“When you hatch, we’ll be the kind of beast and guardian who listen when people need help,” Mina promised. “We’re going to make a difference.”

She picked up the book she’d been reading to the egg: the story of the group of rain guardians who’d created the lake district. Some kids used their three hours with their egg to nap or knit or play solitaire—​there were dozens of solo games invented for kids to entertain themselves with while their beasts developed, shaped by the thoughts from the kids’ heads—​but Mina liked to read aloud, so her unborn beast could hear her favorite tales of adventures and righting wrongs and of people who lived exciting lives beyond her family’s little patch of farmland.

As she read, she wondered when her beast was going to come out and tell her what it thought of the two years’ worth of stories Mina had read. Gaton had told her what it felt like to be linked mind-to-mind to a storm beast: he couldn’t hear all of Arde’s thoughts the way he heard his own, and Arde couldn’t always hear his, but he could always feel his beast, Arde’s emotions like a constant hum in the back of his mind. Gaton said it was like hearing a distant song: he couldn’t quite make out all the words, but he felt the tempo and bits of the tune. And when he wanted to talk to Arde, all he had to do was concentrate on both the words and his beast. It was like shouting. But quietly. She thought she’d like that.

Mina read until the end of the book, closed it, and then pressed her lips to the shell. “Looking forward to meeting you.”

Crack.

Jumping to her feet, Mina stared at the egg. Was it . . . ? Had it . . . ? But she didn’t hear another sound. She circled around it again, examining every inch of its iridescence. No new cracks. She ran her hands over the hard, smooth shell, and it felt like it always did.

Maybe I want it so badly I imagined it.

She could easily believe that.

Laying her cheek against the shell again, she whispered, “Come on. I know you have things you want to tell me, too.” She pressed her hand against the smooth rainbow surface. “You can do it. Break free.” Whenever you’re ready, I’m here, she thought at it.

But the egg was silent.

Sighing, she curled up against the egg and pulled out her sketchbook and began to draw the egg with its crack. She then drew more cracks, as if that would make it hatch faster. Drawing always made her feel better. It was soothing, the way her pencil whispered on the paper. You could capture a past moment with a pencil, or imagine a future one.

She heard footsteps thump up the stairs and her mother call, “Mina? Is it hatching?”