annothray

[annothray]

Love and Thunder

Thunder rolled over Jack and Gale. Birdsong faded as the sky darkened. Raindrops spattered ithe thirsty leaves of the trees.

“Jack, Let’s stop,” Gale said. She peered into the shadowy woods. Jack’s upward gaze fell on her.

“YOu’re shaking. You okay?” he pressed his warm body into hers. The rain drummed the dirt path with a thunderous boom. It seemed in sync with her heart, a language she knew and guarded from others. But was Jack like the others? She held onto Jack’s worn t-shirt drenched in his earthy scent she loved. “It’s okay if you’re scared of storms,” Jack said. “Don’t be ashamed of it. I’m scared of spiders,”

“You’re funny, Jack. Tell me, you love me?” Gale gazed gaed into Jack’s green eyes.

“Yeah. You’re like…like this rain and I”m like…like the dirt all mushy like mud when you’re around. I mean, you make me feel like apart of something bigger.”

Gale’s skin vibrated. The wind snatched her hair. She squeezed Jack’s hands till her fingers turned white.

“Bigger, like things you can’t say in words but feel?

Like you know something more mysterious exists beyond your idea of reality but you can’t explain how but you know is there? she asked.

“Yeah..” What’s wrong?” Jack asked.”Tell me, Gale. YOu can tell me and I won’t tell anyone. It’s just us here.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Pretend I’m a tree. I’ll listen. You speak. It’s like that with me..” Jack said. “

“Don’t be funny.

“I’m not. Some secrets will keep you locked up. I can handle whatever you gotta say to me. I want you to be free with me..” said Jack.

“IF you mean that, then you’ll see me. I love you, Jack,” she said her body igniting with violet light.

***

“Gale? Where are you?” Jack sank to his knees along the path.

“Here,” Gale’s voice growled, wings strokes of thunder over Jack’s shivering body below. A bolt of blue fire flared from her narrow eyes.

Jack looked and he saw her as…the thunderbird.

[annothray]

For A Season

The air whips his many flailing legs under cascading Seed pods against his soft long body. Even amid pelting bark on all sides, he wonders if this is his turn to splatter on the hard ground below like so many of the others before him. But then, his motion suddenly stops with a shuddering wet thud. Throughout his body.

Beside him, she lands with a soft plopping thud on the same Knobby branch. “Still alive,” he thinks, his feet clinging to the reAssuring groove of the bark.

He senses her bitter fear mingling as his antennae frantically reaches out towards her. His bristlIng body shivers with a thrill as his jelly-soft head blindly connects to Her own spongey sticky face. “We’re safe,” she tells him, both their antennae making Contact at their tips.

He finds himself struck By a cold panIck As the air vibrateS With her creeping motion. She inches along The dips and FoldS of the branch. He can nOT be alonE. After all, it was the droubt that brought tHem to share the same leaf, right before the crashing Gust of wind haD turned TheIr leaf upsidE Down. They had survived something that should have ended them, but had not. It must mean something more, he thinks.

“Don’t go,” he pleads through quivering antennae.She pauses. She waitss. He inchis mnearer. Front, back. Front , back. It seemed to take a whole day to get to her.

“Stay,” he says.

She is quiet. He regards her uncertainty, her bitter scent so young and fresh. He shudders with the strangest thrill he has never experienced before but wantes. Needs. It could be love. It could be they survived both dying together.

“She thinks to herself. Going back to where? Alone? He seems so sad.

“Why not?”

So, why not after some time becomes the stay he was hoping for. They share more leaves together. Some brown, crunchy and those days they went hungrier than they want to. Other days they find the tender juicy ones, but other insects fight them, one even biting off the tip of his front leg. HE is slower now, his front, back locomotion even more painfully slow. But she waites, pulsing encouragement through her lovely bitter scent as they slowly ascend each tree each stalk and over thirsty hard earth.

Then, the day arrives. She feels it first. It is a deep change.

At first, he is afraid to be. alone. But then, the change happens t him, too. It is spinning-time.

His cocoon wraps him gently until he awakens some time much, much later. He has Folded damp wings and bleary new eyes that see in a rainbow of colored light too unspeakable at first.

Soon, he lifts soff into the air, body buzzing with the taste for pollen and sweet things to gather in a frenzied flash of motion. There was others with I’m, moving around the swaying purple buds and stalks quivering in the breezes. But none are her, the one he remebers.

The sun falls golden to the line of the trees far away, But still, he can’t find her. By. dark, he settles in his secret place, giving up the search.

A breeze stirs his still form. He finds her in the breeze.

Her scent joined with a new scent. Her

wings dark, she misses him by a twilight’s wink of lightt. He. listens to her flutter by and retreats from the fearful Knocterm world.

flash fiction,fantasy,summer

[annothray]

Juniper’s Quest

The wind sliced across Juniper’s face and stung her slitted eyes as she rose higher and higher on the back of Yule. The strong reindeer shot forward into the eastern wind, into the darkness beyond. Over unseen cold ocean waters far, far below them. “Go, boy, go!” Urged Juniper, tightening her grip on the deer’s thick reins.

Yule grunted in response to her encouraging voice as another gust of wind rushed at them, fluttering Juniper’s hair into her face and seeming to tear into her warm, snug coat and mittens. But shew was used to this kind of cold, being an elf. AT least, the kind of cold felt on the ground but never this high up never over the North Pole. “We’re going to be heroes,” she said with a smile to the racing wind in her face. The ultimate adventure to a new place, a place to finally show the others all those evenings of daring stunts she put You through were worth it. Juniper, who would make her deer just as famous, if not more, than Santa’s famous team of eight. She had to admit, she was one of the best deer-keepers in Santa’s village.

“Faster!” she cried with another thrust of Yule’s reins. He plunged into the wind, the frightening darkness beyond over the sea very far below. Looking down gave Juniper icebergs of fear in her belly, she had to say, but she was in no Jack frost’s way not turning back now.

All those experiments for all these months, though disastrous, were finally paying off. Even the crash-landings Juniper tried while riding You from high onto elf roofs, resulting in needing to rebuild a new roof, well, that proved Yule had the guts to take the plunge. /OH, and the experiments with speeding up the flight feed’s ingredients to increase the reindeer aerodynamic propulsion --that made many deer go out of control, including Yule, but it was all worth it. Now, the other elves and Santa were pretty angry with Juniper this past year for all of this in particular, saying she wasn’t being careful or properly training Yule like the tradition dictated.

Juniper disagreed, seeing the older elves just too old to understand that it was time for new methods, to be a little more daring. She was right. All her unconventional methods had given Yule the endurance and conditioning he needed to face the Blue Yonder to find Starfall, although it really all could be nothing but a story after all.

It had been a secret meeting, one Mrs. Clause did not know of. Mrs. Clause, being the protective person she was, would have outright said “no” to the whole arrangement. But it was the toy makers and other deer-keepers in the barn where Juniper worked who decided something had to be done. They gathered that afternoon to discuss the final plan. Who would go? Who would find the cure?

“Santa may pull through still,” one fearful toymaker, Ginger, said at the meeting. “This is a big risk. The star village may not even exist anymore. It’s outright snow sugar myths and sparkles,” he harrumphed. “There’s got to be a more practical way to wake Santa.”

“Nobody really knows that,” Juniper said. “There could be a chance. She had grown up as an elfling, had been born in the North Pole, to know from the traveling puffins, that claimed to had glimpsed the twinkling village where the star people on the Blue Island across the ocean. She had brought up the idea of the story of the Blue Beyond, to the older elves’ bewilderment. Nobody left the island of the North pole ever. It was to keep everyone safe, the world being a wild place out there. Only Santa had permission to go when needed, which was only a few times a year, besides on Christmas Eve.

“Exactly,” Ginger replied. “does anyone agree this is sugar and sparkles insensible?

There was a muttering and nodding and shaking of many of the others’ meeting bells in their little hands as and pulling of beards and nervous yanking of hat tassels.

“NO, nobody goes,” cried Bellfrost, a very old respected elf. “Now I say this legend of the star people once healing ancient sicknesses like what Santa’s got sounds all wonderful and exciting but it’s all elf fire story-time and for little ones. Be sensible. Not like those dumb penguins who speak all out of order,” some elves giggled at this. ”You, Juniper, hit your head too much with all those daring things you called training ,” he huffed. The others grumbled in agreement.

“So, what are you all going to do then?” Juniper demanded, angry at the idea of going back to mucking deer stalls,, polishing their harness bells and making more batches of flight feed as if nothing was wrong. She had to do something, be more than that. So what if it wasn’t true? Didn’t the stories come from some flake of truth? Wasn’t that what a myth was all about?

Juniper had always wanted to explored beyond the island, but never like this. She couldn’t believe she had pulled it off so easily, just flying away with nobody knowing it. She had snaked away in the dead of night when everyone was asleep, the meeting long ended and with no new solutions. Unable to sleep, Juniper woke Yule up and prepared him for a very long flight.

The problem was with Santa. He had come down with an ancient sickness nobody thought would ever return To their cold part of the world. But it had. It was a magical sickness, you see. Legend has it that the first one to ever come down with the EverNight sickness was an old elf, one of the first to come to the North Pole, called Fir-Beard. Fir-Beard was sensitive to the heavy darkness of human hearts and the seeming endless dark of the North Pole itself after summertime. The only way he was saved was when a child’s wish star touched his heart. This happened many, many hundreds of years ago, when his family journeyed to find the fallen star people on the island of the Blue Beyond. The star had to be captured and was brought back that had seen hope somewhere in the sky over the world. Stars traveled, so they saw many things and lived a long time.

Now, Santa had fallen deep asleep with sadness. He’d been this way since December 1st, This had sent Mrs. Clause into a quiet unrest but she stayed with him day and night.

Santa, naturally having such a huge heart, had grown so heavy and tired of the sadness, the lost joy not found in the spirits of human children and families in the past years. Everyone could tell how slow and disinterested Santa seemed around Christmas Eve . He even began to hum “You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch” which was his least favorite song on Christmas morning during his steaming bubble bath.

Santa did not seem just tired after a long night of gift-giving all Christmas Eve, but older, more somber and troubled. He would sigh deeply over his steaming cinnamon cocoa and spiked velvet cake Mrs. Clause prepared for him the following morning on Christmas Day, unable to communicate what he really felt when she aske him what was wrong. He would just shake his head and mutter something about how long Christmas could really matter, which was not like him at all everyone knew.

So, here Juniper was only two days until Christmas flying on the back of her young, newly -trained reindeer she had raised as a fawn. . It would soon be once apart of Santa’s flying team of reindeer but not for a while. Juniper hadn’t flown Yule this high up before, and he bucked with nervousness as another blast of wind nearly knocked them sideways. The only source of light they had in this vast gray-blue darkness was the gleaming full moon, and even that was hidden at times by thick stormy clouds.

It had been a few hours now since lifting off and Juniper’s short legs ached from the rough ride. To her relief, she saw the gray outline of Blue Beyond island. Juniper was eager to stretch her legs and let Yule rest as well. He had to stay strong, after all, to fly them back over to the North when this was done.

Finally they lowered ever so slowly down, down towards the gray shelf of rocky frozen earth below. Yule’s large hooves thudded hard into the rocky ground with a thump, jarring Juniper. She let out a long sigh as she carefully dismounted and looked around the edge too the long strand of the lonely Blue island’s edge. She squinted to see the scraggly trees of the forest beyond .

“Here we go,” she said out loud, more to herself as much as to fill the sudden silence as the wind was less wild down here. Some of the tall, strange rock formations loomed largely around her and blocked the wind, which was a welcome change to the icy cold winds in the sky but created a stillness she had never felt before. It felt like it would swallow her up in all directions.

Juniper urged Yule up the hill as she lied him slowly up the craggy rocks to and into the blue forest.

The silvery moonlight washed away into blackness as elf and reindeer entered under the tall black trees. The only sound was Yule’s careful thudding hoof stomps and Juniper’s soft crunching steps in her boots over the hard, frozen ground. There was not much snow here but she was aware sometime soon a snow storm was headed this way. Whether it came tonight she was not sure. It could come by morning. She was afraid she would get caught in it and that would delay her from getting back home.

Juniper was sure the stories, telling of stars that became beings who supposedly dwelled here were true. Another story said the star people were formed out of the northern lights so went another belief, at least, that’s what the puffins had told everyone over the years. Nobody could say which beginning was the right one, though.

Such stars were dying stars but ones that carried the remaining hope, joy and love a child wished for that gave Christmas Magic all its power. The stars held wishes and dreams and memories of all these things. Those are what the stories said all these long years anyway.

Adjusting her hat, Juniper’s pointed ear twitched nervously, despite being amazed at the blue island. She felt watched. She stopped and so did Yule with a snort. He pawed the ground and sniffed the air with a loud huff-huff-huff.

“It’s okay,” soothed Juniper, placing her mittened-hand over her deer’s side. But he quivered and she knew then they weren’t alone.

Before she could wonder what it was, the invisible something rose up around her like a rising wind. It circled her, the many falling and rising voices of the wolves’. Their yellow eyes flashed like so many fiery stars around her and Yule.

The deer stomped his hooves as he struggled against Juniper’s hold his strong lead. He let out a series of Frightened bellows that echoed deep into the darkness beyond. The wolves growled and snapped long, narrow jaws Juniper couldn’t see but could somehow imagined as she pressed against her deer’s flank. “Steady, Yule! Steady!” Juniper cried, just as one wolf leaped towards her.

In a flash, Juniper jumped back as she felt the breeze of the wolf’s clacking jaws just miss her fur collar.

“ “So sweet and small!” Snarled the wolf, its eyes just inches from Juniper and big as glowing snow globes. It’s hot breath steamed against Juniper’s cheek. “Aren’t you a surprise treat here in the Blue Woods,” the wolf sniffed long and hard at Juniper’s warm coat.

Beside Juniper, Yule tensed. She wondered if he would try attacking with his newly-grown antlers. They were sharp and she knew he would defend himself if any wolf went after him or Juniper .

“Please, let us through,” whimpered Juniper. She realized how dumb this sounded, but she had never faced a real winter wolf . She had heard stories of them but never had faced one, since there were none at the North Pole. These must have been the winter wolves with their frosty white coats, so vicious and always hungry.

