ONE: The Boy in the Bubble

He woke to the taste of blood and the agony of a sharp, terrifying pain. His ears rang. His head pounded. His bare chest was pressed to the carpet his parents had installed in their new apartment just a week ago.

It still smelled funny. Gluey and artificial.

“Daddy!” he screamed. “Momma!”

Blood fell from his mouth onto the carpet. One of his arms was caught under his body, and he couldn’t move it. Something had pierced the side of his stomach. It hurt.

It hurt so much.

He called again for his parents. But his own voice sounded weird. Distant.

On the floor all around him, shards of glass sparkled in the orange glow of his nightlight. There was wind in the room.
The window must have broken, but he couldn’t see it from here.

He looked around as best he could and spotted Wummy, plump and smiling, lying beside him. The stuffed wombat was half hidden by a comforter that had spilled over the side of the bed.

Sobbing, he reached for Wummy with his good arm and grabbed him by the ear. Beneath them, the building shook. A fire alarm began to shriek.

Suddenly, there was a deep thoom of sound. The boy felt an awful pain in his ears as the world exploded around him. Something—someone—blasted through the exterior wall of his bedroom. The ceiling crumbled. Chunks of concrete flew through the air like cannonballs.

With his face pressed to the floor, the boy didn’t see any of it.

But he felt small pieces of rubble hitting his back. Then, he felt a crushing, smothering weight as the mattress from his bed landed on top of him. Pain from whatever was stabbing into his side shot through him, making every muscle spasm.

He screamed as loud as he could. In response, he heard nothing but a terrible rushing noise and an endless high-pitched whine.

Something heavy landed on the mattress. The air was pressed from his lungs. He couldn’t breathe.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. Help.

Dying was painful.

It was dark.

He wanted his mother. He wanted…

###

Light.

The boy didn’t know what had happened. Maybe he had passed out. Maybe he’d been struck on the head, and his memories were having a hard time sticking. The only thing he knew for sure was that he was awake now, and there was light all around him. A semi-transparent globe of it encased him, glittering like a bubble full of silver stars.

He was suspended inside the bubble, his body frozen. He tried to twitch his fingers or turn his head. But his mind was the only part of him that could still move, and it seemed to be moving more sluggishly than it should.

There was no pain. He couldn’t even blink, but his eyes didn’t feel dry.

He and the bubble slowly spun in place. And that place was…where was he?

There was so much wreckage in the room that he only gradually recognized it as his own. A gaping hole in the wall looked out onto the ruin of a building. The night was full of smoke, dust, and flashes of red and white light.

Firetruck lights, he thought.

There was a station near their apartment. He loved to watch the trucks pass by on the street below.

“It is exciting, bud,” his father always said. “But remember to say a prayer for the people they’re going to help.”

His father was a pastor. His mother had just gotten a job as a nurse in the Artonan House of Healing. The son of a pastor and a consecrated nurse was supposed to say prayers for all kinds of things. It was important, but sometimes he forgot.

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Dear God, he thought now, as the bubble slowly rotated. I think something bad is happening. Please keep me and my family and Wummy safe. Please be with the firemen and don’t let them get burned. Please take care of the people the firemen are going to help.

Amen.

Next, an Artonan wordchain to call good fortune from other worlds. He only knew a few of them, and he only knew them in English. Most people said that was useless, but his mother’s boss said no faithful intention went completely unrewarded.

My heart calls out to another in good faith. Spare me your luck under tonight’s moons, and tomorrow I will spare you an equal portion of mine.

Frozen in place as he was, he couldn’t make the accompanying hand gesture. Hopefully it would still help.