Unraveling Fate (Fates Saga #1)

Prologue

Sonora, California

The dandelions were singing again. Which meant Cadenza was late for kindergarten. She was always late for school when the dandelions sang.

She capered through her backyard, jumping and kicking in time with their hot-sunshine song. The ground joined in with a bass thrum, and the pine trees chimed in harmony.

Her mother’s discordant voice called from inside the house. Cadenza ignored it and twirled through the familiar song of her favorite flowers.

Shapes moved out from behind the garden shed.

A man. And a woman. Cadenza stopped dancing.

Both of the strangers glowed pale in the sun.

An almost-color shifted over their skin, like they hadn’t decided what color to put on that morning.

The same possibility of hue bled into their strange clothing—animal skin and moss.

The only firm color was in the generous crown of red blossoms that circled the woman’s head.

The man had antlers.

Dandelion song plucked at Cadenza’s toes, but she didn’t return to her dance. Maybe she should call out for her father.

She tried to yell for him, “Babbo!” but the word stuck in her throat.

The woman with the flower crown was watching her, inspecting her. It gave Cadenza the same nervous burning in her belly as watching singing judges grade her big sisters, and she wondered if the woman had a clipboard hidden somewhere under all that moss.

Maybe the strangers were friends of her mother’s from the theater?

She took two steps away from the theater people. The music swirled around her legs. And jumped inside her belly. Cadenza clutched her throat, face screwed up like she’d swallowed a bug.

The music lived outside of her. Always there. Always wanting to play. But always outside—in the ground, in the flowers, the wind. Never had it crawled inside her.

Pressure built in her chest. Notes pushed at her ribcage, climbing up her throat, prickling over her skin. Her fingers tingled with melody. Earthsong buzzed the bottom of her feet.

The song wanted something—it pushed at her from the inside. An urgent need to do something with the music stretched at her skin and inflated her ribs. She held her breath, afraid she might float away like a balloon, and Babbo would never find her.

What if she popped?

Her lip trembled, and a tear slid down her cheek. The man with the antlers smiled. Just a little. He made a motion with his hand like her teacher did at school when she thought Cadenza almost had the answer to a question and just had to reach a little further.

The back door smacked open, unleashing her mother’s voice, shrill and soprano. “Cadenza! Che fai? You are late again.” Legs blocked the antlered man and flowered woman from view. Cadenza threw her arms around her mother’s knees, but her mother pried her off.

“What’s this?” She swiped the tears off Cadenza’s face. “Your face is a mess. Sbrigati, sbrigati. Your teacher will say I don’t parent.”

“The dandelions were singing, Mamma,” Cadenza tried to explain. “But it stuck in my throat, and I don’t know what it wants—”

Her mother pointed a red fingernail in her face.

“Basta. That is enough. You are five years old; you need to stop playing this game. What will people think? That I am crazy and taught my daughter to be crazy too?” Her mother’s hands gestured wildly in the air.

“The only music is the music people make. These”—she swatted at the dandelion puffs—“are just weeds.” She stormed towards the house.

“In the car in two minutes! Mamma mia, che ci faccio con questa pazza?”

Pazza. Crazy. Cadenza didn’t really understand what those words meant, but her mother only said them when she was angry.

The song expanded in her tear-clogged throat again.

No. Mamma said no. She scrunched her eyes shut and shoved the notes down. Shrank it out of her throat, out of her belly, back down her legs. Let it flow out of her feet into the dusty ground.

Shuddering, she drew in a breath and opened her eyes. The flowered woman and the antlered man were gone.