“Meow,” the cat replied with interest.
A few minutes later Mrs. Bird’s footsteps sounded on the stairs again, then came the squeak of the spigot being turned off, and the footsteps retreating. May stripped off her sari and walked out into the hall for her bath. Just outside the bathroom door, she paused. Inside she could hear the splish splash of the water being swirled around the tub.
May grasped the ceramic door handle and twisted it, opening on an empty room. In the middle sat a white tub with claw feet, with water gently waving back and forth. Leaning over, she inspected it, then climbed in. May was used to strange things like this. Her mom had always said all sorts of quirks came with a house as old as theirs. May used to insist it was ghosts. But Mrs. Bird had long ago given her one too many stern looks on the topic. So May simply sank beneath the water and let bubbles drift out of her of nose.
When she stepped out of the bathroom in a towel a half an hour later, the steam poured out behind her, engulfing the tiny figure of Somber Kitty, who waited in the doorway, licking his paws one by one. With the cat at her heels, May walked into her room and pulled on the turquoise tank top and shorts her mom had laid out instead of the usual black clothes.
Last summer May had built a tiny shelf that snaked its way around the whole room, way up high. Along the sill was the collection of quartz rocks she’d carefully picked from the woods. Her mom swore they were worthless, but they seemed as dazzling and precious as diamonds to May. There was also a complete zoo of lopsided animals she’d made out of paper clips, a perfect heart shaped pinecone she and Somber Kitty had found together in town, and an onyx brooch left behind by the lady who’d once lived here before them—a lady by the name of Bertha.
The quartz rocks stared at her as if they, too, wanted to go wherever she was headed. Once she was dressed she pulled the smallest one off the shelf and let it hitch a ride in her pocket, for luck.
The picnic was a disaster.
Sweaty and red-faced, May Bird spent much of the afternoon pedaling around the lawn of Hog Wallow Town Hall on a bike with tassels flapping from the handlebars and a stowaway Rex cat who’d insisted on coming tucked into her backpack. She’d spotted a gaggle of classmates across the grass, talking and laughing.
May kept herself busy, scaring crickets out of the grass, then sat against a tree near the picnic table where mothers had gathered, working on her smile.
She overheard the parents talking. “Thank you, we love the house. We’re always getting offers,” Mrs. Bird was saying, adjusting her hat in a familiar way. She had always said the sun on her face gave her wrinkles. “But I think May needs to be somewhere more . . . average.” May’s mom looked down at her hands while she said this.
Unseen, May blushed. She knew that the reason her mom wanted to move was because she thought May needed to be more average. At that moment, Mrs. Bird’s eyes drifted toward May’s direction and widened, embarrassed.
May pretended she hadn’t noticed, plucked grass between her fingers, and then stood up. Without looking up she made her way toward the other kids.
Pollen blew across the grass, and Somber Kitty nipped at her heels. She lifted him up, frowning at him. “I’m going to hang out with the humans,” she said. “Go play.” He kissed her, his tiny pink tongue darting out to tickle her chin, making her wince before she placed him on the grass and gave him a pat on the butt to shoo him away. She nervously straightened out her clothes and made her way against the breeze to where the children had huddled into a tight group. There she tacked herself to the circle awkwardly, like a losing try at pin the tail on the donkey.
Claire Arneson stood at the center of the group of kids. Instead of being pulled into the usual pigtails, her hair was down and combed across her back, shimmery as mountain water. Two bright, pink-ribboned barrettes held back her bangs. May had always wondered why she couldn’t be more like Claire, when Claire made being herself seem so easy. She always had something funny to say. She never looked big-eyed and serious. And she had a million friends, none of whom were bald cats.
“I’m only allowed to have eight people,” Claire was saying, “Maribeth’s coming, and Colleen. . . . Finny, can you come?”
May smiled big as Claire singled out the kids that would attend her annual Kites and Katydids birthday party. Maybe they hadn’t even recognized her yet. Maybe Claire would invite her to the party, thinking she was inviting a mysterious stranger.
