String Theory_ Fusion (Book 2) - Kirsten Beyer [91]
Kathryn’s first assumption was that this was a little girl. The figure had long, flowing locks of silver and blue hair, flecked with tiny sparks that reflected light in all directions. But there was a decidedly masculine character to the child’s face, and its soft gray smock betrayed nothing of its gender.
The child said nothing, only gazed contentedly at her with its solemn little eyes.
“Who are you?” Kathryn asked with friendly curiosity.
The child opened her mouth to speak, but the sounds that flew forth were an incoherent babble that Kathryn could make no sense of.
Undeterred, she tried another question.
“What are you doing here?”
Kathryn didn’t know whether or not she was more surprised by the fact that when the child spoke again she could understand the words perfectly, or by the words themselves.
“I am holding up the doors.”
Kathryn started to smile.
“Why would you do that?”
“What else is there for me to do?” the child replied.
Kathryn looked around the room, considering the multitude of childhood riches that sat before her.
“We have lots of toys. Would you like something to play with?” she asked.
The child looked about, and said, “I should really stay here and hold up the doors.”
“Don’t you ever play?” Kathryn persisted. “Here,” she continued, holding Sneakers out to within the child’s reach, “this mouse is one of my favorites. His name is Sneakers… why don’t you play with him?”
The child cocked her head, considering the stuffed mouse. There was no innocent mischief in her eyes, only a cold calculating consideration that was too adult to belong on the small face.
“Go ahead,” Kathryn urged gently. “We can play together if you like.”
The child reached for the toy, and in a flash it was pulled from Kathryn’s hand on an invisible thread and landed firmly in the child’s arms. She petted it lovingly for a moment as Kathryn smiled. Then her head cocked to the side again in that strange quizzical fashion, and suddenly Sneakers was alive. Held in the child’s firm grasp, a purple and green mouse nestled and burrowed, his whiskered nose sniffing the air greedily.
The child mimicked him, and to Kathryn’s surprise she saw tiny whiskers sprouting from the child’s cheeks at the base of its nose. The plain gray smock was streaked with wide swaths of purple and green, bleeding into existence as if they were sucked from Sneakers’s flesh.
Then the child began to laugh.
If Kathryn had ever found laughter comforting or pleasant, those memories were blotted out as the eerie, shrieking laughter of the child echoed through the house.
Kathryn took an involuntary step back, suddenly feeling the urgent necessity of putting as much distance as possible between herself and the strange laughing creature. Her foot met something solid behind her. Turning, she saw another child reaching out to her.
This one was definitely more feminine than the first. Long jet black hair was coiled atop her head in dozens of looping curls, and her face was painted with bright streaks of silver and gold.
The girl reached past Kathryn and grabbed several wooden blocks painted with the letters of the alphabet and single-digit numbers. As Kathryn watched in alarm, the symbols on the blocks unhinged themselves at the girl’s touch and rose in the air above her head, flying about the room. For a moment, Kathryn saw complicated equations forming and re-forming, but within seconds she could make no sense of the strange girl’s game.
The mouse-child was still laughing, scurrying about the room on all fours, chasing Sneakers around, and in the process knocking over anything and everything in her path.
Instantly, there were children everywhere. Some emerged from thin air, others climbed out of the cushions of the sofa or the folds of the drapes her mother had made, others pulled themselves from the half-empty boxes and bins.
Each child had its own color and look. And each was as different as the elements. Some, like