Prologue
Legends say that two centuries ago...
The stars shone brightly over the Isle of Ikanten. The fishermen had returned to their families with nets bountiful and tales of sea monsters narrowly avoided. The village, tucked into the cliffs of the South Corridor, settled down for the night—lanterns were dimmed, and shop windows were hatched closed.
All grew quiet, save for the piercing shriek of Adelaide Bennett as she made her way out of the womb and into the cruel world. The child’s cries could be heard a quarter mile wide. She was born at midnight, and she bustled with energy from the moment her lungs sucked in the salty night air.
The following morning, neighbors flocked to the Bennetts’ door with loaves of warm sweetbread and meat pies to congratulate the growing family. The Bennetts were well-liked, hard-working Ikantens. Until the night Adelaide was born, her mother had worked selling fish at the market. Her father was a fisherman—like most men in the village—providing imports and exports to the main continent of the realm.
She was their first child, and in the weeks following her birth, they worried whether it was normal for a babe to cry so fiercely each night. The new parents coddled her and fretted and did everything they could to calm her. But not even a thimble of rum could ease their ailing child. Each evening, at sunset, Adelaide began to wail up at the sky in defiance until the break of dawn. Three long weeks passed with no reprieve—her father worried that the dear child was ill. But her mother knew what vexed Adelaide.
A year prior, while working the plum orchards of the North Corridor during the off-season in Ikanten, she had made a terrible bargain. The plump burgundy fruit had been too tempting to resist.
“Just this once. My dear husband will enjoy them,” her mother had whispered.
She’d shoved a bushel of plums into her apron, holding the edges to capture as much of the forbidden bounty as possible.
“No one will notice them missing,” she’d assured herself.
But when she’d turned toward the arched iron entry, the sorceress who owned the estate stepped into her path.
“Who steals from my orchard?” The sorceress’ eyes had shone with sharpness.
Then she’d given Adelaide’s mother a choice.
“You will pay for the fruit with your life today, or you will agree to your firstborn child’s servitude as a debt. The choice is yours,” the sorceress had bargained.
The Bennetts had tried for three long years prior for a child that had never come. Why would she expect one now?
Thinking herself clever, Adelaide’s mother had responded, “Please, let me live—you should have what you ask. I swear it.”
The picking season soon ended at the orchard, and Adelaide’s parents sailed back to their family in the South Corridor isles. All the while, Adelaide grew within her mother’s womb.
So, it seemed that dear Adelaide was the sorceress’ to claim.
With each passing day, her mother’s guilt for having made that dreaded bargain worsened. Her anxieties didn’t cease when Adelaide was born—for weeks, she expected the sorceress to be waiting in every shadow and in every dark alley.
Then one night, Adelaide’s father was running late, still docking his boat in the port. Her mother took Adelaide from her crib and walked with her, bundled in linens. The babe screamed to the heavens as her mother rounded the spiral steps to the stucco rooftop that jutted out stories above the village.
Sleep-deprived, hopeless and with tear-soaked cheeks, Adelaide’s mother stood at the edge of the three-story building holding her daughter’s tiny fingers in her own. The salted wind off the shores whipped through her dark hair, and she smoothed the bundle of soft fabric that entombed her inconsolable infant.
“Shhh, my dear girl…everything will be okay soon,” she whispered into the wind. “I will make everything okay. She will not ever have you. I promise.”
The sky above was clear. Planets, stars and mysteries opened as mother and daughter stood with nothing between them and the galaxies above. Then, as the clock tower of the nearby capital Isle of Eros struck twelve, Adelaide’s mother calmly stepped off the roof—the babe was still cradled in her arms and screaming to the heavens.
They fell as one. The mother was a picture of calm resolution as she and the child plummeted down, down, down. But Adelaide fought and wailed, willing the sky to take action.
A beggar, awoken by the foreign sound of skin and bone hitting cobblestone, rose. Upon realizing what lay before him, he called out, “Help, help, someone has fallen!”
Lamps lit the windows of homes surrounding the Bennett residence. Neighboring families poured into the street, groggily appraising the commotion. Her mother had landed face up, her last moments of calm etched across her face permanently. A crowd formed before anyone noticed what she held tucked in her arms.
“There’s a babe! She has a child,” a woman gasped out. She knelt to the ground next to them, staining her nightrobe red. Three generations of Bennetts piled out of the building to witness the fate of their kin.
Gasps wrung out through the street as whispers carried from household to household. Mother and child lay unmoving. Men who had been ripped from their sleep leaped to action to gather others to help. But they knew their efforts were for their consciences alone. The mother and child would not be saved.
Myths were born from what happened next. Many said that a single star fell from the sky down to Ikanten. It fell to meet Adelaide’s chest and willed the child’s heart to beat again. The babe glowed in a bright silver-blue haze as the onlookers’ eyes widened in disbelief.“A miracle,”they whispered.“Magic,”they hushed.
None of them noticed the strange woman standing in the shadows, watching. Then, when the star was fully absorbed, the babe was finally content—cooing quietly and reaching up at the night sky. As if she was waving up at someone looking down on her.
