Prologue

Flames licked up around the disintegrating branches Bobby had stacked up for their fire. Under his feet, the pebbly sand was cool with the beginning of night, and the dry heat of the fire played warm against his shins. The cozy orange light flickered across his dark cheeks and warm brown eyes as the boy looked up at her, grinning to himself. Miss Felicity didn’t laugh, or even smile much, but they had come down to their little beach cove after their work for the day was finished and he’d got her smiling now. There was no missing the glimmer of laughter, too, in that look.

She was a stranger to everyone else in their distant village. A foreigner. A young widow who hid herself in the old cottage she’d bought nearly a year ago outside of town and scarcely seemed to venture out of. Bobby got to see her regularly of course, since he worked for her around her place. She had a bad leg and walked with a cane, and had a little baby too. So he came and saw her twice a week or sometimes three, and he knew her better than anyone. Nobody, not even his father, who was close to her age and had spoken to her a few times, knew her as well as he did. No one else had ever made her laugh.

“Miss Felicity, lookit!” Bobby pointed a sandy finger up at the sky as a small, white dot of light glided steadily across the black for a few seconds and faded. She smiled a little with her face turned up, both of them watching the sky a moment even after the star was gone.

“What’re you goin’ to wish for?”

She looked back down and across the fire at him with her head tipped curiously a little. “Wish?” She carried a gentle accent and the word came out like a soft weesh.

Bobby chuckled and nodded. “Yeah. We both saw it so we both get a wish. Didn’t you ever hear that?”

The confusion lifted from her face and her smile turned faintly amused. She shook her head. “No, I never have heard of it in my country.”

“Well, I guess as long as you’re in ours, it still counts.” His face lit up again and he leaned forward against his knees. “Com’on, Miss Felicity, wish for somethin’.”

She almost laughed a little as she looked down at her sleeping baby cradled in her arms and shook her head. “What would I wish for? No, I think you go ahead.”

“Aw, com’on,” he whined. “You gotta wish for something, you saw it. It’ll waste if you don’t.”

She looked back at him, shaking her head again. Something had turned a little sad in her smile. “No, I don’t think wishing is good for me… You go ahead. You take mine, make yours twice as good and not waste it.”

He looked doubtfully at her a second. Then with a slightly sideways grin, he seemed to decide that it would work alright. He leaned back and tipped his head again to stare at the dark sky as he thought for several moments.

“Lots of eyes,” he said cryptically without cracking a grin. He could feel Miss Felicity doubt her foreign vocabulary for a moment as she looked at him with an uncertain smile.

“Eyes, Bobby?”

He gave a serious nod. “Yeah. Hundreds of ‘em.” Finally he looked across the fire to see the puzzling expression on her face. His sly grin broke free. “Not on my face though. I’ll hide little goblins in places all over the world just to watch the sky at night. They’ll see every shooting star that ever happens anymore and I’ll make ‘em give their wish to me. I’ll get a hundred wishes a night an’ I can do whatever I want with them now.”

“Yes," she said slowly, "but how would you make them give you their wishes?”

Bobby grinned at her. "Maple brittle." Her eyebrows went up. "I jus' have to use a wish every now and then to get a whole bunch of maple brittle and give it to all the goblins."

She asked a little puzzled, "They like maple brittle?"

"Course they do! Gramma told me so! 'Sides-- who doesn't?"

The corner of her mouth twitched up.

"So I give them a bunch every now and then and that keeps them happy and makes them want to collect lots more wishes for me!" He concluded with a satisfied nod and a wide smile. A clear little ripple of laughter came from her finally, soft and light like it was secretly hindered from being too loud. Bobby liked the sound of her laugh. He hugged his knees again and grinned as he watched her. Her quiet laugh tapered off into a smile as she looked down at her infant.

Bobby watched the way the orange glow of the firelight warmed her olive cheek and glittered in her dark eyes. It made her thick, dark hair shine on the front of her head and where her long, loose braid was pulled over her shoulder. She brushed a bit of her hair away from her face as a breeze carrying the taste and chill of autumn danced through, catching a few glowing sparks and carrying them away.

Suddenly, softly, another sound from the edge of the brush broke in on the snapping fire and the waves. Someone’s footsteps crushed the sand close by.

