Her daughter would be twenty-four, if she was alive.

Elaine Hollander lit a candle.

She sat on her creaky bed and watched the flame, bright against the greenery outside her bedroom window. Violet might be alive. There was torment in not knowing. Elaine had things to do tonight. Laundry needed to be put away. Homework and chores needed oversight. Her youngest wards needed dinner, and also their school lunches prepared for tomorrow.

But it was Thursday evening. Every Thursday, Elaine took time to honor the memory of her funny, smart, and sweet Vy.

She mourned her foster children Cherise Chavez and Thomas Hill, also. They had all gone missing together on a Thursday night, two winters ago. Elaine wanted to remember them equally. But she had known her redheaded daughter by far the longest. The ache of that loss never went away.

Elaine had given birth to Violet. She had held little Vy in her arms as a baby. She had nursed her, watched her toddle around, and helped her grow to be a vibrant and gorgeous young woman who had so much to offer the world.

Vy had disappeared without a trace.

Search parties had combed Afton and the surrounding towns, searching for Elaine’s red van with its handicapped license plate. They had driven up and down obscure roads and looked at abandoned cars in towing yards. Police had searched cell phone records, but according to pings, the phones belonging to Vy and Thomas had traveled north and then seemingly vanished into thin air. Satellite searches were unhelpful, perhaps because the region was thick with forests. Tree cover obscured a lot of things.

The van remained missing. So did Thomas, Cherise, and Vy.

They’re alive somewhere, Elaine tried to assure herself, gazing at the steady flame while the forest outside darkened behind it.

She just could not imagine any explanation for their disappearance.

Could they have been somehow abducted by human traffickers? Thomas might be valued by some nefarious organization, despite his special needs and the expense of caring for him. But what about Cherise and Vy? Surely a slavery organization would rather target girls who were easier to mistake for someone else? Cherise had unusual features, with mixed ethnicity. Vy was six feet tall with natural red hair.

More saliently—photos of them had circulated on nationwide news programs. Newscasters had exclaimed over their background as foster siblings, and their mysterious vanishing in the middle of a snowy night. They should be recognizable to a lot of people.

The van might have gone over a cliff.

Perhaps it was buried under a rock slide or underbrush, or in some forgotten bog or pond. Someday, someone would find it.

Someday, Elaine would get closure.

For now, she kept tormenting herself with stupid ideas that her sweet Vy was alive and calling out for her. Her throat tightened involuntarily. Despite her candles every Thursday evening, she was bereft. In moments like this, her joy was gone.

A black marble rolled along the base of the candle tin.

As Elaine examined the mysterious marble, which was flecked with mica, it began to glow. It projected a holograph upward.

Thomas?

Elaine stared in disbelief at the semi-transparent apparition, which glowed against the deepening dusk outside the window. It couldn’t actually be Thomas. Although the holograph only displayed his head and upper torso, this looked like an able-bodied version of her fosterling. His spine was unbent, his shoulders even. And he was a teenager.

Thomas would be fourteen now, nearing fifteen.

“Thomas?” Elaine allowed herself to sound uncertain, like a crazy old lady, since she was, in fact, questioning her own sanity. This could be a vivid hallucination. Maybe she had literally lost her marbles.

“Hi, mom,” the holograph said.

The voice had a tinny quality, coming from a tiny speaker somewhere in the marble. It was the awkward voice of a teenage boy instead of a child. Yet Elaine gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth to hold in a scream of shock and unexamined emotions. A stranger would not call her “mom.”

“We had reasons for not contacting you until now,” Thomas said. “Safety reasons. If we had tried to reach out before, it would have resulted in death for a lot of people. But the ordeal is over, and you’re safe, and so are we. Vy is here. And Cherise also.”

Vy’s voice came from the marble. “Mom! I love you. I’ve missed you so much.”

Vy!

Elaine cried. She had to stuff her joy and her bliss inside, so she could experience more. A holographic version of Vy stepped into view behind and above Thomas. She looked like a queen, with her hair shining in artful coils around her head.

Her voice was all Vy, and all sincerity. “I miss you more than anything.”

Elaine tried to embrace her daughter. Her hands went through the apparition. It was an illusion.

The holographic Thomas went on. “There are still a few risks involved with a visit. But we figured it’s time.”

Vy nodded emphatically.

“If you’d like to see Vy in person,” the holographic Thomas said, “then please clear your schedule for midnight. You should be in your bedroom at that time, with the door locked. Be dressed for travel. We can have you back home by morning.”

Elaine pressed her hands against her teeth, seeking reassuring solidity instead of the softness of lips, unable to stop a sound from seeping out. Yearning. Was this reality?

