Janni Simner - Bones of Faerie

Caleb stared thoughtfully at the bright leaves. Then he stared at me, just as thoughtful. “Well done, indeed,” he said, and nodded.

I held out the quia leaf in my hand.

Caleb grew very still. He took the leaf from me as seriously as he had once taken a quarter from my mother, turning it over in his hands. “There'll be seeds,” he said softly. “Within a few years. We'll go back then. We'll take the risk, if only long enough for planting.” He smiled, a small smile but a real one, reminding me of the young man in my visions. “Our worlds have always been linked, Liza. We forgot that during the War. We should never have forgotten.”

“Lizzy.” Mom started forward, then stopped, as if no more sure of me than of Caleb.

I walked toward her instead, slowly, steadily—until with what might have been a sob and might have been a laugh she pulled me close.

All may yet be well. Almost, I believed that. Not as a promise. No one could promise, not after the War, not after so many other things that couldn't be undone.

But the trees were releasing their leaves. Who knew what else might happen?

Allie twirled her oak leaf on its stem. Matthew leaned against his grandmother, and Kate draped her arm absently over his back. Leaves continued to fall. Snow flurries began once more. And my mother kept holding me, holding me close, as if this time she wouldn't let go.

Many thanks to: Laurell K. Hamilton, Deborah Millitello, Marella Sands, Bob Sheaff, and Mark Sumner, who read the opening of Bones of Faerie before I left St. Louis; Jane Yolen, who also read the opening and kept asking when I was going to finish the book until I finally did; C. S. Adler, Dawn Dixon, Larry Hammer, Jill Knowles, Ann Manheimer, Patricia McCord, Earl W. Parrish, Frances Robertson, Roxy Rogers, Amy Stewart, Jennifer J. Stewart, and Robin Stewart, all of whom read and reread the manuscript for me; my agent, Nancy Gallt, who believed in the completed story; and my editor, Jim Thomas, who took the best book I knew how to write and showed me how to make it better.

Janni Lee Simner caught her first glimpse of the St. Louis Arch on a cross-country camping trip when she was thirteen. She returned to St. Louis for college and lived there for eight years before making her way farther west. She currently lives in the Arizona desert, where even without magic the plants know how to bite and the dandelions really do have thorns. She's published four books for younger readers, as well as more than thirty short stories.

Bones of Faerie is her first young adult novel.

To learn more about Janni, visit her Web site at www.simner.com