Years later, Jess returns to the woods for the first time since he left Virginia. He's a man now, married with kids and a job in the suburbs. But the moment he steps over the bridge, it's like he's stepped into a timewarm and is eleven years old again. The presence of a lost, but never forgotten friend wraps around him, a thick cloak of memories.
"Hi, Leslie."
The shed they called a castle is gone, and Jess can't help being crushed even knowing it couldn't stand forever. He remembers the day they built their castle, proud and excited as a new King and Queen could be. Prince Terrien and the joy in Leslie's eyes the day he gave him to her. The stories, the drawings, the cans of crackers and dried fruit.
He remembers the last time he came here, fresh out of high school and ready to see the world outside rural Virginia. He'd intended to take down the castle and empty these woods, but chickened out, thinking it would be like throwing away Leslie and May Belle, all the time they'd spent here. A good King didn't throw away his kingdom just because he had to leave it behind.
It doesn't matter if the castle's gone and the woods are just plain old woods now, he decides. To him, it will always be Terabithia, a land ruled by a shy artistic king and a tomboyish queen.