“See you at midnight, then?” the holographic Vy asked.

Elaine squeaked. She hoped they understood that she was agreeing.

“Sorry for all the heartache.” Thomas paused, looking guilty. “You didn’t deserve two years of grief. We really do miss you. You’re the best mother any of us could have hoped for.”

The holograph vanished.

Elaine immediately stood and tried to make the marble activate again. She rolled it around and tested it on a variety of surfaces.

No matter what she tried, the marble behaved like an ordinary marble now. It had no buttons or hidden latches. It did not project anything. She would be unable to prove to anyone else that she had actually seen Thomas and Vy, alive and well.

Maybe that was intentional?

If there were risks involved in a visit, then Thomas and Vy might not want her sharing the news. Did they expect Elaine to act like nothing was different?

The rest of the evening passed in a blur. Elaine could not focus on cooking or anything else. She resorted to asking for help.

“Please watch the kids?” she begged her eldest ward; the one who attended the local community college. “I’m not feeling up to anything tonight. I’m sorry. I need to lie down.”

She must seem feverish, because Marissa agreed without protest.

As the hours ticked towards midnight, Elaine alternately sat or paced her bedroom. She used her phone to do internet searches about marbles. She learned about marble racing, but nothing about holographic messages. She searched her room for any other weirdnesses. Nothing. She laid out different choices of clothing. She made sure her door was locked.

How could anyone visit her inside a locked room?

She opened her window, but it was on the second floor, facing the driveway, and it had a screen. Neighbors would notice if someone climbed a ladder to sneak in or out.

She dressed in a stylish autumn outfit, layered with a cardigan. It seemed ridiculous to wear her nicest jewelry, like she was going to attend a dinner party, but why not?

During the final minutes, Elaine simply sat on her bed and stared from her clock to the open window and back again.

She halfway believed that a fairy tale was coming her way. The other half of her felt certain that she was completely delusional.

The clock ticked to midnight.

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Elaine held her breath, ears attuned to the slightest sound.

A breeze rustled some papers.

There was a sigh of windblown leaves outside. Nothing else.

…Until her ears popped.

Suddenly, Elaine was no longer sitting on her bed. She was no longer surrounded by the scent of vanilla candles and fecund summer growth and her wool quilt. Instead, bands of unseen power seemed to hold her upright in midair.

She was in a palatial hall with a reflective chrome floor.

Elegant sconces lit glossy walls between mica-flecked pillars. It smelled of warm minerals.

Elaine’s soft shoes touched the floor. She realized that she should stand. As soon as she had her balance, the unseen power that had wrapped around her body let go.

She shuddered, running her hands down her torso. That was so weird.

“Mom?”

Elaine turned and saw her daughter.

In reality! In person!

“How are you?” Vy smiled with warmth, and enfolded Elaine in a huge hug.

Elaine hugged back. She just wanted to celebrate, but her daughter was saying all kinds of strange nonsense. She claimed that teleportation was disorienting. What did that mean?

“I want to explain everything,” Vy said apologetically. “But that would take more than a few hours.”

Elaine laughed. She held her eldest daughter, her only biological child, in a tight embrace. Vy clutched her back. Maybe they had both felt destroyed. Now they were whole.

“I’ve thought about you so much,” Vy said after a moment. “I felt horrible about the way we left you. That was my fault. Sneaking away. If I had any clue about where it would take me? I would have said something.”

“Sh.” Elaine patted Vy’s back, wanting to comfort her.

At last, they stepped apart.

Elaine studied Vy, perplexed. What was her daughter wearing? It looked classy and elegant, but it wasn’t from any recognizable culture. There were a lot of precious metals and rich pastels.

“You look like you went to a land of Far Away.” Elaine kept her tone light and joking. “And they made you their queen.”

Vy did not burst out laughing, or offer an explanation for her regal hairdo and clothes. “Ah. Well.” She sounded embarrassed.

“It’s okay, you don’t owe me an explanation.” Elaine realized that her joke must have sounded like passive-aggressive nagging for answers. “Not right now. I just want to see you.” She stepped back.

“We can sit down.” Vy gestured behind Elaine.

There was a huge and artful sofa which Elaine had failed to notice. She allowed her daughter to lead her to the seat. They sat together.

Elaine searched the cavernous hall. No one else was present.

“Where is Thomas?” she asked. “And Cherise?”

“Thomas sort of has a job,” Vy said. “He figured it would be best for you to meet him and Cherise on a future visit. Otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed.”

Elaine accepted that, although she thought Thomas was underestimating her capacity for handling weirdness.

Except for one thing that Vy had implied. “A future visit? Uh…” She clasped Vy’s hands. “Aren’t you coming home?”

