Excerpt from Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Florence?" Her father looks with curiosity at his younger daughter, tucks a large white napkin down into his shirt collar.

"You are responsible for my favorite dish?"

Mrs. Nightingale speaks kindly. "Flo dear, tell us. And Parthenope, a bite at least. Mrs. Gale has gone to great trouble."

Briefly, because it is painful, I describe freeing the hare, Mrs. Gale's taking it from me. Wonder what to do about the petticoat, stuffed beneath my bed.

"Poor thing," says Mama. "You tried saving a wild creature's life. I am sorry you couldn't."

"I'm not," Mr. Nightingale says, waving his fork. "Parthe, try a taste with the blood sauce. Mrs. Gale has peppered it to perfection."

"I won't!" Parthe sobs. "I won't drink blood!" She slides off her chair and runs from the room.

I chew on a nip of hare's meat in dark red gravy. Delicious. Not for the first time, I wonder what is the matter with me, why things that cause my sister to cry do not bother me in the least.

Mrs. Nightingale excuses herself to go ask Mrs. Gale to fix a simpler supper for Parthe.

"I found stones on my walk, Papa."

"Excellent. Bring them to the library after supper, and we'll have a look."

He examines my ordinary bits of rock, sets them aside, holds out three small fossils. I choose the largest.

"A brachiopod, dug from a limestone quarry in Roade. How many years are you now, Florence?"

"Seven since May, Papa."

"Well, that mollusk in your hand is millions of years old. You must imagine it coming into your possession from a place called Deep Time."

"What is that?" I ask.

"Not a place so much as a way of looking far outside the limits of human time. Not that long ago, it was believed the world was no more than six thousand years old. Today science tells us it is far older, a fact that disturbs a great many people."

"Why?"

"They fear science will challenge the existence of God. Call into question the truth of the Bible. Threaten all Christian civilization. I hardly agree. Science helps us know how God made this world. It is glorious inquiry, not witchcraft. Here, have all three. The others are echinoids found in glacial beds from the same quarry."

With Parthe, Papa talks of simple things. With me, it is as if I am some creature he must pour all his man's knowledge into. As if to change me into the boy, the son he will never have.

In the nursery, I pull the notebook from under my pillow. Fashioned from Mama's and Papa's old letters, each page is folded into fours, the folded pages neatly stitched down one side. I write in the blank spaces, down the sides, at the very top and bottom. When one notebook is full, I put it in an old glove box of Mama's and make a new one.

Beneath a pencil sketch of the mollusk, I copy the description Papa has written down for me. Brachiopod. Jurassic Age. Found by William Nightingale, 1825, limestone bed in Roade. Turning the page, I sketch the three echinoids, then, from memory, the ammonite, named after the Greek ram-horned god, Ammon. Papa has promised to take me to Dorset one day to dig for fossils. He forgets most of his promises to me; it is doubtful he will remember this one.

Beneath the spiraled ammonite, I print:

Monster
Latin: monere, "to warn"

I am unlike other children. I may be, as Miss Christie says, a monster.

Excerpted from Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard. Copyright © 2024 by Melissa Pritchard. Excerpted by permission of Bellevue Literary Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.