Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner

Author:Kate Messner
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Walker Childrens
Published: 2012-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

But then come the sounds.

Quiet at first.

Uneven. Stopping and starting footsteps.

Creaking. Lifting. Wood-sliding-against-wood.

A voice so faint I can’t tell whose it is or what it’s saying. But the tone is unmistakable. The raw edge, the desperation. Someone needs help.

“Risha?” I start to pull my hand away from her, but she holds on. I wiggle my hand free and stand.

I still can’t see, but I hear the daybed creak and know she’s standing to follow me. I slide a hand against the cool dampness of the wall until I feel the doorframe and take a step out into the hall.

“I’m scared,” Risha whispers, and admitting that is so not-Risha that a wave of cold terror races through me. What’s waiting for us out there?

“Me, too.” We feel our way down the still-night-black hallway, scuffing our feet all the way to the end. The toe of my sneaker bumps something that makes a dull metal clang.

The ladder.

“Ready to go up?”

I wait until I feel her closer to me, feel her shoulder brushing against mine. I take hold of a cold metal rung and start climbing.

Risha’s right behind me; her hand brushes my ankle every couple of rungs.

At the top, I keep one hand clutched around a ladder rung. With the other, I reach over my head to push on the spot where the trapdoor should open.

It doesn’t budge.

“Can you steady me?”

“Hold on.” I feel one of Risha’s arms wrap around my calves to help me stay balanced on the rung. I let go of the ladder and use both hands to push up as hard as I can, until I’m sure my face is bursting red.

There is nothing at first—as if the door’s been sealed. I give it another big push, and then, a crack of light appears.

I bend my knees and push harder. Something slides off the tilting door onto the floor, and the crack grows wider, until the light opens up into a bright, narrow beam of sun. The trapdoor swings wide, thuds down on the barn floor, and there is light. Bright, blinding yellow-white light, like we’ve flopped open the door to heaven.

I step up another rung and see I am wrong. So wrong.

This is as far from heaven as a world can be.

The light is so bright because there is nothing between us and the sky.

The barn is gone.

Gone, except for half a wall whose skeleton teeters, creaking as if it’s in pain. A splintered wooden rod sticks out from the middle of the wall—it wasn’t there before—and somehow in the midst of this chaos, I am fixated on it.

I crawl up out of the hole in the floor, my knees scraping over splintered wood, and rise, shaking, to my feet.

I climb over twisted metal, boards, and beams, through wood splinters and feathers and dust—up to the wall where the wooden rod sticks straight out.

It is the pitchfork I’d seen hanging from a hook on the other wall, part of the tidy row of tools, all lined up before the storm.

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