Vy shook her head.

Elaine’s heart tore a little bit. It was not nearly as painful as the sorrow of the last two years, but it still hurt.

“Why?” she asked her daughter.

Vy adjusted herself on the couch, facing her mother with earnestness. “I’ve thought about it a million times. I want to visit you, of course. But...” She hesitated, clearly searching for the most kindhearted wording.

“You’ve made a life here,” Elaine realized.

It wasn’t such a shock. Not after the news that Vy, Cherise, and Thomas were alive and well. Elaine wondered if anything could ever truly shock her again, after tonight.

Deep down, she had long guessed that Vy was destined to go her own way. Vy was a helpful daughter. She understood her own worth as a caretaker for disabled kids. But she had a wild streak, didn’t she? Vy got excited by wacky adventures. She liked to explore abandoned mills and derelict churches. She wanted to chase storms.

“Tell me all about it.” Elaine made herself comfortable on the couch. Knowing that Vy was happily alive in a foreign land was a lot different from imagining Vy to be a moldering skeleton. Anything else would be easy to bear, in comparison.

Vy looked like she was having trouble choosing where to begin her story. She was happy here, that was plain, but she had a lot of news to share.

“Actually,” Elaine revised, “tell me about the new ‘someone’ in your life.”

Vy looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“Most people won’t leave everything for just a new job,” Elaine said. “Or just for a change of scenery. They might tell you that’s why they’re doing it, but usually there’s a person at the other end. Or a major passion. People move for love.”

Vy nodded with a happy, silly grin. “It’s love.”

Elaine rested her cheek in her hand, happy for her daughter. “Okay. So tell me about this person. Can I meet him?”

Vy’s grin faltered.

“Or her?” Elaine guessed.

“He’s very unusual,” Vy said.

Elaine shrugged that caveat away. “I work with unusual people. And so have you.” She thought of Thomas. Was Vy dating someone who was visibly disabled? That wasn’t something to be shy and embarrassed about. Vy ought to know better.

“Uh.” Vy hesitated. “Most of what I might tell you would sound like I’m lying. My boyfriend is unusual across multiple spectrums.” She brightened. “Uh, but I can tell you why he’s right for me.”

Elaine looked forward to that.

“He’s kind.” Vy tapped a finger, demarcating a trait. “He’s considerate of everyone, no matter who they are.” She tapped another finger. “He’s a real hero. Like you, Mom! He saves people.”

Elaine smiled in fond gratitude.

Vy unfolded another finger. “He’s humble. He has all kinds of reasons not to be. But even though he wields a lot of power, he holds onto his humility. Oh!” She held up a fourth finger. “And he’s human. I mean, in all the best ways.”

That sounded a little ominous. Elaine tried to hold onto her smile. Was Vy planning to marry a manipulative billionaire or something?

Vy held out her thumb, displaying all five digits. “And he’s basically a giant spacefaring wizard galactic emperor with more power than Superman.”

Elaine busted out laughing. She had missed Vy’s sense of humor.

Vy smiled weakly and waited until her mother stopped laughing. “I love him, Mom. I don’t even know if that’s healthy, since I don’t know about his future, long-term.”

“What do you mean?” Elaine thought about Thomas’s disability. “Are you afraid he’ll die?”

Vy made an evasive shrug. “It’s possible. He takes risks. That’s part of who he is, but yeah, he isn’t a stable nine-to-five type of guy. We’ll never have a white picket fence and a standard … well, a standard anything.”

Elaine put her hand on Vy’s arm. “When I was dating your father,” she said, “I thought we were stable together. I thought we’d have forever.”

Vy was listening. Her father had died young. Unexpected leukemia had stolen him away.

“Man plans, and God laughs,” Elaine said, quoting a proverb. “If you love this guy? Then I’m not sure you should take decades of future planning into account. You never know what the future is. All we can do is live our best lives, based on who we are right now.”

Vy grinned. “I love that advice.”

Elaine grinned back, hiding her worries. Doctors predicted that Thomas would never live to adulthood. How was he doing? Had Vy hooked up with someone with a similar prognosis?

“Well,” Elaine said, “can I meet this boyfriend of yours?”

Vy looked embarrassed. “I thought we would save that for a future visit.”

Was Vy ashamed of her chosen man? Or was she afraid of how the secret “he’s human” boyfriend would treat her mother?

Either way, it was a bad sign. One should not feel ashamed of their loved ones, or afraid of them. Vy, of all people, ought to know that. Anyone who cared for children from abusive homes ought to know that.

“Uh, or…” Vy saw Elaine’s sharp concern. “Do you think you’re up to handling a major shock?”

