Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver

Liesl’s father, but it wrapped itself around the man’s feet, a kind of ghostly version of smelling.
    “I appear to have gotten lost.” Liesl’s father shook his head and looked down at the shaggy shadow-pet massed around his feet, and then up at the flowing black dust of the river, and the spinning planets beyond the massive white hill-clouds. “I seem to have been wandering forever, and I can’t find my way back. . . .” He trailed off, squinting at Po. “Who are you?”
    “My name is Po.”
    “I’m having trouble seeing you clearly. I must have left my glasses at home.” Liesl’s father patted the front pocket of his shirt, which was still there in silhouette, but barely. Clothes faded first on the Other Side. They had nothing to hold them together at all: no soul, no Essence, no Being. Clothes were just things, and things scattered into nothing quite easily. “My name is Henry Morbower. Perhaps if you came a little closer . . . ?”
    Po floated a little closer, knowing it would not help.
    “Ah, yes, that’s better,” Henry said, obviously lying, and then gave a little frustrated shake of his feet. “I seem to have stepped in some mud earlier,” he said.
    “That’s not mud,” Po said. “That’s Bundle.”
    Henry squinted. “What?”
    “Bundle. Bundle’s just gotten around your legs. Bundle’s an explorer. That’s why I think it might be more dog. On the other hand, it really likes the constellation Pisces—fish, you know. So maybe it’s a little more cat.”
    Henry said, “Er, yes—quite. Of course. I see.” Although of course he did not see. He kicked more emphatically with his feet. Bundle detached from around his legs and drifted back to Po.
    “That’s better now,” Henry said, and Po heard Bundle think Riff , which was a sound of disapproval. “Do you and, er, Bundle come this way a lot? Do you know this area well?”
    Po thought of a tree shaking its leaves in the wind, and as the ghost thought this, about the shaking tree, it managed to shrug. “About as well as anybody knows it, I guess.”
    Henry’s face lit up, and it was painful to see. It reminded Po of Liesl. “Wonderful! A native. Then you can help point me in the right direction. You can help me get home.”
    Po decided there was no point in beating around the bush. “You’re on the Other Side,” the ghost said firmly. “You are no longer with the living. You’ve crossed over.”
    Henry was quiet for a minute. Another little dark crease appeared in his forehead; through it, Po could see a spinning haze of planetary dust. Henry was falling apart, slowly but surely. He was blending. Soon he would be as Po was—part of the Everything. Po felt a strange mixture of sadness and relief. The ghost reminded itself that losing form was natural, and good, and the way things were in the universe. There could be no regret about it.
    At last Henry shook his head. “I understand all of that very well,” he said firmly. “I met the nicest woman—Carol, was it?—on my way over here. Explained everything to me; how she had died of the flu after going out in the middle of the night to scavenge for potatoes. The man behind her had been killed in a bar brawl. I never was a drinker myself, you know, for that reason. But all the same, I need to get home. I need to get back to the pond, and the willow tree, and my wife, and little Lee-Lee. They’ll be worried sick about me, I can tell you that.”
    Po did not know quite how to respond. Perhaps crossing over had shaken up the particles in Henry’s brain, the ghost thought. “I’m sorry,” Po began again, more slowly. “I don’t think you understand. You’ve died.”
    “I understand that perfectly well,” Henry said, a note of briskness creeping into his voice. “What did I just tell you?”
    “But—but—” Po struggled for the words it needed. It was not used to having to speak so much out loud, and for a second it regretted ever stepping foot in Liesl’s