I am a little girl, no more than seven. The wind whips through my hair as my mother pushes me on the swing hanging from the tree in our backyard.

“You should try it, Mama,” I say, tipping my head back so that my long hair brushes the blades of grass at the bottom of the swing’s arc. “It feels like flying.”

And she does. She climbs onto the swing and I put my hands on her knees and give her a push. Her laugh mingles with the birds chirping in the branches. She swings back toward me and I push her again. The fabric of her skirt bunches around her knees. A flash of yellow-orange. A tattoo on her thigh.

“What’s that?” I ask as she flies away from me.

“I always thought it looked a bit like a sunburst.” She smooths her skirt over her legs. Swings back in my direction.

“How did you get it?”

“It appeared when your papa surprised me with this house. Our first home together.” Her toes drag in the grass and she comes to a stop. “It was a burst of pure joy,” she says, touching her fingertip to my nose. “Kind of like right now.”

The memory fades. But I still remember the glow in my chest. The way warmth spread through me.

And now Latham is holding a bone flute with the same sunburst tattoo.

Bone flutes are used to control animals, and they’re made from the bones of the same type of creature they are meant to command. But what if a bone flute were made from a human bone? What if that bone belonged to my mother?

Latham watches as the realization floods over me. As it turns my blood to ice.

He smiles. He puts the flute to his lips and begins to play. My mind goes blank. And then, distantly, I hear a familiar lullaby—one both my mother and Gran used to sing to me.

Come with me to the dreaming place

Where the owls call and the children race

Come with me to the dreaming place

And stay by my side for-ev-er

“Come, Saskia,” my mother says. I see her in front of me, arms outstretched. Joy leaps in my chest.

“Mama?” I stand and take a step toward her.

“I missed you,” she says.

A sob chokes my throat. “I missed you too.”

“Saskia!” A shout pierces the air and the music stops. My mother wavers. Starts to disintegrate.

I look around, confused.

“Saskia!”

Bram’s face swims in front of me. His hand closes around my arm. “Come with me.”

The music starts again. Come with me to the dreaming place….

My mother grows more solid. She opens her arms.

I’m yanked violently to the side. Bram’s face. Come with me. My mother’s. Come with me.