Beyond the Laughing Sky by Michelle Cuevas Page A

hats, and this made him about as alarming as a puppy in a paisley suit. He was, however, extraordinary, and that tended to scare townsfolk, who were hooked on the Ordinary with a capital O , and preferred their day-to-day served without any Extra.
    Nashville was one of a kind, and he had a way of stirring up whispers in town, causing the old women to sit in the beauty parlor, get their hair curled, and gossip.
    â€œThat youngster looks like a dodo bird in a dinner jacket. What’s next? Turtles in tuxedos? Skunks in swimsuits?”
    â€œI’m just glad he doesn’t have wings.”
    â€œOh! Can you imagine that? Some whippersnapper flying around, peeping in our windows.”
    It was true. The only avian attribute Nashville seemed to be missing, much to his disappointment, was a pair of wings. But he had everything else. Why, by the time he was a baby barely out of the egg, Nashville was not only looking like a bird, but acting like one, too—chirping instead of crying for food, preferring sunflower seeds to milk, and only settling down to sleep in the bed his parents had custom made just for him, the one carpenters had been consulted and hired to build. Branches had been soaked, bent, and twisted. The nest was as large as a bed, and made up with pillows and a soft blanket.
    â€œDid you make your nest?” his mother asked Nashville every morning.
    â€œAnd Junebug,” she asked his little sister. “Did you make your bed as well?”
    â€œI want to sleep in a nest, too ,” whined Junebug, with the misguided jealousy of a younger sibling. She was only eight, but Junebug often seemed older and wiser, and Nashville enjoyed her company. And so, from time to time, Nashville would allow his sister, Junebug, to sleep with him in his boy-sized nest.
    Sometimes, especially when he was alone, Nashville would stand for a long time at his bedroom window. The interior of the house glowed green due to all the leaves outside, and was like being in the cabin of a ship that sank in an algae pond. Sometimes Nashville felt as if his soul was waiting just under the surface of his skin, ready to leap like a fish into the cool, crisp air above.
    But no. Nashville couldn’t fly, that was for certain, so there was no reason for his strange desire to leap. Plus, he loved living in a pecan tree. When it was windy, the branches around the house danced and made shadow puppets on the walls. When the birds sang, he and Junebug imagined that from the outside, it must seem like the tree itself was singing.
    â€œIf a tree could sing,” asked Junebug, “what do you think it would sing about?”
    â€œI suppose,” replied Nashville, “it would depend on the tree. A tree starts as a sapling. If it’s lucky—if it’s not mowed or mocked, chewed or chopped—the tree sets roots. The tree grows branches. The tree sprouts leaves. And every part, down to the smallest speck of bark and the tiniest vein of a leaf, is shaped by the world—the particular world around the tree. One less storm, one more insatiable caterpillar, any twist or turn along the way, and the tree would be changed. The tree would have a different song to sing.”
    Junebug thought deeply about this. “I wonder,” she said finally, “what those pines at the edge of town sing about.”
    â€œJunebug,” said Nashville. “You know I’ve never been past those pines.”
    â€œYeah. Me neither,” said Junebug. She looked at Nashville who was staring into the distance.
    â€œNashville?” she continued. “I think I’d like to stay here in our tree for always. Wouldn’t you?”
    â€œOf course,” Nashville replied, with only the slightest hint of doubt. “I’d like to stay here forever, too.” Anything else seemed, well, downright Impossible, Improbable, and Inconceivable.

T he birdhouse hanging in the pecan tree was shaped like any other. It had a