"Here they come. I can‘t count as high as that many gulls are," she said.
Crying and screeching, the birds swirled and dived, hovered near her face, and landed as she tossed grits to them. Finally, they quieted and stood about preening, and she sat on the sand, her legs folded to the side. One large gull settled onto the sand near Kya.
"It‘s my birthday," she told the bird, - P21
One thing she already knew about life: you can‘t eat grits without salt. - P27
Months passed, winter easing gently into place, as southern wintersdo. The sun, warm as a blanket, wrapped Kya‘s shoulders, coaxing herdeeper into the marsh. Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn‘tknow or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land that caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother. - P34
Thomas Moore:
... she‘s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.
And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I‘ll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of death is near.
The words made him think of Kya, Jodie‘s little sister. She‘d seemed so small and alone in the marsh‘s big sweep. He imagined his own sister lost out there. His dad was right-poems made you feel something. - P49
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