Breck ran his fingers over the wooden mushrooms carved on the carpentry shop’s mailbox. Bracing himself, he lifted the lid and pulled out a single envelope. His name was written in bold, firm letters across it.

Breck let out a long breath and opened the letter.

Breck stared at the words. This must be a mistake. The job should have gone to someone charismatic, organized, accomplished—not a reticent dropout like Breck. Yet the offer remained, undeniable, before him.

Breck managed to pull his eyes from the page only when a horse-drawn carriage rumbled over the cobblestones, passing so close that it nearly brushed against him. Overhead, dark clouds rolled toward the city, black with spring rain.

Breck slipped the letter into his breast pocket. Still in a daze, he opened the door and stepped back inside his father’s carpentry shop. The door swung shut behind him, muffling the cacophony of the city outside.

Scents of fresh wood and beeswax candles welcomed him. Barely ten paces from end to end, the shop featured a thick oak pillar at its center, whittled from top to bottom with images of trees, rivers, suns and moons. Every wall was lined with shelves displaying an array of wooden bowls, combs, and jewelry boxes. Artisan-crafted furniture crowded one corner.

Surrounded by his creations, Pap sat at his desk in a nest of wood shavings that settled around him like snow. His broad shoulders hunched low over his work, and black curls of hair obscured his face. Shadows thrown from the two candles on his desk jumped and danced around his still form.

Breck quietly pulled a stool over to his father’s desk and sat.

Pap looked up from his newest carving—a palm-sized butterfly ornament. His dark eyes scanned Breck’s face. The clatter of traffic outside began picking up, marking the end of the work day. Mam and Breck’s younger siblings would be home from school soon, and there would be no quiet after that.

Pap said nothing, waiting.

Breck hesitated, debating how to broach his questions. Finally he faltered, “Did you—when you lived in the village—you knew some Half-Fay, right?”

With a glance at the front door and a frown, Pap replied, “Yes. Many.” He paused. “Why do you ask?”

His fingers toyed with the hemp necklace he always wore, the only physical remnant of  his life with the Fay. A vial dangled from the knotted cord, full of burnt-orange and midnight-blue dust. It had been a gift from his adoptive Fay parents. He had grown up in a small village in the mountains, where humans and Fay had lived together. They had called him a changeling, a human child raised by Fay. Even now, with the villages all abandoned and the last of the Fay extinct, Pap still clung to their culture.

“You don’t talk about the Half-Fay as much as the Fay,” Breck answered. “I just wondered.”

“I do, but there’s no separation in my mind. We were all one people.”

“So the Half-Fay are a lot like the Fay, then?” Breck asked, his hesitation falling away.

He scooted closer, leaning his elbows on the desk. He had been raised on his father’s stories about the Fay. It was why he’d applied to work at a Wingdust farm, where the Fay’s only surviving descendants were protected. He’d lived his whole life wishing he could see a Fay, and knowing it was impossible. But if the Half-Fay were as similar to the Fay as Pap had just implied, the new job might give Breck a chance to share Pap’s beautiful memories for the first time.

Pap hummed softly, thinking. “They’re a little bigger because of their human blood. And their wing dust is dimmer, a bit.” His eyes flicked back to the door. “What was in the mail?”

Breck cleared his throat. “I might’ve got a job.”

Pap tilted his head. If he’d been sitting straighter, he would have been taller than Breck, but Pap always held himself low, as if he wanted to disappear.

“At a Wingdust farm,” Breck specified.

Pap froze. Then, slowly and deliberately, he set down his chisel and the butterfly ornament. “I didn’t know you’d applied.”

Breck shrugged. “I didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t think I’d get it.” For once, Breck could not read Pap’s thoughts in those deep, dark eyes. His hands suddenly felt clammy, and his leg began bouncing. “I’d be working with the Half-Fay. Thought that might interest you.”

Pap nodded but still said nothing. His eyes were fixed somewhere beyond Breck’s shoulder.

“Well?” Breck finally prompted. “What do you think?”

Stroking his fingers back and forth through a candle flame, Pap asked, “Does your mother know?”

Breck shook his head. “I just found out, just got the offer. I wanted to tell you first, since I know the Fay are…they mean a lot to you. That’s part of why I applied.”