The other wolves impatiently whined. The leader was still busy sniffing Juniper. “You smell of.” He sniffed again, this time his cold muzzle just under Juniper’s chin.

She stood still as the trees, holding her breath. Her heart boomed in her small chest. She was sure the wolf could hear this, too.

“Ahh, you’re a northern elf, you are?”

“Ye-yes. I’m looking for the star people,” she said in a rush like a snow squall. .

The big wolf laughed and the others joined in, barking and yelping . “Star people! Ghosts and myths and no more than the wind itself. You can’t catch the star people,” howled the leader. “

Juniper smiled in the dark, fighting her fear as she shook with the wolf’s mouth so close to her face. “Oh, but I can,” she said with a spark of confidence. ”You don’t know us northern elves at all.

“I love a good chase,” slobbered the wolf. His pack panted and drooled with him. “alright then, you win, we’ll let you go. You lose, we eat,” he snarled. The wolves let out low howls of excitement of the idea of warm deer meat in their jaws and elf in their bellies.

Heart loud as Santa’s stomping boots in a Christmas dance, Juniper leapt onto Yule’s back.

“Point south,” directed the leader. With the glow of his eyes, Juniper turned the nervous deer’s head towards the supposed south. The pack snarled and panted with anticipation as they readied themselves in a formation behind Yule, the leader the closest to his trembling hindquarters.

“go!” snapped the leader, as if setting flame to Yule’s motion.

Yule leapt forward without Juniper having time to whip her reins into action as he took off at full speed. They pelted through the narrow columns of dark trees, over slopes, fallen logs and around rocks.

The wolves panted and grazed the back of Yule’s hind legs, making him bellow with terror and determination not to die.

Juniper held on tightly to his reins, leaning Into the galloping reindeer’s run as he moved with a powerful grace she didn’t know he had. They had never run this fast.

Just as she thought he was outrunning the wolves, one wolf leapt. It latched onto Yule’s hindquarter, forcing Yule to stumble.

“No!” Cried Juniper as she felt Yule struggled under the wolf’s powerful jaws.

Then , Yule reared up hard, his hooves driving down into the wolf’s head. The wolf snarled and yelped with surprised pain as the front hoof smashed into his head. Unable to see what was happening, Juniper found herself slipping off the deer’s back. She was horribly falling, hands reaching for one of the deer’s antlers just inches away. One wolf nearly clamped onto her boot as she found herself nearly pulled into the maddening fray of wolves.

“Looks like you can’t go fast as the myths say,” one wolf taunted from the darkness, springing to catch Juniper in his open mouth.

Juniper remember her ice pick she carried. Back up onto the deer’s back with one hard effort, she thrust the pic out of her jacket pocket. It stabbed the wolf in the snout just as it sprang . It fell back with a loud pained yip.

“Yah! Yah!” Juniper cried, whipping Yule’s reins.

Huffing hard, the deer leapt away. After several minutes of galloping, the sky opened up over them as they bounded downhill into an open space ahead. It was then Juniper realized how quiet it had become.

No wolves howled. NO wind blew. But now, now she didn’t know what was ahead. There was NO village.

She worried about the time then. She worried how long they had until morning and whether or not they could find what was rumored not real. “Maybe we shouldn’t have raced those wolves,” she said, listening to Yule’s hard breathing. “but we won.” Yule rested on the snow beside her, seeming more tired than usual.

“You okay?” she went to inspect her deer’s back leg. Blood trickled fast into the snow, and the deer winced with pain when Juniper lightly brushed it with her hand. The wolf had taken a large chunk out of Yule and he was in pain.

Rummaging around her pack, Juniper found her healing salve around the flight feed and her small bundle of food she had brought for herself. She had lost her only weapon, the improvised ice pic she happened to have with her taken from the barn. Carefully, Juniper applied the salve over her deer’s wound. It reminded her of when he was first born, very ill and small. She had raised him, thought him lucky like her. His weakness reminded her of her one round ear she was born with, the one she couldn’t hear very well out of. Sadly, the other elves teased her about it. “Like a human ear,” they said. “Were you naughty or nice this year?” they would sing, making Juniper cry when she was a small elfling.

Juniper didn’t know much about humans except what Santa told the elves on the island. She only knew some were bad and others nice, listening to their parents while others did not. She felt that way a lot growing up, not really like a regular elf but knowing she was no human, either.

Yule, too, had his problems as a fawn. everyone thought he would never learn to fly. Any deer that didn’t fly was sent away to the wild lands away from the village to live.

Yule was spooked when he got off the ground, taking more months to learn. But Juniper spent her lonely hours with him growing up and in time, he learned to trust her. He was determined, she knew, like her to be the best despite everything. Then, one day, he could fly if not better, she believed, than the best flyers around.

“I’m sorry I got you hurt,” Juniper said. “I didn’t want us to get eaten back there. You’ll be fine soon,” she soothed, humming some Christmas hymns he seemed to like under her breath as she worked.

“I think we were tricked ,” she said suddenly, looking around at the strange valley. “I can’t imagine this islands being that big. We’re still in the wilds outside of any sort of village I would think.” But at least we’re still alive,” she thought .

As she slowly walked Yule through the valley over the silvery blue snow, they came upon another small rise. But all she saw were more trees, twisted and casting ominous shadows over the ground.

“all we can do is go in,” Juniper said, seeing a path in the woods ahead. Yule pawed the ground nervously. Then, Juniper stopped fast.

Something big and white rose up huge against the light in front of them. Juniper gaped up at the towering thing. It was a moon bear, white and strong as thick ice with eyes like a starless night. They gazed fiercely down at Yule and Juniper. “Urrrr! Rrrrra!” The moon bear thundered. “Voice your desire for entering the place of Starfall, elf!”

Juniper was so amazed at the power of the bear, only heard about in stories around the fire and over Solstice Cookie night gatherings to tell magical, spooky stories with the other elves that she could only stare. Yule threatened to use his pointed antlers as he lowered his great head towards the looming bear.

“To save…” Juniper began.

“Speak!” the bear roared again, making Juniper’s bones rattle and ears feel like they’d split like a broken snowman Separating from its Rounded halves. “Santa! I need to save Santa!”

The moon bear considered this. It tilted his huge head as it listened. Its dark eyes seemed to go on and on with all they knew inside of them if Juniper looked to deeply into them. The bear gave a deep snort and said, “The mythic Father Christmas? The Great Clause? So, he does exist.”

“Yes,” Juniper said with disbelief. How could this bear not have heard of the famous Santa? “I live in his village. Why do you think he’s not real?”

“It’s believed the darkness has caused Santa and all the magic and others at the north Pole to have faded. I thought they were stories. But you are proof this is not true or you would not be here.”

Juniper almost wanted to laugh. So, her friends, her family and Santa were all stories to these wild people of the Blue Beyond? But the moon bear was not ready to welcome her.

He lowered himself down to all fours, still a snowy wall of fur to Juniper’s tiny form standing in front of him. Yule wasn’t much comforted. HE still shook and snorted restlessly , ready to charge. He had never known such an adventure, such danger in his life. He didn’t like it.

“I have been guarding Starfall for decades,” growled the Bear. Its voice thrummed through the ground into Juniper’s boots. “Only those who know the answer to the star peoples’ riddle can enter their village. Answer me this. What is the greatest gift that means most to a child?”

“I don’t have much time—“

“Answer,” the moon bear firmly growled. “

Juniper thought and but not for long. She was sure she had the answer. “Ah, that’s easy,” she said with a smile. “All elves know children want toys. That’s what Santa brings them and makes them happy. Remember, I live with the expert giver of gifts,” she said.

“Wrong,” rumbled the bear. “Come back when you know the answer.”

Frustrated, Juniper stared at the bear as it shut its huge black eyes as if to sleep. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll find another way in. there’s no time left for games.”

She urged Yule away at a trot into the woods on the darkened path past the bear. She figured it had to go into the village. Why else would it be guarded? “Not very well guarded,” laughed Juniper, noticing then how her deer limped slightly with every step. He was still in pain.

The path went on and on. It turned into black winding ways and blocked out the moon. Juniper tripped suddenly over an unseen stump. She rolled fast down a steep slope. Yule bellowed helplessly as he watched her tiny form bounce down a hill.

Feeling a bit bruised up, Juniper slowly sat and looked around her at the bottom of the hill. Her pack had slid off. A rustling came then in the unseen brush beyond.

Juniper squinted and could just make out two white forms. They slinked over to her, tiny noses wet and sniffing. Two pairs of glowing yellow eyes looked at her but they didn’t scare her like the wolves. They were small creatures , low to the ground.

“Smells like north wind,” one of the creatures rasped.

“Is it food stuff?” asked the other.

“Too big,” rasped the first. “But stuff came with her.”

“Excuse me,” Juniper said, tired of their sniffing noses. “I’m not food. I’m an elf.”

“Elf bring food?” the first creature asked.

“yes –but not for you,” Juniper said, unable to find her pack as she looked around the snowy spot she had landed with so many more black trees beyond her. She heard Yule stomp and snort with worry hearing her voice.

“I get food,” snuffled the second creature, racing on paws with a long flash of its white tail as he went. HE rustled around and dragged what sounded like something heavy. Juniper figured it was her bag. “Got food,” panted the creature as it came nearer.

Juniper stood but lost her balance over a snowy log she didn’t know was in front of her. She fell face-first in the snow.

Suddenly, she heard the two creatures growling and yipping like little dogs over her bag. “Mine,” one said.

“NO, we take together,” and then there was a spray of snow and a crashing as they took off at lightning speed through the trees.

“Come back with that!” cried Juniper, just wiping the cold snow from her eyes. She realized she would be no match for the creatures and didn’t want to get more lost than she was. She couldn’t leave Yule, that was for certain.

Her heart suddenly sank as she realized her hat was gone, too. It had fallen somewhere. But where? She had no clue. Worse, she had no food for herself, medicine or flight food. If they got stuck here, they would never get home. Never save Santa.

“Maybe I should have tried the riddle again,” Juniper realized. Then she wouldn’t be lost and without food or her warm hat. Already the cold air was making her bad ear very numb. It was more sensitive to the cold than her pointed right one.

She tried not to cry. She couldn’t do that. She had to be strong for Yule, to keep his spirits up. They were brave adventurers on a quest. Adventurers didn’t give up.

But she regretted not listening to the bear. She shouldn’t have thought she knew her way in this wild, unknown place. It was more dangerous here, where everyone seemed so hungry and miserable.

“Yule?” she called. The deer huffed and stomped. She followed the sound of his hooves and climbed sorely to the top of the hill. Now, to get to the bear,” she said. It helped to hear her own voice in this quiet lonely place. Yule grunted his deer agreement.

Slowly, she walked beside Yule in what she hoped was the reverse of their direction. She could just make out deer prints in some tiny breaks in the trees at times. But it was slow-going. But eventually, very slowly until both her ears felt totally numb and her belly grumbled for food, Juniper and Yule found the turn they recognized from before.

AS they walked, she had reflected on what the bear had asked her. What gift did children need the most? It was definitely not toys. But if not, why did Santa do what he did every year for so long and why did the elves work so hard at toymaking if it was not enough to bring children happiness?

“Maybe,” Juniper wondered aloud. “Maybe its cookies. NO, that’s what your stomach thinks is the right answer, you funny elf,” Juniper said, wishing so hard she had her pack of cookies now. “But maybe it’s something the toys make the kids feel.” Then she thought about that. “Toys make kids happy. They feel…they feel like they matter when they get what they asked for. Especially the really good ones, at least, that’s what Santa tells us. They feel love.. But the naughty ones…they don’t do what they’re asked to.. They’re, well, like me on this journey,” she had to admit.

She hadn’t done anything she was told. She had run away, in fact, from her own island when nobody told her to. She had made up a dangerous game to outsmart the wolves who hurt Yule. She had not wanted to do what the moon bear had asked her and she lost her food and her way. She felt not very smart or confident now. Only cold, hungry and worried about Yule and time before morning came.

Trudging slowly, shivering and feeling tired, Juniper at last found the opening to the clearing where the great moon bear slept. She stepped up to it, tapping its big furry shoulder. Yule didn’t try running now, either. He was too exhausted to run.

Opening its huge, wide mouth, the bear yawned long and slow. “What is your answer?”

“It’s love, moon bear,” Juniper said in a small voice.

“Ah, and so it is, among other things. Do you know why?”

“Because love is what makes the heart want to listen to others. To be kind and loyal with friends and to oneself.”

“A very good reason,” the bear said with amazement in its rumbling voice. “I see you had lots of time to know this yourself. Well, no more time to waste. You may enter the Starfall Village.”

The bear gestured to one side of itself. At first, Juniper only saw the trees she and her deer had just come through. But then to her astonishment, she saw it. It been hidden all this time by the bear’s bulk, a path several feet opposite the winding one she had walked. It was a narrow path leading up and up towards a cluster of twinkling golden lights like in the stories.

Eagerly, Juniper led Yule up the hill. They went up and up and finally reached its top.

There, ahead in the center of the tiny village, stood a round stone hut. Juniper paused outside, not sure what to do. “You might have to stay out here,” she said to him.

Juniper went up slowly to the door, marked with a golden blazing star pattern. AS soon as her small hand touched the door, it melted away and sudden golden-white light blinded her eyes for a few seconds. She blinked very hard before the light faded like a setting sun.

There, stood a small old woman, clothed in a silvery long tunic. Her white hair gleamed like moonlight was shining in it. As her very old eyes were impossibly large, bright and also golden as sinking suns on the horizon.

“Juniper Silverlane. I know you. Don’t look so surprised,” she smiled kindly. “You made wishes on many of my sister stars.” Juniper’s eyes grew huge. She remembered wishing as an elfling to one day have Yule fly fast as Santa’s expert reindeer. The wish had come true but not without endless days of practice despite the other elves’ worry and with Santa’s encouragement.

IN front of Juniper, the old star woman held up a brilliantly-glowing orb in her left hand. It shown like a tiny sun and hummed with harmonies that were felt rather than heard in Juniper’s whole body as she came , trembling, close to it.

“It’s a fallen star. It’s a child’s wish for love,, one I saw many years ago before coming here,” explained the star woman. “Give this to your dear Santa. Place it on his heart. Then, when he awakens, he is to make it touch every home he visits to battle hate.”

