Chapter 1

I’m not usually awake after Fourth Corner.  Most Dawncallers retire in the hours between Sunset and Fourth or between Fourth and Midnight.  Only Nightbringers work between Fourth Corner and midnight and between midnight and First Corner.  Just like only Dawncallers work between Second and Noon and Noon and Third Corner.  Thus the day is divided.  I wake every morning in time to join the lilting voices of the First Corner shift Dawncallers singing up the sun, and my workday ends when the Nightbringer chants ring out as the sun sets in the west.  As days grow longer or shorter during the year, corners become closer together or farther apart, but the rhythm of the day stays the same.  It’s peaceful.

Cascade takes after Mother and Father.  He’s showing signs of being a Nightbringer.  He asked me to go with him to the midnight testing, and I agreed wholeheartedly.  I love my brother.  I had always hoped he’d be a Dawncaller like me, but no one chooses their alignment.  And Nightbringers are just as vital to the village as Dawncallers are.  

“Seren!” my brother said in a chastising tone.

It amused me to hear Cascade scold me.  Usually I am the one doing the scolding.  But I sensed his agitation and bit off the yawn I’d been making before he hissed my name.

“Sorry, little brother,” I whispered, leaning down to speak into his ear.  “You know I don’t usually stay up this late.”

“You didn’t have to come,” he said petulantly, feigning ambivalence that simply didn’t carry since he’d begged me to come with him.  “Go home if you’re so tired.”

“And miss the chance to watch you embarrass yourself?” I teased.  “Not hardly.”

Cascade scowled at me and then crossed his arms over his chest.  He looked ridiculous in the pose, still short as he was at twelve years of age and dressed in rumpled clothes that didn’t fit him properly.  Mother had laid out a fine outfit for him, but he’d insisted at the last minute on wearing one of father’s old shirts.  My brother wanted so much to be grown.  I sighed quietly and wistfully thought back to when I myself had been so foolish.  It hadn’t been long ago, just a handful of years.  But I’d grown up significantly when I joined the Dawncallers.  Just as Cascade would mature with the Nightbringers.

“I won’t embarrass myself,” Cascade muttered after a moment, making me smirk to myself.

“Of course not,” said Mother, ruffling his hair and making him whine and turn red.  “And if you did, it probably wouldn’t be as bad as what Serendipity did at her testing.”

My brother stopped frantically trying to un-muss his hair and looked up at me with squinty appraisal.  My eyes were wide with shocked indignation over Mother’s declaration.

“What did Seren do?” Cascade asked Mother while looking at me.

“Nothing!” I said immediately, feeling a tingle of warmth in my cheeks.

“She pulled the flames so hard, she knocked the brazier off the table,” Mother confided, looking between me and Cascade fondly.

“Really?” Cascade asked with wide eyes.  He grinned at me with a mix of awe and vindictive delight.

I gave no answer.  I couldn’t contradict the story, but I didn’t need to add anything Mother had left out, either.

“She did,” Mother said with a nod.  She crouched down to meet her son’s eyes at his level.  “But we don’t pull the flames, Cade.  Dawncallers pull, Nigh—”

“Nightbringers push,” Cascade recited, speaking over Mother.  “I know, I know.  Seren had to put out the fire.  I have to make it bigger.”

“Exactly,” Mother said, nodding again.  She patted Cascade’s cheek.  “Exactly.” 

“Cascade Waters!” called the Nightbringer Prime in her clear, authoritative voice.  “Stand ready.”

I swear I heard my brother gulp.  Then he took a deep breath, smoothed his too-big clothes, and stepped forward.

The loose ring of Nightbringer students parted to let my brother through to the dais.  I recognized a few faces among the young men and women.  They were all around my age, so I’d had lessons with most of them when we were children.  The nearest two nodded at Cascade as they stepped aside, sizing him up as their new potential brother.

I held my breath as I watched Cascade ascend the short set of steps up to the dais.  Then he approached the Nightbringer Prime who stood on the other side of the low table that took up the center of the platform.  A single brazier on the table cast flickering light across the Prime’s stoic face and her neatly pulled back raven hair.

From where I stood, I could just see the curve of my brother’s nose and cheek, but mostly I saw his back and his still-mussed hair.  So I watched the Prime as she watched my brother.  Her dark lips moved, but I had no idea what she said.  My brother nodded several times before he squared his shoulders and extended one arm out, palm down over the brazier.

At first, nothing happened.  The fire in the brazier continued to flicker ambivalently as my brother’s shoulders grew tighter and tighter.  The Prime coaxed him quietly, but nothing seemed to change.  The assembled crowd began to murmur.  I knew what they were wondering: was Cascade talentless?  There were a handful of talentless people in the village.  People who never developed an affinity for day or night magic.  It was rare for the child of two people who could use magic to not develop a talent, but it wasn’t unheard of.  Just like it had been fairly rare for me to become a Dawncaller when both of my parents were Nightbringers.  But I wasn’t the only one in the village who hadn’t follow her parents’ path.  These things happened.  Still, I knew my brother would be devastated if he never became a Nightbringer or a Dawncaller.

