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London, 1758
Jem Connolly, disguised as a boy, likes working with physician John Abernathy, but her inherited magic, Second Sight, is causing problems. Twice, without warning, Jem’s spirit has left her body to fly with a bird. Abernathy wants to send Jem to Margery Jamison’s Sighted grandmother in Cornwall for training. Benjamin Franklin discovers the identity of Jem’s grandparents—and Jem learns they want her back. Jem’s would-be kidnapper, Patch, turns up once again. Beset by trouble, Jem flees to Granny Kestrel’s stone cottage far out on the windswept moor. But Jem feels out of place on Granny’s lonely farmstead. She’s uneasy around Granny, who talks to animals as though they’re people. Granny warns Jem of a Darkness that devours Sight. She urges Jem to embrace her magic or risk losing it. On the longest night of the year, Jem finally decides—and that changes everything. Part of CHAPTER 1—NOVEMBER 1758 A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE |
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The shrunken space in our belly sends us aloft. We ride the updrafts. Watch for wings.
There. Flutter. Pigeon.
In our bones we feel the distance, the wind. We climb.
The bird’s beating wings excite us. We time its flight; we know where it will be when we fall on it.
We tuck our wings. Earth takes us. Wind sleeks us. Our eyelids slide up. We are death falling. A foot short, we turn bottom-down, legs and talons out. Strike. The pigeon’s spine cracks.
It falls. We glide down, bank, land, scan for thieves. Nothing moves in the open. Yet our neck prickles: Something watches. We scream a warning.
We spread our wings over our kill. We straddle the pigeon. We grasp it between our feet and pull feathers until we reach sweet, warm skin. Tear into warm flesh. Swallow. Life blooms in our blood. Our trembling eases.
It is good. It is all good, but Something watches still. Calls and insists.
We seize our kill and launch into the air, find a tree, wedge the meat. Watch.
A black bird on the horizon grows larger as it flies toward us. Raven. Thief. We raise our wings to warn him off, but he circles our tree. Turns a loop in the air like the fool acrobat he is. He flies round and round, too close, turning, tumbling, tormenting. Trying to lure us from our kill. His antics do not deceive us, but we are wary: he is twice our size.
We dig in our talons. The meat belongs to the hunter. The raven swoops over us, scuffing our head with his wings. His feathers reek of the carrion he eats. When we do not abandon our kill, the raven flies an arc and comes for us, leading with his beak. We push off. Our anger drives us up. We will fall on the raven from above and take back what is ours.
But the raven does not take our pigeon—he chases us into the sky. He follows so close we cannot get enough distance to dive. When we try short swoops, he pecks our breast, our wings, anything he can reach.
We slash at the raven with a taloned foot. He pecks our wing. We scratch and pummel one another. Our battle rages across the sky. When his huge wing cuffs us, we tumble head over tail. We flap wildly for balance. The raven harries us all the way to the smoky warren of men that spreads on both sides of the river like a burned field.
Breathing hard, we labor up to try another dive. Speed is our only advantage. The raven doesn’t follow. He has caught a current of wind and sails below us like a shadow. We have him now. We tuck our wings. Earth takes us. Wind sleeks us. We are death falling—
We falter when rushing air wedges between us like a knife, catching an edge and tugging. Light flares in the widening split. Motion stops. Heart stops. Breathing stops. She leaves me!
She? Me?
Before I can find her again, the Light that tore us apart snares me and pulls me over a whirl of gardens, walls, streets, animals, people to a stone house with windows like square eyes, and the Light--
yanks me through a window set in the stone…
to a human lying on a cloud…
to the edge of skin. No, no, not what I want I…
…have no wings, no way to stop, I plunge into a body with bones dense and flesh thick and naked and stretched impossibly long. Frantic, I tumble up and down this body, looking for a way out, but the skin shuts me in. I soar head to toe, lost, until the body warms. It knows me. It draws me into gaps and breaks and holes, and I know this body, too, like I know hunting between earth and sky, and
—I know the feel of this face. This tongue that knows the taste of bread; I know it. Somehow, somewhere, some time before, I have felt this heart beating and these lungs breathing. I ease into spaces that feel familiar: hands, lips, knees. Like rain falling on sand, I seep into this body. It holds only me, alone. It is heavy. It is anchored to the earth.
