Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,141

from outside. First it was noises, she remembers. Strange howls and shrieks. Then a thing from outside slammed into the door, as if the thing knew it was a door and might be broken down—this is how she knows it is safe inside— because it is scary and unsafe outside it.

The things outside want to come in. The things want what Thea has. They want to destroy it from the inside and take it away forever.

Why?

Thea doesn’t know why. She knows only her fear.

***

The strongbox is bulletproof. A vault. Thick panels of glass framed by strong steel. Thea lives inside it in safety; she doesn’t need anything.

Occasionally she can see suggestive vistas through the glass, but mostly it’s darkness out there. When she looks outside and sees things, she is terrified.

There isn’t much to do inside but be. She exists, simply, and that is enough. Time blends in an inebriating fog in her mind, a smudgeon that erases desire, hushing the unsettling questions.

Fear gives her quarter and comfort, sates her with limits to knowledge, helps her to feel life inside the box will always be enough. Can it be a wonder that her mind wanders from time to time?

***

She dreams in fantasy of a boy, and this boy takes her places and shows her impossible things, speaks to her in a different way and her heart flutters under the intravenous influence of something new and untasted. She gives herself entirely to the fantasy boy, even after he fades and she is pushed up to the surface of awareness, back to the strongbox. She swims downward to dreams and the boy, to the love-feel that he can produce in her chest, in her heart, the flutter.

Is mere existence enough?

***

Awake.

The door is open. The bolt is retracted, and she can feel it. It is swung inward and wide on thick hinges, yawning before the black of night outside, and now, for the first time, the darkness charges cold into her world.

Is this a consequence of the boy? She panics.

Thea is pushed out of the box.

She screams; the door closes with authority, and the bolt slams home.

She screams; she wants back inside.

There are things outside.

She fears them.

She fears the unknown.

She feels unprepared.

She feels abandoned.

The lights go out—the beacon the box once was is no more.

With closed fist, she pounds, wails away at it. Though she can no longer see it, she knows it’s there, and she wants back inside.

***

Since the light in the box has gone out, it’s hard to gauge time.

At first she stood plastered, her back against the box, hyperventilating. At length she sat against it in sorrow. Then she beat against it in rage, cursing it. Then she sat back down again, leaning against it in utter defeat. And now…

She begins to see the wild; the uncivilized and dirty wild.

The fear returns with a vengeance.

There are noises: A flitting sound. A muffled skid. Rustling.

Her eyes adjust to the darkness; there is movement in the shadows.

***

Time goes by, apparently. Off to one side, there is light; it is far off. But it increases. It is a bright dull and gray, but it helps Thea to see. It is not the kind of light she knows. Around her are strange and fantastic things that stand upright on the dirt and wave and move in the same breezes that caress her own cheek.

But these green things are not the movement that she heard in the shadows before; these are silent. Mostly; they rustle.

Then she sees what made the flitting sound. It is small, it moves through the air like a dart, but changing directions at will. It is bright in yellow and blue and sometimes red and has spindly legs and can stand on the ground, but Thea notices it seems to prefer to light on the fantastic things that stand on the dirt and wave in the breeze.

She thinks now and marvels at the things, wondering why she understands so little.

But still, these are not what made the noise she heard in the darkness.

Then she hears the noise: there it is again.

It is a voice.

***

Petrified, she waits, sitting on the ground with her back to it, her breathing gagging her, coming in whiffs. Then she sees it: this is one like her, clothed like she is.

Huddled over in the shadows and mumbling, it rises, approaches her: the one with the voice.

She scrambles upward, trying to get away, increase the distance between them: for this is a thing of which she’s not yet

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