If only I could seeher.
Jules screams with delight as Pyro weaves over the mountains, rising and falling like a roller coaster that’s run off its track. She’s clinging to me so hard her knuckles are white, and I can feel her face buried in my shoulder. I think, in this moment, I could soar around on Pyro forever.
When Pyro leaps across a page, there’s an extra blast of wind, and he flies a little higher, until finally we reach the end of the story. “Slow down, boy,” I say. Even though I can’t see it, according to Ember, this is where she ran into the wall of letters.
I pull back on Pyro’s leathery mane, a rein. He comes to a halting stop, his wings pumping in midair, his powerful muscles flexing under my thighs. “Pyro,” I command, “light up the sky!”
Pyro opens his jaws and paints a wash of fire across the sky. The world, for a moment, is bright orange. Silhouetted against the flames is what looks like a junkyard of letters, a tangle of words smashed and tumbled together, pasted back to back, sealing the facing pages together.
“Get closer,” I instruct, and the dragon inches forward. “On the count of three, I want you to torch it. One . . . ,” I say, and Pyro sucks in a giant breath. “Two . . .” His cheeks puff out, illuminated by the fire inside. “THREE!” I scream, and Pyro blasts the letters with a burning blaze.
The letters begin to drip, turning into a black rain that falls from the sky, staining the ocean below. When there’s a hole large enough for us to fit through, I pull at Pyro’s mane again. “That’s enough,” I tell him, patting his neck, and he rumbles inresponse. I gently tap his side with my boot, the way you might spur on a horse. Pyro lurches forward, swimming in a sea of stars.
Behind me, Jules gasps. It’s like someone has flung a handful of diamonds at us, and as we brush up against the stars, they tinkle like broken glass. Finally we reach the one that isn’t glowing, isn’t sparkling. “I’m going to hold him steady,” I tell her. “Can you grab it?”
I hold tight to Pyro’s mane, keeping his strength in check long enough for Jules to lean to the right, stretch her fingers out, and grasp the star. “Got it!” she says.
As she plucks the star loose, the others shimmy and realign in small clusters, leaving an empty space in the night sky.
The ride back to Pyro’s cave is beautiful. By now the sun’s come up, licking the sea with a pink tongue. Birds swoop and dive around us as we break through clouds. Pyro swings over the castle, braying the way he does every morning, except this time, I’m not there to be awakened. I haven’t slept, but I can’t remember ever feeling so alive.
When we land on the ledge of Pyro’s cave, he yawns widely, belching smoke. “You’re a champ,” I tell him, and hop off his back, reaching to help Jules down.
The dragon slithers into the recesses of his cave and is already snoring by the time Jules and I sit on the ledge, dangling our feet over the edge. Jules pulls the night’s treasure from the bodice of her dress. “For real?” I say.
“What?” she replies. “There are no pockets!” She presses the star into the palm of my hand.
I expect it to burn a little. To be warm to the touch, or prickly,and heavy as a meteorite. The star is none of these things. In fact, at close range, it looks exactly like a sugar cookie, five-pointed, edged in yellow frosting.
I turn it over in my hand and notice that the piping continues on the other side.WISH UPON A STAR, it reads.
“Jules,” I breathe, “I think we found it.”
What would you do if you only had one day left in this world?
Spend it with the people you love?
Travel to the far corners of the earth to see as many wonders as possible?
Eat nothing but chocolate?
Would you apologize for all your mistakes? Would you stand up to those you’d never had the courage to face? Would you tell your secret crush that you loved him or her?
Why is it that we wait till the last minute to do the things we should be doing all along?
OLIVER
The way my story is told, at the moment my father was battling with a dragon, my mother was giving birth to me, attended by three fairies who were there to bestow gifts on her baby. The first fairy gave me wisdom. The second gave me loyalty. But just before the third was going to give me courage, my mother had a vision of the king’s impending death and cried out,Save him!The third fairy, mistaking her plea, did not give me bravery after all. Instead she breathed life into me, so that at the very moment my father died, I was born.
I’ve always thought maybe that’s what made me so restless between the lines. I was the only character in the book who had literally been given life—it was only natural to want to experience it to its full potential, not inside the confines of someone else’s story, but rather in a tale of my own making. I chafed at my boundaries; I dreamed of bigger things. What was the point of having a life if you never had the chance to live it?
When you are on the inside looking out, though, you picture that other world as perfect. You never peer at the dark corners where there are cobwebs; you never flip over the cloud with the silver lining to see the storm beneath; you never imagine what might go wrong.
Here is the truth about things that are real: they can be broken.
At first, when I open my eyes and swat the alarm clock on the nightstand, I am blissfully, completely unaware. I’m still lost in that foggy zone between sleep and consciousness. I don’t remember yesterday. I don’t remember what’s to come.
But then, all at once, memory collapses on me, knocking the breath from my body.
