Where Snow Angels Go Chapter Sampler
Uploaded by
Candlewick PressWhere Snow Angels Go Chapter Sampler
Uploaded by
Candlewick PressWHERE
SNOW
ANGELS
GO
For Iris Zelda,
with love
MO
To my family, original and acquired, for all their practical
and emotional support. To my son, Mio, for making me
feel in love every day. And especially to Edith, for posing
so patiently for my Sylvie and letting me drag her
whole family into it, too.
DJT
Text copyright © 2020 by Maggie O’Farrell
Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted,
or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means,
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and
recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First US edition 2021
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
ISBN 978-1-5362-1937-1
21 22 23 24 25 26 CCP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
This book was typeset in Berkeley Oldstyle.
The illustrations were done in ink and watercolor.
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
www.candlewick.com
MAGGIE O’FARRELL
illustrated by
DANIELA
JAGLENKA
TERRAZZINI
ave you ever woken suddenly, in the middle of
the night, without knowing why?
Once, and not too long ago, this happened to a girl.
Her eyes sprang open without warning, and she looked
around her.
The walls of her room were pulsing with a strange,
glimmering light. The curtains were moving, ever so
slightly, as if something—or someone—had recently
passed through them. And was it the girl’s imagination
or was the room colder than normal? Could that be a
line of frost along the mantelpiece, across the bookshelf?
Then the girl, whose name was Sylvie, saw something
that made the blood freeze in her veins, made her heart
leap like a fish in her chest.
There could be no mistake.
Someone was tiptoeing across the floor.
His outline shimmered with a moonlike glow, his
skin a strange blue-white. Most incredible by far was
what extended from his back: a pair of wings, enormous
in size, and made of the softest snow-white feathers
imaginable.
He was picking his way through her room, muttering
to himself, wings wafting behind him.
“First, save the person,” Sylvie could hear him say,
“then fly down . . . No, that’s not right . . . Find the . . .
No, hang on . . . First, fly down. Second, find the person.
Third . . .” He shook his head, muddled, shutting his
eyes, as if for inspiration. “Now, what comes third?
I’ve forgotten and I really—”
Sylvie drew in a breath. She let it out. She drew in
another and said, in a hoarse voice, “Excuse me.”
The visitor whipped around, letting out a shriek, as if
he’d accidentally trodden on something sharp.
“Heavens,” he said, clutching at his chest, “you scared
me. I was just . . .” He stopped and took a sideways step
closer to the end of her bed. There was a short pause.
He stared at her with big, frightened eyes.
“You can see me?” he whispered, incredulous.
Sylvie nodded, looking up at him, holding the covers
very tightly.
The visitor seemed utterly confused. He opened
his mouth, as if he might speak, then he shut it
again. He waved a hand up and down in front of his
face, watching it so closely he looked cross-eyed
for a moment. “Are you sure? I mean, can see me.
Can you?”
Sylvie laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “Of course
I can. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
He let his hands fall to his sides. “Oh dear,” he said
in the saddest voice Sylvie had ever heard, his head
hanging down dejectedly. “Oh no. I must have made
a mistake. I’m going to be in so much trouble. This is
my first flight, you see, and I did want it to go well. I’ve
no idea what I did wrong.”
“I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong,” Sylvie said
kindly. He did seem very upset.
“But you’re not supposed to be able to see me,” he cried
in despair. “And here you are”—he gestured at her—
“seeing me. I tried so hard. I thought I’d done everything
right, but”—he paused to let out an enormous misty
sigh—“this isn’t how it’s meant to go.”
“How is it meant to go?” Sylvie said.
“Well,” he said, lowering himself to the chair at
Sylvie’s desk, “I fly down to find you, and I’m invisible,
entirely invisible, while I save you, and then—”
“Save me?” Sylvie said. “From what?”
And then she uttered the question she’d been wanting
to ask all along: “Who are you?”
He looked at the desk for a moment. He looked at the
window, he looked at the row of wooden animals along
the sill, he looked all around the room, and then back
at Sylvie.
“I’m probably not even supposed to tell you. And,”
he said, “it’s a long story.”
He got up off Sylvie’s chair and stretched. It was an
astonishing sight. Sylvie had been told never to stare
at people, but she couldn’t help herself: his limbs were
silvery blue, and his skin, under his thin white robe,
seemed lit from within. His hair was sculpted curls of
ice. When he moved, tiny showers of luminous dust
came off him, like snow falling from a branch. He took
two steps towards the bed, and his wings
flexed out on either side of him.
“I am,” he said from the foot of her bed,
“your snow angel.”
“My what?” Sylvie said.
“Snow angel,” he repeated.
“Snow what?”
“Sno-ow,” he said, giving the word two
syllables, “an-gel. Are you having trouble
hearing me because—?”
“I can hear you,” Sylvie said. “I’ve just
never heard of a snow angel.”
“Not true,” the snow angel said, folding
his arms.
Sylvie drew herself up, as much as is
possible while lying in bed. “It is true,”
she said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing
and what’s more—”
“But you made me,” the angel said, his
feathers ruffling and twitching.
“I did not. I . . . I can’t have . . .” Sylvie
stammered, but at the same time her mind
was working, whirring, taking her back.
All the way back to last winter, to a day so silent it
was as if a blanket had fallen over the world. A blizzard
had blown through overnight and covered everything
in cold whiteness. Sylvie, in bed, recalled a moment
when she was leaning back in the snow, sweeping her
arms and legs through its cold powder. Back and forth,
back and forth. There were flakes on her eyelashes and
on her lips, and she was laughing.
10
