Everyone was asleep as Alma slipped out her bedroom door and padded toward the stairs, shoes in hand. She held her breath as she passed James’s room, but there were no sounds from behind his door. Downstairs, her parents had left their bedroom door open, and Alma crept through the shadows of the living room until she was clear of it.
Her greatest hurdle, however, was her own guilt, heavy as a stone in her stomach. She had told her parents the truth about herself only hours before, and now she was back to lying.
She left a note, scribbled hastily, on the table by the red-plaid couch:
There is someone I need to help. I will explain everything when I get home. Don’t worry.
Once she made it outside, Alma headed toward the back of the yard, then past the crater, until she came to the first singed tree. Here was the trail that the Starling had taken that first night. If she was reading the quintessence right, it was a path the Starling had traversed many times since then.
The Starling had followed Alma up the mountain. She had followed her to the Deep Downs. She had stayed near Alma’s home, coming to her backyard over and over.
Maybe the Starling knew all along what Alma had doubted so many times: that Alma could help her get home.
Alma hurried from one blackened patch of bark to the next, guided by her flashlight and the still-lingering smell of burned wood. The misting rain that wanted to be snow had returned again. It filtered through the still-leafless branches, settling on her coat in tiny, rounded domes that collapsed into wet circles. The moon was not in the sky that night, but looking up, Alma could see the evening star that was the morning star that was the planet Venus, and she could see real stars, although, she realized, she didn’t know what any of them were called except Betelgeuse, the red supergiant that was destined to explode sometime in the next million years.
Then Alma was out of the woods, and the farmland was spread out before her, barely visible in the light of those unknown stars.
Even in the limited light though, Alma could tell that the fields of Third Point Farm were blackened. It was a good thing that no one had tried to grow anything there for many years, because any crops would have been reduced to ash. The air was thick with the smell of old, wet kindling, and Alma wondered if the Starling had done it or if the fire had been the one she was supposed to gather, and now she was too late. She swept her flashlight across the field until it came to rest on the silo, towering high above the ravaged farmland.
“There,” she said.
There was where the Starling was hiding.
This was what Alma had realized as she gazed through the quintescope from her bedroom window. She could picture how it had happened—the Starling soaring into the air and diving into the opening in the silo the night that she fled from Alma. She must have returned here, to this safe place, time after time.
Alma hoped she was there now.
Charred stubble crunched beneath her feet, and the wind blew ash into her face as she trekked across the field. The silo was the color of rust, except at the top where it was soot black. When Alma grew closer, she saw that there was a ladder up its side.
The silo was rusty, but the ladder looked like it was made entirely of rust. When Alma pushed against the lowest rung, it didn’t creak or shift though. It seemed sturdy enough. So she began to climb, her bandaged hands clumsy and sore.
The opening was near the top of the ladder. And when Alma was high enough, she leaned toward the hole, flashlight in hand, breath in her throat, hope in her heart, and she peered in.
The silo was empty.