“What’s the point,” Lief had said when Nick first mentioned the idea of snowshoes. “It’s not going to snow for months, and we move right through snow anyway.”

“They’re not for snow,” Nick had told him. “It’s so we can walk on living-world roads without sinking in. We’ll be able to move faster if we don’t have to pluck our feet out of the asphalt after every step.”

“So then they’re road-shoes, not snowshoes,” Lief said, then went about tying twigs together with strips of bark. When he had finished the shoes, he handed them to Nick and Allie. “Aren’t you afraid at all?” he asked. “Aren’t you afraid of what’s out there? All the things you couldn’t see when you were alive? Evil spirits? Monsters? I’ve been waiting forever for you to come. I prayed for you, did you know that? God hears our prayers here. Maybe even better than before, because we’re closer to him here.” Lief looked at them with big, mournful eyes. “Please don’t go.”

It tugged at Allie’s heart, and brought a tear to her eyes, but she couldn’t let her emotions influence this decision. She had to remind herself that Lief wasn’t really a little kid. He was an Afterlight who was more than a hundred years old. He had done fine in his forest alone, and there was no reason to think he wouldn’t be fine once they left.

“I’m sorry,” Allie told him. “But we can’t stay. Maybe once we learn more, we’ll come back for you.”

Lief put his hands in his pockets and sullenly looked at the ground. “Good luck, then,” he said. “And watch out for the McGill.”

“We will.”

He stood there for a moment more, then said, “Thank you for giving me a name. I’ll try to remember it.” Then he climbed away, disappearing high in his tree house again.

“South,” said Nick.

“Home,” said Allie, and they climbed out of the forest to face the treacherous unknowns of the living world.

Whether or not careless children actually sink down to the center of the Earth, no one can say for sure. Certainly many do disappear, but as it always seems to happen when no one else is looking, it confounds all attempts to discover where they actually go. The official term for sinking, coined by none other than Mary Hightower herself, is “Gravity Fatigue.”

In her groundbreaking book The Gravity of Gravity, Mary writes: “Do not believe rumors that children leave Everlost. We are here to stay. Those who can no longer be seen have simply fallen victim to Gravity Fatigue, and are either at, or on their way to the center of the Earth. I imagine the center of the Earth must be a crowded place by now, but perhaps it is the spirits of those of us residing there that keep the Earth alive and green.”

CHAPTER 5
Friends in High Places

Mary Hightower was not born with that name. She could no longer remember what her true name was, although she was relatively certain her first name started with an M. She took the name Mary because it seemed a proper, motherly name. True, she was only fifteen, but had she lived, she would most certainly have become a mother. And anyway, she was a mother to those who needed one—and there were many.