“That’s it?” Juniper wondered, , hand shaking as she held the warm star in her palm.

“NO. there will be a battle between love and hate. Love will win but not for all Who won’t hear its song in them. It is the way of humans. Love needs to be more than just Christmas. But humans forget this.”

“Then it won’t work” Juniper said with a sinking heart. She knew very little about humans. But she knew they were not as forgiving as elves and nost always as happy or hopeful. Elves got sad, to,, and angry but it didn’t last too long.

“Love is a strong power that needs to be captured and practiced like any song, or trained to fly like your reindeer,” she added with a shine in her eyes. “You can not control the humans but you can try to be the one who brings love back, the memory of it. Now, you must go. The winds blow from the north a storm. Let the star guide your way and do not lose it,” she added strongly.

Juniper was about to thank the star woman when. Before she could, the golden light carried her back into the darkness.

Yule stood impatiently, nosing the snow and ready to go.

Sure enough, Juniper felt the sharp winds and smelled cold snow in the air. The blizzard was on its way.

Carefully, Juniper tucked the glowing wish star into her jacket pocket. She wished she had her pack but it was long gone. She felt it crackle with a song even through the bag as she climbed onto Yule’s back. “We’re flying,” she thought. With a snap of Yule’s reins, the deer and elf left the ground. They rose higher into the sharp bitter air. It was now totally dark with no moon. The wind came from the north, Juniper realized. Juniper turned Yule homeward. They Whooshed off towards it.

The forest below flashed darkly and soon Blue Beyond, or Starfall perhaps, was left behind them in the many minutes it took. Juniper’s heart sang with triumph.

Over the dark waters they flew. Suddenly, a tearing gale with stinging sleet slammed into them. Yule bellowed with confusion. Juniper felt herself slipping as she fought to control the terrified animal. She realized then they were getting too low.

It was then Juniper had a horrible thought. Yule needed more flight feed to eat but there was none. They were going to fall right in to the sea.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Juniper cried, the snow squall twisting and shrieking around them like a swirling vortex.

Yule had never flown in this sort of weather. He was not that experienced as the sleigh deer. Yule bucked , bellowing with fear as he plunged down with Juniper. She lost her grip.

She fell, screaming as she knew she’d land in the icy deep ocean below.

She tumbled and fell what felt like forever. She saw nothing but felt the biting wind tearing at her wild hair…

Spa-loose! She landed din the icy water, couldn’t breathe …

She had no body , felt nothing. She thrashed and gasped. Water. Water Everywhere. She had failed.

***

The black and white birds stood tightly around her, their beaks bent down, small eyes staring with worry at her.

Juniper blinked to see webbed feet all around her. “Santa I’m sorry ,” she whispered and shivered. The penguins stood and muttered to themselves for a few minutes with much squeaking and in words Juniper didn’t understand.

“Lost one,” the biggest penguin said . Juniper knew penguins weren’t the smartest of talkers. This one, though, maybe he could help her.

“I fell from the sky,” she said. “Yule,” she remember with a jolt. “Where’s Yule?”

“Deer fall fly down. Water splash ,” said the big penguin. The others squawked in agreement, bobbing their black heads in unison.

“Star sing loud,” the penguin went on in his strange pinched voice. He pecked at Juniper’s pocket and she heard it, to, ringing and warm in her coat. “We circle make warm you.”

Juniper should have felt happy about this. But she was not. With no way home, now with Yule unable to fly, maybe lost in the sea forever, she was stuck with the penguins. Santa, too, would not wake up for Christmas. Not this year, anyway. Maybe not ever.

Now, Juniper’s eyes burned like little hot stars of their own. “I’ll never get back home. I’m no hero. Yule’s gone. If only I had done what I was supposed to do, wait for the others at the north pole to find the answer instead of me trying to save everyone,” she said with tears. “I just wanted to help and do something more.”

“You have love star,” repeated the penguin, tapping his beak gently against Juniper’s coat. “not lost.”

“But Yule…”

“Is with us,” said the familiar rough old voice. It was Bellfrost, standing on the icy island just outside the penguins’ warm circle. Juniper sat up and looked. There he was, standing as Bellfrost held out a big bag of flight feed. Beside him stood his own reindeer, Holly. She was strong and proudly lifting her head to the morning sky, now clear.

“Where was he?” Juniper asked, overjoyed. The star sang more loudly now in her coat. It made her smile with gratitude.

“As I say,” huffed old Bellfrost. ”I have my methods just like you. We better get a move on. Christmas Eve’s here and we gotta do something about Santa. He’s really asleep now.

Juniper ran to Bellfrost, embracing him. Between them, the star blazed brightly and tickled Bellfrost’s round belly. “Oh,” he chuckled with surprise. “So the stories are more than sugar flakes and sparkles, I see.”

“Yes,” Juniper said. “And thank you, Bellfrost, for looking for me.”

“HO, hum,” he said, turning to the deer. The penguins watched curiously as he and Juniper got their deer positioned for the flight into the rising sun. “Well, what would the North Pole be without you, Juniper? Boring, that’s what,” he chuckled again jumping onto Holly’s back.

Yule nuzzled Juniper. His fur was dry and refreshed from the energizing food. The penguins excitedly squeaked and trilled as they watched the two of them. AS for penguins, Juniper knew now they were anything but dumb. They were kind and had the biggest hearts out at sea she had ever known.

“Let’s go, Yule! Let’s wake Santa!”

Gray light shown over the sky as Juniper and Yule returned to the North Pole. Tired, hungry, Juniper hurried to the elves. IN her hand, the star burst with its song as it felt her elven family’s love warm her in hugs and happy tears.

“To Santa!” Cried old Bellfrost.

***

The wish star woke Santa like a defrosting icicle. His eyes had a light in them nobody had seen in so long. Santa took the wish with Him that Christmas Eve, turning its light into stardust all over the world where he went. But it was only the beginning for the humans. It would be the children who would keep the starlight of love alive, through dreams and their little hearts.

Juniper’s Quest

The wind sliced across Juniper’s face and stung her slitted eyes as she rose higher and higher on the back of Yule. The strong reindeer shot forward into the eastern wind, into the darkness beyond. Over unseen cold ocean waters far, far below them. “Go, boy, go!” Urged Juniper, tightening her grip on the deer’s thick reins.

Yule grunted in response to her encouraging voice as another gust of wind rushed at them, fluttering Juniper’s hair into her face and seeming to tear into her warm, snug coat and mittens. But shew was used to this kind of cold, being an elf. AT least, the kind of cold felt on the ground but never this high up never over the North Pole. “We’re going to be heroes,” she said with a smile to the racing wind in her face. The ultimate adventure to a new place, a place to finally show the others all those evenings of daring stunts she put You through were worth it. Juniper, who would make her deer just as famous, if not more, than Santa’s famous team of eight. She had to admit, she was one of the best deer-keepers in Santa’s village.

“Faster!” she cried with another thrust of Yule’s reins. He plunged into the wind, the frightening darkness beyond over the sea very far below. Looking down gave Juniper icebergs of fear in her belly, she had to say, but she was in no Jack frost’s way not turning back now.

All those experiments for all these months, though disastrous, were finally paying off. Even the crash-landings Juniper tried while riding You from high onto elf roofs, resulting in needing to rebuild a new roof, well, that proved Yule had the guts to take the plunge. /OH, and the experiments with speeding up the flight feed’s ingredients to increase the reindeer aerodynamic propulsion --that made many deer go out of control, including Yule, but it was all worth it. Now, the other elves and Santa were pretty angry with Juniper this past year for all of this in particular, saying she wasn’t being careful or properly training Yule like the tradition dictated.

Juniper disagreed, seeing the older elves just too old to understand that it was time for new methods, to be a little more daring. She was right. All her unconventional methods had given Yule the endurance and conditioning he needed to face the Blue Yonder to find Starfall, although it really all could be nothing but a story after all.

It had been a secret meeting, one Mrs. Clause did not know of. Mrs. Clause, being the protective person she was, would have outright said “no” to the whole arrangement. But it was the toy makers and other deer-keepers in the barn where Juniper worked who decided something had to be done. They gathered that afternoon to discuss the final plan. Who would go? Who would find the cure?

“Santa may pull through still,” one fearful toymaker, Ginger, said at the meeting. “This is a big risk. The star village may not even exist anymore. It’s outright snow sugar myths and sparkles,” he harrumphed. “There’s got to be a more practical way to wake Santa.”

“Nobody really knows that,” Juniper said. “There could be a chance. She had grown up as an elfling, had been born in the North Pole, to know from the traveling puffins, that claimed to had glimpsed the twinkling village where the star people on the Blue Island across the ocean. She had brought up the idea of the story of the Blue Beyond, to the older elves’ bewilderment. Nobody left the island of the North pole ever. It was to keep everyone safe, the world being a wild place out there. Only Santa had permission to go when needed, which was only a few times a year, besides on Christmas Eve.

“Exactly,” Ginger replied. “does anyone agree this is sugar and sparkles insensible?

There was a muttering and nodding and shaking of many of the others’ meeting bells in their little hands as and pulling of beards and nervous yanking of hat tassels.

“NO, nobody goes,” cried Bellfrost, a very old respected elf. “Now I say this legend of the star people once healing ancient sicknesses like what Santa’s got sounds all wonderful and exciting but it’s all elf fire story-time and for little ones. Be sensible. Not like those dumb penguins who speak all out of order,” some elves giggled at this. ”You, Juniper, hit your head too much with all those daring things you called training ,” he huffed. The others grumbled in agreement.

“So, what are you all going to do then?” Juniper demanded, angry at the idea of going back to mucking deer stalls,, polishing their harness bells and making more batches of flight feed as if nothing was wrong. She had to do something, be more than that. So what if it wasn’t true? Didn’t the stories come from some flake of truth? Wasn’t that what a myth was all about?

Juniper had always wanted to explored beyond the island, but never like this. She couldn’t believe she had pulled it off so easily, just flying away with nobody knowing it. She had snaked away in the dead of night when everyone was asleep, the meeting long ended and with no new solutions. Unable to sleep, Juniper woke Yule up and prepared him for a very long flight.

The problem was with Santa. He had come down with an ancient sickness nobody thought would ever return To their cold part of the world. But it had. It was a magical sickness, you see. Legend has it that the first one to ever come down with the EverNight sickness was an old elf, one of the first to come to the North Pole, called Fir-Beard. Fir-Beard was sensitive to the heavy darkness of human hearts and the seeming endless dark of the North Pole itself after summertime. The only way he was saved was when a child’s wish star touched his heart. This happened many, many hundreds of years ago, when his family journeyed to find the fallen star people on the island of the Blue Beyond. The star had to be captured and was brought back that had seen hope somewhere in the sky over the world. Stars traveled, so they saw many things and lived a long time.

Now, Santa had fallen deep asleep with sadness. He’d been this way since December 1st, This had sent Mrs. Clause into a quiet unrest but she stayed with him day and night.

Santa, naturally having such a huge heart, had grown so heavy and tired of the sadness, the lost joy not found in the spirits of human children and families in the past years. Everyone could tell how slow and disinterested Santa seemed around Christmas Eve . He even began to hum “You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch” which was his least favorite song on Christmas morning during his steaming bubble bath.

Santa did not seem just tired after a long night of gift-giving all Christmas Eve, but older, more somber and troubled. He would sigh deeply over his steaming cinnamon cocoa and spiked velvet cake Mrs. Clause prepared for him the following morning on Christmas Day, unable to communicate what he really felt when she aske him what was wrong. He would just shake his head and mutter something about how long Christmas could really matter, which was not like him at all everyone knew.

So, here Juniper was only two days until Christmas flying on the back of her young, newly -trained reindeer she had raised as a fawn. . It would soon be once apart of Santa’s flying team of reindeer but not for a while. Juniper hadn’t flown Yule this high up before, and he bucked with nervousness as another blast of wind nearly knocked them sideways. The only source of light they had in this vast gray-blue darkness was the gleaming full moon, and even that was hidden at times by thick stormy clouds.

It had been a few hours now since lifting off and Juniper’s short legs ached from the rough ride. To her relief, she saw the gray outline of Blue Beyond island. Juniper was eager to stretch her legs and let Yule rest as well. He had to stay strong, after all, to fly them back over to the North when this was done.

Finally they lowered ever so slowly down, down towards the gray shelf of rocky frozen earth below. Yule’s large hooves thudded hard into the rocky ground with a thump, jarring Juniper. She let out a long sigh as she carefully dismounted and looked around the edge too the long strand of the lonely Blue island’s edge. She squinted to see the scraggly trees of the forest beyond .

“Here we go,” she said out loud, more to herself as much as to fill the sudden silence as the wind was less wild down here. Some of the tall, strange rock formations loomed largely around her and blocked the wind, which was a welcome change to the icy cold winds in the sky but created a stillness she had never felt before. It felt like it would swallow her up in all directions.

Juniper urged Yule up the hill as she lied him slowly up the craggy rocks to and into the blue forest.

The silvery moonlight washed away into blackness as elf and reindeer entered under the tall black trees. The only sound was Yule’s careful thudding hoof stomps and Juniper’s soft crunching steps in her boots over the hard, frozen ground. There was not much snow here but she was aware sometime soon a snow storm was headed this way. Whether it came tonight she was not sure. It could come by morning. She was afraid she would get caught in it and that would delay her from getting back home.

Juniper was sure the stories, telling of stars that became beings who supposedly dwelled here were true. Another story said the star people were formed out of the northern lights so went another belief, at least, that’s what the puffins had told everyone over the years. Nobody could say which beginning was the right one, though.

Such stars were dying stars but ones that carried the remaining hope, joy and love a child wished for that gave Christmas Magic all its power. The stars held wishes and dreams and memories of all these things. Those are what the stories said all these long years anyway.

Adjusting her hat, Juniper’s pointed ear twitched nervously, despite being amazed at the blue island. She felt watched. She stopped and so did Yule with a snort. He pawed the ground and sniffed the air with a loud huff-huff-huff.

“It’s okay,” soothed Juniper, placing her mittened-hand over her deer’s side. But he quivered and she knew then they weren’t alone.

Before she could wonder what it was, the invisible something rose up around her like a rising wind. It circled her, the many falling and rising voices of the wolves’. Their yellow eyes flashed like so many fiery stars around her and Yule.

