On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (The Wingfeather Saga, #1)

by Andrew Peterson

shoo Janner out of the house, where he was promptly bonked on the head by a falling hammer.

“I’m not your son! You’re not my father, and if my father were alive, he’d understand.” Janner already hated himself for what he had said. He was breathing hard, staring at the stove, afraid to look at his grandfather’s face. His chest felt hot, and tears were coming. He put a hand in his pocket and squeezed the folded drawing of his father.

“Now, lad, you’re getting long of leg and yer voice is getting thicker. I expect you figure you’re nearing manhood, do ye?”

He could hold his tears back no longer; they dripped from the end of his nose onto the picture, mingling with the spray of the sea.

Janner looked up sharply. “You were there? What happened?” “Aye.” “Papa, no—” Nia said.

“It’s time he knew something of where he’s from, lass.” Podo pointed at the drawing, then at Janner. “Look at ’im. He’s the spitting image—”

no good. No good.”

“His name was Esben?”

Janner was silent. Podo was silent.

The thwaps in the bag were silent.

name he had just heard for the first time.

“Hee,” Podo laughed.

Tink sounded disappointed. “No spanking?” “No. No spanking.” “So when you’re twelve, you can be a stinker and not get whomped?”

“It’s complicated,”

whenever the other children in Glipwood spoke of their fathers, or when they asked Janner why he lived with his old grandfather, he felt like an oddity.

ridgerunner,*2 whom Oskar had adopted six years earlier upon opening a crate that was supposed to have been full of books from Torrboro. Instead, Oskar had been shocked to find a starving, frightened Zouzab cowering inside.

“I want some sugarberry pie.”