The last thing I remember as I close my eyes is Tan’s feather lighting up the lighthouse lantern. I wonder if it is still shining?

Chapter 16

16

A LITTLE BROTHER

The next morning, the sea is as flat as a pancake, and the air is still and silent. The young boy sleeps in my parents’ bedroom long after sunrise, while his father and older brother doze in the armchairs in the sitting room next door. I look in on each of them from time to time. They have slept for so long that it is as if they are in a fairy tale from my book. Some strange version of Sleeping Beauty.

Grandma has been out seeing to the hens and milking the goat. She and I have breakfast together in the kitchen. I take the flask of Tan’s ashes from beside the range and check it again. I am hoping that there will be a tiny glow of light inside it this morning.

But my hopes are dashed once again. There is nothing.

“Maybe the kitchen’s not the best place for Tan’s ashes,” Grandma says, “Maybe she needs to be free, floating on the wind.”

“Just as she did in life,” I say.

I think of the shooting star then. How I saw it streaking across the sky that first night I was alone. It wasn’t a shooting star at all, I realise. It was Tan spreading her fiery wings and flying to our island.

“You’re right, Grandma,” I say at last. “I think Tan needs to fly.”

We take the flask and climb the winding steps to the top of the lighthouse.

When we step into the lantern room, there’s still a soft glow coming from inside the lantern: the feather.

It is hard to see the feather’s light now because of the powerful sunshine flooding the room, but it’s most definitely there. I open the lantern and take it out.

The glow from the feather is very faint, but Grandma sees it too.

“I’ll get some more oil when I take those fishermen over to the mainland,” she says. “Then we won’t need to use the feather tonight, Deryn. You should keep it. As a reminder of your friend.”

I brush the feather against my cheek. It feels warm. I put it in my pocket.

Grandma and I climb out onto the metal walkway that runs around the outside of the lantern room. Grandma hands me the flask and I unscrew its lid.

“Goodbye, Tan,” I say. “And thank you.”

I lean over the edge of the rail and pour the ashes out in a cloud of grey dust.

A warm breeze whips the ashes away, and we watch as it carries them far out to sea.

“That wind is special,” Grandma says. “It comes from the desert, but people say it carries a little stardust with it. A little magic.”