Personal Log: Adrian Rodd

A quick reminder of who's on this little trek... Steve and Tom you've seen before, of course. Nikki and Paulo are on the gallery of main characters. Jane, however, is a new face. You can catch a glimpse of her here, here and here.

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It was growing dark, as the six of them pressed on through the forest. The air was a little chillier than Sarah was used to on the beach, but it was still warm enough for the prospect of sleeping outdoors not to appear too daunting. She was getting rather tired, but said nothing. She did not want to appear any more of a burden than she already felt.

“We should stop soon, for the night.” She smiled as Tom spoke what was on her mind. Steve looked back at him, considered it for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes, all right. I suppose every spot is as good as any other around here. We’ll set down in a few minutes.”

“Sooner rather than later would be good,” Sarah pointed out. “We don’t know whether Rousseau has placed traps this far out, but if she has, they’d be almost impossible to see in the dark.”

“All right,” Steve said again, and dropped his bag between the roots of a tree. “We’ll take a break until it’s light again. Nikki!” he called out. Paulo’s girlfriend had scouted ahead a short distance. She reappeared a few moments later, waving them on.

“Guys, you may want to see this.”

They followed her, trudging on a few extra metres and gathering round a spot where two trees had seemingly been knocked down by a smallish piece of scrap metal falling from the sky. Sarah glanced up, automatically. The sun had almost finished setting, its golden glow turning to a beautiful, darker brown spreading over the heavens, and highlighting the contours of the clouds. Here and there, the first stars could be seen peeping timidly through, waiting for complete darkness to enhance their twinkling light.

“Part of the plane, right?” Nikki asked.

“Bit of metal torn from the fuselage, I suppose,” Tom agreed, crouching down to look at it.

“But what’s it doing all the way out here?” Paulo asked. “We’re a long way from the crash site.”

“The plane broke up high above,” Tom said, straightening up. “The scattering will have been widespread. Debris probably rained down over most of the island.” Sarah saw Nikki and Paulo exchange a quick glance. The Brazilian chef smiled slightly, then sighed.

“Right, well, let’s set up camp here,” Steve said decisevely. “Now, we haven’t seen anyone yet, of course, but we’re on Their territory here, so let’s be cautious. We’ll keep watch through the night. Paulo, Tom, we’ll take shifts.”

“Paulo will take first shift,” Nikki said. He looked at her.

“I will?”

“Yes.” She gave him a sweet smile, but the look in her eyes was meaningful. Sarah wondered about it briefly, then shrugged.

“Well, you all do what you want. I’m going to get the food out, have something to eat, and then god help anyone who wakes me before the sun’s up.”

It was fully dark by the time she pulled her folded, thin blanket out of her bag, and stretched it out over the soft, grassy earth. She lay down, and had been resting for a few minutes when a figure approached her. She turned her head, in time to see Tom sit down beside her.

“Hey,” he said casually. “How’s your leg been?”

“Not too bad. Aching a bit.” She smiled up at him slightly. “I thought Paulo was taking first shift. You should be asleep.”

“I will be, soon. It takes me a while to get sleepy. Am I disturbing you?”

“No, not at all,” she said sincerely, and turned onto her side to look at him, leaning up a little.

“I wonder what’s happening back at the camp...” he said, his voice thoughtful and a little distant. When she did not reply, he added: “Tell me… What do you think of John?”

“Locke? The guy with the knives, who’s only happy when he’s sitting in the pouring rain?” Tom nodded. Sarah bit her upper lip. “I don’t know… He’s a bit of a closed book. I find it hard to trust him, somehow. He’s not… quite there with the rest of us, if you know what I mean.” Tom nodded again, so she went on, “And surely that’s not his real name.”

“Why would he hide his name from us?” Tom asked, surprised.

“No idea.” Sarah shrugged. “But if your family name were Locke, would you really call your son John?”

Tom smiled, seeing her point. “Not unless I had a twisted sense of humour, and wanted to make my kid’s life difficult.”

