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      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

      Published in 2018 by Owl House Books

      Front Cover Image © By Tithi Luadthong | Shutterstock.com

      Cover and Interior Designed by Leslie M. Browning

      First Edition Trade Paperback | ISBN 978-1-947003-92-7

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      1

      Also by the Author

       Call of the Sun Child

       Listen

      PROLOGUE

      Her name back then was not Agapanthus. It was Aria. Aria like the song the wind made through cottonwood trees. They reminded Aria’s mother of feathers, and she often watched the cotton tufts as they floated through the dusk air. She loved when they melted into the flowing, pebble-braided creek, high with water after a storm, or even as they joined the summer trickle when the creek lay stagnant. On summer nights the water shone thick with flies, with dark red clay and the sticky tips of fallen leaves that caked together at the bottom. The freeway hissed in the distance, cars and blackness glimmering just beyond the blackberry bushes.

      Aria’s mother pretended the freeway didn’t exist. She often sat alone, or with Aria scrunched between her thighs, while the trees creaked, and the air stunk of pollen. When the cold air spread bumps over their skin she raised her daughter to her feet and draped Aria’s long blonde hair over her shoulder so she could wipe the dust from her pants.

      They held hands as they emerged from the ravine. There was the sky again, pale and waning. There sliced the blurred traffic, blazing as always in front of their one-story house. There glowed the fields, the sheep far beyond, the hills broken by dirt patches that always shone reddest at sunset. But sunset was past, so Aria’s mother nestled her daughter inside.

      Her husband’s stomach propelled, jiggling, upward and downward with his sleeping breaths. His hands clenched the armrests of the yellow recliner, the remote wedged between his side and the seat. Aria’s mother patted Aria toward the kitchen and kissed her husband’s forehead. He smelled like cinnamon and orange peels, soft remnants of the tea he had finished after dinner.

      Aria’s father woke up slowly. He scooped his wife into his lap. She murmured something about Aria’s bath, and then she burrowed her head into the warmth of his shoulder. They breathed together. The screen door slid open, but neither of them heard it. They didn’t hear Aria’s lithe footsteps against the wooden stairs. They didn’t hear her slide down, crawling on her knees into the grass, unsure of how to balance on the changing surface. She couldn’t speak yet, so she didn’t know what the trees were called, but she knew she wanted to stay with them for a little longer.

      The grass massaged her bare feet and made them itch. Aria looked up at the clouds. The moon was there, too; strangely thin, strangely weak. It wasn’t dark enough for the moon. A bright star shined over the hill already. It grew brighter. Brighter. Then there was darkness. Claws on her shoulders. Flashes of light so hot she cried out as they teared at her, pulled her up, gripping her shoulders until she felt they would pop from their sockets. And then smooth black stone. And then—nothing.

      1

       Age: Ten Earth-Years

      Agapanthus hated the check-ups. She hated the cold click of the measuring band around her arms. She hated standing against the wall with a straight back while the scientist leaned forward, sniffing and sniffing, like he was about to sigh, only to never breathe the air out again. He scanned her with a cool blink of light to measure her height, her weight, her bone density. Then he nodded, and he looked into her eyes, pulling gently on the lower lids where her eyelashes hung down. Agapanthus stared at the scientist’s eyes as he did this; she thought it was fair to analyze him since he was analyzing her.

      He had orange eyes. They were a dim, pooling, saturated orange, the same hue as the gauzy shadows encircling Aamsh and Jord, the homes of the Gods. Agapanthus breathed in. Her cheeks puffed with air.

      “What’s that? What are you doing?” the scientist asked, pointing to her inflated cheeks. His voice was soothing; kind. “Now, turn to the side.”

      She did, and, with an exhale, she stopped holding her breath. The scientist scanned her again. That was another thing she hated; the way the light pricked her, like spiked rocks scratching her arms, her thighs, her forehead. She half expected to see white streaks left behind, tattooed onto her. But when the scientist turned off the scanner, the itching dissipated, and her skin returned to its usual pale-pink.

      “Alright, we’re all done here,” the scientist said. He pressed the button on the side of the stick.

      Agapanthus licked her lips because the measuring light had dried them out. She waited for the scientist to rest his hand on her head, the manner in which all adults said hello and good-bye to each other. Sometimes adults did this with children, but rarely outside of the family. Yet, last time Agapanthus had visited, the scientist had done it—simply, casually, like he’d forgotten that she was a child and not an adult.

      She hovered near the open doorway. “Bye, Feol Vatker,” she said to the scientist’s back.

      He bent closer to the polished black countertop, huddling over the measuring stick and its data screen like a red-breasted-sper over its prey. Agapanthus lingered a moment longer. Would he do it? Was she an adult, today?

      “See you next year, Agapanthus Caracynth,” he finally said. He tilted his eyes toward the soft skin of her shoes. “Take care.”

      Her foster mother, Leera, stood outside, leaning against the wall, watching the open end of the breezeway where the red sunlight glowed.

      “How did it go?” Her warm hand fell to Agapanthus’s scalp. Leera bent down so Agapanthus could reach her head as well. “I hope they’re not sending you back quite yet?” Leera led the way outside the building, onto the coarse ground.

      “I really have to go back?” Agapanthus looked up at Leera’s thin cheeks; at her matte, red skin. “Can’t I just stay?”

      “Oh, Aga,” Leera laughed. “I wish you could stay here with us. But when the Gods say you have to go back, you have to go back. And no one knows when that’ll be.”

      They were silent.

      “Maybe if you’re good they’ll let you stay until you’re an old woman.” Leera patted Agapanthus’s back. “It’s happened before. So say the Gods, I can only hope it happens again.” She held her outstretched hand in front of the twin stars, Aamsh and Jord, whose slow chase through the sky marked the passing of days. The home sun, Imn, shimmered steadily next to them, high above the rock-carved canyons. Imn burned half the sky with rich, purple-red light.

      Agapanthus glared at the stars with