The Forbidden Stone. Tony Abbott

      Austin, Texas

      March 8th

      11:47 p.m.

      How and why—and precisely when—Wade Kaplan dreamed that his priceless star chart had burst into flame he didn’t know, but the instant its swirls of silver ink and richly painted constellations caught fire, he bolted awake.

      “No!”

      The room was pitch-black. There was no fire.

      Knowing the door between his room and his stepbrother Darrell’s was open, he tilted his head toward it. Slow, rhythmic breathing. Okay, good. Their first official day of school vacation had hardly been restful, rushing around doing last-minute chores before his stepmom, Sara, flew off on a business trip to South America. Her flight would leave early in the morning, and despite the hectic day, he and Darrell had promised to be up at the crack of dawn to see her off.

      And yet …

      Wade pushed the sheets aside, walked to the window, and quietly raised the shade.

      It was a nearly moonless night, and stars were sprinkled thickly across the velvety black. His house in the hills some miles from the Austin city lights usually meant a vivid night sky, and tonight was no exception.

      Turning to his desk, he opened the top drawer and drew out a leather satchel the size of a large paperback. Not only had it not burned, but it was cool to the touch, and he realized it had been weeks since he’d last handled it. He undid its straps and removed a thick sheet of folded parchment. His skin tingled when he opened it. The map was a gift for his seventh birthday from a dear friend of his father’s, a man he’d come to know as Uncle Henry. Engraved and hand-painted in the early sixteenth century, the map was a work of science, art, and history combined, and he cherished it.

      Why, then, had he just dreamed of its destruction?

      Wade turned the star map around until it matched the arrangement of constellations outside his window. Then, as if it had waited for him simply to look up, a meteor slid slowly across the dark, sparking as it passed. “Darrell, look!” he said instinctively, waiting for a second streak of light, knowing that one never comes when you expect it. A slow minute went by. No. That was all. He traced his finger across the map. “Right through Draco and Cygnus.”

      “The bad kids from Harry Potter?”

      Wade spun around. “Darrell! Did you see it?”

      His stepbrother staggered over, rubbing his eyes. “The sky? Yeah. I saw it yesterday too. What time is it? Is the world ending? Answer the second question first.”

      Wade laughed. “About midnight. I just saw a meteor. They’re actually much more common than people think.”

      “And yet here we stand, staring out your window. Mom’s trip comes in, like, an hour, doesn’t it?”

      “I know. Sorry.”

      Wade had known since he was a toddler that stars were energy-producing balls of fiery gas burning at incredible heat hundreds of millions of miles away. Since his very first years in school, science had been his thing, his strength. But spread out over the Texas skies—or anywhere, really—stars were also something else. Not merely randomly positioned specks blinking in the darkness.

      “Darrell, look,” Wade said, pointing to the chart then the sky. “That’s Cepheus. See, it’s a kind of box with a pointed hat on top. And there’s one of Pegasus’s legs. Stars are like, I don’t know, messages from way out there to us down here. If only we could read the code, you know?”

      Darrell squinted. “I don’t really see them, but I believe you, which is part of the stepbrother code. I also believe I need to sleep or I’ll die.” He started back to his room.

      “Uncle Henry wrote me once, ‘The sky is where mathematics and magic become one.’ Isn’t that so cool?”

      “I’m becoming one with my bed.”

      “Tomorrow we’ll go to the campus observatory,” Wade said. “You have to see it.”

      “It’s already tomorrow, and I’m already asleep!” Darrell said. Then he turned from the doorway. “But seriously, bro. Very cool. I get it.” In three strides he was on his bed, where he snorted exaggeratedly, went quiet, and was, amazingly, asleep.

      Wade watched a minute longer, then drew the shade down. He folded the celestial chart and carefully returned it to his desk drawer. Where math and magic become one. Wade felt that too. He felt it like he felt his own heartbeat. Since the beginning of time, people had read whole stories in the sky, finding the past, present, and future in the seeming arrangement of star to star to star. When he thought of the kind old man who’d given him the priceless chart six years before, he smiled. “Thanks again, Uncle Henry.”

      Crawling back into bed, Wade felt strangely calm.

      He had no idea that in the coming days he, and Darrell too, would measure their lives as happening before or after that starry night.