For a long moment they looked at each other. The boy asked "What are you doing here?" and Winnie replied "It's my wood". Winnie asked his name, age and if he was married. He was Jesse Tuck, 104 years old or 17. He laughed and said he was not married. Winnie was thirsty and wanted to drink some water from the fountain. Jesse said that she couldn't drink. She insisted. But at this time, Mae and Miles arrived, leading a horse.

They were looking for a place to settle. They went through the woods wanting to get to the end of it. Then, in the middle of the woods they saw the spring. They stopped and everyone took a drink of water, even the horse. Except the cat. They camped there overnight. Tuck carved a T on the tree trunk to mark where they had been. They left the woods and found a populated valley and started their farm. They built two houses. But then peculiar things happened: Jesse fell out of a tree, but it didn't hurt him a bit. A hunter shot the horse, but it didn't kill him. Pa got a snake bite, Jesse ate a poison toadstool, Mae cut herself, but nothing happened to them. But what worried them the most was the fact that they were not getting any older. Miles got married, had 2 children, his wife thought he sold his soul to the Devil and left him. She went away and took the kids with her. So they had to leave their houses, they were like gypsies. They went on into the woods to make a camp, and they saw the tree and the spring. The tree hadn't changed and that was how they found out. They remembered the cat. The cat didn't drink the water and died ten years before. So they decided that the source of their changelessness was the spring. Then Angus Tuck, to make sure, took a shotgun and pointed at himself. The shot went into his heart and right on through him. It didn't kill him.

No one noticed that the man in the yellow suit heard it all and followed them.

Tuck said: "Know what is around us Winnie? Life. Moving, growing, changing. The water is always moving, and someday it comes to the ocean. Know what happens to the water? The sun sucks some of it from the ocean and carries it back in clouds, and then it rains, and the rains falls into the stream, and the stream keeps moving on. It's a wheel Winnie. The frogs are part of it, and the bugs, the fish, the wood thrush, and people. Always growing and changing, and always moving on. That is the way it is supposed to be."

The rowboat got stuck in some rotting chances of a fallen tree.

Then Tuck said " That is what we Tucks are Winnie. Stuck, so we can't move on. Dying is part of the wheel. We can't have life without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are. Do you see now child?

Then a voice rang out "Pa! Come back! The horse is gone!"

Mae came to check on her "We've been alone so long. I guess we don't know how to do with visitors. But still, it's a good feeling, you being here with us." Mae said goodnight and went to sleep.

Tuck came too. "I think I should stay here with you until you get to sleep". Winnie said "You don't have to do that, I'm all right". Tuck said goodnight and left. Then came Jesse and he said "Listen, how would it be if you waited until you're seventeen, same age as me, and then you could go and drink some of the water, then we could go away. We could get married."

Once more Winnie adored him. Her cheeks burned. Jesse said "I'll see you in the morning." After that she fell asleep.

"Mae Tuck climbed out of bed and began to dress: Three petticoats, a rusty brown skirt with one enornous pocket, an old cotton jacket, and a knitted shawl which she pinned across her bosom with a tarnished metal brooch." (...)

"Mae sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on a pair of short leather boots so thin and soft with age it was a wonder they held together." (...)

"Then, last of all, she pulled down over her ears a blue straw hat with a drooping, exhausted brim. But, before she put on the hat, she brushed her gray-brown hair and wound it into a bun at the back of her neck."

"His tall body moved continuously; a foot tapped, a shoulder twitched. And it moved in angles, rather jerkily. But at the same time he had a kind of grace, like a well-handled marionette. Indeed, he seemed almost to hang suspended there in the twilight."

" 'If you must know, I'm seventeen', he said." (...)

"Jesse does what strikes him at the moment, working in the fields, or in saloons, things like that, whatever he comes across."

"I was more than forty by then. I was married. I had two children. But, from the look of me, I was still twenty-two. My wife, she finally made up her mind I'd sold my soul to the Devil. She left me. She went away and she took the children with her."

"Miles can do carpentering, and he's a pretty fair blacksmith, too."

The constable came into the cell after she had settled herself on the cot. He let down a shutter over the window to keep out the rain. Winnie, under the blanket, tried to look as large as possible. He went away but Winnie did not sleep. Next morning, when he appeared whistling and carrying a breakfast tray, he found Winnie and his face flushed red with anger. The constable shout at Winnie. She was an accomplie, a criminal, but too young to be punished by the law. She was released into the custody of her mother and father and could not go anywhere.

Then two things happened: The toad appeared out of the weeds and a large brown dog. The dog looked friendly at Winnie but as it saw the toad, it started barking. Winnie flapped her arms to get the dog away from the toad. And without realizing, she reached through the bars of the fence and snatched the toad up away from harm. She dropped it inside the fence, and wiped her hands again and again. The dog was still waiting outside the fence. She ran into the cottage, got the bottle of water from the spring Jesse had given her. Winnie poured the water over the toad. The dog got bored and went away. Winnie picked up the toad and held it for a long time. Then she put her hand through the fence set the toad free and said "You're safe. Forever".

