Following the North Star

Prologue

Prologue

Isabella Brighton squinted through the glass. The rain poured and the wind howled, battering the little prairie house with its single-paned windows. But in the distance, she could make out an enormous funnel-shaped cloud looming on the horizon - a tornado. Fear coursed through her, gripping her heart with icy claws. A tornado could destroy everything that lay in its path, transforming the already barren landscape of Fedroy, Kansas, into an overcast junkyard. She turned away from the window and its contents, attempting to push the thought of total devastation to the back of her mind. She busied herself with the painstaking preparations needed to provide her family of six with a decent meal. Yet each member of the family had their supper favorites. Her oldest son, Liam, preferred lamb chops, which were hard to prepare, and expensive; her middle son Jacob liked pasta salad, as he took a disliking to meat; her youngest son Michael absolutely loved salmon, w

hich again was epensive; her husband, who was six and a half feet tall, required a generous portion of steak and potatoes to satisfy his huge appetite; her eleven-year-old daughter Tessa always expected a dainty serving of chicken with every scrap of skin and fat peeled off, a meticulous and time-consuming task. So selecting a meal that pleased everyone was excruciatingly difficult.

When she had finally finished cooking her supper of choice for her family, a pig from the smokehouse (one part carefully peeled for Tessa) and a salad topped with sliced tomatoes, she washed up for the final time to set the table. As she did this, she stole one last glance out the window. What she saw scared her so much she froze, rooted to the spot. For out in the storm, racing at full speed toward the house, was a little girl. Her heart sank. A horrible suspicion rose inside her, but she brushed it away. It couldn't be, she thought. My little Tessa is here in the house, not out there! But as she called out her daughter's name, and only silence answered her, Isabella realized that she was alone. And that little girl out in the wind and rain, seconds away from being sucked up by the tornado, was her daughter. The rest of her family was out there too, soaked to the bone, hurrying to meet Tessa. Horror shook her as a sob. They'll never make it. The wind is too strong. She desperately wanted to dash out and help her beloved family, but instincts told her that her efforts would be suicidal. So distraught Isabella Ramirez could do naught for stand there inside her little prairie house with its single-paned windows, watching as her family, one by one, got swallowed up by the tornado - the enormous funnel-shaped cloud that had once loomed on the horizon.