Prologue The Song Before Dawn Mr. Otis used to say that before the stars had names, the world had a song. He told it quietly, often with his harmonica resting in his lap. The children would lean closer. Beyond the carriage windows, the darkness seemed to lean closer too. In that first song, light and shadow moved together. Between them burned the Lantern of Light, a living heart whose seven tones opened paths between the waking world and the world of dreams. Those paths were called the Dream Bridge. Along them, distant worlds could hear one another, and a soul that had lost its way might still find a road home. Then, Otis said, a singer tried to hold more of the song than any one voice could bear. Her name was Seraphina Vale. She called her song the Eternal Aria and believed it could bring heaven and earth together. But somewhere in the singing, her wish to heal became a wish to command. The Lantern could not hold the strain. The Lantern shattered. Its seven tones scattered through time. In the space they left behind, the Oblivion Cello sounded its first note. The Dream Bridge broke, and the roads between worlds fell dark. People remembered different parts of what happened next. Some spoke of creatures rising from the silence. Others remembered only a promise: hearts joined in love could gather the fragments and make the Lantern sing again. Otis never told the children where the story ended. He would lift his harmonica, play a few notes, and let them sit with what they had heard. Andy listened for something that might lead him to his father. Rose listened as though she almost remembered the tune. Holly heard a second voice beneath it, too faint for the others to catch. Michael kept the beat against his knee. Outside, the train carried them through the dark. None of them yet knew how far the song would take them. Chapter 1 Seraphina's Song Mr. Otis remembered the first time he heard her sing. He had been a boy, barely tall enough to see over the oak pews of Widow’s Gate Chapel. The choirmaster called him forward, muttering about giving the farmer’s boy a chance. Otis clutched the hymnal with damp hands. He wanted to sing well enough to be asked back. His first note came out clear. He steadied his breath and followed it. The other boys turned toward him, and the choirmaster nodded. For the first time that afternoon, Otis felt he belonged. That evening, the congregation gathered beneath the gas lamps. Otis took his place with the choir and saw her standing three rows ahead. Seraphina Vale’s auburn hair caught the candlelight. When she began to sing, the room quieted. Otis felt her voice in the pew beneath his hands, in the floorboards, in the breath he had forgotten to release. During a pause between verses, she laughed at something another singer said. Years afterward, Otis could still remember that small, ordinary sound more clearly than the hymn. He remembered something else too. When her voice rose, the candles bent toward her. For a moment, a shadow crossed her face although no one had moved between her and the light. When his solo came, Otis tried to follow the notes in the hymnal. Then he thought of his grandmother singing beside the hearth, and the melody softened into the mournful cadence he had learned from her. The choirmaster’s face flushed purple. “Not like that!” he hissed. “This is a sanctuary of order, not taverns and alleyways!” Otis dropped his gaze, burning with shame. But from the corner of his eye, he caught Seraphina’s glance. She was smiling. Not mockingly, but as though she had recognized a fellow traveler in the dark. Otis finished the verse. He did not know what to call the music yet. He only knew it sounded like home, and that Seraphina had heard it.