Bobby looked up and smiled at a familiar dark figure that walked forward. He cast his smile back at Miss Felicity-- but only to see that she was stiff and staring hard into the shadows, all the laughter gone from her. He’d seen her look like that once before, when they were out in the garden and a beggar came around the house unexpectedly. “It’s alright, Miss Felicity,” Bobby said, trying to soothe her. “It’s just my father.”

His father took a slow step closer so that the firelight flickered over his face. It was similar to Bobby’s, dark and keen-eyed, except that it was quieter and peered at her steadily. She dropped her eyes to her baby.

“Miss Felicity,” he greeted with a sober nod. She looked up again and offered a brief, uncertain smile. “I just came down to get Bobby for supper. Didn't find you two up at the house.”

Her face fell suddenly and she looked over at the boy a second, anxiously. “I’m sorry… It’s my fault, I didn’t realize it is so late.”

“It isn’t your fault, Miss Felicity,” Bobby told her, but it didn’t seem to help much. She seemed overly anxious about it. He tried something else to ease the tension. “We were jus’ lookin’ at the stars, Papa. You ever seen a shooting star?”

His father didn’t seem to be listening. He was still staring hard at Miss Felicity. Her anxious eyes flicked barely up to his face and away again. He glanced at Bobby then and tipped his head back to the sky. “Lots of stars up there... Lots of white stars.” Miss Felicity’s eyes snapped to his face. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

Bobby sensed the strange unease between them. His father was acting odd. “Some of ‘em are blue or red if you look close,” he suggested. No one even looked at him.

“White,” his father said again, then finally answered Bobby’s question. “I’ve seen one fallen star in my life.” He looked again at Miss Felicity. Even in the firelight she looked pale and afraid. “I’m no danger to you,” he said quietly. Bobby frowned at them in turn. “But I gotta keep my family safe.” She glanced at Bobby quickly, holding her baby close, and looked up at the boy's father silently.

For a few moments there were only the waves, the snapping fire, and occasionally the baby cooing from the folds of his gray blanket. Then Miss Felicity dropped her eyes. She rocked her baby and said quietly, “You’ve been a good help, Bobby. I can do on my own now.”

The boy’s face fell and he frowned in confusion. “Huh? But you need me! How are you gonna get your groceries?”

“I’ll get them… I’ll have to go into town myself.” She glanced up at his father when she said that, holding his eye a moment. He slid his hands into his pockets and looked up at the moon. She finally turned to Bobby and her look softened. “I’m sorry... But this way will be better.”

Better? He didn’t see how. The boy looked at her with a faint look of betrayal, having no idea how that look pained her. “How come I can’t work for you anymore,” he asked accusingly. When she glanced at his father and hesitated to answer, he asked more aggressively, “How come you don’t go into town? Why do you hide out here and avoid people? Miss Felicity, what’s the matter with you?”

As soon as he saw the change in her face, even before his father hissed his name, “Bobby!” the boy knew he shouldn’t have said all that. She was frozen, looking somewhere past him through his head. She looked like she might have cried if she didn’t also look like she couldn’t cry about anything anymore. The boy’s eyes filled instead.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean that.” He ran up and threw his arms around her shoulders, sobbing guiltily.

She held his head and hushed him softly. “I know… I know. You’re a good boy, Bobby. I’m sorry.” From across the fire, his father watched her close her eyes a moment as if in pain. Very gently she lifted the boy’s head and brushed at his tears with her thumb.

“I’ll come visit you,” he said. He saw her look past him, at his father. When she looked back and smiled weakly, he felt the tears welling up again.

“We’ll see,” she whispered with a smile.

His father came over and rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Start back home, Bobby. Your mother’s waiting. Tell her I’ll be along soon.” Bobby wiped his eyes with his wrist and gave Miss Felicity one last, tight hug before turning and running up the sandy path. In a moment, he disappeared behind the rustling grasses.

The woman stared after him, letting out a quivering breath. His father bent down and gently scooped up her baby. Her eyes followed nervously. He wrapped the baby’s blanket tighter to keep out the night chill, then he looked down and offered his hand to the woman. She hesitated, then grabbed her cane and let him help her to her feet. They started up the path together, Bobby’s father walking slowly so she could easily follow beside him up the uneven slope.

