More than alive, Fala soon discovered. Weak as she may have been, her body felt saturated with her own power. She did not know what to make of it as she stared up to the ceiling of her treehouse. She considered what had happened after Blues had carried her home, the first of which was that he was too drained to carry himself home, and so Mr. Corelli had to do it for him. He had told her that he was sleeping.

What had happened back in the night, she could not remember at all. She had been on the verge of darkness, but something had held her back from falling. Then, something began to pull her back, something within the very essence of the darkness itself, helping her to free herself. And then she was back, and Blues was there. Dry lungs filled again.

After that, she just lay in bed as she did now. Her brain could not sleep, begging for answers to everything. Fala just wished she could get up and walk around, or at least move. The control had begun to return to her toes and fingers, spreading inward. She slowly shifted her arms, feeling the blood flow back into her muscles. It was a start, even if her legs were still in the process of coming back to life.

There were birds outside. Still disapproving to the change that their trees had undertaken, they invaded the house through the glass-less windows. Fala did not recognize the species, and, therefore, had to guess that they only existed in the magical world. She was impressed by their colors—dark blue wings and head, with a pale white underside. Their song, too, was eerie and composed of many different sounds. It was more like a language then any birdsong she had heard before.

Currently, the finch-sized creatures sat on Fala’s bare stomach, apparently enjoying the warmth coming from it. There were two of them, one that was much more vibrant then the other. The brightly colored one, the male (as she was quite certain he was a male), made his stately way up Fala’s body and began to nibble on her hair. All the while, he twittered in his strange language. Fala understood him.

“Don’t thank me for staying so still,” she told him, “it’s not something I can change!”

He twittered some more, but only to himself.

“If you need to go, please don’t do it on me,” she advised him. “Or in this house, in that case,” she added, as he jumped to the floor. He stared at her, annoyed, and took of out the window. His mate twittered a good-bye and followed her husband. A few minutes of silence passed, in which Fala started to miss their cheerful company, but she was thankful to find that her legs could now bend and she could move her head. Her back remained motionless, on the other hand, and so she was left to entertain herself with little more than twirling her wand.

Just as she managed to sit up for the first time—with her bed cover wrapped around to cover herself—Mrs. Corelli knocked and walked in. She was tall, and she had many of her children’s characteristics, like the thin nose and small chin.

“How are you?” she asked, sitting down on Fala’s bed.

“I’m all right,” Fala answered. After a pause, she added, “How’s Blues?”

“He’s fine too—just tired. He says that his hands feel stiff.”

“He’s awake?” Fala said in amazement, and would have jumped up if Mrs. Corelli had not been sitting on the cover that shielded her body.

“You can see him later, if you can stand up,” was the motherly answer. “By the way, you’re glowing.” Fala shrugged, but was briefly distracted by the male of the pair of blue birds. He hopped through the window and onto her desk (walking a wide circle around Jet’s open bird cage), whistling and bobbing his head at Mrs. Corelli.

“He likes you,” Fala translated. Mrs. Corelli nodded.

“I know. I brought him up,” she returned. “Hi, SilverBlue! It’s good to see you around.” The bird fluttered over to sit on her shoulder. “I didn’t even know you were still here!” SilverBlue chirped back.

His beloved wife, meanwhile, was making her dignified way onto Fala’s head, where she ruffled up her feathers against Fala’s unruly red hair.

“Who’re you?” Mrs. Corelli asked in a startled way to the lady-bird. She had been so busy talking to SilverBlue that she had not even noticed his mate fly into the house. Mrs. SilverBlue chattered at her irritably. “I’m sorry—no disrespect meant on your part,” Mrs. Corelli answered.

“She’s GrayHeart,” Fala said, untangling the bird in question from her hair to keep her from strangling herself. GrayHeart, as any other bird, protested against such physical contact with a person and squawked loudly as Fala finally managed pull her off her head and set her on her lap.

SilverBlue hopped down to her and helped her set right some twisted feathers. All taken care of, they flew out the window together and disappeared. Mrs. Corelli sighed.

“I’m making breakfast if you want to come,” she told Fala. She then got up, told Fala a quick farewell, and left. As the door closed behind her, however, Fala suddenly remembered that she had wanted to ask about the Ring Warden. Too late. Again.

Now with her hut all to herself, Fala got to her shaky feet and went over to her closet to get fresh clothes. She took a long, hot shower, donated some time to de-tangle her hair, and was ready to present herself to the world again.