“Or unless you had high expectations for his future.” She returned the smile. “It fits in to his whole mystery, doesn’t it? Still… He’s the only one of us who’s trained to survive in the wild.”

“I wonder where he picked those skills up.”

“I think I’d rather not know.” She smiled slightly, and lay back, tired. “But it does make him useful to have around. I just… don’t feel comfortable talking to him more than I have to.”

“Not that you’re exactly an open book yourself,” he commented, his tone light, friendly, but distinctly curious. “This is the second time you go traipsing off into the middle of nowhere. I’d have thought the first time would have put you off. Why did you come, Sarah?”

She looked up at him a long moment in silence, then yawned, stretching her arms, and grimaced at a brief flare of pain in her leg when she moved it. “I’m tired, Tom. Can we continue this in the morning?”

He returned her gaze for several seconds, then shrugged in turn, and stood. “Suit yourself. Good night, Sarah.”

“Tom.” She reached out as he began to move away. He turned back. She hesitated, then said, lowering her voice, “I saw something out here… that I couldn’t possibly have seen. I heard things that I couldn’t possibly have heard.” She looked at him, gravely now. “I want to know that I’m not insane. And, if I’m not, what exactly it is that’s happening on this island. Because to me… there are too many things that are just impossible.”

Tom crouched down slowly to gaze into her eyes. “You’re not insane, Sarah,” he said seriously. “As for the rest… nothing that actually happens can be impossible. Can it?” He waited until she shook her head, unconvinced. “Just… don’t go risking your life on a quest for things you can’t understand. Nothing here is worth getting killed for.”

She managed a faint smile, although his words sent barely perceptible shivers down her spine. “I’m not suicidal,” she said softly.

“Good.” He straightened up. “Now get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She nodded, and curled up over her blanket. “Good night, Tom…” she whispered, and closed her eyes.

* * *

By the time they had risen, had breakfast and set out, the sun had already crept up some distance into the sky, but at least Sarah felt reasonably rested. It was going to be a full day of walking, assuming they did not stumble upon EthanÂ’s hypothetical camp before this evening. But a fresh day had lifted her spirits, and she limped alongside the others at a fairly slow but steady pace, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her skin. The others were making light conversation, while she casually admired the patterns of the sunÂ’s rays on the leaves. They were just leaving the forest, and entering a long stretch of grassland and low hills.

“Does anyone here watch Exposé?” For once, it was Steve who had started the topic. He too seemed to be in a lighter mood today.

“Exposé?” Jane repeated. She shook her head. “I watched part of one episode. Not my thing.”

“I watch it,” Tom said. “Well, used to. I’m still on season 2, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“So you still don’t know whose side Philip is on?” Steve smiled. “I won’t spoil it for you. Sarah?”

“Hmm?” She turned to them. “Oh? No. No, I’ve never watched it. Is it any good?”

Beside her, Nikki grinned. “Well, actually–”

She was interrupted by a loud rumble in the sky. Sarah looked up, then lifted her arm to shield her face as the clouds burst open high above them, releasing a fresh downpour of soaking rain. Tom spluttered out a curse. Of all the strange things on this island, these abrupt changes of weather, rain pouring from a previously clear blue sky, had to be one of the more annoying.

“Over to the trees!” Jane shouted, over a sudden clap of thunder. The rain intensified. Sarah was soaked through and through within seconds. She followed, hobbling with her crutch, as the others dashed ahead towards the meagre shelter offered by the forest. She reached them at last, gasping against the chill of her wet clothes clinging to her skin. Tom lifted his bag over her head as a crude umbrella, and she flashed him a grateful smile.

“This place would drive a meteorologist insane,” Paulo muttered, and Sarah laughed slightly, shivering a little in her wet clothes.

“It’s driving me insane,” Jane replied, glaring out over the field, rapidly turning into marshland. All right, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. “Are we going to stand here and catch cold while we’re waiting for it to stop?”

Steve shook his head. “No sense in standing still,” he agreed. “We’ll stay on the edge of the trees, and head for that hilltop.” He pointed. “Maybe we’ll have a better view of what’s around us.”

