You get out.

It is not graceful. It is a scrabble of pride and peat, a boot that wants to stay, a sock that loses the argument. You hit the boards on your knees, which will be bruises tomorrow and a story you will tell honestly if you are brave. Jonah grabs your sleeve. Ranger Dev is already there, because keepers and rangers have a sense for kids who lunged.

Nobody yells. That is worse, in a way. Dev checks your shins like a person counting tools. Mud. Cold. Intact.

“The marsh does not joke,” he says. “The old stories warned you for a physical reason. Lights lie. Ground lies. Boards tell the truth.”

Aunt Mara hears. Of course she hears. In the morning you help stencil a sign for the landing, red letters, no poetry:

LIGHTS LIE. STAY ON THE BOARDS.

Jonah paints a tiny wisp in the corner that looks more like a bug. Ms. Ellison adds a second line in smaller print: Will-o’-the-wisps are weather and gas. The danger is peat.

You are safe, muddy, done showing off. The legend gets to keep its job: not as a kidnapper, as a fence.

THE END

What you learned: will-o’-the-wisps are wandering lights over wet ground—sky on water or tiny marsh-gas flames—not spirits. The real danger is unsound peat. Old stories were maps that said stay on the path.