Sole Survivor

as if from the moon-
        -and then Rose is in a blueness, a silent bright blueness, as if she is a bird in flight, except that no dark earth lies below, only blueness all around. No sense of motion. Neither hot nor cool. A flawless hyacinth-blue sphere with her at the centre. Suspended. Waiting. A deep breath held in her lungs. She tries to expel her stale breath but cannot, cannot, until-
        -with an exhalation as loud as a shout, she finds herself in the meadow, still in her seat, stunned into immobility, 21-21 beside her. The nearby woods are on fire. On all sides, flames lick mounds of twisted debris. The meadow is an unspeakable charnel house. And the 747 is gone .
        At the penultimate moment, the girl had transported them out of the doomed aircraft by a monumental exertion of her psychic gift, to another place, to a dimension outside of space and time, and had held them in that mysterious sheltering limbo through one terrible minute of cataclysmic destruction. The effort has left 21-21 cold, shaking, and unable to speak. Her eyes, bright with reflections of the many surrounding fires, have a faraway look like those of an autistic child. Initially she cannot walk or even stand, so Rose must lift her from the seat and carry her.
        Weeping for the dead scattered through the night, shuddering with horror at the carnage, wonderstruck by her survival, slammed by a hurricane of emotion, Rose stands with the girl cradled in her arms but is unable to take a single step. Then she recalls the flickering passenger-cabin lights and the spinning of the hands on her wristwatch, and she is certain that the pilot was the victim of a wet mission, remoted by the boy who lives in a steel capsule deep below the Virginia countryside. This realization propels her away from the crash site, around the burning trees, into the moonlit forest, wading through straggly underbrush, then along a deer trail powdered with silver light and dappled with shadow, to another meadow, to a ridge from which she sees the lights of Loose Change Ranch.
        By the time they reach the ranch house, the girl is somewhat recovered but still not herself. She is able to walk now, but she is lethargic, brooding, distant. Approaching the house, Rose tells 21-21 to remember that her name is Mary Tucker, but 21-21 says, My name is Nina. That's who I want to be.
        Those are the last words that she will speak-perhaps forever. In the months immediately following the crash, having taken refuge with Rose's friends in Southern California, the girl sleeps twelve to fourteen hours a day. When she's awake, she shows no interest in anything. She sits for hours staring out a window or at a picture in a storybook, or at nothing in particular. She has no appetite, loses weight. She is pale and frail, and even her amethyst eyes seem to lose some of their colour. Evidently, the effort required to move herself and Rose into and out of the blue elsewhere, during the crash, has profoundly drained her, perhaps nearly killed her. Nina exhibits no paranormal abilities any more, and Rose dwells in despondency.
        By Christmas, however, Nina begins to show interest in the world around her. She watches television. She reads books again. As the winter passes, she sleeps less and eats more. Her skin regains its former glow, and the colour of her eyes deepens. She still does not speak, but she seems increasingly connected . Rose encourages her to come all the way back from her self-imposed exile by speaking to her every day about the good that she can do and the hope that she can bring to others.
        In a bureau drawer in the bedroom that she shares with the girl, Rose keeps a copy of the Los Angeles Post , the issue that devotes the entire front page, above the fold, to the fate of Nationwide Flight 353. It helps to remind her of the insane viciousness of her enemies. One day in July, eleven months after the disaster, she finds Nina sitting on the edge of the bed with this newspaper open to a page featuring photographs of some of the victims of the crash. The girl is touching the photo of Nina Carpenter, who had given her Pigs and Princes, and she is smiling.
        Rose sits beside her and asks if she is feeling sad, remembering this lost friend.
        The girl shakes her head no . Then she guides Rose's hand to the photograph, and when Rose's fingertips touch the newsprint, she falls away into a blue brightness not unlike the sanctuary