Heavenly Creatures
PROLOGUE

Tara held the glass ball up to the light. The light shone through it, refracting into a rainbow on the cream carpet. The other children suddenly quieted, and Tara looked over to see the orphanage’s matron walking over with a couple.

“This is Tara. She’s five years old, very quiet, very well-behaved,” the matron said, smiling at Tara.

Tara didn’t smile back, but she looked at the couple who had come to see her. They looked sad, and the emotion drew her to them. She, too, had held a sense of solemnity deep within herself after the accident. But the couple seemed to see none of that sadness in her, for they smiled as they looked into her eyes.

“What a bright girl,” the mother cooed, holding out her arms shyly. Tara smiled very slightly and hugged the woman.

“We’ll take her,” the woman mouthed to the matron.

When the Hand of God finally crumbled to dust, Sun Wukong crawled out of its grip and shook himself. A thousand years of solitude and silence had changed him. He felt himself a being of stone, just like the prison that had trapped him. Any bitterness or anger at heaven had melted away. Any sadness, any regret, any hope. He felt as the angels did—peaceful and dead—for unlike them, the lights had yet to fill his being. Which was ironic because the sun shone unusually brightly on that day.