The deer stomped his hooves as he struggled against Juniper’s hold his strong lead. He let out a series of Frightened bellows that echoed deep into the darkness beyond. The wolves growled and snapped long, narrow jaws Juniper couldn’t see but could somehow imagined as she pressed against her deer’s flank. “Steady, Yule! Steady!” Juniper cried, just as one wolf leaped towards her.

In a flash, Juniper jumped back as she felt the breeze of the wolf’s clacking jaws just miss her fur collar.

“ “So sweet and small!” Snarled the wolf, its eyes just inches from Juniper and big as glowing snow globes. It’s hot breath steamed against Juniper’s cheek. “Aren’t you a surprise treat here in the Blue Woods,” the wolf sniffed long and hard at Juniper’s warm coat.

Beside Juniper, Yule tensed. She wondered if he would try attacking with his newly-grown antlers. They were sharp and she knew he would defend himself if any wolf went after him or Juniper .

“Please, let us through,” whimpered Juniper. She realized how dumb this sounded, but she had never faced a real winter wolf . She had heard stories of them but never had faced one, since there were none at the North Pole. These must have been the winter wolves with their frosty white coats, so vicious and always hungry.

The other wolves impatiently whined. The leader was still busy sniffing Juniper. “You smell of.” He sniffed again, this time his cold muzzle just under Juniper’s chin.

She stood still as the trees, holding her breath. Her heart boomed in her small chest. She was sure the wolf could hear this, too.

“Ahh, you’re a northern elf, you are?”

“Ye-yes. I’m looking for the star people,” she said in a rush like a snow squall. .

The big wolf laughed and the others joined in, barking and yelping . “Star people! Ghosts and myths and no more than the wind itself. You can’t catch the star people,” howled the leader. “

Juniper smiled in the dark, fighting her fear as she shook with the wolf’s mouth so close to her face. “Oh, but I can,” she said with a spark of confidence. ”You don’t know us northern elves at all.

“I love a good chase,” slobbered the wolf. His pack panted and drooled with him. “alright then, you win, we’ll let you go. You lose, we eat,” he snarled. The wolves let out low howls of excitement of the idea of warm deer meat in their jaws and elf in their bellies.

Heart loud as Santa’s stomping boots in a Christmas dance, Juniper leapt onto Yule’s back.

“Point south,” directed the leader. With the glow of his eyes, Juniper turned the nervous deer’s head towards the supposed south. The pack snarled and panted with anticipation as they readied themselves in a formation behind Yule, the leader the closest to his trembling hindquarters.

“go!” snapped the leader, as if setting flame to Yule’s motion.

Yule leapt forward without Juniper having time to whip her reins into action as he took off at full speed. They pelted through the narrow columns of dark trees, over slopes, fallen logs and around rocks.

The wolves panted and grazed the back of Yule’s hind legs, making him bellow with terror and determination not to die.

Juniper held on tightly to his reins, leaning Into the galloping reindeer’s run as he moved with a powerful grace she didn’t know he had. They had never run this fast.

Just as she thought he was outrunning the wolves, one wolf leapt. It latched onto Yule’s hindquarter, forcing Yule to stumble.

“No!” Cried Juniper as she felt Yule struggled under the wolf’s powerful jaws.

Then , Yule reared up hard, his hooves driving down into the wolf’s head. The wolf snarled and yelped with surprised pain as the front hoof smashed into his head. Unable to see what was happening, Juniper found herself slipping off the deer’s back. She was horribly falling, hands reaching for one of the deer’s antlers just inches away. One wolf nearly clamped onto her boot as she found herself nearly pulled into the maddening fray of wolves.

“Looks like you can’t go fast as the myths say,” one wolf taunted from the darkness, springing to catch Juniper in his open mouth.

Juniper remember her ice pick she carried. Back up onto the deer’s back with one hard effort, she thrust the pic out of her jacket pocket. It stabbed the wolf in the snout just as it sprang . It fell back with a loud pained yip.

“Yah! Yah!” Juniper cried, whipping Yule’s reins.

Huffing hard, the deer leapt away. After several minutes of galloping, the sky opened up over them as they bounded downhill into an open space ahead. It was then Juniper realized how quiet it had become.

No wolves howled. NO wind blew. But now, now she didn’t know what was ahead. There was NO village.

She worried about the time then. She worried how long they had until morning and whether or not they could find what was rumored not real. “Maybe we shouldn’t have raced those wolves,” she said, listening to Yule’s hard breathing. “but we won.” Yule rested on the snow beside her, seeming more tired than usual.

“You okay?” she went to inspect her deer’s back leg. Blood trickled fast into the snow, and the deer winced with pain when Juniper lightly brushed it with her hand. The wolf had taken a large chunk out of Yule and he was in pain.

Rummaging around her pack, Juniper found her healing salve around the flight feed and her small bundle of food she had brought for herself. She had lost her only weapon, the improvised ice pic she happened to have with her taken from the barn. Carefully, Juniper applied the salve over her deer’s wound. It reminded her of when he was first born, very ill and small. She had raised him, thought him lucky like her. His weakness reminded her of her one round ear she was born with, the one she couldn’t hear very well out of. Sadly, the other elves teased her about it. “Like a human ear,” they said. “Were you naughty or nice this year?” they would sing, making Juniper cry when she was a small elfling.

Juniper didn’t know much about humans except what Santa told the elves on the island. She only knew some were bad and others nice, listening to their parents while others did not. She felt that way a lot growing up, not really like a regular elf but knowing she was no human, either.

Yule, too, had his problems as a fawn. everyone thought he would never learn to fly. Any deer that didn’t fly was sent away to the wild lands away from the village to live.

Yule was spooked when he got off the ground, taking more months to learn. But Juniper spent her lonely hours with him growing up and in time, he learned to trust her. He was determined, she knew, like her to be the best despite everything. Then, one day, he could fly if not better, she believed, than the best flyers around.

“I’m sorry I got you hurt,” Juniper said. “I didn’t want us to get eaten back there. You’ll be fine soon,” she soothed, humming some Christmas hymns he seemed to like under her breath as she worked.

“I think we were tricked ,” she said suddenly, looking around at the strange valley. “I can’t imagine this islands being that big. We’re still in the wilds outside of any sort of village I would think.” But at least we’re still alive,” she thought .

As she slowly walked Yule through the valley over the silvery blue snow, they came upon another small rise. But all she saw were more trees, twisted and casting ominous shadows over the ground.

“all we can do is go in,” Juniper said, seeing a path in the woods ahead. Yule pawed the ground nervously. Then, Juniper stopped fast.

Something big and white rose up huge against the light in front of them. Juniper gaped up at the towering thing. It was a moon bear, white and strong as thick ice with eyes like a starless night. They gazed fiercely down at Yule and Juniper. “Urrrr! Rrrrra!” The moon bear thundered. “Voice your desire for entering the place of Starfall, elf!”

Juniper was so amazed at the power of the bear, only heard about in stories around the fire and over Solstice Cookie night gatherings to tell magical, spooky stories with the other elves that she could only stare. Yule threatened to use his pointed antlers as he lowered his great head towards the looming bear.

“To save…” Juniper began.

“Speak!” the bear roared again, making Juniper’s bones rattle and ears feel like they’d split like a broken snowman Separating from its Rounded halves. “Santa! I need to save Santa!”

The moon bear considered this. It tilted his huge head as it listened. Its dark eyes seemed to go on and on with all they knew inside of them if Juniper looked to deeply into them. The bear gave a deep snort and said, “The mythic Father Christmas? The Great Clause? So, he does exist.”

“Yes,” Juniper said with disbelief. How could this bear not have heard of the famous Santa? “I live in his village. Why do you think he’s not real?”

“It’s believed the darkness has caused Santa and all the magic and others at the north Pole to have faded. I thought they were stories. But you are proof this is not true or you would not be here.”

Juniper almost wanted to laugh. So, her friends, her family and Santa were all stories to these wild people of the Blue Beyond? But the moon bear was not ready to welcome her.

He lowered himself down to all fours, still a snowy wall of fur to Juniper’s tiny form standing in front of him. Yule wasn’t much comforted. HE still shook and snorted restlessly , ready to charge. He had never known such an adventure, such danger in his life. He didn’t like it.

“I have been guarding Starfall for decades,” growled the Bear. Its voice thrummed through the ground into Juniper’s boots. “Only those who know the answer to the star peoples’ riddle can enter their village. Answer me this. What is the greatest gift that means most to a child?”

“I don’t have much time—“

“Answer,” the moon bear firmly growled. “

Juniper thought and but not for long. She was sure she had the answer. “Ah, that’s easy,” she said with a smile. “All elves know children want toys. That’s what Santa brings them and makes them happy. Remember, I live with the expert giver of gifts,” she said.

“Wrong,” rumbled the bear. “Come back when you know the answer.”

Frustrated, Juniper stared at the bear as it shut its huge black eyes as if to sleep. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll find another way in. there’s no time left for games.”

She urged Yule away at a trot into the woods on the darkened path past the bear. She figured it had to go into the village. Why else would it be guarded? “Not very well guarded,” laughed Juniper, noticing then how her deer limped slightly with every step. He was still in pain.

The path went on and on. It turned into black winding ways and blocked out the moon. Juniper tripped suddenly over an unseen stump. She rolled fast down a steep slope. Yule bellowed helplessly as he watched her tiny form bounce down a hill.

Feeling a bit bruised up, Juniper slowly sat and looked around her at the bottom of the hill. Her pack had slid off. A rustling came then in the unseen brush beyond.

Juniper squinted and could just make out two white forms. They slinked over to her, tiny noses wet and sniffing. Two pairs of glowing yellow eyes looked at her but they didn’t scare her like the wolves. They were small creatures , low to the ground.

“Smells like north wind,” one of the creatures rasped.

“Is it food stuff?” asked the other.

“Too big,” rasped the first. “But stuff came with her.”

“Excuse me,” Juniper said, tired of their sniffing noses. “I’m not food. I’m an elf.”

“Elf bring food?” the first creature asked.

“yes –but not for you,” Juniper said, unable to find her pack as she looked around the snowy spot she had landed with so many more black trees beyond her. She heard Yule stomp and snort with worry hearing her voice.

“I get food,” snuffled the second creature, racing on paws with a long flash of its white tail as he went. HE rustled around and dragged what sounded like something heavy. Juniper figured it was her bag. “Got food,” panted the creature as it came nearer.

Juniper stood but lost her balance over a snowy log she didn’t know was in front of her. She fell face-first in the snow.

Suddenly, she heard the two creatures growling and yipping like little dogs over her bag. “Mine,” one said.

“NO, we take together,” and then there was a spray of snow and a crashing as they took off at lightning speed through the trees.

“Come back with that!” cried Juniper, just wiping the cold snow from her eyes. She realized she would be no match for the creatures and didn’t want to get more lost than she was. She couldn’t leave Yule, that was for certain.

Her heart suddenly sank as she realized her hat was gone, too. It had fallen somewhere. But where? She had no clue. Worse, she had no food for herself, medicine or flight food. If they got stuck here, they would never get home. Never save Santa.

“Maybe I should have tried the riddle again,” Juniper realized. Then she wouldn’t be lost and without food or her warm hat. Already the cold air was making her bad ear very numb. It was more sensitive to the cold than her pointed right one.

She tried not to cry. She couldn’t do that. She had to be strong for Yule, to keep his spirits up. They were brave adventurers on a quest. Adventurers didn’t give up.

But she regretted not listening to the bear. She shouldn’t have thought she knew her way in this wild, unknown place. It was more dangerous here, where everyone seemed so hungry and miserable.

“Yule?” she called. The deer huffed and stomped. She followed the sound of his hooves and climbed sorely to the top of the hill. Now, to get to the bear,” she said. It helped to hear her own voice in this quiet lonely place. Yule grunted his deer agreement.

Slowly, she walked beside Yule in what she hoped was the reverse of their direction. She could just make out deer prints in some tiny breaks in the trees at times. But it was slow-going. But eventually, very slowly until both her ears felt totally numb and her belly grumbled for food, Juniper and Yule found the turn they recognized from before.

AS they walked, she had reflected on what the bear had asked her. What gift did children need the most? It was definitely not toys. But if not, why did Santa do what he did every year for so long and why did the elves work so hard at toymaking if it was not enough to bring children happiness?

“Maybe,” Juniper wondered aloud. “Maybe its cookies. NO, that’s what your stomach thinks is the right answer, you funny elf,” Juniper said, wishing so hard she had her pack of cookies now. “But maybe it’s something the toys make the kids feel.” Then she thought about that. “Toys make kids happy. They feel…they feel like they matter when they get what they asked for. Especially the really good ones, at least, that’s what Santa tells us. They feel love.. But the naughty ones…they don’t do what they’re asked to.. They’re, well, like me on this journey,” she had to admit.

She hadn’t done anything she was told. She had run away, in fact, from her own island when nobody told her to. She had made up a dangerous game to outsmart the wolves who hurt Yule. She had not wanted to do what the moon bear had asked her and she lost her food and her way. She felt not very smart or confident now. Only cold, hungry and worried about Yule and time before morning came.

Trudging slowly, shivering and feeling tired, Juniper at last found the opening to the clearing where the great moon bear slept. She stepped up to it, tapping its big furry shoulder. Yule didn’t try running now, either. He was too exhausted to run.

Opening its huge, wide mouth, the bear yawned long and slow. “What is your answer?”

“It’s love, moon bear,” Juniper said in a small voice.

“Ah, and so it is, among other things. Do you know why?”

“Because love is what makes the heart want to listen to others. To be kind and loyal with friends and to oneself.”

“A very good reason,” the bear said with amazement in its rumbling voice. “I see you had lots of time to know this yourself. Well, no more time to waste. You may enter the Starfall Village.”

The bear gestured to one side of itself. At first, Juniper only saw the trees she and her deer had just come through. But then to her astonishment, she saw it. It been hidden all this time by the bear’s bulk, a path several feet opposite the winding one she had walked. It was a narrow path leading up and up towards a cluster of twinkling golden lights like in the stories.

Eagerly, Juniper led Yule up the hill. They went up and up and finally reached its top.

There, ahead in the center of the tiny village, stood a round stone hut. Juniper paused outside, not sure what to do. “You might have to stay out here,” she said to him.

