Across the Wall by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: JUV037000
ISBN: 9781741769722
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2005-09-01T10:00:00+00:00

LIGHTNING BRINGER

INTRODUCTION TO LIGHTNING BRINGER

I ALWAYS ENJOY WATCHING ELECTRICAL storms, though I prefer to do so from inside a house, behind a nice glass window. The undesirability of becoming more closely acquainted with lightning was brought home to me once, when lightning struck a drainpipe a few yards away from me. I’m not exactly sure what happened, because I found myself sitting on the very wet mat outside the back door, with spots dancing before my eyes and my ears ringing. My friend inside told me that the whole house had shaken and the thunderclap had made everything rattle; she thought I must have been killed when she ran through the kitchen and saw me slumped against the door.

Despite this near miss, I remained fascinated by lightning, as anyone who has read even one or two of my books can probably tell. A few weeks before I wrote this story, I was held spellbound by a television documentary on lightning. In this documentary, they had amazing film that showed the ‘streamers’ that flow up from anything vertical. These streamers actually make the connection with the lightning leaders coming down from the thunderclouds. I saw ghostly streamers rising up from trees and buildings, from weathercocks, and, most importantly, from people.

The taller and stronger the streamer, the more likely that it will connect with the storm. When it does, there is an electrical discharge down from storm to ground, through the conductor. If the conductor is a metal lightning rod, that’s okay. But people are not so well equipped to deal with bolts of energy that at their core are as hot as the surface of the sun.

I vaguely knew how lightning worked, but it wasn’t until I saw these strange, luminous streamers rising up out of vertical structures that it really made sense. At the same time, I was struck with the way the streamers varied, even between people of the same height. Some people just had stronger streamers.

I also knew that there were people who tended to get struck by lightning quite a lot, but who still survived. I had a dim memory of a man who was struck by lightning seven times over quite a few years. He was apparently going to the post office to mail the proof of his many lightning strikes to the Guinness Book of World Records when he was hit by an eighth lightning bolt. He survived that as well, though his clothes were burned off and some of his papers singed.

Put together, all this gave me an idea about people who could see the streamers and who could manipulate electrical energy in various ways. Small, secret ways, like changing the electrical energies in people’s minds, or big, flashy ways, like calling down lightning. That was the central idea. Then I had to find a story to use that idea.

At the time my most pressing need was for something to submit to the anthology Love & Sex, edited by Michael Cart, so I was also trying to work out a story that would concern sex.

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