“So will you take it?”

After a brief pause, Breck said, “Well, I wanted to see what you thought.”

Pap didn’t answer for a long, long time.

Breck waited. Rain tapped on the glass, filling the silence. He hadn’t noticed it start.

“You know,” Pap finally said, “we had a festival, Gekuvalinx, to celebrate the first spring rain, which would feed the island for the coming year.” He pivoted on his stool to face the window behind him. “We’d stay up late into the night, dancing and singing. The whole forest would light up with Fay dust. The rain washed it off their wings in glowing streams of bright colors that would run down the mountainside. When it rained, that was the only time the Fay couldn’t fly, so they celebrated it, humbled by its power…”

Pap began to sing in a low voice, the Fay language rolling off his tongue and echoing the thunder that rumbled outside.

Breck watched his father lose himself in the music of his childhood, and decided to relinquish the conversation about his future for now. He knew Pap would come back to it when he was ready.

Finally Pap looked over his shoulder at Breck, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Gekuva.” He said the word as if he savored its flavor. “That’s the Fay word for rain.” Pap rarely translated the Fay language for his children, but he offered the word to Breck now like a cherished secret.

“Same as the mountain,” Breck murmured. He glanced out the window, where the rocky peak usually loomed over the tree line. Tonight, thick clouds obscured it from sight.

Pap nodded. “It’s called Mount Gekuva because it carries rain down to the rest of the island. To the Fay, the mountain was the island’s mother—”

The door banged open, and Breck’s three younger siblings crowded into the carpentry shop, followed closely by Mam. Her crisp dress and strict braided bun always seemed out of place against the rustic backdrop of the shop.

Pap stood and stepped around Felka, Kian, and Jule to greet Mam with a light kiss on the cheek. Jule, the youngest, leaped into his arms, while Mam moved to Breck’s side and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Breck, honey, can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.

Breck’s siblings subsided into silence. Their gazes shifted between him and Mam.

“Privately,” she clarified.

Breck got to his feet.

“The rest of you, please start changing and getting ready,” Mam said, ushering Breck toward the door. “The celebration will begin in an hour.”

The door swung shut behind them, and Breck faced Mam beneath the shop’s awning, barely big enough to shelter them from the heavy sheets of rain dousing the city streets. He averted his eyes, watching rainwater run past his toes and waiting for Mam’s lecture on how he should conduct himself at the celebration—her celebration, for it was being held in Mam’s honor. He could not sully her image tonight. He’d done enough damage recently, by dropping out of school at sixteen years old. As Vice-Magistrate of the island of Arilien, Mam needed to exhibit perfection, and that extended to her children.

“I hear you’ve been applying to jobs,” Mam said, her lips twitching into a smile.

“How’d you know that?” Breck asked, surprised enough to look up.

“Orval Fayfer told me he received your application to work at a Wingdust farm. He said you’d have some news for me.”

“Oh, uh…” Breck stammered. “Yeah. He sent this.” He pulled the letter from his pocket. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

“He’s a colleague,” Mam replied, taking the letter. She beamed in earnest now—the first genuine smile she’d given Breck since he had dropped out of school three months ago. “Congratulations, honey! I’m really proud of you.”

Breck’s face flushed with Mam’s praise. He didn’t know where to look, so he turned his eyes down again.

“I think you’ll really like working at the farm,” Mam assured him. “Orval’s done a beautiful job with them.”

Breck shifted from one foot to the other, thinking back on his enigmatic conversation with Pap. “Yeah, I haven’t decided yet,” he mumbled.

Mam’s face fell. “Have you applied to other jobs?”

“No…”

Mam shifted to cross her arms. “Did you talk to your father about it?” she asked, her voice lilting upward suspiciously. She read the answer in Breck’s hesitation and added, “Your father has a complicated history with the farms.”

“He does?” Breck had never known what Pap thought of the farms. Whenever Breck or his siblings asked about Wingdust power, Pap would direct them to Mam instead. Even today, Pap had refused to give any opinion about the job offer. “Did he used to work there or something?” Breck asked.

