The girl loved the ghost boy so much that she felt only the smallest hesitation. There’s little to fear when you love. There’s nothing to fear when you are loved. So the girl took her ghost lover out into the valley beneath the moon that night and found Death’s own knife waiting for her. It was strange, that Death was not chasing her, coming to collect her, or swallowing her whole.
Instead the girl was standing beneath the stars, the soft breath of the grass warming her ankles, the heartbeat of the world thudding gently, devotedly against her feet, and the crickets singing a lullaby. She looked into her ghost boy’s eyes, and the softness of his smile filled her heart so quickly that it began to break as she brought the knife toward her chest.
The sky split open then.
The stars fell like silver rain.
The world stopped turning. The Universe held its breath.
The voice came again. “Stop. Set down Death’s knife. I’ve seen your heart and that you withhold nothing for yourself. You know my face. You recognize my love for you, as you know your own for the ghost boy. You know what you would do for him, and so you understand now that, for you, my beloved, I would fix the whole world.”
Then the moonlight fell down too: a brilliant sheet of white that cleansed the whole valley and left the world utterly dark, perfectly quiet as it was in the beginning, before all things. And in the dark, the girl fell into a dreamless sleep.
When she awoke next, the sun was starting to rise. Birds were singing. She remembered nothing, not the night before nor any night that came before it.
It was the first day of her life, and when she looked up the side of the valley, she saw a boy watching her. He looked familiar and unfamiliar at once, like someone whose vague notion she’d seen in a dream.
“I missed you,” she heard herself call to him—though was it possible to miss someone you didn’t know? Her chest hurt then, an immeasurable burst of pain.
“Every day,” he answered softly. “All the time.”
He came toward her, the early sunlight glinting off his skin and hair and eyes.
THANKS
If you’ve finished this book, you probably suspect by now that I’ve been treated better by the people around me than any person can reasonably expect in this world. My heart is full and my words fall short. Here are some people I want to thank:
The First Nations whose stories are seen here: Iroquois (The Woman Who Fell From the Sky), Natchez (Adoption of the Human Race), Sioux (Teton Ghost Story), Seneca (Brother Black and Brother Red), Caddo (The Flood), Creek (The Yamasee and the Flood), Onondaga-Iroquois (The Vampire Skeleton), and Kwakiutl (Ghost Country). There are several beautiful variations of each of these stories, and I highly recommend that anyone who’s unfamiliar take time to sit with them, whenever possible, with the interpretation of a scholar from each tale’s respective nation. This book wouldn’t be the same without these mesmerizing and unquantifiable stories, and I’m forever changed by what I discovered in them.
Gramma and Grampa, for beginning a tradition of gentleness and love that still defines our family; you are the people I want to be when I grow up. Mom and Dad, for reading to us in the hallway between our rooms so many nights, and for always doing the voices. To my brothers and sisters-in-law, thank you for being the kind of people who fight through the hard things and appreciate the good.
K.A. Applegate, for my first book crush (a boy who is literally trapped as a hawk for the majority of the series). Lois Lowry, for teaching me that words can forever change your world. J.K. Rowling, for smart girls, tender boys, deep magic, and love that casts out fear. Madeline L’Engle and Kurt Vonnegut, for an addiction to Weird.
Ms. Hanke, for that first writing assignment. Ms. Neugabauer, for that detention. Ms. Richards, for not punishing me when I turned in the choose-your-own-adventure story in which all roads led to you locking us in the flame-engulfed classroom and picking us off with arrows.
Rhoda Janzen, for giving me someone to look up to and up to, and for telling me I could do this, and I should. Beth Trembley, for teaching me how. Heather Sellers, from whom I first heard the phrase love you into the world. Sarah B., Peter S., Pablo P., Stephen H., Steven I., Martha G., Jesus M., Dean Reynolds, and the rest of the Hope College faculty, for creating the perfect little adult-incubator, despite the frozen lake next door.
Daniel Nayeri, who unwittingly encouraged me to keep going on at least two separate occasions, and John Silvis for his beautiful NYCAMS program, may it rest in peace. Or alternatively, someday be resurrected.
Bri Cavallaro and Anna Breslaw, for talking me up/down/all around: you are beautiful and rare gems. Candice the Queen, for reading an early draft of this book plus, I think, three alternate endings, and helping me admit which was the right one.
The online YA community, book bloggers, and Sweet Sixteens: I’m so impossibly lucky to have been embraced by you. Don’t play dumb. You know who you are.