by Diane Rios
Faron came up just then, and the Artist asked him, “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” asked Chloe. “Are you leaving now too?”
“Yes, the Artist offered to take me back to the Hotel Nell on his way north,” he explained. “I’ve got to get back and help my father. Things will be picking up at the hotel now.” He held out his hand and Chloe shook it.
“Remember, you’ve got to seek he keeps his promise to stop selling stolen goods!” she said to the boy.
“I will!” said Faron, laughing. He climbed up into the cart beside the Artist and turned back to Chloe and Lady Ashton. “You’ll see, I’m going to fix the whole place up, and we’re going to change the way things are done around there. If you ever come to Tillamook Town, you’ll be welcome at the Hotel Nell as my special guests!”
Chloe and Lady Ashton promised to come visit the hotel, Faron, and his father, Mr. Nell, just as soon as they could.
It was time for them to go. Chloe buried her face one last time in Greybelle’s soft, warm neck. “Goodbye, Greybelle,” she said. “Safe travels, and I’ll see you in the summer!”
The mare whickered gently into the girl’s hair, and said softly, “It’s not for long. Goodbye, my darling Chloe!”
“Goodbye!”
“Good luck!”
Everyone called out to their departing friends and waved them off down the drive. The Artist struck up a song, singing loudly, and encouraging Faron to join him.
Our anchor we’ll weigh,
And our sails we will set.
Goodbye, fare-ye-well, Goodbye, fare-ye-well.
The friends we are leaving,
We leave with regret,
Hurrah, my boys, we’re homeward bound.
The Artist, Greybelle, and Faron were the last travelers to depart and the last set of hooves to clip-clop down the long drive of Ashton House. When the sound and the song died away, the servants and Chloe and her mother turned to go back into the house. The air seemed too quiet with all the people that had made the place so lively gone.
But with the stillness came the room to take notice of other things. A single note of a warbler fell on their ears, and Lady Ashton’s hand brushed Chloe’s as they walked up the steps. Chloe turned to look at her mother and in that look they shared was all the love and tenderness and understanding that they had not been able to express in the past. Lady Ashton reached down and took her daughter’s hand.
“I’m so proud of you, darling,” she said to Chloe. “You are so brave and so strong. You did things I could never do. I think you are the bravest girl in the world!”
Chloe felt herself blush. “It wasn’t just me, mother. It was my friends too—without them I couldn’t have done any of it.”
Shakespeare, who as usual had been riding in Chloe’s pocket, poked his head out and squeaked as if to say, “I’m one of those friends, don’t forget!”
“Oh, how could we possibly forget you?” Chloe said, laughing. “You are a hero, my dear Shakespeare! A hero of a rat!”
Shakespeare secretly agreed with the girl. A delicious smell of cooking tickled their noses and made them turn hungrily toward the house. With Shakespeare sitting on her shoulder and her arm around her mother’s waist, Chloe walked back up the steps and into the house, where Mr. Mason greeted them warmly and closed the door gently behind them.
EPILOGUE
Wy’east was radiant in the morning sun. His happiness sparkled over the land from his snow-covered peaks and lit up the valley below him. The great mountain could not contain his joy—Wy’east had woken his sleeping mountain love, Loowit.
When he helped rebuild the Bridge of the Gods, the fierce rumbling and crumbling of boulders and stone, rocks and earth, had woken his beloved. Blinking back the sleep of three hundred years, Loowit’s gaze met that of Wy’east, and as their eyes locked, Wy’east’s angry heart melted. Loowit saw her beloved’s face and it revived her. She raised her beautiful white head and stood proudly, returning his love with all her heart.
All the land felt the two mountains’ happiness, and with the melting of Wy’east’s heart came the melting of the deep snows. The rushing of the waters could be heard for miles as mountain springs and rivers burst forth, and all of life for miles around seemed to sing out with joy.
Far away, across the long valley, the white-capped Klickitat watched the reunion of lovers and sighed deeply, causing the three thousand birds perched in his trees to take sudden flight. It was obvious that Loowit preferred his brother, but Klickitat wished them no harm, and accepted the truth gracefully.
At the new Bridge of the Gods, a migration of sorts was happening. For the first time in three hundred years, the animals were crossing from the south to the north, and vice versa. The smaller animals were the first to venture forth, tentatively crossing the great stone span, and soon the larger animals followed.
King Rei the elk was there, taller than the rest of his people who followed him eagerly across the bridge. His antlers had been damaged in the fight and were missing a point or two, but he still sported a huge rack of gleaming points that looked for all the world like a magnificent golden crown. The bears came next, running swiftly across, and Mai the wolf silently slipped across with them.
Silas was there, too. As the little old man placed his bare feet onto the bridge, he was joined by a massive black shape that stepped along with him, matching its huge steps to his small ones. King Auberon growled gently at Silas, and bumped up against him affectionately, nearly causing the old man to fall. Silas recovered himself and reached up to pat the huge bear.
Once on the other side, Silas turned to wave to the mountain, and Wy’east rumbled his reply, sending small avalanches of sparkling snow down his sides that dissolved in the crisp mountain air, showering the highest pines with twinkling ice diamonds.
“Go in peace, my friend,” said Silas to the mountain, and, in the shadow of Auberon the bear king, crossed the Bridge of the Gods, and walked into the hazy morning mist of the magical northern lands.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning author and illustrator Diane Rios lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her debut novel, Bridge of the Gods, won the 2017 silver Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for Pre-Teen Fantasy, was a finalist for the USA Best Book Award in Children’s Fiction, and was a finalist for a 2017 Oregon Book Award for Children’s Literature. A long-time Oregon artist and musician, Rios wrote and illustrated the picture book Dizzy’s Dream. Rios spent three years working at the world’s largest independent bookstore, Powell’s Books in Portland, where she greatly increased her own children’s book collection and was inspired to write the Silver Mountain Series.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company
founded to serve women writers everywhere.
Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Bridge of the Gods by Diane Rios. $16.95, 978-1-63152-244-4. An evil is rising in the land. The country is under attack, and all creatures, man and beast, must hide. As twelve-year-old Chloe struggles to survive, she discovers an ancient magic that still exists deep within the forests—and learns that friendship doesn’t always come in human form.
South of Everything by Audrey Taylor Gonzalez. $16.95, 978-1-63152-949-8. A powerful parable about the changing South after World War II, told through the eyes of young white woman whose friendship with her parents’ black servant, Old Thomas, initiates her into a world of magic and spiritual richness.
The Same River by Lisa Reddick. $16.95, 978-1-63152-483-7. As Jess, a feisty, sexy, biologist, fights fiercely to save the river she loves, Piah, a young Native American woman, battles the invisible intrusion of disease and invasive danger on the same river 200 years earlier— and the two women mysteriously begin to make contact with one another.
The Afterlife of Kenzaburo Tsuruda by Elisabeth Wilkins Lombardo. $16.95, 978-1-63152-481-3. As he stumbles through an afterlife he never believed in, scien
tist Kenzaboro Tsuruda must make sense of his life and confront his family’s secrets in order to save his ancestors from becoming Hungry Ghosts, even as his daughter, wife, and sister-in-law struggle with their own feelings of loss.
The Wiregrass by Pam Webber. $16.95, 978-1-63152-943-6. A story about a summer of discontent, change, and dangerous mysteries in a small Southern Wiregrass town.