“No,” Mam said with a little laugh. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. This is your decision, not his.” When Breck didn’t reply, Mam continued, “Orval will be at the celebration tonight. He’ll even be talking about the farms. Hear him out, then decide. And if you’re still not sure, you can always try it for a few weeks. There’s no pressure to work there for your whole life.”

Breck nodded.

Mam rose up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. She carefully tucked the letter back into Breck’s pocket, pressing it over his heart for a moment. “All right. Let’s get ready for this celebration.” Then she turned and pulled the shop door open.

Inside, they found Pap singing the same Fay tune he’d been humming before: a jumble of foreign words with gekuva occasionally sprinkled among them. It was a song for the rain. He was teaching Kian and Jule a Fay dance, telling them to link their hands in a circle around the shop’s central pole. Felka watched them, braiding her hair in the corner.

“Hal, what are you doing?” Mam demanded. “We need to go soon!”

Pap stopped singing for a moment. “It’s the first rain of the season, love. One dance!” He grabbed Mam’s hands and pulled her against him, making her laugh as they spun around. It took only a few steps before Mam matched her footing with Pap’s, so that they moved in perfect synchrony. Jule cheered.

Breck watched his parents caper about the shop and wondered how they managed to sustain the strange, contradictory life they had built. Part of Pap’s sensitive soul seemed to have perished years ago, alongside the last of the Fay. Meanwhile, Mam had made it her life’s work to modernize the island of Arilien, transforming it from a young settlement of exiles into a small, powerful country with some of the most revolutionary technology in the world. Pap lived in the past, and Mam lived in the future—but they balanced the two in defiance of all odds and expectations.

In moments like these, when no one else could see them, it made perfect sense. Past and future didn’t matter when the present held them captivated in laughter and joy. These were the moments that Breck clung to when the outside world threatened to pull their family apart.

But eventually Breck and his siblings would have to choose between their parents’ two disparate worlds. Tonight’s celebration, and the job offer sitting warm against Breck’s chest, would add to the pressure bearing down on him to decide which path to follow.

He tried to cherish this moment of peace and simplicity, as the decision loomed over his head.

“Is everyone ready?” Mam asked, appraising the family one last time. She flattened Breck’s errant curls and tucked Pap’s hemp necklace inside his shirt. “Perfect. Let’s go.”

She shepherded them outside and hailed a carriage. They all piled onto its wooden benches, arranged in rows under a canvas canopy that kept them dry.

Breck admired the Wingdust lamps levitating untethered inside the windows of the homes and shops they passed, casting kaleidoscopic reflections in puddles on the streets. Flecks of some glittering substance created hypnotic starscapes inside the transparent orbs, like tiny universes, each a unique color.

Of all the technological advancements Breck had witnessed in his life, these lamps were the most spellbinding. They now lit almost every building on the island, and if Breck took the job at the farm, he might get to see how the Half-Fay made them. The thought made his stomach flip with anticipation.

He glanced at Pap, who had pulled out the wooden butterfly he’d been carving in the shop. Pap blew sawdust from the grooves, then handed the butterfly to Jule, seated beside him. “For the Rain Festival,” he explained, when Jule’s face lit up with delighted surprise. Pap’s eyes met Breck’s, and he smiled.

For the rest of the ride, Jule perched the butterfly on each of their heads, pretending they were flowers. When he reached Felka, she batted his hands away. “Don’t get sawdust in my hair!” she chided.

The driver dropped them off amid a swarm of carriages in front of Noxin City’s new capitol building. Mam gave him a generous tip, then hurried toward the doors to escape the rain.

Trailing his family up the grand steps, Breck marveled at the four stories towering over the rest of the city. White Wingdust lamps flanked the massive doors, which were propped wide open to welcome the guests pouring in. A warm rush of Wingdust heating enveloped the family on the threshold.

The biggest attraction floated high up inside the ballroom, just past the doors: two enormous Wingdust chandeliers, each one twice as tall as Breck. They bathed the room in dappled golden and silver light, like a winter dawn over a river. Tapered at either end, they gently rotated to display a luminous golden spiral inside each one. The lamps’ shutter casings were made of silver embossed with twining vines, like the metallic shells of glowing seeds. They were the most beautiful sight Breck had ever seen.