Wasn’t learning that her daughter was alive a major shock?

Vy looked cautious and expectant.

Elaine laughed and nodded. “Of course. I can handle anything.” Any fresh shocks would seem minor in comparison. She didn’t even understand how she had arrived in this palace.

“Cool.” Vy smiled. “I would love for you to meet Ariock.” Her grin turned to a serious expression. “Um, you should know he is literally a giant. He is ten feet tall.”

Elaine stared at Vy, waiting for the joke’s conclusion.

Vy stared back. She looked serious.

Hm. So her boyfriend was tall. That exact size had to be a ludicrous exaggeration, but there might be a kernel of truth in it. Elaine internally recalibrated her expectations. Perhaps Vy was embarrassed that she had spent her life around small, weak children, and had then gone for the exact opposite in her love life?

“It’s fine.” Elaine squeezed her daughter’s hand. “You can love a man of any size, so long as he treats you well.”

Vy looked relieved. She giggled a little bit, and tapped a tiny device pinned to her stylish collar. “Ariock?”

A deep voice came through the device. “How’s your visit going? Hello, Mrs. Hollander.”

Elaine leaned closer. “Uh, hi. Ariock?”

“Mom is ready to meet you,” Vy said. “Are you busy?”

The voice of Ariock sounded amused, with a touch of being honored. “Not at all. I’d love to meet her. Should I enter through the doorway?”

“Please,” Vy said. “Any time you’re ready!”

She gave her mother a reassuring smile.

Elaine searched for a doorway in the palatial room. Sure enough, there was a massive entrance at the far end of the hall, framed in black marble. How else would one get inside this room?

Teleportation?

Nah. That was fantasy fiction. There must be a reasonable…

The arrival of the boyfriend derailed Elaine’s thoughts. He ducked under the marble lintel.

He had to duck.

Even from this distance, Elaine saw that the entryway was suited for a palace or a cathedral. No one should need to duck under a doorway that was likely ten feet tall.

And he wore very impressive armor.

His armor was obsidian, with flecks of mica or diamonds embedded on his massive chest plate in a spiraled cluster. The mica trailed over his huge shoulders and biceps, implying the trailing arms of a galactic spiral. And the joints were well-engineered. Nothing creaked, but there was no disguising the heaviness of his footfalls. This man was a titan. He was a whole new definition of “Tank.”

As he came closer, Elaine began to crane her head back.

Ariock was larger than reality should allow for.

“Sorry about my outfit.” Ariock patted his chest self-consciously. His voice was big and deep. “I’m between official tasks, and this is how I usually appear in public.”

“Oh.” As Elaine’s lips came together, she realized that she’d been gaping at Ariock in astonished shock.

How embarrassing.

“Yeah, Mom, Ariock is kind of like a one-man-army,” Vy said. “He protects Earth and a whole lot of other planets.”

“Planets?” Elaine was no longer sure whether Vy was joking or not.

“Come sit,” Vy invited Ariock. “You’re looming otherwise.”

The plush sofa was oversized, but it wasn’t that oversized. Elaine realized that this titan would have to sit on the floor.

Ariock gestured briefly, and a huge stone armchair popped into existence behind him. It even had cushions.

Ariock sat.

Without even looking.

As if it was normal. As if titanic furniture magically appeared for all galactic giants who were extremely unlikely to exist.

“Mom,” Vy said, snapping her fingers in front of Elaine’s face, distracting her from the improbable Ariock in his improbable chair. “Mom. Are you okay?”

Elaine swallowed. She had assumed that Ariock would be the size of a pro wrestler. Giants did not exist. Magic did not exist. Her mind felt like it was melting or unraveling. Either this was a new sort of reality or it was a cruelly vivid hallucination.

She reached into her pocket. She still had the marble. At least that felt real.

“You’re safe, Mom.” Vy hugged Elaine. “I promise.”

”I could go,” Ariock said.

“No,” Vy told him sternly. “She’ll get over it. Please stay. She asked to meet you.”

Ariock settled comfortably in his custom-sized armchair.

“I had trouble adjusting to the galaxy and other stuff, too,” Vy told her mother. “I know it’s a lot to wrap your head around.” She turned to Ariock. “I think she just needs a moment.”

Ariock turned a curious gaze towards Elaine. “Well, she raised you, so I figured she can’t be too easy to shock.”

Vy giggled.

Somehow, that exchange made everything click inside Elaine’s mind. This was reality. Regardless of what this titan looked like, regardless of what he was capable of, her daughter was happy in his company.

Why should anything else matter?

“So, young man.” Elaine clasped her hands on her knee. She allowed herself to see the youthful good humor on Ariock’s face. “How long have you been dating Vy?”