When the trumpeter
blared and the songbird sang…
IT HAS BEEN 57 years since Horatio Peters’ mystical horn and
jazz songstress Delia-LaRue Amat’s otherworldly voice brought Fable Avenue out
of the ethers and into physical existence among the streets that make up the
Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, New York. People from all over the African
diaspora have flocked to this street, answering the call sent out by Horatio
and Delia’s enchanted jazz and blues songs, becoming permanent residents and
adding to Fable Avenue’s conjure culture.
Rite into the hands of
destiny...
ALL OF FABLE AVENUE’S young boys and girls go through a
series of rites, but only the Goodspeed children, at the age of nineteen,
receive what is known as the Second Gateway Rites. Tragic happenings have
interrupted the last few ceremonies, and whispered rumors abound of Fable
Avenue’s ill-wishers casting hexes against anyone from the Goodspeed family
engaging in the traditional observance. Community elders are taking a chance
with GORDON GOODSPEED, the latest in the Goodspeed line to come of age.
Changing aspects of the ritual, the community’s elders hope to perform the
sacred rites and invoke the lilac spirit.
FEY FORRESTER lives with her
grandmother in Mount Vernon, New York, estranged from the Fable Avenue
community after her mother’s suicide and her father’s mysterious disappearance.
She has not been sheltered from her culture, however, learning its values and
enchantments from her grandmother, and nurturing her ability to conjure African
fairies called yumboes into the
world. Now, at the age of nineteen, as Fable Avenue’s elders reach out to heal
past wounds, Fey Forrester is set to receive the rites she’d missed after being
alienated from Fable Avenue for thirteen years. When she and Gordon Goodspeed
take interest in one another, the two of them begin scribing a grand,
mythological tale that will guide them to the stars to dance with cosmic
spirits, haunt the streets of New York to protect innocent residents, and move
Fable Avenue closer to procuring the Grand Wish.
