taken from Chapter 1

—NOT SO LONG AGO—

Not so very long ago, spring was blossoming into summer. A soft blue mist was settling over the evening mountains. The land was covered in a coat of bright, rich greens. Streams ran sparkling waters down through the sloping forests to the meadows below. Night-blooming flowers were just opening their petals and releasing an intoxicating scent into the twilight. It was the smell of new life, powdery, sweet, and fresh. It was the time for uncurling, undoing, unwrapping all that had been hiding, waiting to come out from under the folds of winter.

Even the dreary coal town at the end of the mountain road was feeling the effects of spring. Ordinarily, the coal dust and street dirt had a permanent grip on this place. It was everywhere. It was in your mouth when you talked and in your lungs when you breathed. It crawled up the sides of newly painted houses and into the cupboards where food was kept. The women engaged in a daily battle, washing it back from the floors and soaping it out of their clothes.

Indeed, this town was covered in a pall of greys and black. The early spring hadn’t brought much promise with its storms of rain and mud. But now, tonight, as if by magic, there was an overpowering appearance of green—green leaves overhead in the scanty trees—green grass along the spattered fences—green buds everywhere, forcing their way out of scrawny twigs.

People opened their doors and windows to the breezes. Instead of hurrying their children to bed, the women let them continue to play in the yards and on the porches. The night had a marvelous floating quality to it. People just hung about outside, suspended in the moment. The men tramped home from the mines to their usual watering hole at the corner pub. Somehow, they didn’t feel the same eagerness to drown their day’s end in drink. A number of them had pulled a couple of tables out front and were leaning back in their chairs, swapping stories and sipping their beers.

Up in the mountains

the blue mist swirled and

descended closer to the trees,

revealing the first stars

in the sky...