Hanna Howard - Ignite the Sun

PRAISE FOR IGNITE THE SUN

How do you ignite the sun in a world teeming with darkness? Howard explores the answer in this lyrical fairy tale that feels at once familiar and fresh. Her innovative world is filled with fascinating characters that will stick in your heart long after you turn the final page. A vivid story, beautifully told.

JOANNA RUTH MEYER, AUTHOR OF ECHO NORTH, BENEATH THE HAUNTING SEA, AND BEYOND THE SHADOWED EARTH

To Jerry Howard, whose belief in my writing was
unwavering, and without whose encouragement
this book would not exist. Miss you always, Dad.

BLINK

Ignite the Sun

Copyright 2020 by Hanna Hutchinson

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Blink, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Hardcover ISBN 978-0-310-76973-6

Ebook ISBN 978-0-310-76975-0

Epub Edition June 2020 9780310769750

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

All internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by the publisher, nor does the publisher vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Cover direction: Cindy Davis

Interior design: Denise Froehlich

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

MADELEINE LENGLE, A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT

Y arrow, tell me about the sun.

Eh? He looked up from his lap, the unwound strings of his fiddle sprawling like insect antennae into the air. What for?

I want to hear about the way things used to be, I said. Before the Darkness.

The old man returned to stringing the instrument, brows furrowed. I glanced across the small cabin, warm and smoke-scented from the fire in the hearth, to where Linden Hatch, Yarrows grandson and my best friend since I was six years old, sat mending socks. He waved me on with an enthusiastic nod.

I stood up, forgetting the feathers I had been sorting into piles for arrow fletching, causing them to flutter down around me in a whirling cloud. I laughed and spun away from them, toward Yarrow.

Once upon a time, there was something called the sun, I prompted, staggering to a halt in front of his rocking chair.

Yarrow pressed his lips together, but his stone-colored eyes had gone warm and sparkling. He scratched his bald head and wrinkled his brow, making his bushy, gray eyebrows look so much like caterpillars I half expected them to crawl right off his face. You start at Gildenbrook next week, Siria. Dont you think you might do better to go home and get to bed?

My shoulders sagged. Gildenbrook: stiff lace gowns and tedious lessons for the next six years of my life.

I wish I could learn to be a gardener instead, I said wistfully. You and Linden could teach me.

Yarrow snorted. What would your mother and father do with a gardener for a daughter? They want you to become a proper young lady, not a hired hand.

He didnt point out the obvious: that my tramping around the dark grounds of our manor with him and Linden every day practically made me a hired hand already. I looked around the old cabin: at the scrubbed wooden table, the mismatched curtains I had helped sew, the floor-to-ceiling piles of firewood beside the hearthmore home to me than Nightingale Manor had ever beenand wilted slightly. Yarrow was right: my parents didnt want a gardener for a daughter.

But one more week couldnt hurt.

I leaned forward and put my hands over the wiry strings of Yarrows fiddle. Tell me about the way things used to be, I pleaded. Tell me about how the sun would light up the whole world, and about the trees being green and leafy, and about grass, and blue sky, and sunlight, and birds, and magic

His laughter rolled out in an infectious rumble, making his rocking chair lurch backward and sending me toppling sideways. I think you already know it all, Weedy.

Not the way you do!

Linden had abandoned his darning and was now dragging a fat sack of grain across the floor to the woven rug in front of the rocking chair. We plopped back against it and gazed expectantly up at Yarrow, who sighed. Linden grinned at me, messy brown hair everywhere, the dimple winking in his right cheek.

Setting aside his half-strung fiddle, Yarrow reached for his pipe and began packing it. I sniffed to catch the spicy, loamy scentthe smell of storiesand waited with my feet tapping while he went to light a taper in the fireplace and ignite the tobacco.

Once upon a time, he said, turning back to us as the bowl glowed orange and a trickle of smoke crept from the corner of his mouth, there was something called the sun.

FOUR YEARS LATER

T he day had been dark, even for us. In early evening, the Darkness was denser than tar, and it made the sweeping drive before Gildenbrook School for Girls look like a black river that glistened in the light of many windows as it curved downhill to meet the road. I gazed at it from my tower dormitory. In just a few hours, its current would carry me away, perhaps forever, to the Royal City of Umbraz.

Upon meeting my eyes in the reflection of the darkened window, I released a breathfogging the chill glass. An impulse seized me quicker than thinking, and in a swift motion of my index finger I swirled a circle over the misty surface and sketched a half dozen lines branching out from it, just like Yarrow had once showed me. A sun.

I stared at it for a moment, surprised and slightly ashamed. Nearly sixteen years old, and I was still drawing mythic totems to ward off the Darkness? I would deserve it if the queen didnt choose me tomorrow.

A message for you, Miss Nightingale.

I jumped. Smearing my palm across the window, I whirled to find a slight, plain woman standing in my doorway. She wore the shapeless black tunic issued to all Gildenbrooks servants, as well as the gleaming obsidian band the queen herself had fixed around the upper right arms of every nymph who surrendered to her after the rebellion. The band blocked magic, and without it, this nympha naiad, or water nymph, by the look of her lank hair, blue-tinged skin, and enormous aqua eyeswould be able to perform unspeakable horrors with her elemental powers.