Book In Progress

I am writing a children's book. Here is chapter one. I would enjoy feedback.

CHAPTER ONE – Sea Girl
“Thursday’s Child has far to go.”
Nursery Rhyme

This is how the apocalypse came, and how god awful gorgeous it was.
Gwylan was visible only from the air. If you looked from the street, below the brick staircase to her house, you would see only as high as the shingles on the second story. The two neighboring houses were much shorter than hers, and would not help you even at their very top. The sun revealed her presence on the roof, but only after 10 a.m. and before 6 p.m., (and the times changed with daylight savings and weather). The moon noticed her during certain times of the month. The gulls knew she was there.
As usual, she had gone up there to read and paint the seagulls that flew into her town from across the Atlantic Ocean. They almost always found their way to the house sitting by itself topped by a little girl with severely cut black hair and a small collection of watercolors. She was still, and no longer threw rocks or screamed at them. Over several years they had built up a trust, so now the gulls and the girl understood each other, and frequently shared company.
Gwylan counted them among her better friends.
On this particular Thursday Gwylan had stayed home from school. She was not sick. It was not a holiday. She had simply not wanted to go. Once her grandmother had been assured that Gwylan’s grades were doing well and that she had no outstanding school projects due that morning the two of them declared it a mental health day and went out to breakfast. Gwylan’s grandmother, whose name was Sofia, didn’t have a high opinion of their state’s educational system, so she could often be persuaded to let Gwylan take the day off for reading, walking, or whatever else she could find to do.
There was a damp, cool wind bringing in the birds, and in their tiny eyes Gwylan could see storm warnings. She glanced up with her black eyes at the sky and decided to go in before lightning made her high perch on the roof unadvisable.
Although, she thought to herself, Just once I’d like to get hit by lightning if I knew it wouldn’t kill me.
As she stood up the twelve or thirteen gulls that had been sitting with her nodded and watched her before flying off to their own shelters. As she stepped through the circular window that led into the attic she could just feel the beginnings of rain on the back of her left leg. She closed it behind her and looked back to see the rain collapse onto her small paint set. She watched the storm bleed her colors pale and then decided to ask Sofia what she wanted for lunch.
None of this was unusual for Gwylan’s life. Keeping company with gulls, deciding whether or not school was the order of the day, eating with her grandmother, and attending to the weather before the weather attended to her were simply the ways she passed the time. She did not expect much to change for her. Not any time soon.
But, the secret with change is this: Change is always there, watching us from just behind our shoulders, ready to reach out and grab us. Sometimes it is very patient, slowly pushing us into being new people. Sometimes it is all at once, like being picked off your feet as you walk and then dropped from the sky into the middle of the dark oceans to the North. It’s the second kind of change, the all-at-once kind that scares people. Imagine, please, falling from hundreds or thousands of feet up in the air down into water so deep cold that you went frozen and blind. It’s breathing and choking in pain without being able to see a thing around you. It’s a horrible thought. It’s how we feel when we lose that which is most important to us with no warning or way to stop it. It’s terror.
How you react to all-at-once change is important.
Reaction Number One: You become completely overwhelmed by the shock and drown, unable to even think of saving yourself. Maybe as you drift to the black bottom you have time to hate who or whatever tossed you down. Maybe you’d have time to think that before you sank like a self-pitying stone.
Reaction Number Two: You get to the surface as quickly as humanly possible. You take a breath and try to figure out exactly how to get out of the middle of a gigantic ocean. You can sometimes find ways back to shore, for you have some common sense and are not without bravery. But even after you are safe and back home you will shake. You will tell others never to trust in anything, for at any moment someone could pick you up and drop you in the ocean.
Reaction Number Three: You ask good questions. Even after being hurled into strange events with a crush, you take a moment to look around and ask, “Do I fight this? Do I make the most of it? Will it turn out to be more interesting than what I’ve known until now?” You swim around something new and begin the process of learning how to breathe water. It hurts like a knife in the lungs. You breathe in once, twice and so on and so forth until one day you realize it doesn’t hurt any more. You look down and discover you’ve slowly evolved and grown gills. Now you can dive deep and swim far, live in water or on land. You are a person about whom stories are written.
Gwylan walked in her bare feet through the attic with rain coming down hard over her head and echoing on the ceiling beams. Below her she heard old, keening music of Sofia’s playing.
“Now here’s the story about Minnie the Moocher…”
She walked in the dark. She knew where everything was, having spent many hours exploring the attic and trying to find a ghost to talk to, so there was no reason to turn on a light and waste electricity. Besides, turning on one of the lamps rusted by the salt air, during a storm, might blow out the whole house’s power. And also, the only lamp in the attic she liked was ancient, with frosted glass lanterns over the bare bulbs, and it risked a final, unforgiving blow out with every pull of the copper cord. Gwylan knew that Sofia would throw it out when it finally died, and that was the last thing she wanted. It seemed a little lost in time, and very elegant.
It was, Gwylan thought, aging with grace and deserving of respect.
