The Green-Wing Chronicles · Book One
The
The
Hollow
The Green-Wing Chronicles
Before they had legends, they had hope.
The Green-Wing Chronicles
Before they had legends, they had hope.
In the shadow of an ancient city cemetery, a community of monk parakeets has built their home around a grand Gothic gate — a vast, living structure of woven branches they call the Great Nest. For fifty years the flock has survived and grown, guided by the traditions of the First Flight and the quiet wisdom of those who listen to old wood.
Then the bell rings. Three times. At dawn. With no one below to ring it. No human hand was near the mechanism.
A crack opens in the arch foundation, breathing warm mist into the winter air. And in the oldest galleries of the nest, repairs begin appearing that no living builder made or claimed. Something has been inside the Great Nest. And it knows things about the nest that not even its builders know.
“Someone repaired the nest. No one in the nest repaired it.”
— The New BranchAsh is a young apprentice builder with a gift for listening to old wood through the soles of his feet. When he discovers that the mysterious repairs appear at locations his mentor Reed marked privately months before — before the damage was visible to anyone — he understands that whatever is out there is not just repairing the nest. It is reading Reed’s private thoughts about it.
Juniper is a forager who reads the cemetery the way builders read walls. She is finding seed caches rearranged with impossible precision, branches gathered with a builder’s knowledge, and a silent grove that every creature has quietly avoided for longer than anyone can remember.
Two young birds. Two separate mysteries. And beneath the ancient stone of the city, something older than the cemetery itself has been preparing the Hollow — waiting for the flock to finally be ready to listen.
Inspired by a real colony of monk parakeets living in the Gothic gate of a historic city cemetery — birds that arrived by accident, found an unlikely home, and simply refused to leave.
Built around an 1861 brownstone arch, the Great Nest is a city of woven branches — chambers upon chambers, tunnels within tunnels — added to by every generation and alive with fifty years of memory.
The bell rings only when the humans below ring it — to announce a funeral procession. When it rings with no one there, no hand near the mechanism, the whole flock knows something is wrong.
Beneath the ancient stone of the city, something older than the cemetery has been perceiving, preparing, and waiting. Not a ghost. Not a god. Something that measures time in decades and has been patient for twenty thousand years.
He listens to old wood the way other birds listen to conversation — feeling weight, stress, and memory through the soles of his feet. The nest chose him before he knew he was listening.
She reads the cemetery the way builders read walls — not for what is present but for what is absent. The first bird to deliberately communicate with what lies beneath.
The most accomplished builder the Hollow has ever produced. He has been listening to the nest for decades, and he has known something for years that he has been waiting to share.
Thirty years of walking the same paths. He reads animals the way Ash reads wood — not for what they are doing but for what their behavior reveals about the space around them.
Smaller than Ash, louder than any three birds combined, and sharper than she appears. She holds the nest while the others go underground. She is exactly where she was always supposed to be.
The oldest bird in the Hollow. She has been carrying her grandmother's unfinished story for sixty years, waiting for the right bird to receive the ending.
A four-book series set among a real monk parakeet colony living in a historic city cemetery — where the ground is very old, the nest is always becoming, and the flock keeps choosing to stay.
Available in print, ebook, and audiobook. Choose the format and retailer that works for you.
Ask for The Hollow at your local public library. If your library doesn’t have it yet, request it — most libraries will order titles on patron request.