He looked around at the three shocked faces, and as if he were seeing nothing there but calm agreement, he smiled delightedly and rubbed his hands together.

The constable found it very suspicious but decided to follow the yellow suit man's instructions to the Tuck's cottage.

While in the pond, trying to get some fish, Miles talked about himself: "Remember I told you I had two children? Well, one of'em was a girl. Her name was Anna. She'd be close to eighty now, if she's even still alive. And my son - he'd be eight-two."

Winnie asked Miles "Why didn't you take them to the spring and give them some of the special water?"

"Well, of course, we didn't realize about the spring while we was still on the farm. Afterwards, I thought about going to find them. I wanted to, but they'd have had a pa close to the same age they was." said Miles.

Winnie thought and sighed "It'd be nice, if nothing ever had to die." And Miles added "Well, I don't know. If you think on it, you come to see there'd be so many creatures, including people, we'd all be squeezed in right up next to each other before long."

Winnie thought about what Miles said "If all the mosquitoes lived forever - and if they kept on having babies! - it would be terrible. The Tucks were right. It was best if no one knew about the spring, including the mosquitoes. She would keep the secret.

Here is a selected list of them.

Someone knocked at the door. It was the man in the yellow suit.

The yellow suit man said that he had grown up listening to his grandmother's stories. He believed on them. The stories were about a friend of his grandmother who married into a very odd family. This friend married the older of two sons, and had two children. She lived with her husband for twenty years, and strange to say, he never got any older. Neither did his mother, father and brother. His grandmother's friend decided that they were witches or worse. She left her husband and came to live with his grandmother for a short while.

The yellow suit man was fascinated by this story: people who never grew older. He devoted his life to finding out if it could be true. He went to university, studied philosophy, metaphysics, medicine. One day, he gave his grandmother a present: a music box. It reminded her of the mother of the family that didn't grow old. She had a music box. That music box played a very particular tune. And that was a clue. He never forgot the tune. So a few months ago he decided to look for the family again, he followed the route the Tuck's family had taken when they left their farm. And it was the day he met Winnie, he heard the music and recognized it. The next morning he saw the family taking Winifred away and followed them.

And he added: "The wood and the spring belong to me now. I'm going to sell the water. You can show me where the spring is and help me to advertise. I'll pay for your assistance, of course."

Tuck roared "You can't do that! You got to be out of your mind! You are a madman! Don't you see what would happen?"

The yellow suit man dragged Winnie through the kitchen to the door. She was screaming. Mae took a shotgun by the barrel, swung it round her head like a wheel, the stock of the shotgun smashed into the back of his skull and the yellow man suit dropped like a tree.

At that moment, riding through the pine trees came the Treegap constable.

The constable asked "What did you hit him for?" Mae replied: "He was taking the child away."

The constable exploded "That is what you done. You kidnapped that child."

Winnie turned and said "They didn't kidnap me. I came because I wanted to. They are my friends."

The constable with disbelief said "Well, anyway. I got to take charge here. If this feller dies, you'll get the gallows."

Miles and Jesse lifted the man in the yellow suit and carried him into the house. Tuck stood staring. Mae was taken to jail and Winnie was taken back to her home.

Winnie was thinking of Mae when she heard footsteps and a knocking on the door. It was the constable. He came to say that the man in the yellow suit was dead.

Winnie climbed on her bed, closed her eyes and thought that she had to do something. Mae musn't go to the gallows.

Jesse came to say goodbye. He told Winnie about their plan to take Mae from the jail. Miles knows about carpentering, so he could take Mae's window frame right straight out of the wall, bars and all, and she could climb through. Jesse gave Winnie a bottle of water from the spring and said "You keep it. And then, no matter where you are, when you're seventeen, Winnie, you can drink it, and then come find us."

Winnie than whispered "I can help! When you mother climbs out the window, I'll climb in and take her place. I can wrap myself up in her blanket, and when the constable looks in, he won't be able to tell the difference. Not in the dark. I will be waiting for you here, right at midnight."

One day at that time, not so very long ago, three things happened and at first there appeared to be no connection between them.

At dawn, Mae Tuck set out on her horse for the wood at the edge of the village of Treegap. She was going there, as she did once every ten years, to meet her two sons, Miles and Jesse.

At noontime, Winnie Foster, whose family owned the Treegap wood, lost her patience and decided to think about running away.

And at sunset a stranger appeared at the Fosters' gate. He was looking for someone, but he didn't say who.

No connection, but things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels have a hub, a Ferris Wheel has one. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late.

While a prologue comes before the first chapter of a book, the epilogue comes after the last chapter. They are mirror images of each other. A prologue details necessary information the reader needs before the action of the story has begun. Likewise, the epilogue details new information the reader needs about future events to fully understand the story's message or moral.