"A pox on the stars!" continued the voice. "Too bright for my liking. Aye, blinding, they are!"
Zorelli studied the speaker in wonder. He was short-legged and burly and missing an ear. Fitfully, he glowed and dimmed, as if he were made of starlight himself.
"You're Zorelli, the stone carver, if I'm not mistaken." His clothes were ragged and glimmered like their wearer, as if they were the dying embers of their former selves.
"And who - or what - are you?" asked Zorelli.
"What am I?" The apparition snorted. "Why, a ghost! What else did you take me for?"
Zorelli stared at the spirit in awe, his hands fluttering like moths. He wondered where Angelina had gone, and had he not been trapped at the end of the wharf he would gladly have fled as well.
"And what brings you - here?" the sculptor stammered.
"
What brings me here," said the specter, "is you."
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GRAVEN IMAGES by Paul Fleischman. Copyright (c) 2006 by Paul Fleischman. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.
Copyright © 2005 by Paul Fleischman. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
