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that night. But on the day that my hair turned
the color that hers had been, I took the pendant out of its safe
place and hung it openly around my neck. And I walked out of the
house in which they had placed me, taking nothing with me except
that pendant – and I found an abandoned house at the end of a
once-genteel street, and walked inside, and closed the door behind
me. It was empty when I fell asleep curled up on the bare floor
against a wall whose wallpaper was peeling in rotting streamers –
but when I woke, the cottage had dreamed itself into being around
me. There was a fireplace, and a lamp which shed warm golden light,
and an oddly familiar black cat walked in from the back garden and
yawned and took possession of the window-seat in the bay
window.
    I was home. And I knew what I had to do.
    The shadows knew me, and came for me when I
patrolled the neighborhood streets in the night, when the house
lights were down and other people were sleeping. And I knew them,
and faced them. And this, she didn't tell me, the witch – this I
found out the hard way, myself – every battle is like the first
battle, and every victory is like the first victory, because you
are always fighting on two fronts – as the Protector, standing
between innocents and harm, and as yourself, fighting your own
fears and terrors and the shadows in your own soul, things you can
never allow to win, because the moment you bow your head before
them all the battles of the future are already lost.
    I don't remember exactly the first time I fed
a crying child the special cookies that allowed it to come running
to me in the guise of a kitten when it was hurt or scared. But
somehow, very quickly, the rest of my life disappeared somewhere
into a dream – and this was all that I had ever done, all that I
had ever been, and I could smell the old roses which had always
been there in the garden of a cottage at the end of a suburban
street.
    And then came the day I saw a wary, rangy
teenager poised ready to flee on my doorstep, staring at me with
huge, wounded dark eyes, so much like mine had once been, full of a
world of hurt – and yet defiant, ready to take on a world which
seemed to be gathered against her. And I understood, and
smiled.
    She was who I had once been. And one day she
would become what I was now. This was a new Protector, still young,
still a chrysalis, but she would understand.
    "Come in," I said softly, beckoning with one
hand while the other closed around the eye of the cat on my breast.
"This is a safe house."
    -----0-----
     
Reviewers say …
    Midnight at Spanish Gardens :
"Alexander's language is lovely and poetic...the imagery is
beautiful, the setting is compelling...But it's the characters that
drive this story, in all of their imperfection, in all of their
passion or disconnection or feeling of failure." -- Alana
Abbott , Flames Rising
     
    The Secrets of Jin-shei: "Vivid and
involving'... both an exotic journey into the imagination, and a
graceful exploration of the heart." -- SF Site
     
    Changer of Days: "Powerful characters
and a powerful setting help to deliver what I am thrilled to say is
a great bloody book." Altair
     
    Gift of the Unmage: "This latest book
seems as if it is going to be your standard coming-of-age magician
tale, but then you realize it is so much more. It is philosophy, it
is science fiction, and it is beautiful." -- Kelly A.
Ohlert
     
Other books by Alma Alexander

    Midnight at Spanish Gardens (Sky Warrior
Books USA 2011)
    Dolphin's Daughter and Other Stories
(Macmillan, UK, 1995)
    Houses in Africa (David Ling, New Zealand,
1995)
    Letters from the Fire (Harper Collins New
Zealand, 1999)
    Secrets of Jin Shei (HarperCollins, USA,
2004/2005)
    The Hidden Queen (Eos, USA, 2005)
    Changer of Days (Eos, USA, 2005)
    Embers of Heaven (HarperCollins , UK,
2006)
    Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax, (Kos
Books 2010)
    WORLDWEAVERS Series
    1) Gift of the Unmage (HarperCollins, USA,
2007)
    2) Spellspam (HarperCollins, USA,