The sun hit her right in the eyes as she opened her door. Blinking furiously from the brightness, Fala slowly made her lone way over to Blues’ ivy-covered hut. Birds were singing, insects were chirping, and people could be heard talking in their homes. She breathed in the fresh air that was rare to find in the nonmagic world.

Blues was, indeed, awake. He lay in his white bed, too weak to stand, but looked quite bored in Fala’s eyes. When she came in, he smiled widely and said, “You’re glowing.”

“I am?” she asked, having forgotten Mrs. Corelli’s conversation with her during the course of the shower.

“Yeah. In violet, of course.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Bored. Stiff. How about you?”

“Okay, I guess. Better than you, in any case.”

“I look worse than I feel—I just wish that I could get up.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Besides that, my hands are just very hard to move. And they’re scarred.”

“Can I see?”

“Yeah, I’m not resisting,” Blues laughed, twitching his new fingers that lay by his sides.

Now that Fala could look more closely, she could see that they were indeed scarred. Not only were they deadly white, but there were also different sized V’s cut into them—the figure of fire-burns. She lifted the hand to take a closer look at these scars, when Blues sighed and moved his fingers again—but this time with ease instead of pain. Shortly after, he started as he realized what had caused his relief. He pulled his newly mobile hands away from Fala and sat up to look at them. The sitting up he had done quite unconsciously.

“What did you do?” he asked, somewhere between happiness, fear, and surprise.

“Nothing, really,” was the confused answer. “I didn’t mean to...”

“It’s not anything bad,” Blues reassured her, noticing what a fright he had given her. Again, he had to feel sorry for her for being the victim of so much strangeness. They just sat after that, waiting for someone to break the silence.

“Can I ask you something?” Fala asked, with the question that was on her mind so long finally on the edge on her tongue.

“Of course,” Blues nodded. First, she hesitated about how to word her question, as mentioning the Ring Warden would reveal that she had eavesdropped on Predicus’s conversation with him. Hoping she would get a good answer, Fala asked the most basic question she could think of.

“Who am I?” she stuttered, unsure of his reaction. Instead of a frown, as she had expected, Blues gave her a smile.

“I knew you would ask that,” he said, “but I don’t know if I am the person to tell you. Well, to start, you are the Ring Warden.”

At these words, Fala had to suppress yelling, “I know that already!” in her impatience for a sensible answer. But she bit her tongue, allowing Blues to continue.

“What is the Ring and the one to be its Warden?” he shrugged. “That is part of the Legend. What is the one who is the Warden? That is also a part of the Legend. Why? The Legend. How? The Legend. When, where? We don’t know. All that exists of the story is the Legend.”

“What is the Legend?” Fala asked, and was surprised to see Blues cringe.

“I cannot tell the Legend,” he said. “I can only tell you that the Ring stores power, and the one to bear it is the only one know the magic inside. And it’s not normal magic either, of course. It is... something else.”

“Why can’t you tell the Legend?”

“The story can only be told to a child on the day when their magic becomes mature,” he answered. “Mage-blood babies not get their magic until they are a few years old. The Legend is passed down to the next generation then, and told to a child young so that they will know when the time comes. That is the tradition. Those who do not grow up from youth here are unlikely ever to hear the Legend. It is not told to ‘untrustworthy’ mage-bloods.”

“But I’m not untrustworthy, am I?” Fala said, enraged. “Shouldn’t I know my own story?” Blues shook his head—not as a “no,” but as a “I can’t say...”

“Is Greg okay?” he asked to change the subject.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to breakfast anyway, so I can ask then,” Fala answered. “I haven’t heard any bad new about him, so he must all right, too.”

“Yeah, I see your reasoning. I just feel a bit guilty about... you know...”

“Hey—don’t feel bad about something you didn’t do. I’m the one who should feel guilty here!”

“No. It wasn’t really your fault either,” he sighed, stretching out his legs. “Can I come to breakfast with you?”

“Sure,” Fala said, thrown off by another change of subject. “If you can stand, for that reason.”

Blues turned and moved to the edge of his bed, next to Fala. He toed the hardwood floor, slowly letting his weight go on his feet. Then, he stood up easily and walked over to his closet to get a robe.

“Well, that works,” Fala commentated.

“Thank goodness,” he said. “I couldn’t have been able to stay laying down much longer.

“Should I leave?” she added as Blues pulled off the top of his black-striped pajamas.

“No, there’s nothing to see,” he said. “I’ve got boxers on.” Fala smiled, but still tried not to focus on his lean upper body as he pulled off his pants and put on the robes. She could not help but notice, however, that his boxers had a lightning bolt icon printed all over it.

