In glistening night, I walk through what was once the Garden of All Silences. It’s filled with the smell of soil and the promise of new leaves.

One day, there will be a tongue-fruit tree for every soul who loved me enough to listen to my voice. One for Linna. One for Bly. One for Fable. One for each of the cloisterwings. And of course there’ll be a tree for the Sea-Singer.

My mother.

Our mother.

Voices lift from a distance, darned with the strains of stone-flutes. Tonight is the Festival of Shimmer. The Masters have collected the gold that Mr. Crowwith makes in his underground prison. They’re weighing it now on the beach, eating sapsweet puddings as Linna teaches them how to knead the fresh glow of music into metal — and how to improve their playing. She’s an education for their ears.

I look across the sheen of the ocean, following the path of rocks to where the cloister used to be. It’s only a pile of burnt hushingstone now. Mother Nine has a grave there. I do not visit. Sometimes her words still kick up in my heart, but I’ve learned to dampen them with singing.

We found the loosed turnaway girls crouched among boulders, shivering, the older ones holding the babies. They live at Sorrowhall now. The ones my age and younger still don’t have questions, but they like to shine polished gold, catch warped glimpses of their eyes in sun-skimmed plates. Some of the older ones have made themselves little crowns. This pleases Fable.

I open my mouth and a song unwinds from my chest, but there’s no gleam pushing through.

I haven’t sung the souls of birds since the day I met my mother. To make a bird’s soul, the singer must be trapped, and I’m done with that — I’m free.

And so are the cloisterwings.

Sometimes I feel Mimm and Trick nudging my cheeks as I’m waking from sleep. Then I remember they’re gone.

But I am not afraid.

I won’t worry for feathers.

I’ve planted a garden, and I know — I know, I know — the birds will come.