Science Fiction for Young Readers, grade 4 up
Story by Terry Gibson ©

     As the light faded into bloody sunset, 
many small groups waited in the parking 
area of the arena.  Tabitha still had not 
appeared.
     Mrs. Mallow and Mr. Player were 
talking softly with Tab's mother.  The kids, 
now all friends of Tabitha, stayed near but 
knew better than to intrude.  Maria broke 
the silence with unusual candor, "I just 
couldn't stay home.  I guess I wasn't very 
nice to Tab."
     "I guess I wasn't either."  Sally hung 
her head and picked at imaginary lint.  "I 
hope we can tell Tab we're sorry."
     Elsbeth, whose conscience was clear, 
smiled.  "I guess we are all here for that.  
Don't stare but look who's over there."  
Only her eyes turned to show where.
     "It's Rolph!"
     "Maria, Tom Tom and Karl are there 
too."  Sally thought it was pretty funny.  
"Do you think they're here for the same 
reason we are?"
     Akim who had stayed beside Greggy from 
the start, asked "And what would that be?" 
His eyes were dark with unspoken things.
     "Maybe we should ask them."
     Everyone stared at Elsbeth.  Was she 
nuts?
     "Sure, Watch me."  Elsbeth, the last 
person anyone would expect to do such a 
thing, walked toward the Terrible Three.  
They couldn't hear what was said, but hey!  
They were walking back with Elsbeth!  Three 
moons in the sky!  She led them toward Mrs. 
Gray, and the rest of the girls joined in.
     "Mrs Gray," Elsbeth said, as the true 
friend she was, "Excuse me but Rolph and 
Tom Tom have been here the whole time,
--And Karl, waiting like us..."
     "Hello," Tab's mother said, smiling at 
what it meant. "Thank you for coming."  For 
years she had heard all about these three, 
and to meet them at last was interesting.
     It was Tom Tom who spoke first, 
looking at Mr. Player as if for reassurance. 
"I, uh WE thought if we waited here--"
     "...with you," Karl added.
     "...that it would help bring her back."
     JP noted that Rolph was blushing! Well! 
     Before he could say anything, Tom Tom 
rushed in, "This is the last place we saw 
her!" JP was impressed.  These guys didn't 
seem like the same people.  He had watched 
Elsbeth bring them over, and was glad she 
had included them.  Sometimes it took an 
emergency to bring out the best in people.
     "That's why we are here too!  To help 
her return!" Sally was seeing Tom Tom, in 
fact all three, with new eyes.
     The Spirit of Friendship had joined 
them with common purpose, and all felt 
comforted by it.  It was the first good 
feeling any of them had known since Tab 
had disappeared.
     As for the Terrible Three they darned 
near glowed!  It was the first time they 
had felt really accepted.  "Thank you, 
Mr. P," Tom Tom said, and knew that he was
understood.  He would really miss Mr. P, 
the first teacher who, when he deserved to 
be punished, had really given him a chance.  
To be with this group, treated with 
respect...  For the first time, Tom Tom 
felt important.
     Akim and Greggy would have something 
to talk about when they were alone!
     Light was fading fast.  All had 
settled in for some serious waiting.
     They waited, and there was no Tabitha 
at all.  None could put the worst fear into 
words, as if to say it out loud would make 
it true.  Greg and his mother were 
surrounded now by teachers and friends, all 
of them trying to comfort them just by 
being there.

                         
     Greggy was trying to comfort his mother 
when they heard officials from the fire 
department rescue unit make an announcement.  
Search and Rescue helicopters had seen 
nothing in the area, and were quitting for 
the night...  "They'll find her, Mom," 
Greggy said.  "They're doing all they can."
     "But why didn't Tab just bring herself 
down? She showed us she knows how."
     The same thought had been nagging 
Greggy all along.  He wasn't about to tell 
his mother his worst fear, that maybe the 
speed of rising had knocked her out, or 
something.  That maybe she'd keep on rising 
to the upper atmosphere, where air got thin, 
and airmen needed oxygen masks....
     In spite of himself, the tears came.  
The first time he had seen Tab floating in 
her bedroom, he took her for a ghost.  He 
felt his mother's arms warm around him, and 
was glad.

                         
     No sign of Tabitha.  Thinking dark 
thoughts in the dark, Mr. Player sat on the 
stone wall, his face in his hands, feeling 
the most exquisite pain he had ever known.  
Because of him, brave and generous Tabitha 
was gone....
     The crowd had forgotten JP existed.  
Greggy sat, desolate, beside his mother on 
that same stone wall, but in the isolation 
of grief each was a desert island of misery, 
alone in the midst of all the friends, the 
Terrible Three, the girls, and Akim, alone 
left of the remaining two Pariahs. Tabitha's 
absence was sorely felt.

                         
     News people, professionals that they 
were, issued bulletins, and headlines 
screamed, "PRIZEWINNING STUDENT LOST."
     Flush with new religion, another quoted 
the pastor's "GOD TAKES TABITHA HOME," and 
another one in a remote city, with the 
headline: "SCI-FAIR WINNER DISAPPEARS INTO 
SKY" was poorly received. (Rumour had it 
that the reporter who filed that got fired 
because they thought he was drunk... upon 
which he went out and was.)