Juniper went up slowly to the door, marked with a golden blazing star pattern. AS soon as her small hand touched the door, it melted away and sudden golden-white light blinded her eyes for a few seconds. She blinked very hard before the light faded like a setting sun.

There, stood a small old woman, clothed in a silvery long tunic. Her white hair gleamed like moonlight was shining in it. As her very old eyes were impossibly large, bright and also golden as sinking suns on the horizon.

“Juniper Silverlane. I know you. Don’t look so surprised,” she smiled kindly. “You made wishes on many of my sister stars.” Juniper’s eyes grew huge. She remembered wishing as an elfling to one day have Yule fly fast as Santa’s expert reindeer. The wish had come true but not without endless days of practice despite the other elves’ worry and with Santa’s encouragement.

IN front of Juniper, the old star woman held up a brilliantly-glowing orb in her left hand. It shown like a tiny sun and hummed with harmonies that were felt rather than heard in Juniper’s whole body as she came , trembling, close to it.

“It’s a fallen star. It’s a child’s wish for love,, one I saw many years ago before coming here,” explained the star woman. “Give this to your dear Santa. Place it on his heart. Then, when he awakens, he is to make it touch every home he visits to battle hate.”

“That’s it?” Juniper wondered, , hand shaking as she held the warm star in her palm.

“NO. there will be a battle between love and hate. Love will win but not for all Who won’t hear its song in them. It is the way of humans. Love needs to be more than just Christmas. But humans forget this.”

“Then it won’t work” Juniper said with a sinking heart. She knew very little about humans. But she knew they were not as forgiving as elves and nost always as happy or hopeful. Elves got sad, to,, and angry but it didn’t last too long.

“Love is a strong power that needs to be captured and practiced like any song, or trained to fly like your reindeer,” she added with a shine in her eyes. “You can not control the humans but you can try to be the one who brings love back, the memory of it. Now, you must go. The winds blow from the north a storm. Let the star guide your way and do not lose it,” she added strongly.

Juniper was about to thank the star woman when. Before she could, the golden light carried her back into the darkness.

Yule stood impatiently, nosing the snow and ready to go.

Sure enough, Juniper felt the sharp winds and smelled cold snow in the air. The blizzard was on its way.

Carefully, Juniper tucked the glowing wish star into her jacket pocket. She wished she had her pack but it was long gone. She felt it crackle with a song even through the bag as she climbed onto Yule’s back. “We’re flying,” she thought. With a snap of Yule’s reins, the deer and elf left the ground. They rose higher into the sharp bitter air. It was now totally dark with no moon. The wind came from the north, Juniper realized. Juniper turned Yule homeward. They Whooshed off towards it.

The forest below flashed darkly and soon Blue Beyond, or Starfall perhaps, was left behind them in the many minutes it took. Juniper’s heart sang with triumph.

Over the dark waters they flew. Suddenly, a tearing gale with stinging sleet slammed into them. Yule bellowed with confusion. Juniper felt herself slipping as she fought to control the terrified animal. She realized then they were getting too low.

It was then Juniper had a horrible thought. Yule needed more flight feed to eat but there was none. They were going to fall right in to the sea.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Juniper cried, the snow squall twisting and shrieking around them like a swirling vortex.

Yule had never flown in this sort of weather. He was not that experienced as the sleigh deer. Yule bucked , bellowing with fear as he plunged down with Juniper. She lost her grip.

She fell, screaming as she knew she’d land in the icy deep ocean below.

She tumbled and fell what felt like forever. She saw nothing but felt the biting wind tearing at her wild hair…

Spa-loose! She landed din the icy water, couldn’t breathe …

She had no body , felt nothing. She thrashed and gasped. Water. Water Everywhere. She had failed.

***

The black and white birds stood tightly around her, their beaks bent down, small eyes staring with worry at her.

Juniper blinked to see webbed feet all around her. “Santa I’m sorry ,” she whispered and shivered. The penguins stood and muttered to themselves for a few minutes with much squeaking and in words Juniper didn’t understand.

“Lost one,” the biggest penguin said . Juniper knew penguins weren’t the smartest of talkers. This one, though, maybe he could help her.

“I fell from the sky,” she said. “Yule,” she remember with a jolt. “Where’s Yule?”

“Deer fall fly down. Water splash ,” said the big penguin. The others squawked in agreement, bobbing their black heads in unison.

“Star sing loud,” the penguin went on in his strange pinched voice. He pecked at Juniper’s pocket and she heard it, to, ringing and warm in her coat. “We circle make warm you.”

Juniper should have felt happy about this. But she was not. With no way home, now with Yule unable to fly, maybe lost in the sea forever, she was stuck with the penguins. Santa, too, would not wake up for Christmas. Not this year, anyway. Maybe not ever.

Now, Juniper’s eyes burned like little hot stars of their own. “I’ll never get back home. I’m no hero. Yule’s gone. If only I had done what I was supposed to do, wait for the others at the north pole to find the answer instead of me trying to save everyone,” she said with tears. “I just wanted to help and do something more.”

“You have love star,” repeated the penguin, tapping his beak gently against Juniper’s coat. “not lost.”

“But Yule…”

“Is with us,” said the familiar rough old voice. It was Bellfrost, standing on the icy island just outside the penguins’ warm circle. Juniper sat up and looked. There he was, standing as Bellfrost held out a big bag of flight feed. Beside him stood his own reindeer, Holly. She was strong and proudly lifting her head to the morning sky, now clear.

“Where was he?” Juniper asked, overjoyed. The star sang more loudly now in her coat. It made her smile with gratitude.

“As I say,” huffed old Bellfrost. ”I have my methods just like you. We better get a move on. Christmas Eve’s here and we gotta do something about Santa. He’s really asleep now.

Juniper ran to Bellfrost, embracing him. Between them, the star blazed brightly and tickled Bellfrost’s round belly. “Oh,” he chuckled with surprise. “So the stories are more than sugar flakes and sparkles, I see.”

“Yes,” Juniper said. “And thank you, Bellfrost, for looking for me.”

“HO, hum,” he said, turning to the deer. The penguins watched curiously as he and Juniper got their deer positioned for the flight into the rising sun. “Well, what would the North Pole be without you, Juniper? Boring, that’s what,” he chuckled again jumping onto Holly’s back.

Yule nuzzled Juniper. His fur was dry and refreshed from the energizing food. The penguins excitedly squeaked and trilled as they watched the two of them. AS for penguins, Juniper knew now they were anything but dumb. They were kind and had the biggest hearts out at sea she had ever known.

“Let’s go, Yule! Let’s wake Santa!”

Gray light shown over the sky as Juniper and Yule returned to the North Pole. Tired, hungry, Juniper hurried to the elves. IN her hand, the star burst with its song as it felt her elven family’s love warm her in hugs and happy tears.

“To Santa!” Cried old Bellfrost.

***

The wish star woke Santa like a defrosting icicle. His eyes had a light in them nobody had seen in so long. Santa took the wish with Him that Christmas Eve, turning its light into stardust all over the world where he went. But it was only the beginning for the humans. It would be the children who would keep the starlight of love alive, through dreams and their little hearts.

[annothray]

The Selkie Sister

“Yu sneak, what happened to my seashell earrings?” I cried  against  the pounding brakers rushing in several feet behind us. . ”You know those earrings meant a lot to me. They were Grandma’s last present  before she died, you know,” I  went on. I stood over my sister, casting my shadow over her stupid beat-up book of dumb songs she was busy scribbling. She stared up from her perch on the large, black flat “Thinking rock” as she called it and stared with her pretty sky -blue eyes up at me.  

“Sorry, sis.”  Keira said lamely. But I saw no hint of a true “sorry” in those eyes of hers. I watched with some amusement as a gust of wind whipped at her pages. She held it down with her free hand, the other holding her favorite green ballpoint pen so poetically poised over the scribbled page between her long fingers of her left hand. Of course, she had to be so unique that even God--or whatever drunken muse was responsible –heck if I knew about myths like that—had to make my sister left-handed.  

At that moment, I couldn’t stand being ignored by my little sister anymore. Overhead,  the  sky was thick with dark clouds,  like the ones erasing any sense I had left in me. “No, not ‘sorry, Sis .’” I snarled. “What happened to my earrings?” 

Keira looked up suddenly. “I lost them running and I tripped. I didn’t know they mattered so much to you. You never wore them, so I did.” 

“Uh, yeah, they did matter to me, Keira. So what if I didn’t wear them. That’s not the point. You wore them without asking me first just to look sexy for  Liam.” 

My words felt like glass in my mouth. I knew they stung my sister. She stood, angry now as she faced me. Behind her, the dark ocean waves grew wilder, louder, crashing over each other with a boom -whooshing as the foaming breakers rolled over each other impatiently for land. The tide was slowly rising. 

Suddenly, Keira slid off the rock and stood to face me. “You know, it’s mean people like you, Shay, Liam doesn’t like,” her words punched me in the gut as those blue eyes seared into me. “NO wonder he broke up with you last year. You judge people, you freak out before you think,” she said. 

“I judge people. I freak out?” I laughed bitterly. “Liam obviously doesn’t like fat girls like me,”  I said, suddenly staring down at my thick legs, nothing like the long lean runner legs my sister stood on.

“He didn’t call you fat,” Keira said like I was stupid. “He just wanted you to run with him in the Hungry  shark charity race. You’re the one who threw his guitar across the room and called him a shallow eel.” 

My eyes stung at the memory of that fight last summer. I had met Liam in the ninth grade, after he moved to Turtle Rock island from the mainland with his mother to be with his grandfather on the island. It turned out, like many kids on Turtle Rock, Liam sucked at science but was a god of a musician. I sucked at anything artistic—music, drawing and anything else artistic—but science . Now that I did well. It started out with me helping Liam study for biology exams in the spring. I thought he was cute. He thought I was smart. but mostly, I loved how he made me feel things in my dark secret places on my body with his mouth, his hands and voice against my bones when we lay together. 

He claimed he liked how different I was from many island kids. Me, who studied how water molecules boiled  and how I kept my  shoebox collection of the tiny lightning rods from the beach once sand grains turned  to glass. He said opposites attract and I thought that was true. But it really isn’t true, even if the negative to the positive charges in science say otherwise. 

It wasn’t long before  Liam found that other attraction, the one only dreamers find like with my sister, Keira. They met at the Coffee Crab shack open mic. Keira sang and Liam  his guitar instantly fell in love with Keira like a muse he  finally found after so much searching. YOU  totally won’t find me at those sappy Tuesday open mic nights, though. NO, I preferred to stay home and get lost in the drama of a good wildlife documentary  or a science-fiction movie of some  sort. 

“You don’t know how he said it,” I said  defensively. “I just wish  you and everybody would stop acting like I like what you do. Running. Swimming. You know I trip on my three legs. The water  scares me,” I said, thinking back to the time when I was ten and my cousin dared me to swim out too far before I nearly drowned. Dad had to rescue me. I never tried to swim since, only wade out now and again since then into  water. “ 

“I’m sick of your blubbering,” Keira said. She jabbed her green pen at  me as if it was a wizard’s wand about to cast an angry spell. “I’m sorry I look sexy with your  earrings you never wear and can wear prettier  clothes than you. It’s always about you, you, you and how you look. Maybe, you  start doing something about it. Quit binging on snacks and making excuses about why you can’t do this or do that.” 

 The  volcano in me rumbled dangerously to the surface. I felt it in my blood, growing hotter and in my hands. What was she talking about it all being about me?  It had always been about Keira. IN fact, only Grandma had cared about me because she was smart like me. 

In sixth grade, when my hurricane  exhibit was going to be judged at the school science fair, Keira  chose that night to sprain her  ankle while trying to fly like Wendy to audition for the Peter Pan school play. Instead of  being grounded after this stunt, Keira got ice cream and hugs from my parents, even though she had fallen from our pein tree she was told never to climb, thinking she could defy gravity. But not me. 

When I drew pencil “Xu” and “So” on the side of the house to let my parents know I loved them in some weird artistic way, my father flipped out, saying I had to paint over the writing since he had no time to do it. So, when I  attempted drawings properly on paper as a kid, my sea turtle picture was stuck lower on the fridge, thought to be a rough -lined beetle. It went lower down the door than my sister’s drawing. Mine was ignored until it fell off, got stepped on by Mom and was ruined.  Meanwhile, my six-year-old sister sketched a ridiculously  realistic dolphin. It was gushed over by my mom and neighbors for weeks. “She so talented,” Mom kept saying. “A little Paul Cadden, with all those realistic lines?”  And me? Who was I in Keira’s shadowy light? “too lazy…procrastinator…loner” the teachers and my parents said disappointingly. Just not with science. The science nobody cared about except for me, how things worked, how animals survived in the wild, how maybe we had stardust in our own bodies, too. But Keira…I admit, she  barely cracked open her books, run off with friends and get a magical A. But I had no friends to run off with. I did not get As . this year especially, now getting closer to the dream of going off to college someday, go into biology somewhere real fancy. But my grades…

“I tried,” I started, unable to stop my frustrated tears in my eyes. “Eating helps me feel better. I just get bad cravings when I’m upset. Exercise isn’t for me.  Nothing on this stupid island is.” 

“OH, stop,” Keira said, sounding like Mom. “There you go crying again. You wonder why you don’t have friends.” 

“Because girls are idiots around here,” I said. “They only care about music, art, who’s dating who crap. They think I’m ugly and super weird for being smart. some girls accused me of cheating on math and science test this year. I have like no friends now. So I’m better alone doing what I’m good at.” 

“Yeah. You’re good at feeling sorry for yourself, instead of thinking about how you hurt everyone else. Like I said, do something about it,” Kei

ra said, voice cold as the sea rushing ever -nearer towards us.

Suddenly, the lava in my veins violently exploded as the words burst from my lips. “You think just because you can sing a few off-key notes and fake your way with Liam’s garbage music you can say whatever you want. You don’t know what it’s like to be the oldest sister and be treated  like I am .” 

  “You jealous jerk,” Keira said with blazing eyes. “You know none of that is true. Liam plays guitar great, and I can sing,” she seethed  as she rose to her feet, climbing down from the Thinking Rock to the sand. “Maybe Liam was right about you. You are just a  blubbering fat baby.” 

