The nithrid rages across England. It flares up and it flashes down. It howls across the sky, devouring other storms. For a while, the world ignores it; but \u2014<\/p>\n
It has begun to kill.<\/p>\n
Just here and there. Just a trickle. But it has begun to play in this brand new world that Edmund has given to it. It has experimented with flashing down into a city, lighting up the buildings, making them dance St. Vitus\u2019 Dance, and chasing and slaughtering the men and women on the streets. It swirls up and down and all about in great gusts of lightning and \u2014<\/p>\n
It passes through the School. It\u2019s a mix of nostalgia and vague stress; being a living storm, it has no way to turn in its last few homework assignments, or attend to its midterms, and somehow it has gotten the impression \u2014<\/p>\n
I really can\u2019t imagine from where \u2014<\/p>\n
That its secondary school grades and record will be of some sort of account.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t understand what a nithrid should understand, to live in a world like hers, which is: the world belongs to anybody who can power entire cities, live a long time without consuming financially costly resources, and write programs for the marvelous electronic computers so prolific in that futuristic age.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s really no need for her to have high marks!<\/p>\n
Yet there it is, sweeping back through the School now. I just don\u2019t know what it\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n
Emily lugs a PlayStation 6 up onto the roof.<\/p>\n
The nithrid ignores her. It doesn\u2019t recognize its danger. It thinks, at most, that she\u2019s out there to see it; that she\u2019s appreciating the lightning; it doesn\u2019t mind, and it doesn\u2019t kill.<\/p>\n
Emily goes back down. She lugs back up an uninterruptible power supply.<\/p>\n
She plugs the PlayStation in.<\/p>\n
A light burns gold.<\/p>\n
The sky groans.<\/p>\n
The nithrid writhes, and the lightning stops. The rain becomes a perfectly, precisely steady flow.<\/p>\n
After a while a single arc of lightning comes down. It is struggling, as if pushing through molasses. It progresses slowly. It touches down on the roof facing Emily. It skitters there, still and steady, holding itself against the ground.<\/p>\n
It is like it is staring at her.<\/p>\n
Nithrid.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cThis is how it is,\u201d says Emily. \u201cThis is the Konami Thunder Dance. The sun won\u2019t move. The rain won\u2019t start or stop. And there\u2019s not going to be any more of that lightning, nithrid. Not until I start the dance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nithrid eddies.<\/p>\n
Emily brushes back her hair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear tell,\u201d she says, \u201cthat a living storm\u2019s been making havoc over the British Isles; and growing too. That that savage beauty, called a nithrid<\/i>, has come back to make an end to cities and to civilizations and to all the works of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lightning traces across the roof. It makes a symbol. She looks at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t . . . read . . . Sumerian?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
It scribbles the symbol out. It tries again in letters writ much larger: YES.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
There is a bit of silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world Konami Thunder Dance association tells me that I\u2019ve got first crack at this,\u201d she says. \u201cSince I\u2019m here, and I\u2019m the best. If I fail, though, there\u2019s others to come after me. Max. Meredith. Even Lucy. And plenty others after those. So, I\u2019m going to dance against you, and I\u2019m going to win, and you\u2019re going to quit it. Not because you agree to. Not because you\u2019ll choose to. Because this is the revolutionary PlayStation 6 dance pad game that is going to tear you apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lightning is writing on the roof.<\/p>\n
It is writing largely, looping: TRY ME.<\/p>\n
She presses the power button with her toe.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no turning back now.<\/i><\/p>\n
Only, there is.<\/p>\n
She is with it and within it. She is wound through it and it through her; she is dancing amidst the lightning, and she is binding it up again; it is as if her spirit has flown up from her body in the shape of a bird, as if it weaves in and out among the branches of the storm, among its stations, and where she goes it follows her, and she is threading it into knots. Each step she traps it tighter, she twists it about itself, and whether it strikes at her or dances with her, it only pulls itself more stringently into the shape of the tightening knot.<\/p>\n
In this dance, she will be victorious, but \u2014<\/p>\n
There is, in fact, a turning back.<\/p>\n
She kicks off the game.<\/p>\n
There is a sudden silence. The lightning tears itself out of the knots she\u2019s woven into it. The storm howls. It flares. It strikes before her, white, incandescent, searing the air in front of her face and damaging one corner of the coating on her KTD pad.<\/p>\n
It draws back. The nithrid scribbles over its previous messages.<\/p>\n
I DON\u2019T NEED YOUR PITY<\/p>\n
She just turns, though. She walks away from it.<\/p>\n
I WILL KILL THEM. MEN. WOMEN. CHILDREN. I WILL KILL TH\u2014<\/p>\n
It stops writing. She isn\u2019t looking. She\u2019s walking down the fire escape.<\/p>\n
She says, \u201cThen start with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
It does.<\/p>\n
There is lightning all through her. She stumbles. But it does not kill her. After a while she is conscious; she glares down at a fresh new scar.<\/p>\n
She staggers away, limping.<\/p>\n
The storm departs.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod damn it, Emily,\u201d says Max, later.<\/p>\n
She looks at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou taught it to stay away from the Thunder Dance<\/i>. Why didn\u2019t you finish <\/i>the bloody thing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided that I shouldn\u2019t,\u201d Emily explains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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