“Bundle. Bundle’s just gotten around your legs. Bundle’s an explorer. That’s why I think it might be more dog. On the other hand, it really likes the constellation Pisces—fish, you know. So maybe it’s a little more cat.”
Henry said, “Er, yes—quite. Of course. I see.” Although of course he did not see. He kicked more emphatically with his feet. Bundle detached from around his legs and drifted back to Po.
“That’s better now,” Henry said, and Po heard Bundle think Riff, which was a sound of disapproval. “Do you and, er, Bundle come this way a lot? Do you know this area well?”
Po thought of a tree shaking its leaves in the wind, and as the ghost thought this, about the shaking tree, it managed to shrug. “About as well as anybody knows it, I guess.”
Henry’s face lit up, and it was painful to see. It reminded Po of Liesl. “Wonderful! A native. Then you can help point me in the right direction. You can help me get home.”
Po decided there was no point in beating around the bush. “You’re on the Other Side,” the ghost said firmly. “You are no longer with the living. You’ve crossed over.”
Henry was quiet for a minute. Another little dark crease appeared in his forehead; through it, Po could see a spinning haze of planetary dust. Henry was falling apart, slowly but surely. He was blending. Soon he would be as Po was—part of the Everything. Po felt a strange mixture of sadness and relief. The ghost reminded itself that losing form was natural, and good, and the way things were in the universe. There could be no regret about it.
At last Henry shook his head. “I understand all of that very well,” he said firmly. “I met the nicest woman—Carol, was it?—on my way over here. Explained everything to me; how she had died of the flu after going out in the middle of the night to scavenge for potatoes. The man behind her had been killed in a bar brawl. I never was a drinker myself, you know, for that reason. But all the same, I need to get home. I need to get back to the pond, and the willow tree, and my wife, and little Lee-Lee. They’ll be worried sick about me, I can tell you that.”
Po did not know quite how to respond. Perhaps crossing over had shaken up the particles in Henry’s brain, the ghost thought. “I’m sorry,” Po began again, more slowly. “I don’t think you understand. You’ve died.”
“I understand that perfectly well,” Henry said, a note of briskness creeping into his voice. “What did I just tell you?”
“But—but—” Po struggled for the words it needed. It was not used to having to speak so much out loud, and for a second it regretted ever stepping foot in Liesl’s bedroom. “You can’t go home. Home is on the Living Side. There’s no way to cross back. Not really. Not for good.”
Henry climbed to his feet. Or rather, Henry’s ghost simply unfolded and was standing. Despite being new, he was getting the hang of things. Bundle took refuge in Po’s Essence; Po felt the sudden presence of the little animal inside of him.
“My dear boy,” Henry said, and then squinted again. “My dear girl—my dear—whatever you are—I may be dead, but home is wherever I built my life, and it is where I will go back in my death. Home is where my only child was born, and home is where my first wife, my love, was laid in the ground. She’s not here, after all—in this place you call the Other Side, because if she were, she would have found me already. She is not floating around in the darkness somewhere, and I will tell you why. She is not here, because she is home, and home is the pond with the willow tree standing next to it, and dead, alive, or in-between, I am going home. Do you understand me?”
The whole time he had been speaking, his voice had gotten louder and sterner, and as a result, Po felt small and rather ashamed. Distant—so distant now!—memories returned to Po, the tiniest, vaguest memories of the smell of chalk and paper and the feel of its knees pressed under a desk. And strangely, because Po had Bundle’s Essence inside of him, the ghost also felt other long-buried memories, of sharp voices and the shame of a puddle on the floor between its legs, a creeping, seeping puddle on a very nice carpet.
But when the ghost tried to focus on the memories, they evaporated.
“How do you intend to get there?” Po asked.
“My daughter will take me,” Henry said. “She knows the way.”
“She misses you,” Po said, remembering its promise. “She told me to tell you.”
“I miss her, too.” Henry sighed, and at once all the sternness was gone from his voice. He shook his head mournfully, and then said in a whisper, “It was the soup, you know. I should never have eaten the soup.”
“What?” Po was once again confused.