§ § § - - August 29, 1973

Christian was slammed by a blast of light and heat as soon as he stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Squinting painfully, he shaded his eyes with one hand and tried to get some sense of his surroundings; after a minute or so, his eyes adjusted to whatever extent they were going to, and he realized that he was standing at the side of a stretch of two-lane highway that disappeared into the distance in both directions. All around him he saw tall golden prairie grasses undulating in the incessant wind; to his left was the only thing breaking the monotony of waving grass and endless blue sky—a gas station, advertising leaded for twenty-nine cents a gallon and unleaded for thirty-seven. Well, that certifies that I'm in America, he thought humorously. No one else uses gallons! The sigh of the wind was the only thing he could hear; the road was empty in both directions, and heat waves rolled off the pavement in the distance, reflecting the sky in wavering, ethereal mirages of ponds.

Then he caught a movement near the building and watched as a little girl emerged from the interior—a very familiar-looking little girl. She threw a furtive glance over one shoulder, then broke into a run across the blacktop and skirted around the spot where Christian stood staring at her. She wore a pink-and-white-striped sleeveless shirt and shorts in a matching solid pink, and her sneakers were scuffed navy-blue canvas with fraying laces. She wore white knee socks, and her red-gold braid fell halfway down her back. As he drank in the sight of his wife as an eight-year-old child, Leslie Hamilton came to a halt in the middle of the road and shot scowling glances in each direction. Christian followed suit, but the road was still empty.

Then Leslie got a wicked look about her and began to strike off down the road, trotting along as if she were heading somewhere with purpose. Christian fell in behind her, wishing someone were with her, for he was dying to know what she was thinking at this moment. They say if you talk to yourself, you're crazy, he reflected, but in this instance it would be enlightening. He followed her along the road, wincing in the sun, wondering if Leslie remembered getting sunburned at all in this little adventure and if he himself would emerge from this with a sunburn of his own.

They walked for some ten minutes, with Christian's impatience and bewilderment growing apace, before a farmhouse abruptly emerged from the waving grass, as if conjured. Leslie seemed to brighten, and she started to run, veering to the side of the road and jumping a drainage ditch as an eighteen-wheeler rounded a bend in the distance and bore down on them. Christian barely managed to keep from stumbling into the ditch himself in his desperate mission to keep Leslie within sight.

The huge truck roared by, sounding off its air horn, as Christian plowed through the grass behind Leslie, only just keeping her in sight. Then he burst out of it, into a somewhat overgrown and browning lawn, and saw Leslie at the fence, tentatively petting a foal's nose. He stopped short and gaped, his mouth dropping open; he certainly hadn't expected this.

Then he realized he could hear Leslie talking, and ventured a couple of hesitant steps before remembering that Roarke had said he couldn't be seen or heard by anyone around him. He drew up beside Leslie and leaned on the fence, watching her drift her palm with great care along a white blaze on the brown foal's muzzle. "Know what I wish?" she asked the foal. "I wish you were a little bit bigger...and then you and I could just ride away someplace. Someplace my stupid dumb dad would never find me."

He didn't recognize the child's voice that came from her mouth; there was no sign at all of the woman's voice that had been one of the many things that had made him fall so much in love with her. But he drank in the sound of it anyway, because it was still his Leslie, despite her youth and her extreme dissimilarity to his wife as he knew her.

"But then I guess I'd start missing Mom," young Leslie admitted to the foal at that point, pulling Christian back to the moment. Wisps that had pulled free from her braid whipped in the constant wind; a shadow engulfed them, and both he and the little girl looked up. At some point, while they had been trekking along this lonely Nebraska road, a storm front had moved in, and the sky was being rapidly overtaken by a heavy gray shelf cloud with a rolled-edge front. Christian's eyes widened in amazed anticipation; he had seen such clouds on television documentaries about storms as he was growing up, but had never thought to experience one firsthand. "Herregud," he said aloud.

"Oh no," exclaimed Leslie nervously from behind him, and he turned to see her blue eyes wide with alarm. "How come there had to be a storm?"

"Young lady, what are you doing out here?" someone called out then, and both Christian and Leslie turned toward the nearby house. A woman clad in a plaid work shirt and worn jeans whose cuffs were folded up at the ankles approached them. "You shouldn't be out here, you know. There's a weather alert out." She got close enough then to pause and eye the girl with puzzlement. "Are you from around here? I don't recognize you."

Leslie shook her head and hunched her shoulders. "No...I'm from Connecticut. I'm moving to California with my parents and my twin sisters...or I was, except I...I mean, they left me by accident. I was still in the bathroom at the gas station up the road from here, and they left without me."

