jack sighed . '' go ahead . '' '' we 've been through the documents . a thousand times . we 've found nothing . '' jack pointed to one of the papers he 'd been looking through . '' actually , this one has instructions on becoming a shade . apparently if you 've been an everliving long enough and then you miss a feed , you become a
shade

his eyes teared at the wind for a moment , but soon , he grew accustomed to it . he looked back at the eastern cliff and he found that the great pine tree at the peak had vanished . he wiped his eyes with the tee-shirt -- but still no tree . he rubbed at his eyes again . then he turned and he looked back at the
cliff

in the backyard the trees stand sentinel around us , frozen branches like figurines of hollow glass , an inch of a fine white powder piled atop each one . the snow is up to our knees aside from the small patch henri has cleared away . bernie kosar sits watching from the back porch . even he wants nothing to do with the
snow