“Hey, May . . .”
May brightened and nodded as Claire turned to her, her heart doing a jig in her chest. “Isn’t that your dancing cat?” Claire pointed one perfect finger across the lawn and all eyes followed.
Oh. Disappointment. “Yes.” May tried her nongrimace smile again. It felt like the old one—grimacelike.
The whole class remembered Somber Kitty because May had brought him in for her “How To” report in February. Everyone else had done their reports on things like “How to Make a Bologna Sandwich” and “How to Sew a Pillow.” May had done hers on “How to Teach Your Cat to Dance.” It was one of the few times May’s classmates had actually noticed she was alive in a good way (They’d noticed her in a bad way many times.) It had also sort of been cheating, because Somber Kitty, despite his general sadness, loved to dance and had known how since he was a kitten.
“That was so cool!” Finny Elway said.
May cleared her throat, her disappointment fading. They thought she had a cool cat.
“Yeah,” Elmore Smith said. “But the best was when May tried to fly off the roof of her mom’s car with that bunch of balloons, remember?” Everyone burst into giggles. May’s heart sank. She tried to smile, as if she was in on the joke. She rubbed at the scar on her knee from that incident, which had happened at last year’s picnic. Ever since then she’d been afraid of heights.
“Hey, remember May Bird, Warrior Princess?” Maribeth asked. Now the laughter exploded, and May began to really and truly blush, remembering the day the photo had fallen out of her social studies textbook onto the floor. It had been a shot of her and Somber Kitty pretending to be Amazon warriors hiding in the trees. In it, May had on her black sparkly bathing suit that made her feel like she was wearing the night sky, and a belt wrapped around her shoulder with long sticks tucked beneath the strap for arrows. Mrs. Bird had said May shouldn’t dress like a half-naked wild thing, but she had stuck the photo into one of May’s note-books to surprise her and make her smile. It had surprised her by falling out. It hadn’t made her smile. It had made her want to sink into the gold and green tiles of the school floor.
“Remember when May forgot to lock the bathroom door on the bus trip, and it swung open?”
May shifted from foot to foot, looking at the ground to hide her flaming face. She gazed toward the adults’ table helplessly, wanting to make sure her mom couldn’t see. Luckily Mrs. Bird was still busy talking with the other grown-ups.
It was the three-legged race that saved her. The mayor of Hog Wallow announced that everyone was to line up across the lawn by the pink flag.
No sooner had he said it than, shouting and laughing, the children went tearing across the grass. Dazed, May dragged herself after them, her long skinny legs straggling. Races were her favorite. She was deadly fast.
But you needed a partner for a three-legged race. And everyone paired up without her.
“Mew? Meow? Meay?” Somber Kitty asked, appearing out of nowhere and rubbing against her shins.
“Cats can’t race,” May said with a sigh. They watched the racers line up, and then the starting bell went off, and Claire and Maribeth pulled out in front. They were way slower than May would have been. But May would have traded her speed for a partner to race with.
She turned around and walked back to her bike, far away from the crowd, and plopped down next to it in the grass.
“I think if I could go somewhere else, I could be someone else,” she whispered to her cat. She picked a puffy white dandelion out of the grass between her sandals and blew
at the seeds.
Somber Kitty, who always seemed to know May had no one else to tell her feelings to, mewed in agreement, though he had no idea what she was saying.
“But that doesn’t mean I want to move to New York,” she quickly added.
Then she slumped. She felt as heavy as a sack of beans. But then, a sack of beans never got embarrassed or did stupid balloon tricks in front of other sacks of beans or forgot to lock the bathroom door. Come to think of it, life was probably easy for all the beans of the world. Being a sack of them wouldn’t be so bad.
May picked another dandelion and blew on it. “Maybe I’d rather be a sack of beans,” she told the fuzzy white floaters. Somber Kitty meowed disapprovingly.
“Don’t worry, Kitty. I’m not going anywhere.”
