Beyond the Laughing Sky by Michelle Cuevas

N ashville and his family lived in a house perched in the branches of the largest pecan tree in the village of Goosepimple. The tree grew on the top of a high hill, and the hill overlooked the small, perfect village, where the sun always shined, the grass was always mowed, and the men strutted like doves in their gray suits.
    The house in the pecan tree, however, was often shrouded in fog like the purple-gray gloom of an aged bruise, causing the old men in town to sit on their porches, drink sweet tea, and gossip.
    â€œThat tree on the hill looks like the last feather to be plucked from the pimpled skin of a goose.”
    â€œNaw, it looks like the last sprig of hair on an ancient bald head.”
    â€œNaw, it looks like the last white ghost seed waiting to fly away from a dandelion.”
    Tourists often wanted to drive up the one creeping road that led to the top and visit the house, but once they got close realized they had somewhere else to be or something else to do. When they stopped by the town visitor center they would say, “That house in that tree is not like the rest. Was it built there? Was it built like a nest?”
    â€œOh no, sugar,” the old widow working at the visitor center would say. “That house sat on a small street in town for nearly a century. Then, ten years ago, there was a flood the likes of which this area had never seen. It started raining as hard as it could in March, and it didn’t stop until June. Can you imagine that?” The widow paused, allowing the visitors to imagine that amount of precipitation. “Needless to say,” she continued, “the rivers and swamps and the bayou overflowed. The foundation of the building came loose and the whole place just floated away, bobbing on the water like a toy in the tub. The water rose all the way over that hill, and when the rain stopped, the house was stuck in that pecan tree like a mouse in a hawk’s claw.”
    â€œWho lives there now?” asked the tourist.
    â€œA sweet young couple and their little girl,” replied the widow.
    â€œHow precious.”
    â€œAnd also . . .” the widow paused. “And, well, that boy .”
    â€œWhat boy?”
    â€œWhat boy, indeed,” replied the widow. “What boy hatches from an egg?”
    â€œOh, fiddlesticks,” a Southern gentleman said to the widow. “A boy can’t hatch from an egg. That’s impossible”
    â€œWhat an absurd little word,” the widow replied.
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œYou said impossible,” the widow pointed out. “There’s no such thing. There’s things you’ve seen and things you may not have, but there ain’t nothing that’s impossible, sugar.”

I mpossible. improbable. inconceivable. if the children from far-flung villages who came to catch a glimpse of Nashville had better vocabularies, perhaps these are words they would have used. As it stood, they would ride their bikes to the base of the hill after sunset, their brakes screeching like the call of a night bird, with hopes of seeing something they called just plain weird .
    â€œI double-dog super dare you to go up and knock on the door and get a look at him.”
    And then they’d look and look at the house without moving, their hearts pounding like hoofbeats. They’d imagine they saw a light come on, or a curtain billow out like it had bones.
    â€œI saw him!” they would shout to the wind, pedaling fast. “He’s half boy, half bird!”
    Had Nashville heard their words it wouldn’t have mattered, for he really did look how they said—why, the truth of the matter was, he looked like a bird in almost every way. He was the size of a normal boy, perhaps a tad small for his age, but he had feathers for hair and a beak for his nose and mouth. His eyes were sharp and golden and his legs too long and thin. But when it came to clothing, Nashville was fond of bow ties and