He stumbled to a halt. Pap, walking ahead of him, had stopped dead in his tracks.

“Whoa, Pap, what are you—”

But Pap’s eyes were locked on the chandeliers. His face had drained of color, and he gasped as if he had been slapped awake from a dream—or a nightmare.

“Pap?” When his father didn’t respond, Breck called, “Mam?” He looked around and discovered that the rest of the family had already moved far ahead, carried on the tide of people flooding inside. Only Kian remained, watching Breck and Pap with concern.

Pap still stood rooted in the doorway, oblivious to the scene around him.

Breck and Kian exchanged glances. Then Kian placed a hand on Pap’s shoulder, giving him a little shake. Breck used his body to redirect the disgruntled people around them.

“Pap?” Kian said softly.

Pap gave no acknowledgment that he had felt or heard his daughter. His eyes welled with tears, and he gasped for breath like a drowning man. A few incoherent noises escaped his lips, but he seemed unable to form words or tear his gaze from the chandeliers. His fingers fumbled to clutch the Fay dust vial hidden under his shirt.

“We need to get him out of the doorway,” Breck told his sister, trying to quell his rising panic. He’d never seen Pap like this before, and Mam was nowhere in sight.

Kian laced her fingers through her father’s. “Let’s go outside, Pap,” she suggested, gently turning him in order to break his view of the chandeliers. “The rain will help.”

Quiet and perceptive, Kian always caught on whenever Pap needed to escape the clamor of the city.

“Great, yeah, you take him outside,” Breck agreed. “I’ll find Mam.”

Kian nodded. For a thirteen-year-old, she seemed unreasonably calm. Linking her arm through Pap’s, she led him against the crowd, out into the rain. Pap’s shoulders slumped as if someone had unloaded a cartful of rocks onto them.

Once they were out of sight, Breck allowed the crowd to jostle him further into the ballroom. He craned his neck over the heads of other guests, searching for his mother’s elegant bun in the sea of anonymous bodies.

A high-pitched ringing pulled Breck’s attention to a long balcony overlooking the room. The flag of Arilien proudly hung from the railing, displaying a white rowan tree with red berries against a dark green background. Mam stood on the balcony with a tall, elegant man to her right and a squat, beaming man to her left. Breck recognized the latter as Magistrate Corin Gale, who had visited the family’s house several times since choosing Mam as his Vice-Magistrate.

Breck slowly weaved through the spectators toward the grand staircase leading to the balcony. But he stopped when Magistrate Gale held up an empty glass and hit a spoon against it once more, asking for everyone’s full attention. The room quieted, and Breck cursed his bad timing. Pap would have to wait; Breck couldn’t interrupt the Magistrate.

“Hello and welcome!” Magistrate Gale greeted his attentive guests. “I’ll keep this short, since today is not really about me. On behalf of the entire island, I would like to thank Vice-Magistrate Ceanna Arran, whose vision is now reality. Thanks to her, our new capitol building truly reflects the values and singularity of our beautiful country, Arilien.”

The room erupted in applause, and Mam bowed with a hand over her heart.

“Thank you, Corin,” she said. Then she addressed the people. “While I would love to take all the credit for tonight’s success,” she began, earning a few chuckles, “the real thanks goes to our talented design and construction teams, and to Orval Fayfer and his Wingdust farms.” She gestured and smiled at the man on her right, who touched his heart with earnest gratitude.

Breck studied the man, putting a face to the name on his job offer. If he’d realized how important Mr. Fayfer was, Breck never would have had the courage to apply. Seeing him up on the balcony made the letter in his pocket feel that much more implausible.

Mr. Fayfer had a proud but kind face, creased around his eyes and mouth from years of smiling. He wore a black jacket, made of a shimmering fabric that caught the light of the chandeliers in a brilliant array of blue and purple. Breck had never seen anything like it.

“Mr. Fayfer has transformed Arilien through his ingenuity and his tireless years of hard work,” Mam went on. “Tonight he has made history yet again, by fueling the first building ever to run entirely on Wingdust power!”

People clapped politely, and Mam stepped back.