I found my chest growing tight as the moment of anticipation grew longer, and I forced myself to release the breath I’d been holding.  With fresh air in my lungs, I pressed my lips together and stopped breathing again as I waited and watched and willed the fire to grow larger.

And then the fates granted my wish with mocking glee.

The brazier exploded.

The crowd gasped.  Several people shouted as glowing embers and shards of twisted metal shot out in all directions.  I watched in horror as scattered dots of light grew into flames that lapped at skirts and coats and started catching the wooden platform where Cascade had just fallen to his knees.

I clumsily dashed forward, my balance precarious and my gaze locked on my brother as he clutched his stomach and then looked at his wet, red hands.  He looked up as I shoved unsteadily between Nightbringers to make my way to the dais.

Mother was a half step behind me.

Cascade’s face was as white as fresh snow.

“Mother?” he said, his voice almost lost in the chaos around us.

“Cade,” Mother choked out as she hesitated, unsure if touching him would make things worse.

She glanced at me with panic in her eyes.

“Seren?” my brother called, his eyes looking glazed.

“I’m here,” I said, laying my hand over his as my stomach writhed.

Blood seeped from between his fingers to stain mine.  The sight made me feel dizzy.

I knew enough of emergency aid and healing magic to know that Cascade needed immediate care, probably more than a Nightbringer medic could offer.  Nightbringer magic was ill-suited to healing, so their medics focused on non-magical intervention.  Judging by the amount of blood Cascade had already lost, I wasn’t sure if non-magical aid could keep him alive until sunrise, when a Dawncaller healer could intervene.

My brother was dying, and there was nothing I could do.

Dawncalling was impossible at midnight.  I knew that.

But I had to try.

I closed my eyes and began softly singing the melody of restoration, willing Cascade’s flesh to knit back together.  I felt the familiar pull of magic, the warmth that spread through my body, but I also felt a strange weight in my chest and the pit of my stomach, like I had just changed direction while swinging on a rope hanging from a tree limb.

I also felt the resonance in Cascade’s skin as my incantation took hold.

It was impossible, but I was weaving a spell from sunshine in the middle of the night.

I heard Mother gasp.  She wasn’t the only one who did so, but she was the only one whose voice I could identify by sound.

When I opened my eyes, I found several people staring at me in open shock.  Around the dais, people were still scrambling to tend to the licking flames and other people injuried by the exploded pot.

On the wooden platform, I sat surrounded by Nightbringers who were more interested in me and the gold light pouring out from between my hands.

The Nightbringer Prime dropped to her knees on the other side of Cascade and looked at me with wide eyes.

“Serendipity Waters,” said the Nightbringer Prime in an awed voice.  “You’re the Midnight Sun.”

— 

I was barely eleven when I did my Dawncaller testing.  I’d always been a diurnal child, even as a baby (much to my Nightbringer mother’s dismay).  I loved to watch the sun rise.  I loved to watch it set, too, but sunrise has always been my favorite time of day for as long as I can remember.

On the morning of my testing, I rose at First Corner.  My closest friend, Quintessence Aspen, was already waiting for me, bouncing on the balls of her feet, making her strawberry curls dance in the pre-dawn glow.

“Oh, Seren, I’m so excited!” she squealed as she captured my hand and started pulling me toward the village square.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You just want me to be a Dawncaller like you,” I teased her.

Quin was about a year older than I was, and she’d tested at the previous equinox.

She wrinkled her nose as she grinned back at me.

“Of course,” she said, lifting her chin.  “I’d never see you if you became nocturnal like you parents.”

“You think I’d abandon you so easily?” I said, continuing to rib her.

“Oh, I would have abandoned you in a heartbeat to spend more time with those Nightbringer boys,” she replied with mischief in her eyes.

I laughed again, but I knew Quin was only half-teasing.  There were more than twice as many male Nightbringers as females.  And the reverse was almost true as well, thought female Dawncallers didn’t outnumber males by quite so high a number.  So, being a female Nightbringer did have that perk, if the female Nightbringer in question was as interested in boys as Quintessence Aspen was.

Still smiling, Quin and I joined in as a choir of Dawncallers sang up the sun.  I loved the melody and the way that voices of all pitch blended and rose to greet the morning.  The first rays of sunshine made Quin’s hair seem to burst into flame, the warm light shining through her curls and making them glow.  Her eyes shifted from green to gold by degrees as she drew some small amount of magic into herself at the completion of the morning ritual.

