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TWO days later. The orange light is still pulsing and changing size. Although I can call it closer like the other patches, I can’t send it away more than twenty or twenty-five feet. It’s started to bug me, like an insect that keeps buzzing in front of my face. An uneasiness chews away at me every time I catch sight of it. I know it’s crazy, worrying about a light, but I can’t help myself. I have a bad feeling about this.
It’s a lovely, sunny day. Our teacher, Logan Rile, decided not to waste the weather, so we’re having lessons outside, in one of the fields around Paskinston. There ar
e thirty-four of us, a variety of classes and ages, sitting in a semicircle around Logan. He’s telling us about tectonic plates. Logan’s not the best teacher. He sometimes forgets he’s talking to children and gets too technical. Very few of us understand everything he says. But he’s interesting, and the bits that make sense are fascinating. It’s also fun when you do understand him — it makes you feel clever.
Some of the younger children from the nursery have come with us. Their normal caretaker has gone to the fair, and her replacement’s finding it hard to cope with so many little ones. She was delighted when Logan offered to take a few off her hands for the day.
Art’s playing with the orange marbles beside me. I shouldn’t let him have the marbles, but he really likes them. Anyway, he hasn’t put them in his mouth yet. I keep a close eye on him, checking every couple of minutes to make sure both marbles are in sight — not in his stomach.
“So these plates are moving all the time?” Bryan Colbert asks. Bryan’s one of the oldest children, nearly seventeen.
“Yes,” Logan says.
“Then why don’t countries move?”
“They do,” Logan says. “The continents are drifting all the time. It’s very slow, but it’s happening. One day Australia will collide with America or Africa — I can never remember which — and the effects will be catastrophic. New mountains will be thrust upwards. There’ll be tidal waves. Dust will clog the air. Billions of people and animals will die. It might be the end of all life on this planet.”
“All life?” Dave English — a kid a year younger than me — asks.
“Yes,” Logan says.
“But I didn’t think that could happen. Everybody . . . everything . . . can’t just die. Won’t God keep some of us alive?”
“No god can prevent the end of life on this planet,” Logan says in his usual serious way. “Or the end of life in this universe. Everything has an end. That’s the way life is. But maybe there’ll be a new beginning when our world ends. New life, new creatures, new means of existence.”
“That’s scary,” Dave mutters. “I don’t want everything to die.”
“Nor me.” Logan smiles. “But our wants are irrelevant. This is the way things are. We can accept the truth and deal with it, or live in ignorance. Death is nothing to be afraid of. Once you think it through and get it into perspective, it’s not so bad. In fact, many people —”
“Now!” a woman screams, cutting Logan off. All our heads turn at once, as if our necks were connected. I see Mrs. Egin lumbering up behind us, fingers twitching, frothing at the mouth. “Now it happens! Up the throat, past the gums, look out world, here it comes!”
The pink light that I saw her stroking a few days ago has grown much bigger and now seems to be touching her just behind her head. It’s pulsing quickly. Other patches of light around it are pulsing too, and moving towards it, as though drawn to it magnetically.
“Mrs. Egin?” Logan says, rising, signaling for the rest of us to stay seated. “Are you all right?”
“They said I couldn’t do it! Thought I wasn’t strong enough to summon them!” She laughs her witch’s laugh, then sings, “Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Now! Now! Now!”
“Mrs. Egin, I think you should —”
“You will see me die!” she shouts, and her eyes scan the group, fixing on me. “Find the thief! Who’s the thief? Find him!”
Fear comes shooting back. I’m not as afraid as when I was alone with her, but I’m pretty petrified. The others are too. We huddle close together, shuffling into a tighter group for protection.
Logan steps forward. “Let me take you home, Mrs. Egin. We’ll get you to bed, I’ll call for a doctor, and you’ll be right as rain in —”
Mrs. Egin roars a word I don’t know. Her lips are moving fast now, that strange language she was speaking before. Logan stops short and hesitates. That scares me even more —it’s bad news when your teacher is as frightened as you are.
The pulsing patches of light are moving faster, drawn towards the pink light. They merge with it, then flow into Mrs. Egin. She’s glowing from within now, the lights beneath her flesh, spreading through her body.
I stumble to my feet. “The lights!” I gasp.
Logan looks back at me. “Calm down, Kernel.”
“But the lights! Can’t you see them?”
“What lights?”
“Inside her! She’s swallowing the lights!”
