Derek buttoned his coat and gathered his scarf as it blew wildly in the air. “I’m her guardian. And she’s coming with me.”
Derek reached for me again, but I jerked away.
“You’re not my guardian—you’re my manager,” I yelled, as if that could make any of them see the difference. “I’m an act to you. A property. I sing and I dance and … my mom was dying. She was sick and scared, and we were broke. That’s why she granted you custody.” Even though it hurt to admit it—not to the people of Bethlehem, but to myself—I had to say, “My mom didn’t know what was best for me.”
“Liddy, get in the chopper. Now! Before I call the authorities,” Derek warned.
“You mean the sheriff?” Aunt Mary asked. Then she pointed to a man in the crowd. “That’s him right there. Let’s ask him. Hi, Ben.”
“Hey, Mary. You need some help?” the sheriff asked.
“No, thanks. I’ve got this.”
“That’s corruption,” Derek said.
“Yeah. Let’s ask the county judge.” Aunt Mary turned to the woman who had been playing the piano. “Your honor?”
The judge gathered her hands together and studied me. “I see no reason to remove this child from your care, Mary. I’m certainly not letting her leave with some man we don’t know. And since the courts are adjourned for the holidays, I see no choice but to allow her to remain with you at least through Christmas.”
“This is ridiculous,” Derek scoffed. “She’s Liddy Chambers and I’m her legal guardian! When the press hears about this—”
“When the press hears what, Derek?” I snapped. “That I ran away from you? That you had no idea where I was for almost a week and never notified the authorities? That my mother was under the influence of so many painkillers when she gave you custody that she couldn’t even remember her own name? Huh? Tell me exactly what you’re going to tell the press. Because there are a few things I’d like to tell them, too.”
“Liddy.” Derek lowered his voice, pleading. “Come with me. Come with me now and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“Do you want to go with him?” Aunt Mary asked, but it was Ethan who found my gaze and kept it.
“Do you?” he asked, and I couldn’t deny the truth, the reason why I never could stop running.
“If I don’t go, he’ll come back.” I thought about what Ethan had asked me the night we met. “I’m worth a lot of money to them.”
“Oh, honey,” Aunt Mary said, “don’t you know you’re worth more than money to us?”
“You had your little break, Liddy. Now, stop kidding yourself. You want to be a star. You can’t give that up,” Derek said. It was almost like a dare.
“You’re right. I used to love music. I used to love singing and playing and making people happy—that made me happy. But … but I didn’t know what happy was then.”
“And you do now?” Derek sounded like he would have laughed if he hadn’t been so inconvenienced.
He didn’t know what I know. About the way Aunt Mary’s house smells when she cooks bacon, or how the cold wind feels on your face when you do chores at six in the morning, slapping you awake as if, until then, you had been sleepwalking your whole life. If he’d only looked up, he could have seen how big the sky really is and how easy it was to get lost there.
“Now I know what real stars look like,” I told him. “I’m sick of the imitations.”
I felt the townspeople gathering around me, but it wasn’t an angry mob. It was a blanket, a shelter. And, slowly, Derek backed away.
“Enjoy your Christmas, Liddy. I’ll be back,” he called. “I’ll be back to get you.”
The helicopter rose and disappeared in the blackness as I stood, surrounded by the entire town of Bethlehem. The stars were so bright overhead that a part of me couldn’t help but wonder if they’d led me there, guided me to that place and time.
“So, Liddy,” Aunt Mary said, “I was thinking that—if you wanted—you could stay with me permanently. The judge thinks we can get your custody situation changed. If you want that. You don’t have to decide right now, of course. It’s just that—”
“Yes!” I felt tears sting my eyes again. This time for entirely different reasons. “Yes, please.”
Aunt Mary pulled me into a tight hug, but I couldn’t stop looking at the boy standing just over her shoulder.
When Aunt Mary released me, he said, “You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m staying,” I said.
“No more running.” Ethan shook his head and stepped closer.
“No more running,” I said, and then he kissed me. And then he held me close and I looked up at the stars over Bethlehem, knowing I’d come home.
It is the custom on the Isle of Feathers for young men to leave small gifts for their sweethearts on each of the twenty-four days of Advent.
Having no sweetheart and desiring none, Neve Ellaquin woke on the first of December without expectations. Well, that’s not strictly true. She expected rain, because rain was as sure a feature of a December day as hungry foxes. And she expected quiet, because that’s what she’d had in abundance since the twins died together in late summer, leaving her alone in this benighted place. She expected, roundly, a heaping spoonful of the same dolorous drear that November had served up, only colder. That was the way of things as Neve knew them: there were no good surprises, only bad. In the evening, when she took her single, cherished book out of the chest to read by the fire, it would hold the same stories it always had, and so would her days, until they ended.
Her feet fell off the bed’s edge like lead weights, and the morning’s first sitting-up breath was a sigh.
“It’s too early in the day for sighs,” she said aloud. She talked to herself all the time now; she used her voice to slice the heavy air into strips so it wouldn’t smother her. “If I spend all my disappointment before breakfast, what will I go on for the rest of the day?” And she smiled at herself for being such a sour thing. She thought of Dame Somnolence at the factory, whose advice to the girls was to “live bitter, so the crows will have no taste for you when you’re dead.”
“And why should I deprive them of nourishment?” Neve had countered, because before this summer she’d still had it in her to be saucy. “Don’t they deserve a treat, too?”