Once the sun was over the horizon, we made our way to morning lessons.  When the bell rang for Second Corner, class was dismissed and we left the schoolhouse to go back to my home for our morning meal.  I could tell my mother was tired, but she prepared a lovely spread and invited Quin in with open arms.

Once I was bathed and dressed, we all went back to the village square for the midday testing ceremony.

After my testing, Mother told me she was proud of me.  She never gave the slightest inclination that she was disappointed that I wasn’t a Nightbringer.  Maybe she’d known the odds were skewed toward me being a Dawncaller since I was a girl.  Maybe she genuinely didn’t have a preference.  But after I put out the fire (and, yes, dragged the whole brazier off the table, yelped, and nearly fell off the dais), Mother had beamed at me and engulfed me in her arms.

But now, in the wake of the Nightbringer Prime’s proclamation, she didn’t look proud.  She looked terrified.

“Mother?” I whispered, feeling some of the fear I saw in her eyes bleeding into me.

“Seren,” she replied at equal volume, her voice shaking.  “Oh, my baby.”

She reached for me and then pulled her hand back without touching me.  She dropped her gaze to Cascade.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked me in a tiny voice.

“I-I don’t know,” I said with a small shake of my head.  I dropped my voice to a bare whisper.  “I hope so.”

Mother nodded and I closed my eyes to refocus on my healing incantation, singing softly under my breath and trying to forget about what the Nightbringer Prime had called me.  It seemed impossible, since people in the crowd had started repeating the title.  But the Midnight Sun was a myth.  A story told by grandmothers to entertain children.  Even if there really had been a Midnight Sun a generation ago who could use both forms of magic and wasn’t restrained by the time of day, that wasn’t me.  I was just a normal Dawncaller.

Wasn’t I?

Then how are you pulling sunshine in the middle of the night? I asked myself.

I had no answer.

“Cloudless sky,” I heard a familiar deep voice swear.

I looked up and found a bleary-eyed, pajama-clad, and barefoot Dawncaller Prime staring at me with his mouth hanging open.

“Prime—” I started to say, but my teacher cut me off with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t stop!” he said in an almost incredulous tone.  “Dawn and dusk, Serendipity, what you’re doing is miraculous.  You’ve probably saved your brother’s life.”

I felt my chest tighten and heard my mother start crying.  I resumed my incantation as the Prime put his hand over mine.  His baritone voice joined my soprano, but I felt no resonance in his singing.  He was offering only moral support.

He couldn’t pull the sun to help me heal Cascade’s wounds.

I sang through the entire incantation eight times, tugging gently on my brother's flesh and skin with my magic as I willed it to rejoin and heal.  When I started my ninth verse, the Prime tightened his fingers around mine.

“That’s enough, Seren,” he said gently.  “He’s safe.  You can rest now.”

I let out a shaky breath and sagged back onto my heels.  I felt woozy and exhausted, and I was grateful when Mother’s arms encircled me.

“My baby,” Mother said, stroking my hair.  “My baby.”

I slumped against my mother’s shoulder, and then everything faded to black.

— 

After my testing, my lesson schedule changed.  I no longer went to evening class at all but instead attended Dawncaller practice from Second Corner until Noon.  My first few days were bright and welcoming.  Quin and the other older students showered me with kindness and advice.  Then I began learning melodies and the dance-like steps of the Dawncaller forms.  All my new sisters and brethren advised me to focus on patience and flexibility.  Sunlight was ever-present and abundant (in the daytime), a resource as plentiful as water in the middle of a rainstorm, but utterly inaccessible at night.

Dawncalling was about guiding the light of the sun, not controlling it.  About drawing sunlight through ourselves, or through a vessel, to weave spells and then let the light go to resume its normal course. 

I remember the first time I felt the pull.  Intellectually, I know I pulled at my testing, but that experience was too overwhelming to properly quantify.  My first true memory of consciously pulling sunlight was on my sixth day of singing up the sun as a confirmed Dawncaller.

All children in the village learn the Dawncaller song and the Nightbringer chant.  Or perhaps ‘absorb’ is a better word.  When you hear something performed every day of your life, it grows familiar whether you want it to or not.

I sang eagerly that morning, and then I felt an unfamiliar but wholey pleasant warmth flowing through me.  I looked at Quin and she beamed at me.  Her eyes had gone gold and I couldn’t help but wonder if mine had, too.  I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of liquid sunlight pouring through my veins.  It seemed to have no start and no end, but it kept moving, flowing over, through, and around me.  I could touch it, I could cause ripples, but like standing in a wide river, I couldn’t control more than the smallest tendrils that passed closest to me.

But unlike stepping into a real river, I knew with utter certainty that in the sunlight I could never drown or be carried away.

It felt amazing.

Quin slipped her hand into mine and squeezed.

I happily returned the gesture.

