Empty Sky Chapter 16 – The Gardens of the Moon

Sometimes the most beautiful gardens can only be seen at Night

Read Empty Sky Chapter 15 – Pangiosi and Tom


A cold wind roughled Jamie’s bathrobe against his pajamaed legs. Thick animal fur warmed his face like a blanket, its smell filling his nostrils with each breath.

But not Shem’s fur. It smelled…heavier than Shem’s fur…more urgent than Shem’s fur.

He raised his head, his hands stiff from clenching Graywolf’s coat.

“We’re almost there, Jamie.”

They moved through a rush of trees. White barked birch and scotch pine, gray ash and winter oak towered over him, their branches alternately pine needle and leaf and snow covered and offering a canopy through which the night sky, its stars and planets, could still be seen.

High overhead the moon still sailed through the sky, full and rumbling like a big church organ. The Aurora walked back and forth across the cold night sky, crinkling like cellophane candy wrappers, sounding almost like words just beyond his ability to understand, like the Aurora were people talking at a party, like when Mom and Dad had people over and Jamie and Shem listened from the top of the stairs.

The wind moved through the trees and sounded like long, low, breathy, conversations, as if the world talked all around him, ignorant or perhaps unaware or maybe even uncaring that he and Graywolf ruddaRumped underneath. “It sounds like everything’s talking,” he said.

“Everything is, Jamie. The world just waits for someone to listen.”


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