“The hills it is, then,” Sarah mumbled, wiping water off her arms in an utterly futile gesture. She followed them again, Tom and Steve lingering a little so that she could keep up. She found herself missing her tent once more. She had, after all, only returned to it for a few minutes before setting off again on this fools’ errand. I never used to have restless feet like this, she mused, as she limped and stumbled up the wet, slippery, sloping ground. But then, I never used to see Mum appear to me on deserted islands when she’s supposed to be in L.A., either. It was amazing, she thought wryly, how big a change crashing in the middle of nowhere could make to your life.

When she reached the top of the low hill, the others were already standing in a loose line, gazing down at what lay on the other side. None of them was saying anything. She hurried to join them, standing beside Paulo, her gaze traveling down in turn toÂ…

“What the heck?” she muttered, and blinked.

* * *

“All right, now this doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense,” Jane pointed out, as they made their way quickly down the slope, through the trees and the rain, over the muddy ground and to the smallish plain containing their unexpected find. Sarah had her eyes on it most of the way, trying to discern what exactly it was she was looking it. The high tube –like an inverted scuba tube– looked particularly incongruous, sticking out of the ground in the midst of nowhere, but the vast pile heaped below it was particularly baffling. Paulo was the first to reached it, and picked up one of the countless narrow plastic bottles littering the ground in a high stack. He shook it, then opened it, pulling out a folded notebook. His eyes skimmed over the first page, then his thumb flicked through the rest of it, his other arm shielding it from the pouring rain. He began reading as Sarah caught up with him and stopped, catching her breath while she stared at the truly bizarre sight. The pile was at least a metre and a half high at its tallest, and five times that again in width.

“Watching: the Swan,” Paulo read, slowly. “June 10th, 1982, continued. 8:14 AM. Subject three brings fruit blender to the kitchen board. Chops grapefruit.” He looked up, utterly puzzled. “What does this mean?”

Jane had picked up another capsule, opened it, and withdrew an identical notebook. She flipped it open, and read from the first page. “Watching: the Flame. February 27th, 1981, continued. 01:03 PM. Subject six reading Christie book, And Then There Were None.” She looked up. “Is this making any sense to anyone?”

“No,” Steve said, thoughtfully. “But it’s certainly an intriguing find.”

Sarah had limped over to the tube itself, and picked up a capsule from that end of the pile. She pulled off the blue lid, and unrolled the notebook, skimming through pages filled with similar notations. It was incomplete; the last five pages were empty, and on the page before that, notations at the top had been scribbled out, so hard that the pen had torn through part of the page. “This one’s different…” she said quietly, then raised her voice so that they would hear her. “Listen to this. It’s written in capitals. ‘Can’t go back to Pala. Where to now? Is anyone’… Sorry, this is illegible.” She squinted at the page, through the rain. “‘Is anyone reading this? We need to know what now.’ And then, underlined several times, with three question marks: ‘Is there any point???’.”

There was a momentÂ’s silence. She looked back over the previous pages, then placed the notebook back in its container, slipped her backpack off, and placed the capsule in her bag.

“What are you doing?” Tom asked. She looked up into his eyes.

“Keeping it,” she said simply. “It doesn’t look as if anyone’s going to be needing it.”

“It may have been left here for a purpose.”

“We-ell,” she said pointedly, sweeping her arm over the pile of capsules and their surroundings, “if it was, I don’t think anyone’s coming for it. These notebooks are over twenty-two years old. They never seem to have been collected.”

“But who were they meant for?” Nikki asked. “Ethan’s people?”

“Maybe Ethan’s people are all dead,” Steve suggested. “Maybe he’s the last one.”

“Yeah, let’s not count on that, shall we?” Jane said dubiously.

“Perhaps there’s a building nearby,” Steve said, looking around. “This wouldn’t have been stuck here where no-one could get at it.”

