Chapter One

It began with a sound, with a whisper of a sound or a dream of a note. He pulled the pillow over his head, but the sound remained. Small, but true. He tried to smother the sound while some part of him strained to hear more. As he lay there in the dark, he slowly quit fighting, loosened his grip on the pillow and simply listened. He listened until slumber took him and he heard it in his dreams.

In the early hours of the morning, while all the world was still save for an occasional mouse scurrying under the floorboards, it woke him and drew him into the back yard, peering out into the darkness to find the source. Now, dressed only in his blue-striped flannel pajamas, the one's with the third button missing, and with slippers on his feet, he stood under the leafless maple tree, staring between it's barren branches to...what?

What was he hearing?

At first he thought maybe it was the wind, but though the wind blew, it was not that. Then he wondered if it was the swaying of the trees in the nearby forest but, though he could clearly hear those branches moving and swishing against each other, it was not that. Nor was it the owl calling faintly in the distance, nor the cattle in the neighbors barn over the far rise. He could hear all those things for he had remarkable hearing, everyone always said so, but this was something else. Even somewhere else.

He lifted his eyes to the stars over his head, winking in the dark, moonless night. It almost seemed...

He shook his head with a laugh. No. It wasn't that.

He turned, shivering and ran back to the house, quietly letting himself in the back door and slipped back into his own room where he quickly slid into bed, pulling the covers to his chin.

He lay there, sleepless for the next few hours, staring at the ceiling in wonder.

It couldn't be that. Could it?