lies the town. It is still, ghostly, an eerie silence spread over it like fog. Cars dribble along the main road in a miserable little procession, no one quite sure where they are going or what they are meant to be doing.

Your hair blows in your eyes and you hug your coat tighter around yourself. At your feet is a hump of earth, a little hillock lumping slightly higher than the rest of the flat landscape. A crude wooden cross, no more than a foot long, lies on top of the soil. Beside it is a stone, with a carved inscription. Here lies a nameless boy.

You shiver, and look around you, at the acre of tree stumps and fallen leaves. In the centre is a big, bare circle of brown soil. Nothing more.

There is the crunching of dead leaves, and a man comes hobbling through the tree stumps. He is an old man, with white hair. He sees you, and comes over. 'I carved that stone,' he says, waving his hand down at the grave. You nod. You both stand in silence. 'I'm a forester,' he adds. 'Or I used to be. I cut down trees.' You stand in silence a little longer, you looking at the sky, him at the stone and the cross. 'Did you see the tree?' the man asks. You don't reply, but your silence seems to encourage him. 'Of course you wouldn't, I suppose. It was when I was still a young man and they were planning on developing the town more. There was a big wood here... once. We were instructed to cut down the whole thing, which we did, of course. When we cut down the last tree, it fell really slowly,' he explains. 'Then out of thin air, a trunk appeared. It was the trunk of a massive tree. It went up and up, right up into the clouds. And as I looked at it, I remembered being a little boy, and sitting on my grandfather's knee while he read me a story from a big green book. It was called The Faraway Tree. And I felt... I felt like I was a little boy again. Still come here every day, even in my old age.' He gazes towards the bare patch of ground again.

'He was dead when we got to him. The little boy. Dead the second the tree vanished. That's what it did, you see. It vanished into thin air. Just like that. They never did do the extension of the town, building those extra carparks and supermarkets or whatever it was. Everyone had a change of heart. Now there's just the tree stumps.'

The breeze blows and blusters, cold fingers pinching and nipping. The forester turns. But there is no one there. He frowns. 'Funny. I could have sworn there was someone there, looking at the sky.' His frown deepens. 'Who was I talking to then?'

The grey sky grows greyer, sinking further and further away. Shadows descend, punctured by feeble pinprick lights from the town. The old man shivers. 'I wonder what happened to that red book,' he says aloud. 'When I wrapped the little boy in blankets, I saw it, poking out from under his coat. But when we buried him, it was gone.' He shakes his head. 'Strange, eerie feel out here,' he whisperes. 'As though ghosts will come out. Always has been, ever since the wood was cut down.' He hurries away, and is swallowed in the night.

The wind drops. The night calms. And as it does, something appears in the bare circle of soil. A trunk, climbing high into the air. A tree stands there, its topmost branches reaching right into the clouds. Lanterns swing from boughs, and merry chatter fills the air as little folk climb up and down with a ghostly quietness.

Above the tree hangs a low, dark cloud. Somewhere up there is a ladder, which leads from the tree right into that cloud, to the land on top of it. You look away from the Faraway Tree, towards the cottage where you once stayed a brief, unwelcome stay. It is no more. It burned down in a fire years ago, Mrs Josie inside.

You wait. You will wait for however long it takes, whether it be tonight, or in one hundred years. You have all the time in the world. You stand as the earth spins around and the stars wheel and the asteroids plummet. Your only movement is the rhythmic rubbing of your finger, as you trace the gold letters embossed on the cover of the red book under your arm.

Because you hope that some day, at some time, Peg and Timothy might come down from the clouds, clamber down the Faraway Tree and forgive you.

Ah! What we humans will do for forgiveness.

So it was that Jack's ghost stood by his grave, waiting.