“Down I fell,” Tiffany said, eyes distant, the Oxford accent surfacing for an instant, then disappearing into tough-talking Doree.
“I didn’t fall into Chaos. Nope, the Chaos was gone at last. I fell feet first into a black sky and it was just totally full of stars.
“I thought I was in outer space!
“I thought I’d fall forever and I screamed and right then I thought, uh oh, no air in space. I’ll probably explode soon and I won’t never breathe again.
“Then I saw the trees, upside down and just way too big, but there’s no trees in space. And I was already slowing down, and of course I was already breathing cause otherwise how could I scream, so that was okay.
“I hung still for a nano, and then I fell back up.
“Cheez, all I could think was I’d rather keep falling than go back to Cloud Rock and Tanya Honey. I thought sure they had me and were pulling me in.”
“Then smack! I landed on my back. I guess it knocked me out for a second. It was crazy, I was stuck to the underside of Cloud Rock but it felt just like I was laying on my back. I got my eyes to open at last and there was quiet starry sky and dark trees all around like regular trees.
“And kazowie, I got it, like that!
“I was right-side-up. Everything else was right side up.
“Cloud Rock had landed upside down!”
Jasmine’s eyes went wide with the wonder of it. “Wow,” she said quietly.
Doree grabbed Jasmine’s hand. “Yeah, seriously? Just like when Robby got through, the Chaos had opened up and Cloud Rock hit again but this time it hit upside-down stuck. The top, the little red hill where I sat earlier, it was buried in the ground. The butt end stuck up. The big boom was when it hit. And everybody, all the others got squished.
“I just lay there and thought, that oughtta make me really sad, but it didn’t. I tried to remember anybody who was my friend in there but it was all kinda like misty.
“Anyhows, so there I was on my back on the bottom of Cloud Rock. I thought, a real hero would go back in and try to rescue anybody still alive. That’s what Robby would want me to do.
“So, I crawled back to the hole I popped out from and slithered over the edge.
“Whoa! I thought my stomach was gonna dance into my throat. Or like my top and my bottom was going to squish into my middle. I figured out later what happened: the top half of me was past the edge of the hole, in Cloud Rock, see? And Cloud Rock still had its own gravity, just like it had all through the crash with earth when I got my Robby. So regular gravity was pushing my legs and my butt down and Cloud Rock gravity was pushing my head and my chest the other way.
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“And I saw wood. Wood! They’d boarded up the hole at the bottom of the stairs!”
Doree rocked back and forth with excitement and misery. “I let go and slid back out, ‘cept I didn’t, I slid just past the gravity balance point, and then back and forth with the rock edge pressing into my tummy going runk runk runk. My legs got cold cause of night air and losing all the blood from like standing on my head. Finally, I pushed myself backwards and got out of the hole, back to where down was down and I could lay panting and think.
“If someone hammered boards over the exit, then they was still alive in there. Also, I must have been knocked out longer than I thought. Then I thought, well of course everyone is still fine in there: when we hit the ground just a while ago, we bounced off and our air didn’t even get mussed.
“Cloud Rock must be still there with its swimming pool and conference center and hot springs and low red rock hilltop. Except above that dome of air would just be dirt. And Tanya Honey probably made someone nail boards over the hole at the bottom of the stairs so nobody would try to leave now that it wasn’t Chaos anymore.
“So that was okay, at least nobody was dead and squished and I could stop worrying about them.
“But I still was worried about me. I was outside Cloud Rock and the trees at the edge of the world loomed up just huge. Had I come to a land of the giants?”
The distant voices were closer but Tiffany seemed not to notice, and so Jasmine clasped her hand and willed herself to ignore them, as for months she had ignored the demons in the caves beside which she wandered. Instead she lived the adventure with young Doree. She saw what Doree saw and with a quickening of her heart, she realized that she had seen those trees before. Something stirred, almost a memory…
“So,” Doree said, shivering, “I figured I better get a look at where I was. I crawled along shaking like a jitterbug and there was rock grinding into my knees. See I could tell myself I was right-side-up but it still felt like I was crawling along a roof. Like I’d sweep off into space if I didn’t hold on tight.
“It took just forever to crawl over boulders and around gashes and come right up to the edge and look over.
“A couple hundred feet down my Cloud Rock disappeared into the earth. The earth had giant blades of grass, like swords, all dim in moonlight. I held on tight and tilted my head up so’s I could look around.
“The world wasn’t big. Cloud Rock was little. And I was little. If I was the size of anyone else in this world, I’d see the grass mowed smooth like a garden and low fir trees all around. Cloud Rock was in this circle of stones, low gray boulders. In the middle of the circle was this huge heavy rock on three smaller ones, all blotchy with lichen. Eerie, that’s what it was, like a tomb.
“And then I looked up and saw a giant looking down at me.”
She was silent with the memory and Jasmine again saw what Doree saw: a girl about her age, with dark hair like hers and wide eyes.
Jasmine knew that face and remembered now where she’d seen those low firs and that circle of standing stones. It was in the painting on the wall of Silver Mary’s apartment. And right next it had been a picture of what Silver Mary had looked like as a girl.
“Are yeh one of the little people, then?” Giles’s mother, still a girl, asked in a voice filled with wonder.