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Excerpt:
Evelyn’s words caught in her throat as a faint
blue light flickered inside the globe, forming and spreading into a ball. Then,
the ball floated at the globe’s center.
She brushed her fingertips across the glass.
The blue light brightened.
A deafening pop made her turn her head to the
left. The lantern next to her burned brighter, then changed from white to
yellow to blue. Her hands flew to her ears, her head spinning left and right.
All the lanterns along the row were changing color, in both directions, each
one transforming with a pop and a puff of smoke.
Tilting her chin, Evelyn glimpsed the world
beneath her. Everyone and everything had frozen in time. Feet had stopped,
mid-step. Lips that had fallen open had failed to close. Hands and arms stayed
suspended in the air, along with those of the mimes caught inside their ice
cubes.
“Joyce!”
Evelyn’s breath returned to her in heavy gasps
as she scanned the pier for her sister. With her fists tight around the
handlebar of the stepladder, she twisted to where she noticed a hot dog stand,
and the top of a head with golden blonde hair, but she wasn’t sure it was
Joyce—she was too far away.
“Anybody?” she cried out. “For weeks I’ve been
trying to tell you there’s something wrong with this light!”
But no one looked up. No one saw her. All
seemed incapable of raising their eyes.
Blue light crackled from the base of the
lantern and glided across the handlebar. Then, folded around Evelyn’s fingers;
the light tugged at her hand. With a shriek, she tried to climb down the
stepladder, but she couldn’t break free.
As the smoke from the lanterns cleared, the
clouds that had obscured the starlight broke apart and vanished. Evelyn
squinted at the spray of stars glittering the sky.
The moon brightened. A beam of moonlight
stretched from the sky and joined the blue glow, intensifying the light until
it shattered into a thousand sparkles.
Evelyn screamed.
The light that had pulled at her hand had
spread and folded around her entire body, drawing the scream and the breath
from her lungs until all sound faded.
All light dimmed.
1 comments:
Thank you for helping me introduce new readers to the Lantern collection! I read every review on Amazon and Goodreads. They're little Christmas presents that fuel my writing.
Happy Holidays!
Chess
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