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Prologue
ALTHOUGH IT IS NEARLY MIDNIGHT, AN UNUSUAL LIGHT
SLIPS through a crack in the wool, brushing her arm like the
feathers of a wing. In the next room her parents sleep, and the
darkened village is silent, but she has lain awake all these hours
and now she climbs out of bed, the floorboards rough against her
feet. For weeks people have talked of nothing but the comet, how
the earth will pass through clouds of poison vapors in its tail,
how the world could end. She is fifteen, and all day she and her
brother helped seal the house—windows, doors, even the chimney—with
thick black wool, hammers tapping everywhere as their neighbors did
the same.
The narrow triangle of strange light touches her
here, then there, as she crosses the room. She is wearing her blue
dress, almost outgrown, the worn cotton soft against her skin. In
this room, a low space over the shop that is hers alone, the wool
is only loosely fastened to the window, and when she yanks a corner
the cloth falls away, pale comet light swimming all around. She
pushes the window open and takes a breath: one, and then another,
deeper. Nothing happens. No poison gas, no searing lungs—only the
watery spring, the scents of growing things and, distantly, the
sea.
And this odd light. The constellations are as
familiar as the lines on her own palms, so she does not have to
search to find the comet. It soars high, a streaming jewel,
circling the years, thrilling and portentous. Distantly a dog
barks, and the chickens rustle and complain in their coops. Soft
voices rise, mingling, her brother’s and another, one she knows;
her heart quickens with anger and yearning both. She hesitates. She
has not planned this moment—the turning point of her life it will
become. Yet it is also no impulse that pulls her onto the window
ledge, her bare feet dangling a few yards above the garden. She is
dressed, after all. She left the wool loose on purpose. All day she
has been dreaming of the comet, its wild and fiery beauty, what it
might mean, how her life might change.
The voices rise, and then she leaps.