With a graceful bow first to Mam, then to the room below, Mr. Fayfer approached the banister. “Thank you. It is truly humbling to stand before you in this historic moment.” He had a soft, musical voice that contrasted with his impressive height. “If you had told me forty years ago that my first little upstart Wingdust farm would grow into an industry providing heat and light to all of Arilien, I would never have believed it. But, to me, this moment is not about Wingdust technology at all. Tonight we celebrate the Half-Fay who, after decades of unethical treatment and illegal poaching, are now protected at our Wingdust farms.”

He paused as the audience broke into spontaneous applause. Breck joined them.

With a smile, Mr. Fayfer held one hand up. “It is thanks to the generosity of these enchanting creatures that we’ve made the technological achievements you see here tonight.” He gestured at the chandeliers. “And it is thanks to Magistrate Gale and Vice-Magistrate Arran’s funding that the Wingdust business can continue our research. We are striving to find a permanent cure for the devastating Colony Collapse Disease, which drove the Fay to extinction and still afflicts their delicate Half-Fay descendants.

“So, tonight, I ask that you drink to the Half-Fay with me, to their health and longevity, as we enter a new age of peace, power, and prosperity. Here’s to a bright future, Arilien!” He took the empty glass from Magistrate Gale’s hand and lifted it over his head in a symbolic toast.

The people around Breck lifted their glasses in return. They cheered when Mr. Fayfer bowed one last time and stepped away from the balcony. Then the room relaxed once more into movement and conversation.

Mr. Fayfer’s ardent advocacy for the Half-Fay had sent a wave of excitement across the crowd, catching Breck up in its energy. Most people nowadays regarded the Fay as history and the Half-Fay as mere technological conveniences that provided heat and light. But Mr. Fayfer had brought them to the forefront of Arilien’s success, asking the rest of Arilien to give them the same dignity. All around him, Breck could hear people discussing the Half-Fay and their incredible achievements. He wished Pap were here to listen.

WINGDUST is a story of heritage, love, sacrifice, and connection. This allegorical fantasy novel follows a multiracial family fighting to overcome a history of discrimination and bloodshed. Set on a fantastical island with a unique source of power, the story follows a group of siblings discovering their place—and their influence—in a rapidly changing world.

Sixteen-year-old Breck Arran’s life is built on contradictions. As the son of a changeling raised by Fay and an indomitable politician, Breck grew up between his father’s stories of the extinct Fay and his mother’s visions of a glittering future powered by Wingdust technology. Torn between past and future, Breck believes he has a chance to balance both when he is hired at a Wingdust farm, where humans care for the fragile Half-Fay—the only living relics of the extinct Fay. But as he works to reconnect with his father’s history and push forward the Wingdust technology that his mother helped to invent, Breck uncovers the grisly truth of the farms and his own unexpected connection with them.

Inside the walls of the Wingdust farm, headstrong eighteen-year-old Pyxel can’t remember her parents or a time before her cruel imprisonment. Like all Half-Fay, Pyxel and her precious twin brother, Flynt, are being covertly exploited for their blood—the fuel source for all Wingdust technology. But the farm has taken too much from them, and Flynt is dying. When Breck arrives, Pyxel seizes on his impetuous naïveté and enlists his help, desperately hoping to smuggle Flynt out of the Wingdust farm for good. Such an escape, because of the humans’ dependence on the Half-Fay for power, is punishable by death.

As Pyxel is revealing the dark side of the farms to him, Breck makes another discovery at home, long buried by his parents: eighteen years ago, Breck’s father had two illegal Half-Fay children with a Fay, nearly tearing his parents’ marriage apart. And Breck’s half-siblings are none other than the farm’s notorious troublemaker, Pyxel and her sickly brother, Flynt. When Flynt’s health takes a turn for the worse, Breck must choose either to bury the past and run from the truth or to forfeit his own future and steal his half-siblings from the farm. Breck would do anything for his family, but for the first time, he must decide: which one?

I have always been an avid lover of fantasy, but I often feel that even my favorite stories do not reflect (or blatantly disregard) my personal experiences. I was raised in a tight-knit, multiracial family, which inspired me to write about what happens when children are expected to act as bridges between colliding cultures. I strive to write the books I’ve always craved but could not find. I hope that WINGDUST will someday fill that void for others.