The Ever After

Chapter Three: Beyond the Endless Briers

LATE THE NEXT MORNING MAY PUT ON HER favorite black tank top and black denim overalls and walked out onto the front porch. She sank into the rocker, balancing a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice in her hands. Somber Kitty appeared just behind her, slipping his way through the crack in the screen door and perching by her feet.

She yawned, her mouth gaping like a bat cave. Last night her mom had gotten her out of bed to watch a meteor shower. They'd laid on a sleeping bag on the back porch and competed over how many racing, fiery balls they could each point out.

Things had started nicely enough, but soon May had started trying to steal her mom's meteors, and vice versa. After that they'd started poking each other to cause distractions.

"You care more about winning than about me!" May had shouted, laughing.

Mrs. Bird had laughed too. "That's not true. I care about you more than all the meteors. Even more than most of the smaller comets."

"Ha-ha." May had rolled her eyes.

They'd stayed up until long past midnight.

But even though May was tired this morning, she wasn't sleepy. It was the kind of day where the world seemed full of promise. The dragonflies were humming, and the sun beating on the porch made the wood smell woodsy. It felt like it was a Day that Meant Something.

May thrust her hand into her pocket and felt the map. She wanted to think it had jumped into her pocket on its own. But she knew that wasn't quite true.

She drank and ate quickly. If it was a Day that Meant Something, she wanted to find out what that Something was.

In the breeze Somber Kitty stretched his body long and thin as a rubber band, and then leaped up onto her lap. He licked her chin, thumping his paw down on her chest to hold her in place.

"Yuck." May scrunched up her face. She stood up and brushed him off with the slightest move of her wrist, though he struggled to stay on. He clung to the waistband of her short overalls, dangling like a set of keys on the school custodian.

"Mew? Meow? Meay?"

"C'mon, Kitty, off."

Somber Kitty let go, bounced back onto his rubbery hind legs, and watched her walk to the edge of the deck, then down into the grass of the front yard. He jumped down behind her and lifted his paws gingerly. Already the sun had scorched the grass so that it was brown and dry.

"Mom, I'm going in the woods," May called in through the screen door.

"Don't go too far, baby," her mother's voice called back.

May pulled out the map, looked at it once more, and tucked it in her pocket. Her bike was lying right there on the grass in front of the stairs. She picked up the tasseled handlebars and set the bike to moving, straddling it and standing on the pedals. A pinwheel she'd stuck into the rim at the back of her seat spun and glinted in the July sun. She bumped along the grass to the edge of the woods, where a dirt trail zigzagged its way into the trees.

May was flying, leaves tickling her bare arms on either side as she flashed and bumped and jostled past the trees. Somber Kitty raced behind her, stopping only to clean his paws occasionally or bite a gnat out of his fuzzy coat before racing to catch up. When May skidded to a halt right in front of the fallen tree that marked where the bike track ended, he skidded too, leaping at the last minute to avoid a collision and wobbling through the air to land on his feet on the other side. May slid off her bike as she laid it down and stepped over the tree, slapping at the mosquitoes on her legs. The mosquitoes, she'd always assumed, got their water from the blood of the squirrels that got their water in Hog Wallow.