– 6 –

It’s probably less than half a minute before she’s in the gun emplacement in the bell tower. It feels like it took her half her life.

She kicks on the anti-magnet. She boots up the nithrid absorption machine. She swings the sky whitener around whole-bodied, holds its grips in her hands, slips her feet into its pedals, and fires into the oncoming storm.

It’s not a person, right? It’s not violence. It’s just a storm. You can shoot the weather, it’s OK to shoot the weather —

It’s not OK! She shrieks. It’s not OK! It’s not OK!

Her spirit defocuses again. She is gasping. Her pores are bleeding. She tries frantically to not have shot at the nithrid, over and over tries to exert her power to not have done that, but the deed is already done.

There is a viscous wound of clarity in the middle of the sky.

I’m just anthropomorphizing, she thinks. It’s not alive. It’s not a person. Only, it’s screaming —

Saul, incidentally, is terrible at being a saint.

“Dang,” Bethany says, as the lightning comes down for her. “I’m worse’n Saul.”

<< – 5 –

– 7 – >>