The woman looked shocked at first, then disbelieving. "Are you sure?"

Leslie nodded, beginning to look frightened. "You can call the station. Honest."

"I think I'll just do that," the woman said with a decisive nod. "You come with me, young lady. What's your name?" She took the girl's hand as she spoke, leading her toward the house; Christian, with one eye on the sky, trailed them like a ghost.

"Leslie Hamilton," the child said. "I'm eight."

The woman nodded and brought her up onto a wraparound porch, then into the house; Christian just managed to slip inside before the screen door banged closed. She sat Leslie down on an overstuffed chair near the door, and Christian loitered beside the girl, taking the chance to study her while the woman made a phone call. He could see that the shape of Leslie's face had remained the same; her hair color had never changed, and those blue eyes were the same ones he found so entrancing now. He noticed for the first time that she was surprisingly thin; she wasn't being starved, but she seemed to be all knees and elbows, huddled within the clothing that was at least a size too large for her. Christian wanted nothing more than to kneel beside the chair and reassure Leslie that better things were in her future, and that she needed only to be patient and wait for them.

The woman hung up and regarded Leslie with a much kindlier mien. "Well, the gas-station attendant said you're right, you got left by mistake." She sighed. "I wonder what your parents must have been thinking? How long ago did they leave?"

Leslie hunched her shoulders even farther, folding her hands together in her lap; her feet dangled several inches off the floor, and she turned them inward, toes pointing toward each other. "I don't know, kind of a long time. But I didn't want to sit in that gas station and wait around for them all day. I...I saw this house when we came off the highway to get gas, and I saw the horses in the yard...especially the little one. When I got left, I decided I wanted to come and see it." Her face grew soft with wonder and she seemed to forget where she was; Christian's heart melted. "I was never that close to a real live horse before."

The woman smiled, as if perhaps she remembered being that young and filled with discovery once upon a time. "That's our foal, Lightning," she said, sitting in a nearby chair. "Born just this spring." As if reacting to the foal's name, there was a long, low grumble from outside, and Christian's attention was drawn to the large picture window that looked out over the rain-starved lawn, the sun-bleached pavement, and the ever-rippling prairie grass. He went to the window, but couldn't see much because of the porch roof; still, there seemed to be a change in the character of the wind. He turned in time to see that Leslie was staring apprehensively through the window as well, and the woman was crossing the room to a fireplace, upon whose mantel sat an old-fashioned radio that Christian guessed must date from the thirties or forties. She clicked it on and fiddled with the tuning knob till she got a tense male voice reporting current weather conditions.

"Tornado watch," she muttered, shaking her head. "Little late in the season, but you never know with the weather these days. It's risky...you'd better stay here till your parents get back to pick you up."

"A tornado?" Leslie repeated in high-pitched horror. "But...but what'll happen to poor Lightning if there's a tornado?"

The woman smiled at her. "Animals are smarter than people a lot of the time," she said. "They can take care of themselves. We'll keep an eye on this weather, but you'll have to be ready to run out to the storm cellar with me." She took in Leslie's blank, wide-eyed look and shook her head again. "Where are you from again?"

"Connecticut," Leslie squeaked.

"Then you wouldn't know about tornadoes. Tell you what, if something does happen, just do as I say and you'll be all right. I'm not going out in that weather even to take you back to the gas station. It's too risky right now."

At that moment Christian noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and twisted his head to follow it; a dusty white station wagon roared past the house as he watched, and Leslie clearly saw it too, for she blurted, "That was our car! They came back!"

"The gas station'll send them here," the woman told her. "You just sit tight."

She was right; a few minutes later the car returned, pulling onto the parched grass and discharging a slender woman with the same hair as Leslie. She turned to say something to someone in the car, then rushed across the yard; Leslie leaped from her chair and plastered herself against the screen door. Christian watched avidly as the woman, her short straight hair standing almost horizontal in the freshening wind, jumped the steps onto the porch, yanked the screen door open and hugged Leslie hard. "Thank goodness! I've never been so terrified in my life!" she cried, and Christian recognized Shannon Hamilton's voice from the cassette tape they had played for the triplets not so long ago.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Leslie blurted, her voice muffled in her mother's shoulder.

"Honey, it's not your fault," Shannon told her. "Your father was in too much of a hurry and didn't bother to check and make sure we were all in the car." She lifted her gaze and seemed to look straight at Christian, who flinched backward with surprise before realizing that the woman of the house had come up behind him. "I really appreciate your keeping my daughter like this. I'm sorry to put you to so much trouble."

