Birdwing

[Matt Mahurin]


Then there was only wilderness, darkly forested or bright with snow and ice. And there was…certainty. As a swan he had been sustained by the calls that linked all the swans together, whether in darkness, or in storm. He understood barking foxes, howling wolves, and the shrill, piercing cries of eagles and hawks. Even the moon and stars seemed to whisper wordless messages from the sky.

Yet each morning, when he awoke, he was back in the nightmare of his waking life, shut in his room in the castle—a freak, isolated, and different.
-Birdwing, by Rafe Martin