Epilogue

When the people of Cielore talked of what had become of the skylark, they might have shared any of a dozen tales.

Some said she had gone far away, somewhere she could sing without being disturbed.

Others said she had never existed at all.

Still others knew of the nightingale, and spoke not of a lone songbird, but of two: two women with the power to change the skies, who lived together in a castle on an island in the middle of the sea.

The most imaginative, or the most keen-eyed, said that both birds returned to Cielore on occasion; that if you knew where to look, you might see them on the solstice, or hear them sing together on those rare, rare days when the moon passed across the sun.

But there was one thing in common between all who told stories of the skysingers: they were sure that the sun would rise and the moon thereafter – a dawn, a dusk, a golden day, a velvet night, and never one of them without the other.

The world will go on, the lark and the nightingale sang, into light, into darkness, into light.