“I bet it does,” Rodney muttered. Raising his voice, he said, “What’s the idea?”
“I want to show you something,” Jerri said. “I need another person to see it to make sure I’m not losing my mind.” She laughed. “Any more than I already have. In exchange, I’ll give you my truck.”
Don blinked. “What? We can’t take your—”
“I’m not going to need it,” she said. “Come what may, I’m fine right where I am. But you folks aren’t.” She pointed back up theroad. “My cabin isn’t far. Won’t take long, and you can be on your way.”
Rodney said, “What do you want to show us?”
She shrugged. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
True to Jerri’s word, they didn’t have to go far. Five minutes up the road, she turned the truck down a small driveway hidden by overgrown trees and shrubs. Almost full-on dark. Branches scraped the sides of the truck, causing Don to wince. Naks sniffed Rodney’s crotch thoroughly just as Jerri said she would. Rodney suffered in silence.
Until Jerri pointed out the rocks captured in the truck’s headlights. Not all of them. Small pebbles, really, but they were floating a few inches above the ground. Then Jerri said, “Look at the trees.”
Pine trees. Conifers. And their branches didn’t sway side to side. Instead, it looked as if the limbs wererising, like one of those fake Christmas trees that had been boxed away, the wire branches sticking straight up. It was as if the trees were reaching toward the sky.
“How long has it been like this?” Rodney asked.
“Since last night,” Jerri said. “This morning, I saw a squirrel try to leap from one tree to another. It… just kept floating. Didn’t see where it landed.” Under her breath, she added, “If it did.”
The truck crested a small hill, and there, set back against a grove of trees, a small log cabin, the roof made of dark green metal. Underneath the front windows, wooden boxes that held soil and flowers in yellow and pink and purple. A small porch with a rocking chair next to a dog bed that looked as if it’d been chewed on a few times.
Don stepped out of the truck onto gravel and froze when he saw light moving through the trees about a quarter of a mile away.
Behind him, Rodney said, “What are you doing?”
“Did it follow us?” Don asked in a hushed voice.
Rodney climbed out of the truck, following Don’s gaze. “What on earth…?”
“Ball lightning,” Jerri said, appearing beside them, causing them both to jump. “Very rare. I’ve only seen it once before, when I was a kid. It’s been like this almost every night for the past week. It sticks around for an hour or two and then just… vanishes.”
“We saw it earlier,” Don said. “Before you showed up. It’s why we stopped. What…whyis it?”
Jerri shrugged. “I don’t question things anymore. For all I know, it’s the Earth’s response to what’s coming. It never comes any closer than it is right now. I’m not worried about it. I’m worried about the moon.”
“What about it?” Don asked, looking up. He saw what she meant. He didn’t know how else to think of it but this: The moon now looked like a comet. Something was happening on the surface of the moon, something that caused a streak of white to trail off to one side of it, as if all the dirt and dust and rock on the surface was getting pulled into space. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah,” Jerri said in a low voice. “I don’t know how much longer she can hold on.”
She didn’t invite them inside; rather, she led them to the side of the house, Naks bringing up the rear, tail wagging furiously. In front of them, hills and rolling fields as far as the eye could see. Tall grasses swayed. Trees reached toward the oddly colored sky.
“What are we looking for?” Don asked.
“Give it a minute,” she said without looking at them. “What’s at Copper Mountain?”
“A promise we need to keep,” Don said.
“A serious promise?”
“Yes,” Rodney said.
Jerri nodded. “I get that. I’ve made those kinds of promisesbefore. To others. To myself. But I didn’t keep some of them. Maybe a lot of them.”
“Why?” Don asked, despite himself.
“Because sometimes, the people asking for the promise didn’t have my best interests in mind. People can be cruel, selfish, only thinking about themselves even as they inflict harm on others.”