— 

The first thing I became aware of as I regained consciousness was voices.  They sounded distant and muffled at first and then slowly grew distinct.  I heard my mother and both Primes and various other people I knew.  They sounded animated and tense.  Some voices I didn’t recognize sounded upset.

“Then you’re a fool,” I heard a deep voice say.

“Nightfactor Hale, I have tutored the girl for six years,” I heard the Dawncaller Prime say in a patient voice.  “This was not trickery.  The girl pulled.  I stand witness.”

“As do I, Hale,” agreed the Nightbringer Prime.

The deep-voiced Nightfactor scoffed.

“Then you are both fools,” he said

“Why not put her to the test?” I heard a new voice say.  The voice sounded somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“What was that, Wren?” the Nightbringer Prime asked.

The Prime using his name made the voice suddenly click into place.  Wren Mulberry.  He was perhaps a year older than I was; the same age as Quin.  We’d gone to lessons together as children.  We’d been friends before Wren switched to strictly evening classes and I switched to mornings.  Since then, I hadn’t seen or spoken to him.

“If the question is whether or not the girl is a fraud, then why not simply put her to the test?” Wren asked.

“What sort of test did you have in mind?” the Dawncaller Prime asked.

“Simple replication,” Wren said in a bored-sounding tone.  He’d always struck me as stoic, even when we were children.  “Have her heal another wound.”

“You mean have her utilize another accomplice,” Hale said.

I heard the unmistakable sound of a belt knife being unsheathed.  I kept my eyes closed.

“If you choose the recipient of the wound, she could hardly beguile you,” Wren said in the same droll tone.

“Are you volunteering your skin, boy?” Hale said with disdain.

“If I must,” Wren said dismissively.  “I hardly expected you to volunteer yours.”

Someone made a choked sound.  I bit my cheek to stop from smirking.  Wren had always had a quick wit and a sharp tongue.

“You might as well open your eyes, Seren,” the Dawcaller Prime said quietly.  “We know you’re awake.”

I grimaced and then opened my eyes.  I was still on the dais in the middle of a ring of people.  Several lanterns lit their faces.  The errant fires seemed to have all been extinguished.

I glanced around at each person, taking in the scene.  Mother sat to my right, cradling Cascade across her lap.  He was unconscious and pale but appeared to be resting.  The Dawncaller and Nightbringer Primes each sat nearby, forming a small entourage for me and my family.  Across from them stood several unhappy-looking individuals, mostly Nightbringers I guessed since I only recognized a few faces.  The foremost one, a dark-eyed man with thin, pursed lips stood glaring at Wren, who was holding out his belt knife, handle first, to him.

That had to be Hale, the Nightfactor.  He and Wren looked similar, but I wasn’t sure if it was just the expressions they wore or the flickering light playing tricks on me.  They both had dark eyes and dark hair.  They were both tall, though Wren was slightly taller than the older man.

“I’ll use my own blade,” Hale said, drawing a knife from his own belt.

Wren shrugged indifferently and resheathed his knife.  Then he extended one of his arms toward the Nightfactor.  His expression was perfectly stoic, but I thought I saw him glance at me.  I couldn’t be sure in the flickering firelight.

“This is ridiculous, Hale,” said the Nightbringer Prime.

“But it does seem a fair test,” said the Dawncaller Prime.  He turned to me.  “Seren, do you think you can do it again?”

“I-I don’t know,” I said nervously.  “I think so…?”

I let the words rise to end like a question.

“Then let it be me,” the Nightbringer Prime said.  “Surely we can all agree that I would not be an accomplice to such a ruse.”

Nightfactor Hale didn’t seem completely convinced, but he quickly took the opportunity to run the blade of his knife across his Prime’s skin.  The Prime and I both grimaced as a trail of blood appeared on her arm.  Then the Prime purposefully smudged the middle of the line, revealing the laceration and prompting new blood to spring forward.

“Are you sufficiently convinced that I truly have an injury for the girl to heal?” the Prime asked, addressing Hale but speaking loudly and glancing at the assembled crowd.

A murmure went through the throng.

“Yes,” hissed Hale.  “Get on with it.”

The Prime nodded and turned to me.

“Seren,” she said quietly.

I took a deep breath and nodded.  Then I took hold of the Prime’s arm and began the song of renewal again.

I felt woozy this time, and the strange tightness I’d felt while healing Cade returned.  I tried to ignore it and focus on healing the shallow cut on the Prime’s forearm.  It was a simple wound, and fresh, so it didn’t take long to heal.

When I was done, I flopped back on to the dais, exhausted.  The Prime wiped the blood from her arm and showed the healed skin to the crowd and her Nightfactor.  The crowd murmured again, and Hale looked thoroughly displeased, but I was too tired to feel smug.  If smug was even the right emotion.  I did feel slightly vindicated to prove I wasn’t a fraud.  But then, what was I?

I decided that was a thought for another time and let unconsciousness once more drag me under.