"She wasn't any trouble at all," the woman assured her. "But you know, I think you and your family need to stay put for now. There's a tornado watch out, and if one happens to come along, I'd hate to hear about your getting caught up in it and killed."

Shannon tossed an uncertain look over her shoulder toward the car, which sat half on and half off the road with all its windows rolled down. Christian squinted in the same direction, trying to make out the figures inside; he assumed the driver was Michael Hamilton, but the car was too far from the house for him to make out details.

"I think you're right," Shannon said, and waved at the car. The back door promptly flew open and two more girls spilled out, racing across the yard as the first wind-driven raindrops flew past on the wild breeze. As they reached the porch, the driver got out, gave the car door a slam that sounded like a gunshot, and stalked across the yard, paying no heed to the rain. Christian took in the faces of Leslie's parents and sisters: Kelly and Kristy, whom he couldn't tell apart to save his life, were loitering on the porch, one on either side of Shannon, while Michael Hamilton made it only halfway across the lawn before the skies opened up and the grass across the road was obscured by the rain. Michael cursed loudly and fluidly, and ran back for the car, flinging himself inside and frantically rolling up windows. The twins both burst into frenetic giggles, and Leslie smirked.

"Girls," Shannon said, but with little heat.

"Dad got all wet," one of the twins chortled delightedly. "That was funny!"

The woman behind Christian cleared her throat. "Sorry about that. Why don't you come inside and I'll make some coffee. I might have some juice for your girls."

"Can we stay, Mommy?" a twin asked.

"I don't know, Kristy," Shannon demurred. "Dad wants to make Grand Island before we stop for the day..."

"You're another fifty miles from Grand Island," the woman broke in. "You'd better stay put. There's enough daylight left to make the trip, but if you get caught in this weather, you'll be sorry."

At that precise second, the entire world seemed to light up, as if they were all standing on the inside of a giant exploding firework; there was a terrifying crack, which was followed a tenth of a second later by a deafening explosion. Leslie, Kristy and Kelly all screamed, long and hard; Shannon emitted a shriek of her own and tried to gather the girls into her arms all at once. Even Christian flung his arms over his head and half crouched, freezing in that position for a few seconds till the worst of the thunder had rolled away; then he blinked and shook his head, deeply impressed. No storm he had ever witnessed rolling off the North Sea onto the jordisk coast could have prepared him for this.

The homeowner looked shocked herself. "That must have been right overhead," she said in a shaky voice. "Now I insist you come inside."

"We will," Shannon agreed immediately, visibly trembling as she herded her three terrified daughters inside. Kristy was crying; Kelly—the one Christian remembered being told was the fearless one of the trio—was wiping away tears as well, trying to look brave but not making much of a job of it. Leslie shivered in her mother's embrace as Shannon added, "If my foolish husband wants to stay out in the car in this, then let him."

Over the roaring of the rain on the roof, there was the faint whinny of a horse; Leslie stopped short, her eyes popped, and she wailed, "Lightning!"

"Yes, honey, it was," Shannon agreed.

"No, not lightning," Leslie protested, turning pleading eyes to the homeowner. "Lightning! I hope he didn't get hit!"

"Our foal, Mrs. Hamilton," the homeowner explained with a little smile. "Your Leslie came over to visit him before all this weather got in. I think she made a new friend."

Shannon smoothed Leslie's braid. "I'm sure he's just fine, honey. Don't worry."

Christian saw the fear in Leslie's eyes and found himself making a wish—and then realizing there was a way he could fulfill it. Unseen by anyone else, he ducked through the door that Shannon was still holding open and made his way to the end of the porch, trying to see through the curtain of rain. It took him a minute, but he managed to make out several equine shapes, like half-invisible wraiths, milling around in rapid twists and turns. One of them was notably smaller than the rest, rearing onto its hind legs over and over again and shrieking in much the same way Leslie and her sisters had done during the lightning blast moments before. Christian felt compelled to yell, "It's all right, Lightning, it's all right. You're going to be fine."

"I can't see Lightning," he heard Leslie cry out from behind, and turned to find her clinging to the screen door, trying to see through the rain herself. "I can't see him!"

The homeowner came out beside her and knelt down to reassure her. "Remember what I said? Animals are smarter than people. Those horses are just fine, I promise."

"I hope so," Leslie said fearfully, staring into the rain. "Oh, I hope so."

The world around Christian seemed abruptly to begin melting, as if it were a painting being washed away in the torrential rain; then all sight and sound ceased, and a door appeared right in front of him. Jolted, he grabbed the knob, opened the door and emerged into the time-travel room. There was a chair nearby, and he sank into it, sighing.