Without looking, she could feel him watching her from the corner of his eye, sizing her up, analyzing her, trying to piece her together. And how much did he know? What did he want? She started running over ways she could slip away from the village quietly, find another place. She should have planned this out sooner. Maybe a big, crowded city was the place after all. Sometimes you could hide in a crowd with a thousand people looking at you and never seeing you.

“You’re already thinking about leaving, aren’t you?”

She stopped her plotting and looked over silently.

“I told you, you don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“I’ve thought that about a lot of people,” she replied nervously. He stared at her, but she looked away and pretended to be carefully watching the path in front of them.

“Must have been some kind of life,” he murmured finally. He looked down at her baby, inspecting his face thoughtfully. “You didn’t start off rich and powerful, did you?” After a hesitation, she shook her head without looking up. The baby started crying. She quickly reached out for him and the man rested him in her free arm, then he slipped around to her weak side while she softly hushed her infant, careful still not to look up.

“This is your only child?”

She hesitated again, then nodded.

After a moment, he asked, “Your husband--” She tensed. “Is he really dead or is he-- like you?”

“You ask many questions, Mr. Reed.” He turned his face ahead and slid his hands into his pockets while she looked up. “Now I have a question. How do you know me?” When he silently kept walking without looking at her, she stepped in front of him and stopped. “I need to know.”

He studied her face in the moonlight. Delicate features, eyes a deep, dark brown sparked with passion under a hardened brow. He chuckled softly and shook his head.

She scowled darkly but her eyes were afraid. “What is so funny to you,” she demanded again, her accent growing thicker. “Tell me, how do you know?”

“Listen to yourself,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing anymore. “The way you talk-- not like just anybody. The way you carry yourself, even with that limp. Any fool who pays any attention would know you’re not just some war evacuee.”

He paused a moment. “Bobby was right too, you know. There’s something wrong.” He tapped his chest. “He sees it. You carry it with you.”

For a while, they were silent. She looked back over the shore and wouldn’t meet his eye. He was right. She knew he was right, but what could she do about it? It was all part of her now. Inseparable.

“After that it was just a good guess really.” He shrugged a little and looked at the sand. “Little things that matched. Your accent for instance, the child, the timing, the seclusion and secrecy--” She glanced at him sharply and started walking again.

“Who else knows?”

“I haven’t said anything. I told you, I mean you no harm. If others suspect, they’re keeping quiet too.”

“The way you say it, everyone should suspect something.”

At first, he was quiet. Then he went on in a softer voice. “There’s talk in town sometimes. Not as much as there used to be, but they wonder about you.” From the corner of his eye he could tell she was growing more uncomfortable. “They question Bobby sometimes when he’s in for groceries. Looking for gossip I guess. Rumors go around occasionally-- just harmless ones. I’ve never heard one about, uh…” She shot him a look that made him trail off.

They walked in silence then, until their steps brought them to her front door. She held her cane in her other hand and drew her house key from her skirt pocket. He gave her plenty of space as she went in. As she closed the door behind her, leaving him on the step, she paused and met his eye. Did he have any idea what he now held in his hand, she wondered? One message to the right people… He said he’d keep her secret. Should she believe him? He looked steadily back at her, head and shoulders silhouetted against the moonlit fields behind.

It didn’t matter, she realized, if she trusted him or not. Her eyes fell, the door closed softly, and all was quiet. He waited until the lock clicked on the other side. Then he turned and slowly started on his way home, gazing up at the stars overhead.

The woman went to the bedroom in the back of the small cottage and lay her baby in his cradle. For a minute or two, she stayed by his side, gazing down vacantly. Crickets chirped outside the window and the breeze tapped a dry branch against the broken shutter. With a long, low moan, her forehead fell into her hand.

“Eli... What am I going to do?” she whispered. There was no answer… Neither from sleeping child nor his father lost to some darker sleep. She sighed shakily as she slowly straightened and turned away. Her skirt and the quilt rustled as she sank mechanically onto the edge of her shadowed bed. There was a half-moon outside. She could see it out the window. And the stars. One fallen star…

Her eyes suddenly welled up and a single, gasping sob escaped, violently slicing through the silence of the dark room. Her hand went to her mouth as her head sank and heavy tears ran into her fingers.

The room was empty-- holding the soft, hollow sound that she made as she cried, wrapping her arm around herself tightly. Inside, a gnawing pain, just-- empty.