* * *
“I saw her eyelids flicker.” A woman’s voice. Something warm around my hand. “She feels different to me now. Jem? Jem, are you there?”
I opened my eyes to a silhouette framed by light. A woman sat close by, my hand clasped in hers. My vision cleared. Red hair stuck out from the woman’s head like ruffled feathers. Great dark circles bloomed under the blue eyes. Friend. M…Margery.
“Jem?” she said. “Thank God!” She shouted over her shoulder to somebody nearer the door—another woman, Mrs. Pierce, setting a pile of cloths on a chair—“Run, quick, and tell the doctor Jem’s awake!” The housekeeper hurried out. Margery placed a hand on my forehead, ran it down my cheek, and said with tears in her eyes and a trembling smile on her lips, “Oh, Jem, we were so worried.”
“What happened?” It hurt to talk.
“You don’t remember?”
“I—is there water? My throat hurts. My mouth is so dry.”
Margery poured a glass of water and held me up. The water was sweet and cold. It soaked into the dry places inside. Sitting up made me dizzy, so I let my head sink back to the pillow.
Dr. Abernathy, in his shirt sleeves, dashed in. He looked as though he’d slept in his clothes. His hair wasn’t even clubbed back. “Jem!” he said. He caught me up in a fierce hug, and that by itself was enough of a shock to stop my head spinning. When he set me back, his face wore the focused look he gets when we’re examining a patient. He felt my pulse, looked into my eyes, checked that all my limbs moved and functioned. His eyes met Margery’s over my body, and he said, “She can’t do this again.”
“I know it,” Margery said.
“What happened?”
Dr. Abernathy’s eyes widened. “You don’t remember?” he asked.
“I—all I remember is a dream that I could fly. It was wonderful—I loved it. I wasn’t by myself, though, I was with…somebody. We were flying together. We killed and ate a pigeon. It was so good we were shaking.” Margery’s fingers flexed, but when I looked at her face, she gave a wobbly little smile.
The doctor asked, “I see. What were you doing before you had the dream?”
I said, “The last thing I remember before the dream was being in the garden. I saw a bird so high up it was a dot, and I—” I stopped. I whispered, “Margery, please tell me it was only a dream. Don’t say I flew with a bird again.” My eyes fixed on her face. She bit her lip.
“Apparently that is exactly what you did,” Dr. Abernathy said.
* * *
Copyright 2015 All Rights Reserved
There. Flutter. Pigeon.
In our bones we feel the distance, the wind. We climb.
The bird’s beating wings excite us. We time its flight; we know where it will be when we fall on it.
We tuck our wings. Earth takes us. Wind sleeks us. Our eyelids slide up. We are death falling. A foot short, we turn bottom-down, legs and talons out. Strike. The pigeon’s spine cracks.
It falls. We glide down, bank, land, scan for thieves. Nothing moves in the open. Yet our neck prickles: Something watches. We scream a warning.
We spread our wings over our kill. We straddle the pigeon. We grasp it between our feet and pull feathers until we reach sweet, warm skin. Tear into warm flesh. Swallow. Life blooms in our blood. Our trembling eases.
It is good. It is all good, but Something watches still. Calls and insists.
We seize our kill and launch into the air, find a tree, wedge the meat. Watch.
A black bird on the horizon grows larger as it flies toward us. Raven. Thief. We raise our wings to warn him off, but he circles our tree. Turns a loop in the air like the fool acrobat he is. He flies round and round, too close, turning, tumbling, tormenting. Trying to lure us from our kill. His antics do not deceive us, but we are wary: he is twice our size.
We dig in our talons. The meat belongs to the hunter. The raven swoops over us, scuffing our head with his wings. His feathers reek of the carrion he eats. When we do not abandon our kill, the raven flies an arc and comes for us, leading with his beak. We push off. Our anger drives us up. We will fall on the raven from above and take back what is ours.
