When Justin opened his eyes, he saw three children squatting in front of him.

“He’s awake!” said the smallest, a little girl with huge eyes and short brown hair.

“I told you he wasn’t dead,” said the largest, a dark-haired boy of about Justin’s age. “They never are, no matter how bad they look.”

“Come on, then,” said the girl, reaching out to Justin. “Lie here in the sun all day and you’ll get burned.”

Justin blinked, then glanced back at his shoulders. The wings were still there. Why didn’t these strange children say anything about them?

“Maybe I should just fly away,” he muttered, pushing himself to his knees. He did it a little bit to brag, a little bit to see if he could get the children to say something about the wings.

“Oh, you can’t do that,” said the little girl, sounding very sensible. “Well, you could. But it wouldn’t be smart. Not until you’ve talked to the old woman.”

“She’s right,” said the biggest boy. “Come on, we’ll show you the way. But first you ought to eat something.”

“So you’ve seen people with wings before?” asked Justin.

“Silly!” giggled the girl. “We all had wings when we came here. Were you scared when you went through the cloud? I was.”

Justin nodded, uncertain of what to say. He realized someone else seemed to be in the same condition. “Doesn’t he ever talk?” he asked, gesturing to the middle child, a dark-eyed boy who looked to be about nine.

“Not yet,” said the girl. “I think he will someday. But he was in pretty bad shape when he got here.”

“Come on,” said the biggest boy. “The old woman will tell you all about it.”

Justin followed the three strange children up the beach and into the forest, a forest so perfect that it almost made him weep. It was not that it was beautiful—though it was. Nor that the trees were old and thick and strange—though they were. What made it so wonderful, from Justin’s point of view, was that it was filled with tree houses . . . and the tree houses were filled with children. Happy children. Laughing children. Children who scrambled along rope bridges, dangled from thick branches, and swung from tree to tree on vines.

“Hey, new boy!” they cried when they spotted him. “Welcome! Welcome!”

No one seemed to think it odd that Justin had wings, though a few of them gazed at the wings with a hungry look.

Justin’s own hunger, which he had nearly forgotten in the strangeness and the wonder of this new place, stirred when the children led him to a platform built low in a tree, where there were bowls of fruit and bread and cheese. He ate in silence at first, too hungry to talk. But when the edge was off his appetite, he began to ask questions.