“But no-one did get at it,” Nikki pointed out. “Whoever sent those notebooks through the tube, they were sending them nowhere.”

“Perhaps they thought they were sending them to a research station on this island,” Tom mused. “I mean, that would make sense. An island in the Pacific, with apparently no indigenous inhabitants… There could have been a research station here, in the early eighties.”

“A research station interested in people using fruit blenders?” Paulo countered. “I don’t think so.”

They all considered that in silence for a while. Sarah glanced towards the trees, then back at them.
“Aren’t we missing an important question?” she asked finally. “Not only why this was being sent here… but who was sending it? And where from?”

“That would be rather difficult to answer without following where that tube goes, underground,” Steve remarked, nodding at it.

“What about this?” Nikki picked up another capsule, opened it, withdrew the notebook, and tapped at its front cover. “This… logo. Design. Whatever you want to call it.” The cover featured an octogonal logo with an empty interior, featuring a single word. “What does” – she looked at it more closely – “‘Dharma’ mean?”

Steve shrugged. “Add that to our growing list of mysteries. Well… I suggest we check our surroundings. There may well be some sort of building, even if it’s abandoned. Nikki, Paulo, if you’d like to go in that direction” – he pointed – “and move clockwise. Tom, Jane and I will go in the opposite direction. We’ll each walk half a circle round the perimeter, then meet up here again. Sarah, you stay here. Rest that leg of yours… and, if you want, see whether there’s anything useful in the notebooks. Be careful,” he added seriously. “We know our enemies are armed, and they may be near.”

Sarah nodded, and sat down slowly, stretching her legs out in front of here and leaning back against the heap of bottle-like capsules. Nikki tossed her notebook back onto the pile without returning it to its container, and set out towards the trees with Paulo; the others moved away too. Sarah watched them for a while, then panned her gaze slowly over the forest. She was still extremely wary after having been shot at by an unseen gun from somewhere within this same jungle. She also felt highly visible and exposed, by this bizarre stack of capsules, in a small clearing, without the immediate cover of the trees.

She reached behind her, and grabbed another notebook. This one was dated mid-December 1981, and referred to a station named the ‘Looking Glass’. She read through some of the entries with idle interest, but they mostly detailed the routine activities of nameless ‘subjects’. Why anyone would want to stare at people round the clock and log their every move from dawn to dusk for months on end was utterly beyond her. There seemed to be no sense to it at all. She could vaguely imagine a man bent over a table in a dark corner of a room – perhaps a science laboratory with white walls, or its adjacent living areas – and frantically scribbling down how long it was taking ‘subject four’ to wash his hands and peel his onions, remaining in the shadows the whole while… She shook her head. No, really, it did not make any sense.

But it would make a great story! she thought, smiling faintly. I could build on this, turn it into a spyÂ’s adventureÂ… Something to tell baby Lucy next time I see her. Her smile faltered somewhat at that thought. If I ever see her againÂ…

She read through the rest of the notebook, and returned it to its rightful place with a sigh. After a moment, she pulled the first book back out of her bag again, and turned the pages to the one with that visibly frantic scribbling. “‘Can’t go back to Pala’…” she whispered softly, into the empty clearing. “‘Is there any point?’”. What had been the writer’s feelings when he had written this down and sent it hurtling through a tube into the unknown, she wondered? He was agitated, obviously, but why? Frustration? Or actual fear? Again, that was a question none of them could answer. There were too many pieces missing to this puzzle.

She skimmed through several other of the notebooks as she waited for the others to return, but none of them contained any crucial insight into the purpose of their authors. The stack she was leaning against seemed a monument to meaningless toil, hours and months expended faithfully writing down pointless information that had remained unread for over two decadesÂ… until today.

Movement between the trees up ahead caused her to look up. Peering through the rain, she could see a human figure emerge. She squinted, trying to gain a better look… then relaxed as she saw it was Tom, followed by the others. She struggled to her feet –or, more accurately, foot–, sneezed, tried in vain to brush some of the water out of her soaked hair with her hand, and waited for them.

