The imprisoned smiles of yesteryears swayed above my head. Gilded silver-leaf frames became a whisperedwhoosh, whooshin my ears, like one may fall and crash to the floor at any given second.
Momma’s black hair, usually tucked behind her ears, fell flat against her pale cheeks.She doesn’t look like Momma.I shook my head.She doesn’t look like Momma at all.
“You’re wearing my dress again,” she said to me in a strange voice I’d only heard once before. Accusingly. It was the first time she’d spoken all night.
Her fingers flexed around the arms of the rocking chair. “Come to me.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t move, I couldn’t. The bottom of the dress was long and piled over my curled toes, trapping me here and not wanting me to go, either.
I twisted my fingers in front of me.
But she was my mother, and I had no reason to be afraid.
“Come, Adora,” she said again, more familiar this time. “Come here and let me tell you a tale.”
I took an uneasy step closer.
And another.
I passed Dad, whose snoring caught in his throat, until I was standing in front of Momma.
She was looking right at me. An unwavering look.
Like staring at a portrait. And the picture staring back.
With a hesitant hand, I leaned forward and tucked her hair behind her ear. She didn’t move when I did it. Not a flinch. I fell back on my heels and looked at her—really looked at her this time. She seemed pretty now, like the same momma I’d always known. The momma I knew from the photographs in the hallway. The momma who’d sung in the morning and swum with me in the sea. The same momma who’d tucked me in at night and told me stories of mermaids and handsome pirates.
But there was something different about her.
The light was missing in her eyes.
I crawled into her lap.
“My sunbeam, look at me,” Momma whispered, stroking my hair while the burnt scent of incense—notes of petals and hints of disturbed earth—still floated in the cottage. I turned, and Momma took off the chain around her neck and slipped it around mine. Attached was an empty antique setting.
Momma always wears this necklace.
It was special to her, and she gave it to me.
Then she wrapped me in her arms, and we looked out the window together as she started the story. “This tale, unlike all the other tales I’ve told you before, begins with a boy—a lost boy whose name is still a mystery. And right now, as this tale begins, he is an outsider among the trees …”
PARTI
THE SHORE
CHAPTER 1
STONE
age thirteen
Chesapeake Forest, Maryland
April in the year of 1853
The white-tailed deerstood only feet away from us as we hid outside the small village. We tracked it for some time, and Paco still had not moved from his position. Unlike me, he hadn’t found whatever it was he needed to snatch the breath of a living creature, even if it meant feeding and nourishing his family.
It was neither courage nor bravery. No amount of skill would suffice, though skill did help. I could never pinpoint what trait someone needed to have to kill something. Perhaps if one had known hunger like Mother and I had—before we’d been trained to go days without food to know what it was like to be without it—it did make it easier.
