Eighteen. Orphaned. Homeless.
Mr. Finch adjusted his coat, a small motion that felt like a verdict. “You and your flock need to be off this property by sundown.”
I blinked at him, slow, as if maybe the world would change shape when my eyelids opened again.
“Where am I supposed to go?” I asked.
He shrugged with one shoulder, polite as a closed door. “That is no longer my concern.”
My eyes slid past him, past the tidy rooftops and the calm grid of a town that had never once imagined it could fail, and landed on the granite cliffs that formed the valley’s western wall.
They rose like a giant’s spine, wind-scoured and indifferent, a brutal stage against the dying season. I’d spent my childhood thinking the cliffs were the edge of the world, the place where the valley ended and the impossible began.
Now my mind did something strange.