Something in me broke, shattered like sharp little pieces in all directions in my mind.  I lunged towards my sister, who was stepping past me then. With one savage motion, I snatched her notebook out of her hands. 

“Take it back,” I growled in her ear. Seagulls screamed as they flocked inland, the wind a constant roar in my ears and snapping at my oversized t-shirt. 

“No,” Keira said fiercely, her hands reaching for the notebook. I held it away from her. 

“NO?” I said with some surprise. “Why, because Liam said that? or what?”  ?” 

Her eyes grew glassy and her face serious. Now real guilt flashed in her eyes as she looked desperately at her notebook I held over my head. I waved her book out of her reaching hands.

“I said them,” Keira said, watching with horror as I slowly tore out a page and let it fly out into the wind. It sailed over the incoming waves, before falling into the churning water like a bird with a broken wing.

“Shay, stop!” Keira wailed, as  if I had tossed a helpless kitten into the waves instead of her worthless song lyrics into the water. “Please—just don’t. What do you want? New earrings? No, wait. Look, you’re not that fat. I freaked out this time,” she smiled a bit, trying to smooth over the pain. “We’re even, right?” 

I was just about to  tear out another page. I paused .  Studied her face. It was serious, seeming younger as her tears ran . 

”wow, a real apology,” I said, a bit sarcastically. Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew she meant it.   But the bigger feeling in my way  was the pain of her words , the rumbling anger  simmering and boiling from earlier. I freak out, like I was out of control all the time. So not true. Just with her lately. And judgmental. And seriously, a Liar? Too much too late. 

“Should have thought of that before calling me all those things a bit ago ,” I yanked out another page. It came away from the binding with a satisfying rip.

“Be mad at Liam. I know you are,” she said, but her words were like feathers trying to stab at my rock-like anger, unmovable, thick and cold.  “Just give back my book. It’s the only place my songs are right now. We’re even, okay? I’m a jerk. And you’re smarter than I’ll ever be. I wish I was smart like you. Art isn’t everything, you know. You’ll be this rich scientist one day. Me? Ha,--Just some girl singing in a pub probably making quarters. C’mon. You’re so lucky. Things aren’t that bad for you really. Look, I’ll do anything to make you feel better. Just stop getting so mad. You can stop now.” 

“But you’ll do anything?” I asked. What a liar. Smart like me.  She would hate to be smart like me. 

It was obvious smart girls get nowhere in places like turtle rock Island. And yes, I was still angry at Liam about everything. It was time I made my point.

“Okay,” I said, racing to the water’s edge. “Go get it.” With a quick snap of my wrist,  I flung Kei

ra’s notebook. It tumbled…and silently, it splashed into the roaring sea. I watched the notebook drift away like an abandoned little soggy raft, rising and falling on the waves.

Keira only screamed as if I had murdered more kittens. “What did you do?” she screamed  again, racing into the water. I smiled but did not follow her.

I watched  with fascination as my sister, fully clothed, flung herself into the wild waves. Powerfully and with effort, she swam out, jumping the waves as she kicked her way to where her notebook bobbed just out of reach. 

Then, my triumph turned to cold horror. A wave , taller than me by several feet, came slamming down over my sister.  For a moment, Keira fell away from sight under the waves as the rain pelted down like god’s angry garden hose over me.

It was then  realized my game was no longer a game anymore. It was getting dangerously real. Keira reappeared, gasping, her notebook nowhere in sight with the thrashing white and gray waves as thunder burst the sky. I watched as Keira came up, then down. UP and down, face just visible, her hair a tangled dark mass around her unseen body in the water.

Heart pounding  with fear, I forced myself into the slamming breakers. They smashed against me, toppling over into the sucking sand beneath. They thundered over me even in the shallows as I found myself flailing with a moment of panic. I kicked wildly and slapped the water with hands against relentless wave over wave. I choked in salt water. My head was plunged into the darkness below the pounding surf.

I didn’t know how to swim. I wouldn’t make it. Keira...would she make it?

My head rose up above the surface. The lightning strobed. Thunder crashed as if applauding  my fight against ocean versus human. “Keira?” my voice was nothing, a whisper in the rushing waves and cold stinging rain in my face. Another wave rolled me under. Again , darkness. I was shot towards the shore, just another lifeform to spit back. It shot me back with a whooshing foaming rush of the current. Did it spit Keira back, too?

I remember crawling. Crawling slowly up the wet sand. Everything so wet. So cold and wet.

I measured time between thunder. It slowly growled farther and farther from me. It was the relentless smacking of broken shells, tangled stinking seaweed and something harder  in the back of my head that made my eyes open at last. I lifted my head, turned to see a bobbing blue sandal. Keira’s sandal, one strap torn away.

My heart jumped. “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead,” I chanted to myself, slowly standing to throw up salty water and whatever else before dizzily moving along shore on shaking legs. The many dead fish, their  bodies rotting in the air. The smell made me pause, taking in the reality of things stop  after some wandering in circles for several unsure moments.  I sat down, pulling my knees up to my chest against my damp, clinging tent of a shirt and shorts as I began shivering.  I just wanted to be home, warm with our parents. B a child safe in bed in the cave of blankets and stop shivering. But mostly, I wanted Keira now with me, to hear her sincere words, see her tears again. Where was she? Somewhere down the beach?  I did not want to think of the other reality.

I pressed Keira’s broken blue sandal to my chest like some relic. ”I’m sorry, sis. I’m so sorry ,”I moaned. “Just come home. I love you,” and I actually meant those words, words I Had not spoken in so long I forgot when. My tears fell in twos and threes there into the murky foaming water near my feet. 

A sliver of red peered out from the west as sundown came. But I didn’t move.  I couldn’t go home, not without Keira. Could I ever? 

   It was then I saw something in the water out a short ways in front of me. Something dark…something round…a head. It had to be, but no, I didn’t want it to be.

My  limbs grew cold. I wanted to hope, but I was afraid to. The form drifted nearer…and even nearer as if the ocean was a morbid little child excitedly saying, “Look, look what I found, Shayla?”  

I squeezed my eyes  shut, unwilling to look. “. “I can’t. I can’t look…can’t look, not like that,” I said to myself, beginning to tremble with an icy reality I did not want to make real. But the noise made me look anyway. The strange, grunting sound of an animal. Alive, beckoning me to see it. So I did, letting out the gasp of air I held tight in my lungs.

The dark-headed seal was so close to me. Its whiskered face and strong, thick paddling flippers helping it move even closer to me to touch. But it was not a seal, not a seal at all. It had those eyes, blue like the sky, dreaming of rivers and oceans of feelings, singing them in her head at night. Keira.

With more speed than I knew I had, I was on my feet, moving back from Keira’s sleek-furred form. Those eyes pleaded with me, so human in their large sockets I could not miss them. They watched, they held me. “don’t leave,” they said. “Be with me.” Trembling hard, I stumbled as I tried moving from Keira farther onto the beach. Determined, Keira struggled to pull herself onto the sand with her flippers, a motion clumsy and horrible all at once in her wild form.

“go back! Leave me!” I screamed as her front left flipper’s sharp claw brushed my foot. Opening her mouth with its sharp teeth in her dog-like face, Keira let out a shuddering, haunting moan of human -like sorrow that cut me in half. Like a weapon, I brought her sandal down on her head. I sobbed and shook as I defended myself—defended myself selfishly and against who? What had she become? Smack, smack, smack went the flat shoe. 

I flinched as Keira growled and snapped at my leg, just grazing it. A thin river of blood streamed where she had caught my tender skin above my right knee.

I was afraid of her, of this new thing she had become, something animal , something not. I regretted hurting her again, this helpless creature, all at once. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” I said, unable to stop staring at this muscular, sentient beast of the sea—my sister. “I will never be you!”  

Unable to stand it,--this dream, this living nightmare from those myths in dark heavy books--I sprung away from her up for the hill, back towards the outline of our house. But even as I ran, I heard Keira’s mournful cry echo. Even worse now, as if she were crying. I could run tonight but it was clear to me. Our fight was not over.

*** 

It’s  funny how  time seems to stop when something really big goes down. Especially when big things go down in turtle Rock Village on our Island. It’s not  often, believe it or not, we remember someone who’s drowned. Mostly, it’s the old people who go first, their hearts unable to take any more of the heavy shell of the world on their backs and its pressures after nearly a century of living. 

Sometimes, someone from our village we knew doesn’t return from the mainland and has a horrible accident there. But it’s the young people here, which aren’t many—maybe a scattered handful in the few families, who are a big deal to lose. The youngest person to die before Keira did was only twelve -years -old, a boy, Sam Palmer, who died of hypothermia after a boating accident left him stranded at sea for two days during a cold rainy night three years ago. Keira was drowned young person number two. It had been  a week since my sister’s “death” as everyone else thought it was. But it felt more like a month and really, let’s be honest., She   had…disappeared. Of course, nobody but me could ever know that. 

The small community—the whole village really-- gathered in the narrow church on the hill to remember my sister. Keira Gray, fifteen-years-old. Invisible in body  but her memorial made it seem otherwise.

There were flaming candles. Incense that made people sneeze and hymns to a God   I still questioned. I stood quietly, a watchful ghost through the whole thing, like a far-off movie I was not sure I wanted to finish as I listened to the snatches of stifled sobs, coughs and sniffles around me. I remember how the rose perfume from my eighth -grade teacher, Mrs. Gladstone, encircled me like some angelic symbol of hope I did not feel as she wrapped me tenderly like a second mother  in her arms. 

I overheard my  teacher whisper to my parents how brave I was, how it was nobody’s fault about what happened to my sister. Nearby, my parents  stood together, two inconsolable figures standing in the stale air in the back of  the church. I watched Moms body shake, my father’s brown, sore -red eyes blink  like a confused owl awakened     in bold daylight  in his sullen face. 

Nobody really knew what had happened to Keira. They only knew what I told them. The lie. 

how Keira accidentally dropped her notebook in the waves when trying to capture some line about their dramatic motion. How I failed to pull  her back at the last minute as she was torn away from me by the strong water. How I nearly died myself. The lie, a skeleton in the sunken treasure  chest of my soul weighing me down. They could not know and would never know what creature my sister now was. 

“So brave,” my teacher said, turning  to me. “You tried your best. I’m here for you if you want to talk,” she  said, face wrinkling with her sad smile as she turned to go out the doors into the May evening light.

Then I saw him, just a flash of his drawn face, dark shaggy hair and the same worn out jeans and flannel shirt. Liam Walsh, the very person who caused all my anger and the regret I now felt seeing him because of it. My heart squeezed in me, not sure what to say to him as he came in my direction where I stood near the exit . Beside him limped his Grandpa Jack and his mother, solemn as they approached me near the door. 

Liam’s green eyes met mine but he did not seem to have words to say. I was glad, unable to move or make much of a sound. I was not sure if I was still angry or sorry for Liam, maybe both. His grandpa Jack, or Poppy Liam called him, filled the silence as he turned to me, leaning  on his gnarled driftwood cane I  worried would break under his weight. “I don’t know why everyone’s so upset,” he said,  seeming confused as he gazed around at the somber people around us. His gaze grew pointed as it settled on me. “You especially, Shay, should know the sea…it saved her life. She’s been singing every night, you know,” he lowered his voice as he leaned in close to me so I could smell the peppermint candy on his breath. “Just the other night, under the moon, I was playing seal music on my flute there down by the water, you see, and I saw  your sister with the others. I saw her eyes, all sad in her seal face and crying,  Wasn’t she, Liam my boy?” , 

Liam said nothing.  He only shook his head as if embarrassed at his grandfather.   With a sudden thud, Grandfather Jack pounded his old wooden cane on the church floor. It boomed at my feet causing my parents and others nearby to glance our way. “Now listen, here,” he started. “Liam here was with me. He saw the whole thing. Keira’s alive—” 

“ Jak,,  , that’s enough,” hissed Liam’s mother with an embarrassed tug at old Grandpa Jacks arm.  “Look, you’re making a scene ,” She turned  apologetic eye on me. I pressed myself hard against the old wooden wall as if I could fade into its dark paneling. 

“I’m so sorry, shay. He’s just so stressed from everything going on. Take care, honey.” 

Beside his grandfather and mother, Liam just glared at his Grandfather,  disgusted with what seem like nonsense.  But I knew it was a frightening  truth. NO matter how hard I pushed it out, the scabby wound above my right knee where my sister had caught me only days ago was no dream.

As they left, my bones felt like liquid ice as I heard Grandpa Jack protest loudly so his voice echoed back at me even out the door. “I’m making a scene, huh? Liam,  you good for nothing. Why didn’t you back me up about Keira?  I’m no fool .  I know selkie magic…” before his voice faded.

I stood there stunned. What had Grandpa Jack just said? That word…it sounded like sell something magic. Key magic? Silky magic? Just a made up word for his serenading the seals at night? O was it a special word for what Keira was now? I never heard of it. 

And Liam. He was obviously playing stupid about what he knew. Was he embarrassed because I was there?  I knew Grandpa Jack’s moods by now and how serious he was and angry, too, when Liam played dumb. 

It was true, too, what Grandpa Jack had said just then. All week long, Keira’s voice had been somewhere in my dreams, on the wind ever since her, well, change.  

Grandpa  Jack, the oldest person on the island,   had been the first to see the secret in me as if my soul was a deep lake and he saw right down into it. Frozen ice ran through my legs at the thought. What else did he suspect of me?

Did Grandpa Jack know how it had happened, Keira’s change? Sure, it was no secret Keira had drowned, but I had to avoid Mr. Walsh from now on. Maybe even Liam. But could I really? 

As long as nobody found out exactly how Keira had really become seal, (if that was what it really was)then I was safe.  Let the island believe I failed as a sister to save Keira. I would not be a murderer.

*** 

Grandpa Jacks’ words haunted me. They followed me as I puzzled out their meaning. I had to admit, he was right. Keira was with me. All throughout the start of June,  the night was the worst time. The time when Grandpa Jack’s words were too true.

my dreams with tangible color and sound found me like a prowling animal. At least once  a week I had these dreams, when the tides were high and overtook the beach I walked earlier in the day. Keira was in these dreams, a seal with her human face and teeth sharp as nails driving into my hands. My finger bones breaking, cracking in her powerful jaws as she devoured them like hard-shelled shrimp. I awoke, gasping and frantically feeling my hands in the dark in bed, finding them whole.

