Runaway Silver: The Impossible Sight of Lily Lilac

By SW Quinn

Experience the #1 International Bestseller today!

• #1 Children's Survival Story (Amazon, September 2021)
• #1 Teen/Young Adult Fantasy & Supernatural Mystery (Amazon, September 2021)
• #1 Teen/Young Adult Fiction about Self-Est

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simpatico Studios, LLC
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781737940838

Book preview

PART I

CHAPTER 1: GIRL ON THE RIVER

On the bank of a swollen river deep in the woods, I happened upon a lifeless, gray-haired girl.

I’m not especially familiar with children. But I’m familiar enough to know they don’t usually wash ashore barefoot in the forest. I’m also familiar enough to know that, as hair color goes, gray isn’t found often on someone so very young.

And young she was, maybe eight, or nine. And she’d been in a fight. A big fight. A battle, perhaps. By her tattered, singed clothes, I could tell. Cuts and bruises canvassed her wrists and legs.

I knelt to make closer inspection. She wore a gray overcoat. Under it, a ruffled gray blouse. Below that, gray, ankle-length pants. The clothes of a show hand. Of a servant.

And the whole ensemble, gray.

Most unusual indeed.

Her hair, long, wet, and matted over her face, shimmered under the high afternoon sun. She lay draped on her side, head at rest on her bicep. Her knuckles grazed the water; her palms, pale and pruned, faced open to the heavens.

The story told itself.

Poor thing, I thought. You probably never saw it coming.

With my fingers I lifted the bangs from her eyes—and gasped through my nose when she grabbed and squeezed my hand.

Please, she whispered, her breath warm on my wrist. I’m so...dizzy. She rolled onto her back, famished blue eyes searching for me in the daylight.

I smiled. How fortunate for her that dizziness is the one problem I can solve best.

But her clothes. If I helped her—a show hand—to the Mission? They’d string her up on sight.

I cracked a knuckle, balancing my predicament: I had to save her. I had to hide her.

But I couldn’t do both.

CHAPTER 2: MAMA’S PROMISE

It turns out, gray hair and clothes were far from the most unusual thing about the girl on the river.

Indeed, the most unusual thing about her—well, that I wouldn’t discover until much later. But you, our esteemed spectator, have come expecting a show. And to enjoy a show, you must know the most essential thing about its star.

Which is this:

To know Lily Lilac—yes, once upon a time, that was the gray-haired girl’s name—you first must know that she, like all girls, was a daughter, who had a mother. And like all good mothers, Mama Lilac promised Lily once: Lily, you can do whatever you set your sights on.

Now, maybe Mama Lilac didn’t mean her promise literally. Maybe all she meant to cast was a spell of courage; to inspire her little girl to keep after it, whatever it might turn out to be; to chase her dreams; to grow bravely into whoever she might decide to become. That’s all any other Mama would’ve meant. If not, that’s the meaning any other daughter would glean.

But Mama Lilac, it turns out, was not any other Mama. And Lily Lilac wasn’t just any other girl. So by mother, for daughter, on the far-away prairie they called home, the promise was made:

Lily, you can do whatever you set your sights on. I promise.

And the key thing is this: When Lily heard her mother’s promise, she believed it.

I know you must be thinking, So what? So what indeed, dear spectator. A promise is, after all, just words. Ten, in this case: Ten short, easy, perfectly ordinary words. The thing about ordinary words, though, is that they can do extraordinary things if uttered just the right way, to just the right person, at just the right time.

I can only presume that’s what explains the impossible sight of Lily Lilac.

Because whatever Mama Lilac might have meant, or how exactly she meant it, is forgotten now, like most things that happened before the Fall.

CHAPTER 3: CERTAIN TALENTS

Here’s what Lily’s pieced together from memory:

First, she knows now she wasn’t born gray-haired. Actually, before the Fall, she recalls her reflection having bright, blonde, corkscrew curls, like her Mama’s. Also like her Mama, Lily had...certain talents. The more Lily grew, the more apparent those talents became. But never were her talents more apparent than on the day Mama made Lily that promise—which began, like any other morning: out front of the cottage, on its porch.

The cottage porch was a favorite spot of the Lilacs’. I’m told it’d be a favorite of yours, too, if ever you saw it: peaceful, gently breezed, and perfect for taking in scenery,