Free Beyond the Laughing Sky by Michelle Cuevas Page B

color of pale blue eggshells, the golden yolk of the sun rising in the east. Nashville and Junebug flew low to the ground, where they could hear the last cricket songs of dawn, where they could see their shadows fly along beneath them, the shadows of a boy and girl running along below them, playing and whispering to one another in the long grass. The air was cool—it whipped their hair back and reddened their cheeks. Nashville tried to press the moment into his memory—tried to find a place he could keep it safe and take it out when he needed it, maybe in the cotton depths of a pocket, or the snap of a locket, or the bottom of a dark trunk. Couldn’t he keep all this there—the closeness of clouds, the rooftops and trees like toys below, his sister by his side? He didn’t know.

    When they returned to the house, they sat on a branch and watched the sun finish rising.
    â€œYou could take me with you,” Junebug finally said.
    â€œI can’t do that,” Nashville replied sadly. “Not in a really real way, you know that. You need to stay here.”
    Junebug thought about this for a moment. There’d be nobody to play with in the fort, and the maps they’d made would yellow and curl with age. Maybe eventually they would replace his nest with a bed or a cradle, the perches with sturdy, normal chairs.
    One day, not long from then, Junebug would ask her father, “Where do you think he is now?” And so her parents would take out the globe, and point to a magical place far, far away. And they’d smile, and they’d imagine Nashville flying, soaring, gliding, and seeing the world over the pines. They’d imagine him free.
    But for this last moment, her brother was still there. So Junebug tilted her head to the side as if to listen to the softest music.
    â€œHey,” she asked. “Do you hear that?”
    Nashville listened as well. He listened with his whole self, and finally he did hear it. It was the song of a tree. But this one was different—more like it came from inside his own throat, for it was the pecan tree he’d lived in singing, and it was singing a song just for him.
    â€œI do,” he smiled. “I do hear it.”
    Nashville knew that it was time for him to fly away, but no matter where he went, there would always be this: a whisper, a hum, a lullaby. A song singing out over the pines; through the clouds, the lonely hours, and over the rooftops of the world. A song hatched from an egg. A song to sing him home.

T he house was quieter without Nashville.
    Well, not quieter really, but there seemed to be less of something . Junebug felt it, but couldn’t put it into words. It was as if some magic had been peeled away like wallpaper.
    Perhaps it was because when she looked out the window, Junebug still saw Nashville’s birdbath covered in green moss and crawling ivy. Perhaps it was the dust gathering on his bureau and his tin soldier toys. And perhaps, just maybe, it seemed something was missing because someone was; Nashville had been gone for most of the spring, the world turning green, smelling of rainstorms and frogs.
    Junebug grew accustomed to this new, quieter house, though odd thoughts did sneak up on her from time to time, the main one being just this: How could she have known? How was she to have known that the last time she saw her brother come downstairs for breakfast with his feathers a mess would be the last time? The last card game, the last adventure, the last thumb-fight over the first slice of cake. You rarely know, in the moment, when it’s the last time you’ll do something. Most of the time, the whole thing just sneaks away in the night, never to be seen or heard from again, not even sending back so much as a postcard to say hello.
    Oh, there were stories of course, about where Nashville had gone. People claimed to see him just about everywhere, doing just about anything. Some said he’d joined the circus,