Everton Miles Is Stranger Than Me
Page 16
All three of them, Everton, Martin, and Jez, stand in front of me.
You must choose, Gwendolyn Golden.
All the joy I’ve felt for the past two days drains out of me. How can I possibly choose just one of these people to be my new Watcher? I can’t do it. I love all three of them in different ways, for different reasons. One old friend, one dear friend, and one new friend. I’ve been through too much for the Spirit Flyers to make me choose one.
I hesitate for a few moments, but it’s impossible. “I choose all three to be my Watcher,” I say.
The Spirit Flyers take a few seconds to look at each other, which I think is talking for them.
Yes. It is done. It is amenable, and unprecedented, but we will accept your choice of Jezebel Katherine Fremont, Martin Philip Evells, and Everton Paul Miles as your Watchers. These three friends have brought you joy in different ways, and you have been tried harshly by circumstances beyond your control. We allow it.
The Spirit Flyers lead Jez, Martin, and Everton to a corner of the forest clearing, and I hear each of them murmur as they take the oath to watch over me and generally cover my back for all time.
I sneak off for a moment because I hear my brother and sister giggling in the forest, and I don’t want them to wander away. My mom is deep in conversation with Emerson and the other adults. So I slip into the trees and find C2. Christopher is looking with great tenderness at his sister … who is floating just above his head. They both see me, and Christine giggles and waves.
Of course. Of course this is how this year will end! How did I not see this coming? Christine was flying above the flowers in her picture in Adam’s office! Why wouldn’t C2 be able to fly, or at least one of them? It makes perfect sense. I smile and wave back. Celestine is suddenly standing beside me, and I think she smiles too (although it’s hard to tell).
Little golden sister, your father is all around you.
“I know.” I nod. “He really is.”
The sacred ring has enhanced your sister’s gift on this special night. Do not worry, she is unlikely to fly elsewhere until she is older.
That’s a relief. I watch my sister float and listen to the twins giggle in the dark forest for a few moments. Our lives are about to change in ways I can’t even imagine. There are two Night Flyers in the family? Possibly three? I can’t think about that right now. Not tonight. Instead, I ask something that has been bothering me for a while.
“Celestine, how did you find us in the Shade?”
Do you not know?
“I really don’t.”
You were the only real heartbeats. The only real love. That is the only way to banish the Shade, with love and with the living. And you two were very much alive.
“Is the Shade gone forever?”
No, little golden sister. There is always sadness, and a new Shade is already on the rise. There will always be a Shade, and other enemies to torment your kind.
“What? What other enemies?”
No, no talk of enemies tonight, Gwendolyn Golden. Now is the time to celebrate.
I want to pester Celestine, who is being unusually cryptic, but the Spirit Flyer moves silently through the trees back to the clearing and the adults. I follow until I have a terrible thought and stop.
“Who’s going to tell my mother about my little sister?” Someone is going to have to, and I hope with all my heart that it won’t be me. Maybe I can make one of my three new Watchers do it.
Celestine looks at me for a moment.
You are a Night Flyer now, Gwendolyn Golden. Together with your community, there is nothing you cannot face. But tonight I shall help you. I shall tell your mother about your sister’s new gift.
A white feather drops from Celestine’s wing and drifts softly into my hand with a gentle flutter. My skin receives it with warmth. It feels alive as it settles beside my own golden feather, which I’ve been clutching.
It is not your father’s golden feather, but a Spirit Flyer feather is a rare gift. I am only allowed to give one in my life, and now it is yours. It is a special bond between us. May it serve us both well.
I’m touched. And what does this special bond mean, exactly? But the Spirit Flyer is already moving off to the clearing. In the next moment my mother and the crowd of mortals and immortals follow Celestine through the woods toward C2. I can see Everton coming through the trees, looking for me.
The white feather pulses gently in my hand. My mother is about to find out my little sister can fly, and I’m not entirely sure, but I think I’ve just been adopted by a starshot immortal.
Not strange at all. Just another completely normal day, I’m discovering, if you’re a Night Flyer.
And I am.
In the Same series
The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden
Philippa Dowding
One perfectly ordinary day, for no apparent reason, Gwendolyn Golden wakes up floating around her room like one of her little brother’s Batman balloons.
Puberty is weird enough. Everyone already thinks she’s an oddball with anger issues because her father vanished in a mysterious storm one night when she was six. Then there are the mean, false rumours people are spreading about her at school. On top of all that, now she’s a flying freak.
How can she tell her best friend or her mother? How can she live her life? After Gwendolyn almost meets disaster flying too high and too fast one night, help arrives from the most unexpected place. And stranger still? She’s not alone.
Also by award-winning author Philippa Dowding
The Lost Gargoyle Series
The Gargoyle in My Yard
What do you do when a 400-year-old gargoyle moves into your backyard? Especially when no one else but you knows he’s ALIVE? Twelve-year-old Katherine Newberry can tell you all about life with a gargoyle. He’s naughty and gets others into trouble. But if you’re like Katherine, after getting to know him, you might really want him to stay.
Commended for the 2009 Resource Links Best Books, for the 2010 Best Books for Kids and Teens, and shortlisted for the 2011 Diamond Willow Award.
The Gargoyle Overhead
What if your best friend was a naughty 400-year-old gargoyle? And what if he just happened to be in terrible danger? Its not always easy, but thirteen-year-old Katherine Newberry is friends with a gargoyle who has lost his greatest friend. Gargoth’s greatest enemy is prowling the city, and it’s a race against time to find her first!
Shortlisted for the 2012 Silver Birch Express Award.
The Gargoyle at the Gates
Christopher is astonished to discover that gargoyles Ambergine and Gargoth are living in the park next door and that Katherine, a girl from his class, knows the gargoyles, as well. When the Collector steals Ambergine, it’s up to Christopher and Katherine to get her back, as long as something else doesn’t catch them along the way.
Shortlisted for the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award, the 2013 Diamond Willow Award, and commended for the 2013 White Raven Award.
They’re troubling. They’re bizarre.
And they JUST might be true …
Weird Stories Gone Wrong
Copyright © Philippa Dowding 2016
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All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Allister Thompson
Design: Courtney Horner
Cover design: Courtney Horner
Cover image: background: Kathy Konkle/iStock, Shoes: Mika
teke/iStock
Ebook Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dowding, Philippa, 1963-, author
Everton Miles is stranger than me / Philippa Dowding.
(The night flyer's handbook)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3527-9 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3528-6 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-1-4597-3529-3 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8607.O9874E94 2016 jC813'.6 C2016-901737-0
C2016-901738-9
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