Another week drifted by like stray gull feathers on the breezes as the days slowly grew longer as the end of June approached. I could not feel the energizing brightness of the sun or push  out the heavy absence of Keira  anywhere. I felt a dark  shadow in me growing by the day. 

This shadow fell over me as I saw the flyers advertising the Hungry Shark race in the Coffee Crab  windows where she excited her listeners with her liquid voice. 

If only I could run that race…if I was in better shape, I  would run it for her, I thought miserably eying the cartoon shark on the colorful blue and yellow flyers shouting at my eyes. 

”Keira, you’re right. I am too fat,” I said to the flyer behind the sea -sprayed glass. I was Wheezing like  a gasping fish only after running halfway across the beach behind my house.  Bent over wanting to throw up in horrible baggy green shorts I found somewhere in my drawer , my heart slamming.  I hated my legs, especially, like two thick tree trunks  holding me up on the sand. 

I hated my body so much. My body…Keira’s seal body. Well, at least I was no seal. I was not covered in fur with a whiskered snout and blubbery flippers weighing a few hundred pounds. No, I was not that ugly or even fat really …

But poor seal Keira. Was she really ugly in the form she had become? Wasn’t nature kinder than that in making her so made for the rough waters and the deep, dark night of below the ocean’s surface away from so much light? Yes, yes she was still beautiful. And for me? What a selfish jerk I was for feeling sorry for my human body, the one I still had and my sister did not, all because of me. I could adapt, too. I could change myself. 

I turned, shaking as I walked away from the coffee shop down the sunny sidewalk . Hot tears stung my eyes as thoughts crashed in on me. 

no. I didn’t deserve a second chance.  Because of me, Keira lives this alien death as another creature from humanity, the people she loved, the hopes and dreams all now nothing. If only she had really drowned like a normal person, this wouldn’t be so bad. But she still existed, probably having nightmares of her old human life…That was more painful than eternal death. 

And me? I got to wake another day, feel the sun like now on my face, the breeze in my hair, still hug my parents. I was such a monster. I had no right to stay on this island.  

A car past. Windows down. An old eighties song was playing. “…Get my message in a bottle. Message in a bottle,” the singer said to a pounding drumbeat that throbbed through my feet. I paused at the street corner. The car past me. 

A message? Send a message to Keira? But seals didn’t read, right? But what if she could? Could it help to tell her, tell someone, how sorry I was?

*** 

Without Keira, our small cottage was quieter, though the memory in her room upstairs near mine and photos on the walls screamed loudly in my face.

Keira’s room, an untouched shrine. My mother refused to do anything about it, as if Keira could come home any time soon. I knew my parents would probably soon box up her many poetry journals in the locked wooden trunk she bought herself at some yard sale with her money earned watching the Hanlon’s’ dog two summers ago. Her indie band posters on her walls, her name-brand clothes and her tray of collected sea glass on her dusty dresser. But nobody was ready to do that, at least, not Mom and me. Dad insisted it was time after a month already, to accept the reality of Keira never coming back.  

I sat on her bed, shoving my message deep into the blue decorative bottle I stole from the window sill collection Mom kept in the living room. She’d never miss it, I figured from the dozen  others collecting dust. The bottle would go back to sea. Keira would find it. 

If we were really all that connected, like the stars in our makeup to girls turning into seals, then somehow my own magic  would work, too. I mean, I’m no believer but nothing screams real as blood. If all those sayings about blood is thicker than water and sisters are bonded by blood, well, maybe there was truth in it. 

Carefully, so carefully, I pricked my finger with the needle from Mom’s sewing kit. The pain was a miniature firework on the pad of my left index finger. A bead of deep red dripped to the paper. Then, lowering my trembling finger below the written words, I signed….

*** 

I would have not gone to school but my parents insisted on it, though I was half alive when I was there. I checked out books in the tiny library on marine life to study the seals. I failed at drawing one with round blue eyes like Keira’s. But her image stayed in my mind, those cutting teeth and wild beautiful eyes reflecting me. My mistake, my doing. I had made her. Instead of taking notes or studying for the final math test as I was supposed to, Inside my head, I burned to ask Liam about Keira’s singing Grandpa Jack had told me  at Keira’s memorial. Did Liam here it, too? Did Liam have a secret, a secret like mine? I had to share it…share it with someone. I carried it like  a whale hung on a string from my guts. It was getting too big, too heavy to wake up to day and night.

But Liam avoided me in the  halls, at lunch, in class. It wasn’t hard to guess he didn’t want me to exist suddenly in his world. One week left of school and  my eyes spark and blood  glowed like hot lava  when I saw him scurry away to his guy buddies, who always seemed to be hovering in the right places to surround him in their noisy huddles. 

At home after school, the day I knew I had flunked the math test, I found Mom.  She was lounging on the couch, the place I found her lately in the past few weeks when I got home, watching TV. I dropped my backpack to the floor with a soft thud near the living room door and stood quietly there, my eyes drawn to the watery scene on the screen. The seal swam, dark eyes seeing things I could not. I was caught in place as the seal suddenly powered its flippers frantically through the water, frantic as something huge and dark moved in behind it. A shark, silent, deadly,  persistent. Red. Red everywhere as it clouded the black -blue… 

“No!” I cried, my eyes catching a framed photo on the wall just above the TV screen. Keira’s smiling face taken two summers ago. Red on the screen. The seal alive, but fighting for its life, wounded. Keira’s smile, Keira’s blue eyes. Now the seal,  cutting through the dark -blue ocean with a muffled human -like  cry…fighting and losing…losing, dying… 

My hand found the sea green bottle on the window sill. Whipped it hard. No more. Just no more. I wish it was me. IN the deep dark blue. That blood…that should be my blood. But it’s Keira’s blood.. 

A sudden crashing of glass, fast and sharp, slammed me back into the room. Mom suddenly standing. Her body blocking the silent TV. It  was off now.  Mom stared down at me, confused, sleepy. She had been asleep. Not now .

“Shayla? What was that for? Why you mad?” 

I blinked. Keira’s picture was not on the wall now. I was shaking. Time felt like it had been rubbed in gum and stuck the minute hands  in my head. So slow. But no, only a few seconds?

“blood. I hate blood,” I lied as the tears fell hot and fast down my numb face. What was happening  to me? OH, wait, that’s it. It happened finally. The dreams. All of it. I’m losing my mind.

“NO,” Mom shook her head, cutting through my lies. She tossed her frizzy red hair aside and sighed like a breezy tree. Her glance just caught the space where Keira’s picture on the wall now lay in its broken frame on the floor near the Tv. “It’s her. I know,” she said quietly, too tired for anymore tears. She gestured for me to sit near her on the couch as she lowered herself slowly like an old lady on its worn blue cushions.

Slowly, feeling hollow, I sat, too. I expected a lecture, about my angry outburst. But nothing came. Mom had no more energy for that. 

It was my fault that she was this way. Depressed again. She had been doing so well, too, working again at the antique shop, even laughing more. The medicine was working but it no match for grief this big. If only she knew Keira lived…lived on shrimp and slept in kelp and on lonely cold windy rocks and sang to grandpa Jack’s flute music in remembering her human self. Or did she? WAS it better she didn’t? 

“I know you miss her,” Mom went on, not reading the pictures of seal Keira in my mind. “I do, too. But You know it was…it was a horrible accident. You can’t blame yourself. You tried to help.” 

A few tears quietly ran down Moms face. I looked away, unable to stand it. The words , so close to my mouth melted in fear as I almost formed them like rocks in my teeth. I could not admit that I had made Keira go out there, made her drown against a wave she could not swim against. And for what? So I could feel powerful and in control of something I never was? Myself. My feelings. 

Mom’s attempt to comfort me felt cold as a damp towel around my shoulders. I let her do it but it was a shark she hugged,  hungry, running on instinct without feelings for others. Just a cold, calculating machine with too many useless facts about things and not of feelings for others. Just a predator, another wave knocking everyone down.

“You know,” Mom said then, “as ridiculous as Liam’s grandpa is, he was right when he mentioned Keira’s still here with us. IN here,” she pointed to her heart. “I heard him talking to you at the memorial. You know, Kee, , She loves you.” 

Mom’s words struck me and the sobs tore from me. She held me until I quieted like a child, and our tears made our clothes and hair wet as we cried. While she cried for missing Keira, I cried for Mom, for everyone I had been lying to, for a reality I faced alone and with no way out of. Or was there? What magic did Grandpa Jack know?  

Forget stupid Liam and his stupid games. He couldn’t hide that for  long. When I found out, he would pay for  his silence in leaving me in the dark like this. He knew what Keira was like Grandpa. His screaming denial  burned in me now.

Forget Liam right now. I’d go to the man himself, learn the language of the seal magic. Find Keira  again. And then what?

I wasn’t sure. But I wasn’t dealing with science now. More like the theory humans had stardust particles in them. Connected to something mysterious, ancient and unknowable like space itself. Keira was like that. My crying slowed and I grew still, thoughtful. . IN that moment, these sleep -walking  dreams, Her moaning songs at night…it all had to end. Keira was not dead, after all. Just different. And Alive. Alive out there, while I was here, on land. Safe in my home at night. But Keira…at night…was she safe?. 

*** 

Then came the sleep -walking dream, in the last week of June. Keira’s cry,, that moaning song that pulled me from my core like a magnet towards the sea. She called me, longing for me to be with he. I sensed her desperate calls as I moved through the dark of the sea cave, out into the waters that pooled around my knees, my waist…the rising tide…

The thunder rose from Keira’s music, her mouth open wide, the surf joining its roaring boom. I awoke, col and  not in bed. 

My father found  me, crawling on my hands and knees near the kitchen door. He was home before dawn from his shift at the lobster packing plant. I was there, mumbling, not knowing what was real and not.  , “Which way? Keira?” Dad smelled of the cold, stale beer and the stink of lobster on him as he lifted me up into his strong arms like a child. With soft steps, he climbed the stairs. ”Quiet, shay-Shay,” he said, my childhood nickname a small comfort. I wondered if Dad, too, could hear    Keira’s defeated seal music over the sudden gust of rain wind rattling the windows before I drifted back into sleep in my own bed.  

The next day was Wednesday. Last night’s thunder storm spit up driftwood, shells, sea glass, dead fish, all along the shore as I hurried in the direction to Grandpa Jack’s cottage later that day. It was near Liam’s cottage though, which frustrated me. I hoped I wouldn’t run into Liam right now. I was too angry to see him.

Breathlessly, I ascended the steep grassy hillside to and not the path to Grandpa Jack’s plain cottage. He insisted on living in one similar to the old style kind like the fisher’s cottage from what I knew. Said it had the original character and spirit of the old island he loved so much.

Heart skipping with anticipation, I knocked hard on the weathered wooden door. It swung open and I blinked as Liam’s Mom, Mrs. Walsh, peered out looking exhausted. 

“Shayla,” she said with surprise. “It’s nice to see you. Is everything okay?” 

I never visit Grandpa Jack. I never wanted to before. Before all this, he was just an old man who believed in fairytales and lived like some dreamer everyone said. I didn’t have time for that. Who had time to wonder about the mysteries of magic and the what -ifs of reality?

“Is Grandpa jack here?” I asked in a small voice.

“OH, honey,” Mrs. Walsh’s eyes grew watery. “He had a heart attack last night. He’s at the mainland hospital. The storm stressed him out I think. I’m just taking care of some things here.” 

My breath caught. I was speechless, frustrated and afraid. “Is he…okay?” I couldn’t say the word “dead.” 

“He’s stable but we’re not sure yet,” she said, seeming like she would cry any second. 

My heart fell. Without Grandpa Jack, I couldn’t find my sister again. I didn’t know how I would understand what she wanted from me in the songs I heard in my dreams Liam’s grandfather supposedly knew. 

Suddenly, someone shuffled in into the room from behind Liam’s mother. It was the last person I wanted to see. Liam himself.

“Hey, shay,” he said. The anger burned through me. AT school, he kept running from me. But would I run now, too? My feet did a hesitant dance as my emotions fought there in the doorway. NO, I would stay and not be the coward he was.

His mother stepped aside, trying to be friendly and polite as always. “I’ll let you two talk,” she  said. I watched her drift into the darkened little kitchen beyond, leaving Liam and me alone with the surf pounding outside behind me.

“so,” I began, steadying my voice. “sorry about Poppy,” I said, using Grandpa Jack’s nickname. I  knew his family loved Grandpa Jack, as strange as he could be. Liam’s father had divorce divorced many years before, so Grandpa Jack had become a second father to him in a way.

Awkwardly, I shut the creaking door behind me and stepped into the dusty living room. I saw Grandpa Jack’s many beach treasures.  ON a tall bookshelf beside the lumpy sofa, there shelves were crammed with Various gnarled driftwood, some plain, some painted with colored designs. There were shells and oddly -shaped stones ,starfish and more.  Beside the shelf, Stacks of thick old books nearly toppled over each other on the floor beside the sofa. The curtains were open and dust motes floated in the beam of late afternoon light slicing across the worn carpet between Liam and me. It was the longest day of the year, I realized, the start of the summer solstice.

Liam’s eyes met mine. Sad brown eyes, maybe even worried I thought. “Yeah. He’s old,” he shrugged. “But hey, he might pull through. And…if not,” he paused, fighting something in him and failing to hide it in his faltering tone. “Well, Poppy got to have one last adventure. 

I moved to the shelf of treasures. And froze. I hadn’t seen it at first with everything crowding around it, but it was there. But was it the one?

Hands shaking, I carefully picked up the blue glass bottle. It had been hidden behind a large stack of driftwood. I only spotted it because of its top showing. It was open, cork removed. It was empty.

“Yeah” Liam started, moving close to me. “So Poppy went out like always at the butt crack of dawn. Found that, what you’re holding in the mess the storm washed up. Of course, he showed me what he found at lunch today. It was this letter…” 

My ears rang. It was the one. I sat down  suddenly on the sinking  sofa.

“You okay? You look weird,” he stared at me. There was no room to be angry with him. Only afraid now that Liam knew. How could he even be talking to me?

“No,” I finally said. The room seemed to spin as he sat silently next to me, like old times. Somewhere deep down, beyond the anger, I wanted him again. But it was far away under confused feelings around it.

“I know you wrote that letter. You’re name…was that blood?” Liam said.