“Found anything useful in the notebooks?” Steve called over to her as he came nearer. She shook her head, spraying raindrops.

“No. It’s all just the same. There seem to have been at least five ‘stations’ under observation, but as for the where and the why and all that… You?”

“No buildings, or any other sign of human presence in the immediate vicinity,” Steve answered. “Of course, it would take hours to–” The rain stopped. Sarah looked up. The dark grey clouds seemed to wither away into fading, willowy strips, and the sky was a clear, bright blue once more, the warm sun shining down over their soaking clothes. “…to search the whole area,” Steve finished, after a moment. He wrung the bottom of his drenched shirt. “Crazy weather…” he muttered.

“So are we going to look around?” Sarah asked.

“We may as well, now that we’re here,” Paulo said. “We probably won’t be coming back here again, will we?”

“Presumably not,” Steve said. “All right, then. We’ve been walking all day, so if everyone agrees, we’ll take a rest for a while, dry our clothes, then do a wide circle round this clearing and comb the area thoroughly. If we’ve found nothing by nightfall, we can press further inland tomorrow.”

* * *

Sarah felt exhausted. They had kept going at a steady pace the entire evening, tramping through the jungle, walking –or, in her case, limping– round and round, in search of anything at all, and finding… absolutely nothing. So far, it appeared that one scuba-shaped tube sticking out of the ground, and presumably connected underground to the original source of those baffling capsules, had been the only man-made structure on this island prior to the crash survivors’ arrival… excluding of course Rousseau’s crude but lethal traps. Nor had she seen her mother’s look-alike again. She could not help but feel disappointed… and a little relieved. Her conflicted feelings, hopes, fears and expectations continued to battle inside her, jumbled, intertwined and illogical, but she was far too tired to try and make any sense of them. She lay on her back, her blanket spread over the still damp grass right next to the heap of capsules, and gazed up at the stars in the clear night sky. Nearby, the others were asleep or at least quiet, except for Paulo and Nikki, whispering in low, inaudible voices to each other. Out of sheer, shameless curiosity she made some effort to hear what they were saying, but soon gave it up and closed her eyes. It was going to be another long day tomorrow, and she needed to build her strength up.

As she drifted into the silent, soothing realm of sleep, her thoughts returned to her father, and a slight grimace of sadness marred her face. He had probably accepted her presumed death by now, although she assumed he would still be grieving for a long while. She wondered what her mother had felt when she had heard. The planeÂ’s disappearance on its way to LA would have been fairly big news in her adopted city. Did she feel responsible, for having bought the plane ticket which had led her daughter to vanish without a trace? Sarah hoped not. It wasnÂ’t your fault, MumÂ… I may never meet you, but I hope you know it wasnÂ’t your fault.

She shifted a little on her blanket, uncomfortably, and sneezed. She imagined the news of an airplane disappearing, thought to have crashed into the ocean with no survivors, would have been one of the headlines for one evening, and then would have been quietly forgotten by all but the families of the lost. In a world filled with such constant, senseless tragedy, the deaths of several hundred people could only shock or sadden the rest of the planet for a brief moment, if at all. She shivered a little, more against the damp grass poking through the holes in her blanket than at her own gloomy thoughts, and pushed the latter aside as best she could. She needed sleepÂ… Barely a moment later, a soft sigh escaped her lips, and her conscious mind finally switched itself off for the night. She slept.

For several hours, not a sound disturbed the peaceful clearing, the moonlight casting its weak glow on the pile of plastic capsules, barely shining on the six dark figures lying closely around it. Then, unseen, a new light drifted into the open space from between the trees. None of the six castaways woke. Sarah lay on her back, sleeping soundly, her chest rising and falling with steady, regular breaths. Her eyelids twitched, suggesting she was deep within the world of dreams, lost for now to the reality outside her sleeping mindÂ…

* * *

“I hate fast food restaurants! The food is disgusting, probably unhygenic, fattening, there’s hardly anything for vegetarians, and… and you know the people working there are just being exploited.”

