“You packed light,” Germ jokes, because of course he is just floating there like he always is.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask Ebb.

He nods.

“I haven’t ventured more than a mile or so from home since I died,” he says, “but there’s a first time for everything,” he says. He looks scared.

We stand for a moment, staring at each other. And then I pull my flashlight from around my neck. I point it at the horizon to the north, and Little One appears, sitting on a path of dry leaves ahead of us, tilting her head at me quizzically. I breathe deeply.

“Follow the moths,” I tell her. “Just don’t eat them. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

Little One is zipping over the trees—a flash of luminous bright blue against the dark. And then she is gone. We stand there in silence and wait. Minutes pass. We look at each other, nervous, the forest hushed.

And then there’s a woo-wup-woo-wup-woo far off in the trees. And Little One shoots up above the treetops in the distance like a tiny firework, chasing a tiny, luminous moth. She stops midair, and then hovers. She’s waiting for us to follow.

We trudge into the woods.

I glance over at Ebb, who appears pained.

“You okay?” I ask him. And he looks over at me and nods.

“Does it hurt?” Germ asks.

Ebb considers this like he isn’t sure. “I feel like my soul is at the end of a yo-yo string that’s stretched too far. Yeah, it hurts.”

“Do you want to turn back?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It’s bearable,” he says. He takes the lead before I can argue.

When we catch up with Little One, I point my flashlight forward again like a kind of command, and she takes off. She covers lots of distance, but never goes so far that we can’t hear her woo-wup-woo-wup-woo, and see her little figure when it rises, victorious, from the trees. Each time she finds a new moth, she circles like a beacon—her bright blue shining iridescent in the dark sky.

“The moths may end up stretching all the way to Japan,” Germ says.

And with that cheerful thought, we walk into the night and whatever it may hold.

CHAPTER 26

The sounds of Seaport—the occasional hum of far-off cars, the ever-present sound of the sea—fall away behind us as we walk deeper into the woods. Soon all we can hear is the rustling of leaves and the occasional but reliable woo-wup-woo of Little One as she finds another memory moth. Up above, the stars look as if someone has thrown a handful of bright seeds across the sky.

Occasionally we cross a road cutting its way across the forest, or pass a remote house nestled in the trees, but mostly we are on our own.