In the wet air, Helen could hear her pursuers even more clearly,
and she knew they could hear her better, too. Panicked and exhausted,
she blindly tossed herself into the fog and asked her body
to go even faster. On the edge of collapse, she felt her body grow
light and her labored breathing unexpectedly eased up. The jarring
impact on her joints and spine from her gargantuan strides ended
abruptly. She was still moving, but she no longer felt anything except
the cold and the wind that spun her hair into whips. She burst
through the edge of the fog and saw nothing but darkness and stars
around her. There were stars everywhere. She looked down.
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Below her were twinkling lights outlining the edges of a familiar
sideways comma in the middle of the ocean. Looking around for
the airplane that would normally be housing her body at this altitude,
Helen saw her limbs floating in the air, buoyant and sinuous
as if they were submerged in water. She looked down again and
realized that the twinkling comma was her beautiful little island
home. Her vision contracted into a narrowing tube of blackness.
Without a sound, she fainted and fell out of the sky that had so recently
claimed her.
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UNCORRECTED E-PROOF?NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Chapter Six
It was nighttime in the dry lands. Helen was surprised that
there was such a thing as time here. It confused her so much
that she glanced around, uncertain as to where she was.
After a few moments she decided that, yes, she was in the
dry lands, but this time the hilly terrain was flatter and