Somber Kitty rolled himself into a ball and continued to stare at her. He didn’t look so sure.
“Unless you know something I don’t.”
At the edge of the grass, the trees watched her.
They knew better.
CHAPTER TWO
A Letter From Before
You can drop me off here.”
Mrs. Bird looked at May, then at the dirt road ahead of them, then back at May, who sat with her back straight the way her mom always asked her to. Mrs. Bird ran her free hand through her wavy brown hair as she brought the car to a stop.
“You sure you don’t want to just come home, pumpkin?”
May nodded.
“I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time in the woods. I worry about snakes.”
May opened the car door, but felt her mom’s hand on her back. She turned. “I love you, pumpkin,” Mrs. Bird said.
“You too.”
“Wait, May?”
May was halfway out of the car when she ducked back down to meet her mom’s eyes. “You know I wouldn’t trade you for anybody in the world, right?”
May smiled. Mrs. Bird seemed to breathe a sigh of relief before May went around to the back of the car to get her bike and her backpack. Somber Kitty jumped out of the back too, just before May closed the door and the car pulled away.
“Thank gosh,” May said. She looked around the dilapidated and deserted main square of Briery Swamp. Except for being dry and dead, it looked like any other town in the state of West Virginia.
May Bird had always thought that if states were like people, West Virginia would be the shy relative of, say, Texas. Texas was big and bad and sprawled out flat, saying “Look at me, I’m Texas!” West Virginia was mysterious and it liked to keep to itself. It hid in the folds of mountains, resting in the cool shade. It was sweet, beautiful, and bashful. Its woods held its secrets, or at least it seemed that way to May.
Briery Swamp wasn’t much of a town anymore. The houses that had once stood in a sociable gaggle at the town square had crumbled into crooked piles of bricks, overgrown with weeds. A possum, four snakes, and a hundred thousand three hundred and six earthworms had moved into what used to be the mayor’s graceful mansion. The postmaster’s old cottage was the centipedes’ favorite place for hatching long crawly babies.
The only building in town that still looked like a building at all was the post office itself. It stood up from the weeds like a snaggle tooth, three of its walls mostly collapsed and pouring onto the grass like a waterfall.
May laid her bike on its side and stared around. There wasn’t much to do except meander around the square with Somber Kitty and tell him made-up stories about the people who’d lived here, and why they’d moved away. Since there had been a drought in Briery Swamp for as long as she could remember, her favorite theory was that the rain had retired to Florida, and all the people of Briery Swamp had followed it there.
“Meow,” Somber Kitty said, which May interpreted to mean “At least we have each other.” The pair spent an hour or more kicking rocks up and down the road, until Somber Kitty ran off into the woods chasing a moth. Then, for the millionth time, May ducked in through the hole in the old post office wall and began digging through the rocks for treasures. Once she’d found a stuffed skunk mounted on a plaque. She’d also found three old rubber stamps saying “First Class,” “Second Class,” and “Third Class.”
Now she thrust her hands into a pile of rubble against the back wall, sifting out the larger rocks from the smaller ones, hoping to find maybe another stamp, or an old letter. She was just digging in with one last thrust when her fingers lit on something that felt distinctly different from rubble. It felt like paper. May pinched with her thumb and forefinger and gently extracted it, watching a corner of molded white emerge from the pile. It slid out with a little scratch.
It was a letter. A huge find. May couldn’t believe her luck.
“Meay?”
“Oh, you scared me,” May said, her heart racing as she met Somber Kitty’s tilty green eyes. “Look at this.”
May held the letter up for the cat to see. “Somebody didn’t get their mail.” She ran her tongue against the inside of her bottom lip, thinking. “Maybe it’s some private stuff,” she whispered breathlessly to the cat, who had already gotten bored of the letter and started licking his black paws.
The envelope was clearly very old—yellowed with age. One comer was folded back so that the stamp and postmark were visible. Though it was faded, May could just make out the date: June 11, 1951.
