– 8 –

“You could die, you know,” cautions a silver snake.

Its paper tongue flicks, and the lightning moves.

“They’ll fall on you,” it says, “and the Earth will shake, and you’ll probably be buried alive.”

It’s a good warning, I think. It’s an important truth. But Emily, she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t heed.

She doesn’t . . . actually . . . know . . . how to understand the words of snakes.

So she just picks it up, and she kisses it, instead, and she gets a paper cut on her upper lip; and she puts it down, and she pats its head.

And she goes off to summon down the sky.