by Jeff Hirsch
Even at seven years old, Sally Sparrow isn’t afraid of anything.
She fills a knapsack with provisions, sneaks away from their parents, and climbs the mountain. She finds the old hermit lying on a bed made of stone in a cold, dank cave. He’s shriveled and frail. Dressed in rags. His skin is like tissue paper draped over a frame of bone. Sally’s heart breaks. He seems so familiar to her, even though she’s sure she’s never seen him before. She kneels by his side and feeds him morsels of food from her pack and wets his chapped lips with water from her canteen.
“How did you get here?” Sally Sparrow asks. “What are you doing in this cave all alone?”
Cardinal’s eyes are covered in a film of gray. Sally is nothing but a shadow and a warm breath against his cheek. She takes his hand in hers and squeezes. When he speaks, his voice is like the moan of a rusty gate.
“My name,” he says, “is Cameron Conner.”
He tells her everything he remembers about the world to come. All about the Brotherhood and how the Volanti reappeared after a hundred years to betray and murder them. He weeps as he tells her how he saw the great love of his life, Sally Sparrow, die just before he fled uselessly into the past.
Frightened, Sally runs away, but when she reaches the sunlight and sweet air at the mouth of the cave, she’s overwhelmed with guilt to have left the helpless old man on his own. She returns, only to find the stone bed empty. The old man and all his things have disappeared.
The final spread will be wordless. The spires of Liberty City sparkling in the light of a noonday sun. High above them, the Brotherhood of Wings soars, with Cardinal and Sally Sparrow in the lead, hand in hand.
Hope you like it. Save me a front row seat for Hamlet. I’ll be home soon.
Love,
Card
Acknowledgments
SPECIAL THANKS to my pal and official science advisor, Dr. Kenneth Fortino, who was kind enough to set me up with a couple world-class scientists whose advice was invaluable to me as I worked on this book. All my thanks to Laura Thomas, PhD (Research Health Scientist, War Related Illness and Injury Study Center, DC VA Medical Center) and Catherine Franssen, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychology at Longwood University). Memory is a bafflingly complex subject and you both helped make it just a little bit clearer.
Thanks as well to Martha Brockenbrough, Joelle Charbonneau, Eliot Schrefer, and Roland Smith. Also to Ken Weitzman and Danielle Mages Amato, who were kind enough to give me their thoughts on early drafts of this book.
Huge, heaping helpings of thanks to Sara Crowe, the whole team at Clarion, and my wonderful editor, Lynne Polvino, who were all tireless in helping me make this the best book it could be.
About the Author
Photo credit Elizabeth Dahmen
JEFF HIRSCH is the best-selling author of The Eleventh Plague and The Darkest Path. He lives in Beacon, New York.
Visit him online at www.jeff-hirsch.com