But the raven does not take our pigeon—he chases us into the sky. He follows so close we cannot get enough distance to dive. When we try short swoops, he pecks our breast, our wings, anything he can reach.
We slash at the raven with a taloned foot. He pecks our wing. We scratch and pummel one another. Our battle rages across the sky. When his huge wing cuffs us, we tumble head over tail. We flap wildly for balance. The raven harries us all the way to the smoky warren of men that spreads on both sides of the river like a burned field.
Breathing hard, we labor up to try another dive. Speed is our only advantage. The raven doesn’t follow. He has caught a current of wind and sails below us like a shadow. We have him now. We tuck our wings. Earth takes us. Wind sleeks us. We are death falling—
We falter when rushing air wedges between us like a knife, catching an edge and tugging. Light flares in the widening split. Motion stops. Heart stops. Breathing stops. She leaves me!
She? Me?
Before I can find her again, the Light that tore us apart snares me and pulls me over a whirl of gardens, walls, streets, animals, people to a stone house with windows like square eyes, and the Light--
yanks me through a window set in the stone…
to a human lying on a cloud…
to the edge of skin. No, no, not what I want I…
…have no wings, no way to stop, I plunge into a body with bones dense and flesh thick and naked and stretched impossibly long. Frantic, I tumble up and down this body, looking for a way out, but the skin shuts me in. I soar head to toe, lost, until the body warms. It knows me. It draws me into gaps and breaks and holes, and I know this body, too, like I know hunting between earth and sky, and
—I know the feel of this face. This tongue that knows the taste of bread; I know it. Somehow, somewhere, some time before, I have felt this heart beating and these lungs breathing. I ease into spaces that feel familiar: hands, lips, knees. Like rain falling on sand, I seep into this body. It holds only me, alone. It is heavy. It is anchored to the earth.
* * *
“I saw her eyelids flicker.” A woman’s voice. Something warm around my hand. “She feels different to me now. Jem? Jem, are you there?”
I opened my eyes to a silhouette framed by light. A woman sat close by, my hand clasped in hers. My vision cleared. Red hair stuck out from the woman’s head like ruffled feathers. Great dark circles bloomed under the blue eyes. Friend. M…Margery.
“Jem?” she said. “Thank God!” She shouted over her shoulder to somebody nearer the door—another woman, Mrs. Pierce, setting a pile of cloths on a chair—“Run, quick, and tell the doctor Jem’s awake!” The housekeeper hurried out. Margery placed a hand on my forehead, ran it down my cheek, and said with tears in her eyes and a trembling smile on her lips, “Oh, Jem, we were so worried.”
“What happened?” It hurt to talk.
“You don’t remember?”
“I—is there water? My throat hurts. My mouth is so dry.”
Margery poured a glass of water and held me up. The water was sweet and cold. It soaked into the dry places inside. Sitting up made me dizzy, so I let my head sink back to the pillow.
Dr. Abernathy, in his shirt sleeves, dashed in. He looked as though he’d slept in his clothes. His hair wasn’t even clubbed back. “Jem!” he said. He caught me up in a fierce hug, and that by itself was enough of a shock to stop my head spinning. When he set me back, his face wore the focused look he gets when we’re examining a patient. He felt my pulse, looked into my eyes, checked that all my limbs moved and functioned. His eyes met Margery’s over my body, and he said, “She can’t do this again.”
“I know it,” Margery said.
“What happened?”
Dr. Abernathy’s eyes widened. “You don’t remember?” he asked.
“I—all I remember is a dream that I could fly. It was wonderful—I loved it. I wasn’t by myself, though, I was with…somebody. We were flying together. We killed and ate a pigeon. It was so good we were shaking.” Margery’s fingers flexed, but when I looked at her face, she gave a wobbly little smile.
The doctor asked, “I see. What were you doing before you had the dream?”
I said, “The last thing I remember before the dream was being in the garden. I saw a bird so high up it was a dot, and I—” I stopped. I whispered, “Margery, please tell me it was only a dream. Don’t say I flew with a bird again.” My eyes fixed on her face. She bit her lip.
“Apparently that is exactly what you did,” Dr. Abernathy said.
* * *
Copyright 2015 All Rights Reserved
