Strange New Worlds 8 by Dean Wesley Smith

Author:Dean Wesley Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books

Transfiguration

Susan S. McCrackin

I’m afraid of fire.

Sometimes I dream about flames all around me. They are so real I can feel myself burning. I must scream, because Daddy is always there when I wake up crying. He holds me, sometimes so tight I can’t breathe.

I never have to tell him about what I was dreaming. He knows.

You see, Mommy died in a fire. I was there when it happened.

Mommy was the best engineer on the whole ship. She was so smart that even the captain would ask her what to do. And Mommy always knew.

Sometimes, on a special day Mommy would let me go with her to engineering. She told me that if I was a smart girl and if I worked hard, one day I could be an engineer too. I would look at her when she said that and I knew I would do anything to be an engineer because I could see how proud Mommy would be.

I was there that day because I had done extra work in school and the teacher had told Mommy and Daddy about it. Mommy said she would take me to work with her as a reward. I was so excited because I knew she was working on a special project and I wanted to see it real bad.

So I was there when everything exploded. All I can remember is how dark and hot it got and how everybody was screaming and how scared I was until I heard Mommy calling my name. Then I felt her arms around me and then I felt all hot and burning and we were running through fire. Then there was more air and we were covered by people blowing foamy stuff at us and then I don’t remember anything else.

When I woke up after it happened, Daddy was leaning over me but I could hardly see him. I tried to ask him about Mommy, but I couldn’t talk. And then I realized that my skin was burning, and I screamed. Well, I tried to scream.

I remember Daddy yelling and shadows all around me and starting to feel like I was floating and feeling like I was falling real slow and hearing Daddy crying.

Mommy had been dead almost a month before I woke up enough for Daddy to tell me what happened. I remember his voice sounded like he had a bad cold. I remember how everything sounded, but I couldn’t really see him because my eyes were hurt in the fire.

He told me I would be okay, but that I wasn’t going to be able to see much anymore and that I had been burned and would have scars, but that I was still alive because Mommy loved me so much that she saved me.

It wasn’t until later I heard the people whispering that Mommy had run through all the fire to get me. She had to run back into the flames to get me out. They said how brave they thought she was and what a shame it was that I was so disfigured.

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