Banished To Earth Book Two, Souls Adrift (18)

   “It just lit up!” Tucker exclaimed.

 

   “What?”

 

   Tucker raised his eyebrows.

 

   “The oak.”

 

     “I was in the barn, looking for the plastic. Then it was like someone ignited a giant acetylene torch. Blue light suddenly streamed in. The horses froze again.  In fact, they’re still frozen. It was the oak. That tree just ain’t right.”

 

    “Think lightning hit it?”

 

   “No. It’s not on fire. It’s just glowing, and humming, can’t feel it from here but….”

 

   “The storm energized it!”

 

   “Could be, could well be. That’s a good guess.” Just then, another band of heavy rain whipped under the porch.  “Come on, let’s get this window covered, her room’s goin’ to be a swamp if we don’t hurry.”

 

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      With that, they quickly measured the window, cut the plastic and nailed it over the jagged opening, happy that it was on the first floor.

 

   Once inside, they continued their postulating.

 

   “I need to go check it out,” Tucker announced, just as Davin was about to hang his rain-drenched duster on the coat rack by the door.

 

  “Not alone, Tuck. Silhouette and Pry can stay and keep watch over our girls. I’m going with you.”  He said, slinging his duster on as he spoke.

 

  “Guys,” Silhouette yelled from the kitchen. “It’s, ah blue outside.”

 

   “It’s the oak, Tucker yelled back, I, we’re going to check it out right now.”

 

   Pry and Trudy came running down the hallway. “Be careful,” Pry said, running into Davin’s arms, all fears of Stayner momentarily dismissed.

 

     Trudy didn’t run to Tucker. He smiled at her anyway, whipped open a portal just before Pry released Davin, and they were gone.

 

   Horizontal gusts slapped their faces with stone-hard rain pellets. Had they not been hunters, it would have hurt as badly as bee stings. They hardly noticed. A twisting column of blue light coiling up from the great tree, boring into the clouds, had so absorbed their attention that they would not have noticed anyway.

 

   The clouds high above the tree began to shimmer and twist, flatten and fade away. Sunlight suddenly streamed down, sunlight from another world.

 

   “That’s a window.” Davin exclaimed. He struck off toward the tree to get a better look. Tucker was right on his heels.

 

  They had shifted only about three hundred feet from the tree, but the window abruptly closed before they got there.

 

    The tornadic column of blue light had also collapsed, leaving behind not the slightest shimmer.

 

   Eloween and Thorn, hermetically sealed within their sleep pods, slept through the entire event. Had they been awake they might have learned how to return to Lah rah’ and maybe even freed their kindred but slumber and security robbed them of that opportunity.

 

   “The storm, Tucker, had to be the storm, all that energy.”

 

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    “And maybe low air pressure,” The lanky cowboy turned toward Davin. “Huh, you know what

I did just before the new tree arrived.”

 

    “You shifted.”

 

  “That’s right, and the three of you had just shifted under the tree too, didn’t ya.”

 

   “We sure did. That’s a pretty big energy release.”

 

   “Maybe tomorrow we could experiment.”

 

    “Yeah, but I’m not sure that’s a smart move. We’re safe here, for now…”

 

    “They’re watching,” Tucker said, looking up. He wiped rain from his eyes. “They’re out there somewhere, and the monsters, noise and light. And it was a big light, ‘bout as big as the sun.”

 

   ‘Huh, it was a sun for a bit, just not ours.”

 

  “Wanna go check out the oak anyway?”

 

  “Yeah, who knows what we might find?”

 

     Wind-whipped rain was still lashing them as they stepped under the oaks, dripping boughs; they hardly noticed. Both managed to shake off the mind-numbing effects of the tree’s narcotic aroma. It seemed the effect was easily countered by conscious intent. And their intention was highly focused tonight.

 

    One thing they did notice was a dull blue glow emanating from all the pods. Tucker jumped flat-footed, grabbed a limb and climbed over to one of the pods. Its azure light was faint but not so faint it couldn’t expose it contents.

 

    Like an egg held up to a light bulb, creating an x-ray image of a tiny unhatched chick, the glow clearly exposed the unmistakable image of a tiny winged being curled up inside the pod.

 

     “Davin, we got fairies!”

 

    “Nah, really?”

  

     Tucker peered deeply into the pod's blurry blue interior. The little creature quivered. “It’s alive.”

 

   “Pry said the same thing. Her hair sensed life inside one of them.”

 

     Tucker looked around, “This tree is alive with them.”

 

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    “Sure, hope they’re friendly.”

 

   “Not monsters, but I know nothing about fairies. Maybe they’ll all be like Tinker Bell.”

 

   “Hey, you do know about fairies,” Davin yelled up.

 

    “Don’t think that counts.” He yelled down.