It was coming, they could feel it, could feel its gentle breath, its arrival like the inky darkness that comes before slumber. Oaks and bluebells bowed their heads to the melody, and even the sky seemed to curl in on itself, so great was their song. She rose above them, the years trailing from her fingertips like water off a leaf, her body spiraling and convulsing at the beauty of their pitch. They sang of her body cradled forever in the stars, that her wings would rest after her long journey into the great night sky.

Their toes were covered in the dust as they raised their arms and voices together, their many bodies pulsing and breathing as one mind as they lifted their tired sister up in song. The ground beneath their feet shimmered, its crystalline properties shaming the diamonds the humans needlessly worshipped. Dust streamed down from the tips of their wings, and they could feel it leaving their veins, the power and the love, a constant pouring in and back out, power and love, power and love, more with each tiny breath. The wind had changed as it wrapped around them there was a funnel structure now in the way the breeze blew their wispy hair. They could feel it in the thrumming quarter seconds that reverberated through the tips of their wings and down their bodies, each second playing out like a lifetime in their minds. “Mother,” he cried, “I love you!” They were the last words she was to hear from him for a long time.

She went from bed to bed, and little Michael threw his arms around her. “They are the eyes a mother leaves behind to guard her children.” “Can anything harm us, Mother, after the night-lights are lit?”

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.įor Maine, who is the sun and the moon and everything in between. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015940086Ĭover design © Julie Metz, Ltd./ Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint, All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Wendy darling volume 1 stars