PROLOGUE
The Ruin of Eveningstar
On the day Jennifer Scales turned five, her
family was forced to move. It was the morning their quiet river
town of Eveningstar, Minnesota, died a horrible death.
Jennifer remembered only dim dawn light
against her window, her mother rousing her, and jeans and a
sweatshirt finding their way onto her tired body while her head
drooped against her chest.
If she thought a little harder, she could
remember walking through the crisp, brown woods behind her house
until they reached the Mississippi River, stepping onto a flat,
slippery boat that sunk a bit with her weight, and shivering in her
mother’s firm arms while her father’s voice calmly reassured
her.
And if she relaxed her mind, which she
wouldn’t be able to do until she was older, she could remember
standing on a bluff beyond the other side of the river, watching
from a safe distance as her hometown burned under a crescent
moon. She heard the roars of beasts—dinosaurs?—the
howls of wolves, and the screeches of unknown things.
The morning of September 18, those things laid
waste to Eveningstar. No one from beyond its borders ever tried to
put out the fires, or bury those who died there, or even report the
incident.
No one went there. No one remembered there.
Eveningstar, Minnesota, settled by Scandinavian immigrants and
incorporated more than one hundred years past, fell into ashes and
out of existence.