Book IV. Gibbous

Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

—William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I

Sunlight wakes me

Warm and still

Moonlight moves me

Always will;

Firelight warms me

Starlight stirs me

No light at all makes me feel

Glad to be with you.

—Talis Kimberley, "Any Kind of Light"

The whittled-down Crow Girl was standing at the edge of the mesa, looking uneasily down, an expression on her face that implied she had never contemplated anything she liked less than the idea of jumping to join them.

"I'm too short to fall without hurting myself," she said, somewhat petulantly.

Zib blinked, then frowned. "Can't you be birds long enough to fly down?"

"I'm not sure being birds would be a good idea," said the Crow Girl, and hugged herself. "I think this is part of what it costs, eventually, to be a flock without a heart. The only way I get to be bigger again is if I make or steal more birds to join myself, and they won't have been part of whoever I was before I traded my name away. They won't know how to be me. I'm going to wind up turning into somebody else before this is all over, and I don't want it. So I don't want to be birds anymore, not unless I very much have to."

Avery, who had felt the loss of the shine from his shoes as a blow to his very identity, nodded slowly. Even if he assumed the Queen of Swords had told the Crow Girl all the consequences of getting what she wanted, even if he believed she had been honest and upfront, the Crow Girl had lost so many birds—and the memories that contained—at this point that she was no longer the person who had agreed to pay. She was, in many ways, caught in a bargain she hadn't made, just like any other child. And like any other child, she was afraid.

He stepped closer to the wall, so that he was right beneath her, and spread his arms.

"Sit and push yourself over the edge, and I'll catch you," he said solemnly. "I promise."

She looked at him gravely, as if assessing his honesty, then did as she was told, sitting and pushing herself away from the edge, eyes screwed tightly shut as she dropped toward him.

Avery caught her and staggered, more from the force of impact than from her weight, which was even slighter than he would have expected from the size of her. He remembered reading somewhere that birds had hollow bones, and supposed she must be proof of it.…

—From Into the Windwracked Wilds, by A. Deborah Baker