Part 14 (1/2)

Poppy sat down next to him. ”You should have just told us.”

”I know,” he said. ”Are you mad?”

Poppy nodded. ”Of course I'm mad! But I guess I'm less mad than when I thought you didn't care about any of it.”

He looked over at Alice. She was staring at one of the stones, as if maybe she didn't want to look at him. ”What about you, Alicea”?”

”Get up,” she said suddenly. ”Get up! Get up! Look!”

Poppy jumped up and hauled Zach to his feet.

Alice was pointing to a stone he'd been lying in front of on the gra.s.s. ”You found it! Zach, you actually found it.”

The large marble headstone bore the word KERCHNER on it, and over that, a carving of a willow tree. They stared at it, incredulous smiles giving way to genuine grins and laughter.

It made him feel, for a moment, like maybe no stories were lies. Not Tinshoe Jones's stories about aliens. Not Dad's stories about things getting better or things getting worse. Clearly, not Poppy's stories about the Queen. Maybe all stories were true ones.

Poppy knelt down, pushed aside some weeds, and traced smaller words at the base. ”There are names herea”it's a family plot. That's why the stone is so big. There's Lukas. And someone named Heddaa”that must be Eleanor's mother. And looka”a blank spot. An empty place for Eleanor.”

”We did it,” Alice said, her voice soft as any prayer. ”The quest is complete.”

”We have to give her a good funeral,” said Zach. ”We came all this way. We have to do it right.”

Alice and Poppy nodded.

And so they decided that Zach would dig the grave, which he did mostly with his hands, but also with the a.s.sistance of several sticks and a long, flat piece of slate that was sharp enough on one end to cut through roots. It took some time, but he was able to hollow out a s.p.a.ce big enough for the doll to rest comfortably.

Alice's job was to find flowers. She didn't want to take them from other graves, so she picked some toad lily and goldenrod and turtlehead that grew in the woods at the edge of the cemetery. She braided all the stems together to make a garland for the Queen and then made another little bouquet to leave behind once they were done.

Poppy's job was to prepare the doll for burial. She rubbed the dirt off the porcelain with spit and the cleanest edge of her T-s.h.i.+rt. Then she took off her hoodie and wrapped Eleanor in it, like it was a shroud.

Finally they were ready.

Poppy placed the doll in the hole in the ground and smoothed the hairs around her face. One of the doll's eyes was open, staring up at them, but the other was closed. Poppy cleared her throat.

”Eleanor,” she said, ”we think that you were about our age when you died and that no one really knows your true story, only that something terrible happened. We're going to keep trying to discover the truth for you. We hope you can rest easy now. You're home with your family.”

”Eleanor,” Zach said. The words came easily, the way they did when he was playing, but he felt entirely like himself. ”You must be one determined ghost to get us to come all this way. I know we didn't always do the best job, so thanks for not quitting on us. I'm glad you chose us to be your champions.”

”Eleanor,” Alice said softly, stepping forward. ”I only ever knew you as our Queen, so that's how I am going to talk to you. We, your loyal subjects, quested far to bring you to this place and have gathered here this day to bid you farewell on your journey. I'm glad you're finally free from your tower.”

She leaned down to place the garland around the doll's neck. Pink petals fell on the Queen's dress and hair.

”The Queen is dead,” she said. ”Long live the Queen.”

They clasped hands, and then Poppy knelt down to begin covering Eleanor with dirt. The first handfuls covered her face, leaving her fingers, her cheeks, and her forehead bare. More earth fell until she was covered completely.

”Good-bye, Eleanor,” Poppy whispered as Alice set the bouquet she'd made on top of the soft, new-turned earth. A few petals fell, dusting it gold.

Zach felt the wind rise, like the wind he'd heard singing through the trees the night he'd run home from basketball practice. He felt the same chill at his neck and he s.h.i.+vered, but this time he didn't run. He let it pa.s.s over him, racing on and upward. And he thought he heard, very distantly, the sound of a girl laughing.

Smiling, Zach looked out at the lines of graves as they turned to walk back to the road.

Alice kept pace with him. ”I keep thinking about what Poppy said, about us all changing. We are, aren't we?”

Poppy s.h.i.+vered in her T-s.h.i.+rt. ”You guys are.”

Zach wrapped an arm around her shoulders. ”You're cold because you gave your jacket to a ghost, and you don't think anything's different about you?”

Poppy snorted, but she didn't pull away. ”That's not what she means. I'm just different like weird. We had this adventure together, but now we're going to go back. And I'll be the same, but you guys will keep changing.”

”Quests are supposed to change us,” Zach said.

”How about real life?” asked Poppy.

Alice picked up a blade of gra.s.s and folded it in her fingers. ”What's that? Seriously. This was real. This was a story that we lived. Maybe we can live other stories too.”

In the distance, Zach saw two cars pull into the graveyard. He recognized Alice's aunt's silver Toyota, with his mom's beat-up green Nissan behind it. As they drew closer he saw the shadow of his father in the pa.s.senger seat.

”This was our last game,” Poppy said. ”This is the end of our last game.”