James Howerton

The Blue River Valley James Howerton

"Daddy." She pierced him suddenly with her green eyes. "You know what it is, stop pretending. I'm grown up now; tell me what it is!"

"Cathy, you always said you didn't want to know; it made you feel different, you didn't want to know. And you're not grown up."

"I said a lot of things. But now I want to know."

"You're not grown up, you're..." He stared into her burning eyes for a long time, having known for sixteen years that this moment would one day come, that she would have to know the truth someday. "It's called Mist," he heard his voice saying. "It's a powerful field, something along the lines of magnetism. You know, that game we used to play on the kitchen table, Cathy; when you tried to push the positive sides of your magnets together and they repelled each other, and one scooted away without even touching the other, and how you used to giggle?"

She studied him for a long time. "But when I reversed one of them, they didn't repel, they attracted."

He looked away from her, his little girl, the miracle. Fear throbbed in his eyes as he stared out the window at the Blue River Valley beyond the farmhouse. He had always known that they couldn't hide here, nor anywhere. She would never be safe, not anywhere on Earth, not anywhere in the universe. He had always known that this day would come.

"Mist," Cathy said, breaking him out of his stare.

"Mist. That's the field that surrounds you."

"Daddy, am I human?"