“So you keep telling me. But it’s cheap, it’s closest, I’m hungry, and there’s a very pretty waitress. Come on.” Faisal grinned at her, grabbing her wrist gently, and led her inside. Sarah rolled her eyes, and followed with a loud sigh.

“You’re buying me lunch, then,” she told him, managing a playful smile as her feeling of annoyance rapidly faded.

“Of course,” her friend agreed cheerfully. “Chips? Coke?”

“Coke? Are you kidding? Fruit juice!” She shook her head, looking at him with a mock-impatient glance as they joined the queue. “Coke, honestly…”

“But chips?”

“I s’pose so.” She shrugged, and glanced past the people ahead towards the young, blond woman serving their line at the counter. “My god, she must be almost nine months pregnant! Don’t they give their employees any maternity leave here?”

“Oh, stop complaining,” Faisal told her with a smile. “Which one?”

“Right ahead,” Sarah said, nodding discreetly, and trying to peer at the woman’s name tag. “Claire.”

Faisal looked. He smirked. “She’s pretty, though.” Sarah elbowed him in the ribs.

“Idiot!” she whispered. “If she’s pregnant, she’s probably got a boyfriend.”

They collected their food, and carried it over to a free table near the wall. Faisal cast a last glance in ClaireÂ’s direction as he sat down, then turned his attention to his friend opposite him.

“So… When is it again you’re going to the States?”

“In four days. Not that there’s much point in me telling you, since you’ll have forgotten again tomorrow.”

“Hey!” He gave her a mock-hurt expression. “I remember it’s LA you’re going to. To meet your mother for the first time. How weird is that?”

Sarah nodded. “Very.” She picked up a chip, and looked at it with mild distaste before eating it. “It’s still not quite sunk in, to be honest. It probably won’t until I’m actually on the plane and on my way.”

“A bit… forceful of her, wasn’t it? Actually booking the ticket for you, without asking you whether you even wanted to see her. A bit pushy.”

“Yeah,” Sarah agreed, then shrugged. “But then, I haven’t seen her since I was a baby, so she probably figured I’d want to meet her at last. She is my mother, after all.”

“Is she?” Seeing the strange look Sarah gave him, Faisal explained quickly: “I mean, biologically, yeah, of course she is. She carried you and all that. But she wasn’t there for you afterwards, was she?”

“What are you trying to say, Faisal?” she asked calmly.

“That it’s up to you,” her friend told her, his usual casual attitude giving way, for a moment, to a far more serious expression. “That just because she’s called doesn’t mean you have to come running. All those times you were calling out for your mum as a baby, she wasn’t there. To be really honest with you, Sarah, I’m not sure I really like the sound of your mother. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that she doesn’t get to decide, all of a sudden, that she’s your mum again. You get to decide whether she’s your mother. You owe her nothing. You’re doing her a favour. Remember that.”

Sarah looked at him, taking his words in. She thought about them silently for a while, chewing on her chips, then shrugged idly and swallowed her food.

“At the very least,” she said, with a deliberate air of casualness, “I get a free trip to LA.”

* * *

SarahÂ’s eyelids continued to twitch under the natural effect of rapid eye movement, her lips parted very slightly as she inhaled and exhaled steadily, quietly in her sleep.

“Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop…” It was barely a whisper, a murmur of the wind in the trees. Sarah did not wake. Her breathing remained even, untroubled. The whisper seeped quietly into her dreams. “When the wind blows…” A low breeze brushed against the tops of the trees, rustling the the leaves. That sound, too, wound its way gently into her dreams. “…the cradle will rock.” She could hear the voice now. One voice, echoed by many others, the latter murmuring indistinctly, barely audible. The main voice, though, was becoming crystal clear, a woman’s voice, beautiful and a little haunting. A voice she had heard before, perhaps, stirring distant memories long forgotten, but… her still unconscious mind could not quite place it.

