Everfound

Milos left the train in the afternoon, and followed the track, every couple of minutes looking around, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary, but nothing caught his eye. Looking back at the train proved to be a surreal sight: the locomotive, standing against the little white church right in the middle of its path. The way its steeple poked up at the sky made it appear as if the church was giving the train the middle finger.

Milos found nothing a mile back. Just a dead track, and the living world on either side of it. Whatever it was Allie saw, it was not revealing itself to Milos. He returned to the train, his afterglow faintly red with slow-boiling frustration.

When he arrived, all seemed the way it always did. Kids playing games, shuffling their feet to keep from sinking into the living world.

Speedo came ru

“Nothing,” Milos told him. “I saw nothing at all.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I will figure something out!” Milos shouted at him. “Don’t ask me again!” When he looked around, he saw that his outburst had gotten the attention of some of the kids playing around them. When Mary’s kids saw him, they used to look away, too shy and respectful to make eye contact. But now when they looked at him, they stared coolly, and their gazes were an accusation. What are you doing for us? those gazes said. What good are you at all? Now it was Milos who looked away when they stared.

He considered going up to the front car, and bargaining with Allie to tell him what she saw, or perhaps threatening her—but he would not give her the satisfaction of knowing she had the upper hand. Instead, he turned, and strode toward the caboose.

“Wait, where are you going?” whined Speedo.

And Milos said, “I need to talk to Mary.”

When Mary’s army had acquired the train from the Chocolate Ogre, it did not have a caboose. It had been a simple steam engine with nine passenger cars, each from a different time period. The caboose was added at Milos’s insistence before they left Little Rock, Arkansas. He was adamant that they travel no further west until a final car—a special car—was found. No one argued. It was, in fact, the only order he gave that met with no resistance from anyone.

They finally found the caboose sitting on a slight stretch of dead track, hidden by a living-world apartment complex. Once found, attaching it to the train had been relatively easy. So was decorating it—because Christmas ornaments were both beloved and fragile, and so were naturally abundant in Everlost. The strings of brightly colored lights even stayed lit in Everlost without needing to be plugged in.

The caboose was decorated by Mary’s loving children, and the entrance was locked to everyone but Milos, the only one who knew the lock’s combination.

Now, as he spun the lock, and turned it to the combination, he took in a deep breath, for even though he no longer needed to breathe, the mere act of doing so helped him steel himself for the moment. Then, once he was sure he was ready, he stepped inside.

It was late afternoon now. Light poured into the windows of the caboose and onto an object that lay in the center. It was the only thing in the caboose.

The object was a coffin.

It wasn’t made of wood as one might expect, or even of stone, as had been done in ancient days. This coffin was made entirely of glass—bits and pieces of it, meticulously glued together with bubble gum and anything else sticky enough to do the job. There were pieces of crystal taken from chandeliers that had crossed into Everlost. There were bottles, and window panes and sunglass lenses, artfully arranged, and little stained-glass window hangings that added color. The casket was strange and piecemeal, yet perfect in its own way.

Within the glass coffin lay a figure in a shimmering green satin gown, ever silent, ever still. A girl once lost to this world, but now ever found.

“Hello, Mary . . .”

Milos knelt beside the coffin, gently moving his hand across the rough edges of joined glass. Tears filled his eyes, but not tears of sorrow. Far from it. It was joy that filled him when he looked at her. This is where Mary belonged—in Everlost—a world she was determined to tame, and dominate. The Chocolate Ogre had found a way to make her live again, sending her back into the world of the living, turning her spirit into flesh. Her untimely life was a shock to everyone, most of all to Milos—yet even in that dark time, Mary had orchestrated her own return to Everlost.

Bring me home, my love.

Those were the last words Mary said to him, before he took her life. She looked into his eyes, and steadied his hand as he thrust the blade through her heart. It was that singular act, as horrible as it was, that bound them together forever.

My love, she had called him—and in that moment Milos knew he had finally replaced Nick, that hideous chocolate-challenged spirit, in her heart.

In the living world Mary’s heart had lain mortally wounded, leaking its last ounce of life in an alley—but as her body died, a portal opened before her spirit, and Milos was there to catch her. Just as he’d promised, he was there to grab her and hold her tight in his embrace, denying the gravity of the light and preventing her from being sucked down the tu

Perhaps the light wanted her. Perhaps God had already set a table for her in eternity . . . but Milos wanted her more. With every ounce of his will, he held her back until the light retreated, the tu

“I love you, Mary,” he had said to her, but she didn’t answer, and the moment after the light disappeared, her arms, which had held him so tightly, went limp and she fell into the deepest of sleeps, as they both knew she would. Nine months of dreamless slumber—for just as one is born to the world of the living, one must be born into Everlost. Not even the great Mary Hightower could escape that simple law of nature.

Even so, Mary had now accomplished something no one else ever had. . . . Never before had the same person lived and died twice. It changed everything.

Bring me home, my love.

And Milos did. On the day Mary re-died, he had carried her in his arms all the way back to the train. He walked with her through the crowd of Mary’s children so that they could all see. She had left in mystery—for Milos had never told the others what had befallen her—and now she was back. Not just back, but transformed. They were all too awed to do anything but whisper and reach out to touch her, feeling the smooth fabric of her green satin gown. When she was forced back into the living world, her tight Victorian velvet dress had quickly been ruined by a mere week of living on the street. She had shed it, replacing it with this gown of emerald satin. Now she looked less like a governess, and more like a goddess—a fallen goddess, waiting for her moment to rise.

That moment would come, but Milos feared it wouldn’t come soon enough.

Things had not gone well in the two months since he had brought Mary home. Just ten miles out of Little Rock, Arkansas, the ghost tracks had come to an end, and they had to backtrack, finding another set of rails that could carry them, and then another, then another—a constant series of false starts and dead ends. It was like navigating a maze, and finding alternate routes would take days. Even when they had forward momentum, they always moved at a snail’s pace, for fear that the tracks would unexpectedly end.

And then the desertions began.

Those who were loyal to Mary were loyal to the end—but others who feared the prospect of a dying/rising goddess, or simply distrusted Milos, were quick to run off. At last count they were losing a half dozen kids a day. Mary’s kids numbered close to a thousand when they started. He had no idea how many there were now. He was afraid to take a census.