After Blues had retrieved his wand from his bedside table and slipped into his shoes, he and Fala headed to the Main House. The sun was still not very high in the sky, but it was noticeably warmer now then it had been before. Blues was happy to see the sun again after so long a time. It strengthened him and helped restore his magic. Fala was quite restored in magic already, and it showed more as the violet light around her grew darker in the sunlight. She noticed it now, and held her own hand up to her face to look at her glow.

“How can I get rid of it?” she questioned, feeling even more like she was in the spotlight.

Blues shrugged. “Use your magic more,” he suggested. “If it gets used, it might not pile up on you.”

“How can I use my magic without, and I quote, ‘blowing up the universe parallel to this one?’” Fala said, discouraged. Magic had sounded so much like a fun talent in all those books—but why did it have to be so complicated?

Once again, the answer was as uncertain as the one before. “I guess that you should just not try to use magic for a particular reason. Not spells, basically; just thoughts, feelings, and so on.”

“Right, like that’s gonna work.”

“You won’t know till you try.”

“What if my magic looses control again?”

Blues never answered her question, as they had just reached the Corelli Main House.

The breakfast went as usual, other than that the conversation was stiff since no one wanted to mention the recent events. Fala was, therefore, largely left to listen to the talk rather than be allowed to join in. Etude and Symphony were the ones that spoke with her the most, and with smiles (no surprise there).

“So what will we do today?” said one of the twins—Fala could not tell which one. She noticed that he kept well clear of her glow, however normal he attempted to act.

“Are you talking to me?” she asked abruptly, not realizing that the question was directed to her. The boy nodded. “Well, I dunno. Walk around and meet people, I guess.”

“If they aren’t too scared of you, you mean,” the other twin put in.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Fala said. “And besides, I need to use my magic more, or so Blues says.”

“Don’t trust him,” the twin whispered loudly into her ear.

“Hey! I heard that!” Blues exclaimed, and used his spoon to catapult a piece of toast at his brother. The whole table roared with laughter as the buttered side hit the twin’s forehead and stuck there.

“Let’s break it up, boys!” said the demanding voice of Mrs. Corelli.

“Sorry, mom,” Blues said, watching the twin peel the toast from his forehead. “I hadn’t meant to actually hit him.”

“Sure you did,” the twin said.

“Apologize,” Mr. Corelli ordered from across the table. He, too, was smiling.

“I’m sorry, Symphony or Etude,” Blues admitted.

“Symphony,” the twin said.

“Anyone have a hair tie?” Fala broke in then. Gavotte, the little girl, handed her a small pink one. “Thanks,” Fala said.

She reached up to Etude’s brown head of hair and put one small tuft of it into a ponytail. Not only was it off-center, but the hair tie caused the hair in it to stick up.

“That’s better,” she sighed as she continued to munch her toast. Blues looked at her with suspicion—but a sarcastic, questioning look on his face. So was everyone else at the table.

“What?!” Fala asked them. “It works! Now you can tell them apart.”

“Smart,” Lila said.

“Weird,” Blues said.

“Funny!” Gavotte exclaimed.

An hour later, Fala found herself walking down a slim gravel path somewhere in the south side of WillowWind with Etude, Symphony (with the pink hair tie still in place), Blues, Greg (who had recovered as quickly as they had), and Lila. The oldest sister was there for two reasons—to supervise her teenaged siblings and their friends, and to give Fala the presence of another girl.

While they were strolling, Greg stopped to speculate a young, but very dead, rat that was sprawled on their path.

“Poor thing!” Fala said, crouching down to take a closer look. “I wonder how it died.”

“I dunno,” Greg put in as he also leaned down to investigate. “Looks like it ate something poisonous. It wasn’t a cat, though, because otherwise it wouldn’t be all in one piece.”

The dead rat was a black one, or used to be, anyway, and it reminded Fala of the pet mouse from the orphanage that she and Summer would often take care of. Smaller than the young dead rat, the mouse had been a very smart and friendly creature, beloved for the little time that she had lived.

Summer had cried when the mouse died, but Fala could not remember ever shedding a tear for her. She was not the one to cry with the occurrence of death; she was sad for loosing a friend, of course, but she knew that it was the way that life worked.

The rat lay there—new and black and shiny, complete in form, and not long dead. Fala could almost see that rat when it was alive: how its black whiskers would twitch; how its pink nose would be stuck into all the little cracks in a wall; how its pale, long tail would be used to balance on a bird-feeder line; and how it would hold its food with its tiny front paws to eat seeds. His front paws, Fala corrected herself. Saddened by old memories and images, Fala reached out to the cold dead rat, and pulled it by its tail to the side of the path.