“I hope they weren’t holding their breath,” May said with a small, curious smile. A slant of light found its way through the hole in the wall and striped her face, making her look like two halves of herself. Where the flap of the envelope ended in a point there was a faded stamp of a tree surrounded by snowflakes and, when May looked closer, the face of an old woman, peering through the leaves. May stared at the stamp for a long time, a knot of unease gathering beneath her ribs. It was one of the prettiest pictures she’d ever seen, but her gut didn’t like it. She had to think for a minute to figure out why, but then she had it. The thing about it was that you couldn’t tell if the person who’d drawn it had meant for the lady to be a nice, old woman, inviting you into the tree, or someone not so nice, waiting to pounce on you like . . . a tiger.
Letting out her breath, she turned the letter over, rubbed at the dust and mold covering the address, and froze. She blinked twice. She read the words in front of her three times, her eyes as wide as cereal bowls.
The envelope, in blue, loopy letters, read:
Miss May Ellen Bird
White Moss Manor
Briery Swamp, WV
“Meay?” May jolted, her eyes shooting to Somber Kitty, who’d snuck up beside her.
“Shh, Kitty.”
She patted the cat’s head absently, then returned her gaze to the letter. She looked at the seal on the back, then turned it over again to look at the address. Her address. She felt like a firefly was lighting her up from the inside out. She stood up and looked around, then sat down again.
It had to be a different May Bird.
But then, there was her address.
May chewed on a finger, thinking hard.
The date had to be wrong. Nineteen fifty-one. May didn’t even think her mom had been born then.
But if the date was wrong, and the letter was sent recently, then how did it end up buried under all the old bricks of the post office?
May turned the letter over again and again and again, trying to make sure she was really seeing it.
“Well, Kitty,” she whispered, “what do you think we should do?”
May bit her lip, then raised a pinky to her mouth and began nibbling just the tip. She lowered her fingers to the slit in the back of the envelope to open it, then changed her mind and stopped, then started again. Once she started, she ripped it open with lightning speed.
There was nothing strange about the letter itself, except what was written on it. It was a single sheet of yellowed paper, just like an old letter should be, mottled with blue swirls and waves where the paper had gotten wet, making the ink bleed and blur. May pulled it out gingerly, worr
ied it might disintegrate. She unfolded it.
Dear Miss Bird,
The Lady of North Farm had asked us to send you this map to Briery Swamp Lake, just in case. She thought you might be having trouble finding it on your own, and she is expecting you to be prompt. We are very sorry for the danger you will endure, but we eagerly await your arrival should you survive it, as we are in great need of your help. The Lady joins me in sending you good luck and best wishes.
Sincerely,
Ms. H. Kari Kagaki
T. E. A. Travel
May let out a sigh of relief. That settled it. She didn’t know Kari Kagaki or any North Farm. They had the wrong person. She sank back, feeling like a casserole dish full of Jell-O. She looked at the envelope and the picture again. It brought back that uneasy knot.
May’s fingers stretched toward the map, and she looked at it sideways, trying to pretend that she wasn’t looking at all. She immediately recognized a few things. There was the town square. There—the knot got worse—was White Moss Manor, and there were the woods. The map even showed a dark smudge, where the giant gathering of briers—the Endless Briers, May called them, because she’d never managed to cross them—wound their way thickly along the east side of May’s woods.
And beyond them, there was a lake.
Almost as much as the letter itself, this couldn’t be believed. There were no lakes in Briery Swamp. Not even a puddle. The squirrels and chipmunks, May had always supposed, went to the next town over to get their water. If the lake had been there in 1951, it wasn’t there now.
May crumpled up the letter and dropped it on the ground. But as soon as she stood up, she swept down and picked it up. Turning red, she flattened the letter out, folded it, and tucked it into her knapsack. She caught Somber Kitty looking at her thoughtfully.
“I don’t want to litter,” she said, knowing there wasn’t a thing in the world that would get her to go looking for that lake. But Somber Kitty didn’t appear to be convinced. May sighed. “Really.”