Born of starlight and shadows

~Part eight: Maria~

 She was in the heat of a battle. Spells were flying everywhere, the evil conjurer's dragon was flying above, and the heroine was fighting for her life.

"You won't win!" she cried. "For I have the power of light on my side!"

Maria set the book down. "Ew. Did they have to do that? I'm cringing just reading the line."

She located her bookmark and stuck it in the page she just read-225. The book was called "The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Dawn Rising" and was turning out to be pretty good so far.

All the elements of what Maria thought made a book enjoyable: a strong female character, a crazy (but fun) plot, and, of course, dragons. And magic.

But it still didn't take her mind off things. Off how empty the house seemed. It was silly, really, but Stella was home a lot of the time. Now that she wasn't, it seemed weird. Really weird.

She had tried to ask Mom, and now she knew, her mother alone, but she'd been on the phone with someone the whole way home. And, as far as Maria knew, she still was.

Even though it had been over half an hour. Maria knew because that was how long she had been sitting in her chair reading a book instead of doing her homework. She was waiting on someone to tell her she had to, which wasn't something she usually did.

Usually she got it done as fast as possible-especially all the lame science work were nothing gave people superpowers and, worst, they had to use the metric system, which had bored Maria to death just learning about. She did all the work anyway, mostly because she knew the sooner she was finished the sooner she could do what she wanted to do and not what her teacher forced on her.

But not today. Today was different.

Today homework was the last thing on her mind, and even if she was wrong and even if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, she knew she could always do it on the ride to school or at recess. She didn't like recess much, anyway. No one wanted to pretend they were adventurers, journeying into an unknown land across mountains (the jungle gym), rivers (below the monkey bars-and if you fell, the crocodiles would eat you!), and swaying, rickety bridges (the balance beam).

So Maria didn't play those games anymore either, even though she wanted to. She instead sat in the shade with Amber Mullins and Heather O'kelly, who last year had been her two best friends. Except now they just wanted to talk about things like which boys they thought were cute (Boys in books were just better, thanks, Maria thought every time the subject was brought up, but she didn't say so).

Sometimes they asked Maria her opinion in things, and sometimes she made something up. Because she knew if she didn't talk to her friends about the things they liked, they wouldn't talk to her anymore. But still, she thought even her science homework might be more interesting than their conversations.

So she didn't care if she stayed in the cool, air-conditioned classroom while everyone else was out in the afternoon sun. Not really.

She'd had another one of the dreams last night. And it had unsettled her.

They're just dreams, Stella had insisted the other night when she'd woken her up from one.

But they seemed to be more than that. Especially the last one. In it, she and Stella had been running. There had been someone else, too, she was pretty sure. A girl, maybe. But not one she recognized. And she thought she might have seen someone else, too, but they had been surrounded by shadow and she couldn't see their face.

It wasn't like the last dream she could remember, where there was a creature made of black fog or something chasing her at school. No, there had been people chasing them. And the sounded angry. They had chased Stella and the others away, somehow missing Maria. She didn't see where they had gone, but she had heard them scream.

It scared her.

She rose from her beanbag chair and walked downstairs. She needed to know where Stella was.

Mom was leaning against the counter, still on the phone with someone. As Maria watched, she took the phone away from her ear and pressed something on the screen, the hang up button, probably. She looked, Maria thought, stressed out and tired.

"Oh, hi, Maria," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"Where's Stella?" Maria asked.

"Right, I suppose I did forget to tell you. She's at a friend's house," Mom said.

"Really?" Maria asked.

Mom nodded. "And she'll be there until about six or so, I believe."

"Oh," Maria said. "OK."

It felt mean to even think such things, but she hadn't really expected Stella to have any friends at school. She'd certainly never mentioned any, and she'd definitely never gone over to any of their houses.

Until now, apparently.

"Well, I'm going to go upstairs and do my homework," Maria said.

"All right," Mom said. "We can have dinner in about an hour if you'd like."

Maria nodded. "OK. That's fine."

She turned and went back to her room, this time determined to actually do her homework. Her mother's words should have reassured her: Stella was fine, after all.

But they didn't.

She couldn't shake the feeling that her not-biojunky whatever but still her sister no matter what anyone else said was somehow in danger.

She shook her head. It didn't seem possible, but that's what she felt.