“When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall…” The voice was so gentle, so soft and caring, so filled with love and warmth. A smile touched Sarah’s lips. Somewhere in the back of her mind, as her mother –my mother?– continued to sing, soothing her child as she slept, Sarah could hear a baby crying. Her eyelids twitched more uncertainly now. Her breathing accelerated, becoming more fitful. But that’s me… The baby crying, that’s me. “Down will come baby… bough, cradle and all!”

She opened her eyes with a start. Her wide, dark eyes stared straight up into the bright white light hovering right over her face, and she gasped, her breath catching in her chest. The air shimmered and crackled. Confused, muted whispers hummed in her ears.

The haze of light seemed to descend slowly closer to her face, stifling in its proximity, an eerie glow of pure white blotting out the dark sky above. The humming in her ears grew louder. There was a whir, and clicking sounds, almost like machinery. She tried to cry out, but her throat felt constricted, and she could barely breathe. She swallowed hard, with an effort, frozen to the spot. Every muscle in her body tensed as she pressed herself down against the ground, unable even to blink, staring upwards continuously. The light paused, hovering centimetres above her without descending any further.

Slowly, she was able to discern almost imperceptible patterns. Shifting whisps of very light pink amidst the glaring white; hints of grey, of shadows. In a way, she realised with a shock, it was stunningly beautifulÂ… Like mother-of-pearl having shed all solid form, and transubstantiated itself into pure light. She licked her dry lips, trembling despite herself.

Hauntingly, the lullaby emerged from the confused whispers and murmurs, her mother’s clear, beautiful voice singing softly to her from… where? Her deepest memories? In the muted shadows above her face, she thought she could glimpse a baby –me– and then her mother holding her, a look of radiant love and delight on her face. A tear trickled down her mother’s face… and then the image blurred and faded, a ghost retreating into the past, gone in an instant. There Sarah was now as a child, kicking a bright orange ball, blurred into a dark grey now, in the garden in Sydney. Her father was there, too, in the garden… then again, carrying her on his shoulders over Harbour Bridge, laughing. His laugh echoed in her ears for a fraction of a moment, then that, too, was gone. And she was in Paris, a young adult now, stading looking down the Champs de Mars towards the Eiffel Tower… no, in a street, near that large square, and she was staring right into her own startled, guilty face, her arm poised in mid-air, as a young black man’s hand descended firmly onto her shoulder, clamping her still –

Then nothing. The white light reared up, then seemed to be sucked away towards the trees, rushing away from her impossibly fast and vanishing into the dark night. Sarah sat up without even realising it, gasping loudly for breath, almost choking as she filled her lungs as quickly as she could, blinking her aching eyelids. She felt as though she had just emerged, half-drowned, from being held several minutes below water. She coughed, spluttering, before she was finally able to breathe normally again. She stared out wildly towards the trees, and pushed herself upwards, scrambling towards them.

She had forgotten about her injured leg. The moment she pressed her weight down upon it, still trying to stand and catch her balance, it gave way beneath her, sending her sprawling onto the grass with a faint cry of pain. All around her, the others began to stir. “Sarah?” Nikki’s voice, sleepy but concerned. A figure appeared beside her, helping her sit up. Tom.

“Sarah! Sarah, are you all right?”

She gulped, and nodded, catching her breath again. “Yes…” She gazed past him at the trees. He followed her eyes briefly, then looked into her face, worried.

“What happened? Did you have a bad dream?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “Not a dream. At least… I don’t think so. I… I saw…”

“What did you see?” he pressed, urgently. The others were beginning to gather round. She lowered her voice to a whisper, so that only he could hear.

“Nothing. Only a white light…”

“A white light?” He looked at her, puzzled. She nodded, her eyes earnest, still wild and unsettled. Sweat dampened her brow, and she shivered.

“It was beautiful…” she whispered, surprising even herself. As the others reached her, she allowed herself to fall back, all the strength drained from her body, barely hearing their anxious, worried queries. Tom caught her, and lowered her gently back onto her blanket. Sarah did not even look at him. She gazed up at the stars, then turned her back on them all and began, very softly, to cry…