There were shouts of disgust from everyone else. Even Fala herself found the touch of a cold tail revolting. Until, that is, she realized that the tail was no longer cold. The same rat that had been dead just a moment before now hung from his tail that was in Fala’s grip, and looked back up at her!?

The rat, his fur shiny and black as Fala had thought it had been, scrambled for a foothold in thin air. She swiftly placed him on her palm and let him sit there. The rat ran up her arm and onto her shoulder, where he paced from the edge of one shoulder to the other. Quite alive.

“He’s got violet eyes,” Blues commented. “And so do you,” he added when Fala looked at him.

“I’m so sorry... I hadn’t meant to, honestly!” she said, taking the rat down from her shoulders and handing him to Greg. “I hope I wasn’t loud!”

“Don’t worry, we didn’t hear a thing,” Etude said cheerfully.

“Stop pretending that everything’s right,” Lila scolded in a sharp voice. “Fala just raised the dead, and without making a sound! Isn’t something wrong with that?”

“All magic makes a sound,” Blues answered. “And it’s impossible to raise the dead.”

“Please, please, let’s not get into a thing about this,” Greg came to Fala’s rescue. The rat was strolling on his broad shoulders, searching for a way off. “We are not talking normal here, anyway, so why make it more serious when it was not?”

Etude opened his mouth to complain, but at that moment Fala’s eyes turned yellow and he shut up again. They moved on, and allowed the rat to stay in Greg’s custody until they were sure it had not inherited Fala’s magic. The redhead, nevertheless, still glowed purple.

When they headed home again, everyone was happy to return. The black rat, who had jokingly been called Ghost by the twins, was still perched on Greg’s shoulder, comfortably snoozing. The sun was nearing the treeline when Greg finally left the group to head home in his own direction. The rest of them continued until they reached the Main House for dinner. Afterwards, Fala went right to bed.

Other than Ghost’s incident, nothing more had happened along the trip. Fala had been introduced to some of the singles and a few families that inhabited WillowWind. This included Reeba, the new color-blood who Eric had mentioned; BlackBird, who was Blues’ unofficial shadow-blood teacher; RiverRun, a very old but talented water-blood; Sparrow, who was a fire-blood girlfriend of Greg; the Greenfires, who were Sparrow’s family (her parents and her little brother); the Corellis, who were Mr. Corelli’s parents; and the Polmers, who were Mrs. Corelli’s.

Fala was greeted with astonishment, respect, and dropped eyes by all the adults. Sparrow and her brother seemed to be the only ones who would talk to Fala in normal slang without stopping themselves. Never before had Fala wanted to be quite as normal as she did now. Her other high-priority task was that of riding herself of that annoying purple glow.

The problem was that there was nothing to bewitch. Still not extremely comfortable with her magic, Fala decreed to ask Blues to take her somewhere where she could dispose of her access magic.

She used her magic to turn off the candle simply by wishing it to, and settled into bed. A stream of moonlight came through the windows and beckoned to Fala with its silver light. Unable to sleep, she got up and went to the window to stare into the starry heavens and moon.

It was a full moon, and Fala thought it could not have been brighter. Usually she would be mystified by moonlight, but today she felt different. The perfectness of the night no longer seemed peaceful and thoughtful. It brought memories, and with memories came tears, and with tears came the sadness of being incomplete. She missed the Olgers, and William, and her friends, and her violin, and the familiar space of her room in Vermont. Here the crickets talked not of the harshness of winter and the sourness of pollution. Here they spoke of myths and legends and magic and all those many things that Fala had never believed in before. She missed a normal day. She hated how her childhood had been torn from her in one night to turn her into something feared and loved at the same time. There was a hollow inside her, and it would never be filled. This house was not her home; this village was not her village; these people were not her people; these crickets were not her crickets. This moon was not the moon she had known.

Fala would have given anything to go back to her normal life. Normal. What was normal now? Not herself. Not this world. Not this life. Falamarana was tired with fear of herself and sadness of what she was. She wanted nothing more but to fly away.

Her feet remained flat on the floor. And she hated it. She wanted to scream, to put her voice to the feelings that raged inside. Instead, she pulled at her hair as if to pull the magic out of herself. Her scalp hurt, but the pain was irrelevant, even as her body began to shake. Then, exhausted, she dropped into the bed and cried.

After a few moments, clouds covered the moon.