This small story sets up the big themes of the book: how does a person figure out what they’re really meant for? How do we find and define family? This now old man gives the mysterious young boy a flute that the cargo captain gave to him, and the boy, the flute, and the captain leave the man behind. However, his true destiny may lie in helping and caring for another young boy-a boy who appears in a fiery wreckage out of nowhere but who is unharmed. The boy grows up and becomes leader of his village, thinking this is the special destiny his father predicted, but he is always haunted by a yearning for the stars-and for the captain of the cargo ship, with whom he has a dalliance. The most exciting thing that happens is the arrival of the ships, whose crews never age due to the effects of interstellar travel. It is a rural society, divided into hunters and farmers. He lives on a Resource World: a planet that is used to grow a crop that is harvested, saved and exported off-world every fifteen years by cargo ships. Simon Jimenez’s sweeping space opera, “The Vanished Birds,” starts out small, with what could be a stand-alone novella: a boy is born with an extra finger, and his father declares that he will be special.
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