Free Memorymakers by Brian Herbert, Marie Landis Page B

Ordinary, everyday, sweet-smelling grass that stretched outward in a never ending carpet and finally disappeared beneath the edge of a high concrete wall. Nothing marred this expanse of grass except a dark shape sprawled a few meters away. She thought she might be in a park, but noted an absence of swings or trees or flowers.
    Emily stood, somewhat shaky, and walked to the edge of the wall to see what lay beyond. Its height obstructed her view, but there was a planter box filled with dirt beside it, and she used this to climb upward. On the other side of the wall there was nothing she could immediately identify, but for a few moments she thought about her geometry class. The scene before her was all planes and angles and vertical and horizontal lines. She focused, but it didn’t hold and she had to remember what she’d seen. Buildings, lots of them, a sensation of altitude . . . rooftops visible. Tall, modern structures in the distance, and nearby more buildings—squat, ugly, gray, separated by narrow alleyways filled with refuse.
    I’m on top of a building, she thought, and dismissed the idea at once as impossible.
    The shape on the grass stirred and groaned, rolled over and faced her.
    “Thomas,” Emily mumbled. She ran on unfamiliar legs toward an unfamiliar Thomas, an older Thomas.
    He gazed at her, and after a blur before her eyes he was as he had been before—green eyes, brown hair, tall and slightly chubby. She looked down at her own body and saw that it was as it always had been—a slender torso attached to short, slim legs. Emily sighed with relief.
    Her brother stared at her with widened eyes. “Where are we?”
    “I don’t know. Outside somewhere.” Her answer sounded feeble, and she tried once more. “Looks like a park.”
    Thomas shook his head as though he wished to dislodge something clinging to his scalp. He flailed his arms about and tried to explain his dream. “I flew through the sky . . . past the stars.”
    Emily hugged her body to keep from shivering. “I did, too!” she exclaimed. “And the Chalk Man came for an instant. I think he tried to save us from . . . this, whatever it is.”
    “You really think so?”
    “I’m sure of it. This time he was a friend.” She sucked in her breath. “It’s funny, like I was on the edge of communicating with him. Closer than ever. If Victoria ever heard me say this . . .”
    Thomas’s forehead creased in a frown, and he shook his round, baby face from side to side. “I always thought you made the Chalk Man happen,” he said. “Not on purpose, but because you needed him. I don’t know exactly why. What if . . . ” He cleared his throat. “What if our minds did this one together, kind of reinforced each other and transported us somewhere, like right here?”
    “You always make me feel better about things. Even when I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
    She tried to review the events of her dream, seeking a point where it broke off, where this cold, hard reality came into being. She needed to grasp some sense in their predicament. Emily wished her grandparents, with all their wisdom, were here to help.
    Thomas hugged his knees close to his chest and rocked back and forth.
    It was a language of fear that he spoke with his body, Emily sensed, though he didn’t speak it. She and her brother possessed a kinship that went beyond an ordinary brother-sister relationship. They communicated their needs to each other in effortless ways. Since the day Thomas was born, Emily had felt a particular affinity for him, as though he held a part of her she could never share with another human. They had never discussed their relationship; there seemed no reason to do so. It existed, and that was sufficient.
    A motherly streak arose in Emily, and she wanted to comfort her brother. But she knew he would resent such behavior, for while younger, he was almost an inch taller than she and professed a fear of nothing . . . usually. After all, it was