His words stabbed me like tiny knives. The tears blurred my eyes. I smelled his spicy scent, felt the warmth of his presence keep me suspended between the real world and myself. He was not angry. He was gentle, and that was the worst. 

“You should scream at me. Run away,” I blurted out. “I killed her, Li. I killed my sister!” the words came out in a wail. I forgot everything about what made me hate him, for ignoring me, believing he knew about Keira’s magic change, too.

His arm was warm around me. “NO, no, you didn’t ,” he insisted quietly. I saw his face then, leaning into mine. My brain thought he wanted to kiss me, but another part of me knew he was whispering. 

I heard a cupboard door slam in the kitchen. Right. He was only close to keep his mother from hearing us.

“the ocean…it does what it does,” he said almost to himself. “I saw her, you know. Keira.” 

Now the anger ignited again. Just a tiny spark above the fear and deeper desires with Liam’s arm around me. 

“You saw her when? How? Like Poppy?” I said, an edge to my wondering tone.

“With Poppy . he played some songs on the flute. The seals came in . but one came really close to the shore. It was dark but I saw her eyes…this blue in the moonlight. They looked…looked at me. She made this noise…but in my head, it was like Keira’s music, not like the seal sounds, you know? 

“You’re lying,” I said, because it felt good . I wanted him to be lying. To not have known a truth I had kept so guarded all this time. I pushed him off of me, moving to stand.

“No,” Liam said, frustrated as he stood. “The stories of the selkies, they’re real, and…and I think you know it, too. You have to know. You were there when she…when she left us,” he said in a shaking voice. His eyes pleaded with mine, and we didn’t speak for a few seconds. WE heard dishes rattling in the sink as Liam’s mother busily washed them.

“I know you know,” he insisted. “You came here to talk to Poppy about it. You didn’t know he was in the hospital obviously so what else would you want from him?” 

“I did,” I said, looking down at the creeping sunbeam fading away from us as time went on. 

“I want to see her again , too. But I can’t play flute like Poppy did. Just guitar. It doesn’t work for some reason when I play guitar. And you don’t play so don’t suddenly think you can call her, too. I think it’s in the way the music speaks that calls the seals,” he said with serious eyes watching me like a lecturing teacher.

“why didn’t you say something when Poppy brought this all up at the church way back? IS that why you kept avoiding me at school?” 

His eyes flickered from one side of the room and back to me, considering. “Yeah. I didn’t think you would get it, being all rational and stuff. And face it, we’re not the same you and me since we broke up.” 

More silence, uncertainty  between us both in the uncomfortable space. I broke the quietness. “That hurt, you keeping it from me what you knew. You have no idea what I’ve been through.” 

“I’m sorry. I really am now. I was…a coward,” he said, and looked me right in the face. I couldn’t take the intensity of his gaze. I turned away just as his mother came into the room, then went upstairs.

“I shouldn’t have judged you like that,” he continued after a hard swallow. “But you’re letter. I see you are really upset  by what happened. You didn’t kill her, whatever you think you did. Everyone feels guilty when they can’t protect someone they love.” 

“It’s not like that,” I started. He wasn’t understanding me. 

I had nothing to lose, I realized. This shared secret, that was all it was. WE would never be lovers again, never be the same.

“I made her go into the water. It was me.” 

“But it was out of your control. Just accept that  she  got a second chance, Shay,” he said. “Let her go.” 

“I can’t,” I said. “My parents are wrecked over her death. The whole island. She did so many things, made people happy, believed in so many hopeful things and cared so much. Not me. I just took someone’s life away and others are hurt now because of me.” 

“that’s how you feel now,” he said. WE moved back to the bookshelf. I set down the bottle, slick with my sweat on the dusty side table near the book stacks. “Life goes on. You’ll go on, do great things,” he was trying to be helpful but he was not.

“I want to find her, I said, not realizing it was out loud. “What is she? What was that thing Poppy was talking about? 

“Selkie magic, Liam said, touching a colorful pink shell on the bookshelf. “Poppy says on Summer Eve, they throw off their seal skins, become human once a year. Visit their loved ones. Sing on the beach.” 

“wait,” I said, thinking. “Human? Keira can be human again?” 

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I never saw it. I guess we’ll find out.” 

“But she’s supposed to e dead. If other people see her…so she’s not trapped forever like a seal? She can stay,” my voice rose with hopeful excitement.

“quiet,” Liam warned me. His eyes went to the ceiling, where his mother’s footsteps thudded overhead. “No, shay. IF you read any of the legends like Poppy has, all of them say the seal people will die without their skins. Die. Like forever in the ground as humans. For  real. . You want that?” 

“Don’t be upset,” I said. “It was…just an idea.” 

“Well, obviously these things are true so not a good idea. Look, nobody knows about this, okay? I don’t think Keira wants just anyone hunting her down in the town if they find this out.” 

“Of course not,” I said, horrified by the idea of my sister being hunted down, her skin a trophy. I shuddered at the thought. She had to stay safe.

I started for the door. “Hey, are we friends?” the words slipped out of my mouth easier than I thought.

“Yeah,” he said from the middle of the room. I slowly opened the door to the evening summer’ air filled with sea spray. “Hey, Shay?” 

“Yeah?” I turned to face him as I stepped out into the lowering sunlight.

“I hope you find what you want soon.” 

*** 

What I wanted was my sister. I wanted to believe in the stories, the power of Summer’s Eve and a defiance of physics itself as animal became human. The plastic instrument, Keira’s old recorder I found from the forgotten box in the attic when she was in fourth grade. She hated the instrument, preferring to learn the keyboard instead. 

I could at least try.  There,  on  the darkened shores of the empty beach, some ways beyond the thinking rock, I blasted out a few screeching notes. They were swallowed up by the sea. I managed a few actual squeaking notes on the scale but beyond that, nothing really like a song. I held the notes each, long and loudly like a dying bird call.

Finally, after several lousy attempts, I threw the recorder into the waves near my feet. I couldn’t see in the moonlight really where the recorder ended up as it floated away. I didn’t care.

I screamed, yelled my sister’s  name as I stood on the rock, crying and screaming all at once.

Exhausted, I climbed down the rock. I saw nothing in the waves move beyond the darkness. It was late, maybe eleven o’clock by now. Mom thought I was sleeping, as she had fallen asleep earlier on the couch. Dad was at work.

I couldn’t complete my plan without Keira, though. I needed her. Needed her to make it all work. But it seemed Liam’s grandpa was a dreamer after all and Liam…maybe a liar, too. Or the myths were lies and nobody knew a thing about selkies. Yeah, that had to be it. Nothing else made sense otherwise.

Feeling defeated, I trudged home. I couldn’t take another night alone in realizing that, really, I had failed at magic. Figures. I was no dreamer. I wished Grandpa jack was here, because maybe he could help me. But he wasn’t.

Sneaking into the house, I listened. Heard the TV ramble on and Mom’s soft snoring. Her anti -depressants were kicking in, making her sleep like a log. She would sleep for hours even with a herd of deer came galloping through the door. 

As quietly as I could, I Crept up the wooden stairs, careful to avoid the two groaning steps that croaked like frogs.  It was then I realized the top landing was dark with water. A lot of water. I froze on the top of the stairs, confused.

I looked up , but saw no leak in the ceiling.  I realized then the puddle of dark water on the carpet tracked away from it, leading into both my room and Keira’s room down the hall. My heart pounded a bit louder now, afraid of what it meant but also excited. What if? What if it was true, I thought, stepping into the soggy carpet where sand grains and the smell of seaweed hung in the air. To Keira’s room I went, the door shut. Dark.

Slowly, I creaked open the door. Smelled the seaweed stronger in here now. Sensed something…watching me. Mouth dry, I snapped on the light. I stumbled back with the surprise I was not ready  for.

there she was, naked on the edge of her bed, something large and dark folded at the end of the heavy gray -blue comforter. Keira sat there, her dark brown hair dripping nearly black, skin smooth and white, her blue eyes fixed calmly on me.

My stomach flipped. “Ki-Keira,” I rasped, unable to catch my breath. “You’re a dream,” I said, blinking, not sure why I was in so much denial. Why, after wanting to see her for so long .She had defied the law of physics. 

“Shayla,” she said, voice still hers but yet different. It held a note of something older, as if Keira had been away for a hundred years instead of nearly two months. Maybe in seal time it was like a hundred years. I stared unable to see the old scar on her left arm from the time she fell from the pine tree she tried climbing as a kid with me at Grandma’s house. Now, it was erased, her skin new like a child’s.  “Not a dream. I’m here,” Shayla said with certainty, eyes steady on me as they gazed deep into mine. I blinked, unable to stand her strange owl -like stare. 

My heart smashed in me as I hurried to her, wrapping my arms around her warm sooth skin. She smelled of the sea, of fish and as bad as this all would have been, I could overcome it. Something deep like joy rushed through me, turned my mouth to smile and my eyes to throw tears over her through a mix of amazement and sorrow too big to hold back.

I slowly stepped back then, and eyed her seal skin beside her. Oily, dark and sleek it seemed impossible to have kept her alive in its folds and structure  these weeks.

“Did you cause that storm?” I questioned eagerly.

“I’m sorry, I did,” she said simply. . I do things through nature. I know it’s hard to understand,” she began slowly, searching for the words. “But I needed to reach you. I didn’t want you to forget me.” 

“Forget you? I can’t live like this anymore,” I said. “It should have been me the ocean took, not you. You had so many dreams of going on, making music, art, supporting things you loved. Why aren’t you angry with me? Just say you hate what I did. I deserve it.” 

I stood in front of her, shaking, angry at her calmness. Wanting a  reaction of some sort. This was not my old sister. This was someone new who looked like her.

She seemed to age a  hundred years as her eyes looked into mine. “I was angry. It was dark. Cold. Frightening at first,” she began. “I wanted you to come with me, but I knew that meant, well, dying.” 

“That’s what  I want,” I whispered, the words releasing something in me, like a chain snapping. The words felt freeing.

“NO,” she shook her head. “No, it’s not. This magic, it’s torment. Caught in two worlds always, land and sea. You don’t want it.” 

“Maybe not,” I said, wondering. “Let’s go outside, get some air. You have all night with me, right?” 

“Yes. But only,” she warned. She gathered up the heavy seal skin. Before leaving the room, I made her throw on one of her blue summer sundresses on over her nakedness. She had no issue with it but it was too weird for me to keep looking at. 

Like ghosts, we left the house. We went down the shore, to the Thinking Rock. WE sat on the rock together, unafraid anyone would find us after midnight. 

“You didn’t call me, by the way,” Keira explained to me as we sat with the seal skin between  us. “I would have come anyway. It is the way of the sea. I always watch the island, you know. I  watch  everyone –you, Poppy, Liam, our parents. I can see them, but I know they can’t see me. I know they’re sad for me. But I’m  okay, shay. Really, I’m strong in the water. It’s a second home to me, but it will never be my first.” 

“It’s wrong,” I said, touching the skin.. “I’m leaving with you.” 

“You can’t,” she said. “You won’t.” 

“I need to,” I insisted, then snatched up her skin. It was heavier than I expected. “I mean nothing here to no one. I’m a liar, a killer and give nothing good,” and I leapt away.

Keira followed with struggling  steps, unused to her human legs. I somehow got ahead of her, back in the water.  The rising tide pulled me in fast, the sealskin like a weighted blanket around my shoulders  as I threw it over me. Would it work? Would it turn me seal?

“Stop!” Keira’s words were right behind me as I plunged into the water. The skin hung around me, refusing to become anything but what it was. Just a skin, a skin that dragged me down, an down.

Strong hands raised me, up and up into the black air of night. I gasped as my body  grew lighter. The skin was off, my human limbs heavy as my sister’s strong body pushed me back to land. 

ON shore, we gasped for air together. I saw her dark human shape, the skin draped around her shoulders like a strange oversized coat. “So,” she said, the venom of her anger finally breaking through her calm. My sister was back. “You want to die? You want me to die, too, alone here without you?” 

“No,” I said, not understanding as I stood up , dripping wet. “I want to take your place.” 

“Very compassionate, Shayla,” she said, voice softening. “But you don’t understand the power of this skin, the sea, the worse consequences of what you almost did.” 

“I just want to make it right,” I sobbed. She came closer to me. Her long hair touched my shoulders and dripped seawater.

“Shayla,” she said in the softest of tones. “I love you. This island is not for you. You have dreams, too. Chase them. The world needs thinkers like you. The world needs more than art. It needs both.” 

“But you—you are trapped like you said. I can’t—” 

“You can,” she insisted. “You can accept what I am. My destiny is not yours. If you love me, like I know you do, build new dreams. Make new scientific discoveries,” she laughed then, sounding so normal now, and not like a seal girl. “Become a marine biologist and keep us seals safe from pollution. This ocean’s pretty awful like that.” 

We laughed together. It was the first time in months we shared a joke like that. Then we grew serious.

“I’ll be back next year,” my sister said. “I will always find you no matter where you go in the world. I bit you the first day, remember?” 

“yeah, that hurt,” Is said, recalling the now healed wound on my knee. “What was that for?” 

“One, to prove I was real to you. Two, because sisters are bonded through blood. You’re my sister forever, she hugged me then, long and tight.

The hours flew as the sky lightened into gray dawn. My head filled with stories of Shayla’s underwater world, I sadly walked with her to the edge of  the water.  “Hurry—I need the sea,” she managed to rasp out.  Her webbed hands shook with effort as she leaned against me. Afraid for her, I adjusted the seal skin over her body, but not before helping her remove the cotton dress over her head.

She knelt, the skin falling over her body, the seal’s head a hood thrown back from her human face. “Remember what I said tonight,” she said, squeezing my hand in hers with rough fingers. 

We suddenly heard a far-off bark of a small dog. It was our neighbor, Mr. Hanlon for his morning beach stroll.

“Shay,” she said in a whisper, the nearby breakers crashing a few feet from us. “Be free,” were her last human words.

I watched my sister shudder. Watched the seal’s face enclose over hers. Her voice a seal’s barking of departure. Awkwardly,  she moved on four flippers back to sea. 

I stood, watching the dark heads emerge. There were others, waiting friends as my sister’s dark head  vanish into the jeweled morning sea in the rising sun. She would be alright. And so would  I.