Chapter Seven: Katrina
I hauled myself into my seat at school the next day, and groaned as Mr. Weaver droned on about the school dance coming up this Friday. Not to be rude, but I really did not care about the school dance, not when my eyes could barely stay open and I drifted to sleep during gym. Finally, the morning announcements came on, cutting Mr. Weaver's talk short.
I trudged down the hallway to my next class, World History with Mr. Limberg. I tripped over the threshold, grabbed the nearest chair, and pulled it down with me as I fell flat on my face. Quickly I jumped up, hoping the clatter hadn't been noticed. Surprisingly, it hadn't. The students in the hallway were much too loud to hear anything besides what they wanted to hear, and Mr. Limberg had gone to fetch a couple copies. The rest of the students were almost as loud as those in the hall outside, and were talking and texting under their desks in case Mr. Limberg suddenly came back.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I settled down in my seat at the back of the class and waited until Mr. Limberg had come in, turned out the lights, and started the daily slide show. I dropped off to sleep almost immediately, completely unnoticed among the shadows near the door.
Something was running through the woods. I could hear its frantic heartbeat, going 90 miles an hour. The thing was crashing through the undergrowth, running for dear life. The animal paused, and then resumed running. I opened my eyes and found myself in a dream world. A thick forest of towering fir trees rose around me, and snow was lightly coming down. The animal in the bush was running, running, but never seemed to get closer or farther away. And suddenly I was running, too, running for my life, but I was moving, moving, until suddenly I stumbled out of the woods. Spreading away until it swallowed the night sky, with moonlight shimmering on its rippling water, was a great, black, lake. And standing on the shore was Blanca. She was looking out across the lake, staring into the horizon, where the lake stretched. She turned to me. "We need to cross it, Katrina. There is a great evil on the other side, that we must destroy. Only we can do this, Katrina, because no one else believes..." Blanca's voice trailed off. I turned back around and ran towards the forest, but this time, it had changed. It was now the forest in daylight and summer, the forest beside my family's little cottage. It was beautiful, but I could sense there was something evil in it, some little fragment of the great evil Blanca spoke of. I stood in the heart of the forest, listening. And I realized I could hear nothing. Not a single wild bird was singing. The forest was deathly silent. Then a bird trilled one single note, a warning. I turned around. Sitting there in the path was a white stone. It certainly hadn't been there before. The stone was lying in a mud puddle, but it was not dirty. It practically glowed, and behind it, a trail of white glowed, too, a path? I picked up the stone and put it in my pocket. The path vanished. The birds started to sing again. I pulled the stone out of my pocket. The birds stopped singing, and the path appeared again. This time I felt a tug in my mind, as if I knew what lay at the end of the path, but how could I? I didn't know what this "great evil" was, but somehow I knew that at the end of the path was a little fragment of the great evil. I put the stone in my pocket again, and suddenly I awoke.
Mr. Limberg was reaching the finale of his slide show. I rolled onto my side, and something pressed against my leg. Wondering, I reached into my pocket. My paw shivered as I felt something round and smooth. I looked down at my pocket. The white stone was there.
Which meant that the great evil...was real.