                         
     Still on the arena grounds, an all-
night vigil emerged spontaneously.  People 
returned with sleeping bags and tents, and 
soon the flicker of hundreds upon hundreds 
of flames, set out like votive candles, 
flickered in the darkest black of night, 
lighting white faces and warming hands.
     With the support of two of their 
teachers and a lot of kids, they joined 
together in prayer for Tab's safe return.  
The crowd had turned into believers of many 
kinds.
     One student introduced the idea of 
prayer-circles.  As the hours passed, more 
and more kids, joined by occasional adults, 
assembled into circles, sending up an 
unprecedented concentration of prayers 
through the endless night.  And then the 
wind rose and it poured.  Some would say 
that God has a sense of humour, for the 
rain drove everyone into the arena, or into 
the tents, dousing candles.  Another said 
it proved God had heard, for the rain came 
suddenly out of an undisturbed sky, like 
tears... Upon which the fervor of prayers 
was doubled.
     No one thought that Tabitha might 
already be safe in God's hands.  It would 
have saved them much grief.

                         
    One by one, the targets of four 
flourbags surfaced.  One had landed in a 
barnyard among chickens, crushing two, but 
feeding fifty-eight.
     Another foiled the robbers' getaway as 
it smashed through their windshield, 
spoiling any hope of white-covered thieves' 
blending with the crowd as they ran.  
It was an easy arrest.  
     Two landed on a flat roof, the impacts 
rattling the dishes in apartments below, 
but no, there was no earthquake.  Nobody 
knew the flour was even there but in the 
next days, birdwatchers noticed a large 
increase in feathered visitors in the area.  
Then it rained, and clogged the gutters that 
drained the roof, and it was some time 
before they discovered why the roof leaked 
while the sun shone.  As for the wooden 
pallet, three little boys found it on the 
bank of a farm pond, and were gleefully 
using it as a raft to fish from.
     A student journalist followed up on 
all these events.  His story appeared as 
"FLOUR BOMBS LAND," earning the student 
an A for humour.

                         
     Next day the headlines read, TABITHA 
VIGIL ROUND THE CLOCK, and commented that 
into the darkness, knots of students and 
some adults sat near the arena, and on the 
wall, disconsolate, which proved the author 
had not been there.
     The saddest headline was over a story 
that told that no sign of Tabitha had been 
discovered even on radar: SEARCH CALLED OFF 
DUE TO WEATHER.  That one threw a pall over 
the whole town.

                         
     Perhaps Tab was unconscious, perhaps 
she slept, but whichever, it was a mercy.  
She did not know that she had a depressed 
fracture of her forehead with wound, and 
the worst of the headache went unnoticed.  
Had the clamp hit her edgewise rather 
than flat, the haematoma would have killed
her instead of being self-limiting in the 
cold, and reabsorbed over time.  She did 
not know either that had the force of that 
impact been two inches lower, (5 cm), its 
shear would have fractured her spine at 
the base of the skull and (martial arts
gurus say) killed her instantly.
     All the way up, the leather tether 
had been whipping her legs.  Perhaps it was 
fortunate that Tab had felt nothing as the 
welts rose, and in some places, blood began 
slowly to flow.  And likely luck was with 
her too as the speed slowed, that she had 
not known how cold the wind had been, but 
it prevented greater loss of blood.  Had
she been conscious, she would have noticed 
that the wind had shifted from the 
vertical, to a sideways direction.
     In strange silence she rode the wind 
much as balloons do, eastward.  Had she 
seen it, she would have found the soft 
morning light on billows of cloud quite 
beautiful below her, the same clouds that 
had caused the search to be called off due 
to heavy rain.  Tabitha would still be 
missing well past the point of hoping.

                         
     When the stories appeared in the 
hometown BUGLE, enough tissue was used to 
wipe eyes and blow noses to clear store 
shelves.  More importantly, a new awareness 
was growing among the young people in Tab's 
town. The media knew a good story when they 
saw it: the value of every human being.  
Thousands could perish in a far country
from earthquake, tsunami, or typhoon and be
shrugged off, but the fate of one of their 
own hit them where they lived.  From that 
grew an understanding that the thousands in 
the news were persons too, each one, 
somebody's son or brother, somebody's mother 
or child, and knowing that first hand, they 
became better persons for it.

                         
     There was talk of discontinuing the 
air-search, but public opinion would not 
permit it. Tabitha had not yet been found 
after another cold and windy night.  So 
long as there was a chance she might be 
found alive, they had to search.  And though 
no one voiced such a thing, it would be
important, even later, to recover her body.
     It was understood.
     Tab's mother was typical of much of 
the town in her heavy grief, inconsolable, 
even by Jeremy Player who returned with 
Greggy and his mother to their house.  
Joined in agony they sat before the flames 
of the fireplace, helping each other resist
the thought that Tabitha might never return.

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