As she passed it she traced the pull cord with a finger and left it swinging, adding its rhythmic swish to the sound of rain, which was coming down in torrents.
Although, she thought, there’s something to be said for going out with a bang.
She made her way to the broken ladder that led out of the attic and climbed down. It could barely hold her weight, and she knew that one day it wouldn’t. But, until it snapped completely she was happy it allowed her into the attic and no one else. Closing it carefully with the handle of a broomstick that stayed in the hall, she brushed the last bit of rain off her leg and thought about soups, teas, and other warm things that are best to eat on stormy days. It is at this point that Change picks Gwylan up and throws her with all its might into the story of what her life has to become.
Gwylan knew every inch of the building she had called home for most of her fourteen years, to the point that she often walked around the house with closed eyes for fun. I have already told you a bit concerning the roof and attic. The attic was essentially a third story, but it was so low that it was more like the second and a half story. Below it was a tall story calling itself “The Second.” On this floor you could find two bedrooms, one facing West and the town (Gwylan’s) and one facing East and the ocean (Sofia’s). There was a library and staircase to the South and a row of windows along the North side, as well as a bathroom dominated by an old claw foot tub with incorrect plumbing. The hot faucet poured cold water and the cold faucet gave you hot, but that was easy enough to negotiate, which is why Sofia never had it fixed. The walls were dark, salt blasted wood, and the doors only had handles on the inside. This made it seem from the hallway that there were no doors at all, only smooth planks that sounded hollow if you tapped them. Doors were left open during the day, as were all the windows so the breeze could sweep out the quiet hours and dust. Sometimes the wind would blow a door shut and Gwylan would open it by sticking a straightened coat hanger through the keyhole to jimmy the lock.
The first floor was a flowing, open place, comprised of doors to a porch and a kitchen that appeared from nowhere and then backed out of your awareness politely. The doors were glass and looked to the beach. It was clean, and soft, and filled with the sun and air. The wood was blonde and the living room held large chairs and a fireplace. There was a copy of Vermeer’s The Girl with a Pearl Earring hanging over Sofia’s corner desk where she wrote letters to friends who were far away. These are the rooms to which Gwylan was used, and she fully expected that when she reached them Sofia would be sitting at her desk with a green pen and four different kinds of stationary, trying to decide what recipient should be awarded which paper and envelope.
The music went on.
“A hidehidehideho (hidehidehideho)…”
Gwylan knew something was wrong when she reached the top of the stairs and saw Sofia thrown into one of the glass doors to the porch. Glass went into Sofia’s hands, back, legs, and head, as well as onto the floor. And then Sofia rose into the air with nothing holding her.
It’s funny, what the brain chooses to notice or ignore when it has to deal with the unfamiliar and heart stopping. For instance, as Gwylan watched her grandmother being beaten and tossed from walls to doors to floors, she found that what struck her the most was the fact that whoever was doing it seemed to be invisible. Odd, isn’t it? Your brain should be screaming at you to run, or fight, or do something productive, but all it wants to do is attend to impractical details.
How can nothing pick Sofia up? thought Gwylan. That’s just strange.
It seemed for several moments that there were two Gwylans. The first was a useless and unmoored fourteen year-old girl. But the second was curious. The second watched something pick Sofia up again and shift her in its clutches so the blood dripping out of her broken nose ran into her hair instead of onto the floor. Then it held her still, as if it was deciding what to do next. Sofia was still, in the middle of the air, and nothing without wings or rockets can do that.
So, thought Gwylan, there is something, and not nothing. I can’t stop nothing, but I can stop something.
Sofia opened her eyes. She hadn’t screamed or spoken the whole time. Maybe the breath had been knocked out of her, or maybe she kept silent for a reason. We don’t know what happened before Gwylan came downstairs, so we shall wonder. However, as soon as she saw her grandchild watching from the landing with bare feet and damp hair, she managed enough air for a whisper.
“Far away,” she gulped out of her cracking throat. That’s what Gwylan thought she said. Gwylan couldn’t really hear. Gwylan was unaware of anything except the horrible picture of her floating, bleeding grandmother.
As soon as Sofia spoke, the something keeping her off the ground threw her hard into the fireplace. A great burst of soot spat all over the rug and darkened the room even more than the storm had done. More importantly, as the burnt dirt fell over the scene a fine outline of ash settled in ridges here and there for almost six feet above the ground where nothing visible stood, and formed the outline of a man. The something with the outline of a man twitched near the top and Gwylan realized from the film of used fires that he was smiling at her through the grit. That was when sound returned.
“Out!” she screamed as she crossed the distance to the filthy grin. “Get out of my house!” She picked up a shard from the broken glass door and sliced the air in front of her. But as soon as she reached the something he was somewhere else, and she spun, trying to find the dark outline of moving ash in the fading light. Then she felt something twist her wrist that held the shoddy weapon, and fell to her knees from the pain as she heard the bones snap cleanly. A light, strange voice came into her ear.
“Gwylan.”
Something else inside her snapped and she felt only terror. That was when she ran. She wrenched from the grip that squeezed her broken wrist and found the stairs again, sailing past the carved out waves in the front planks, along the dark brown hallway with secret doors and windows framing the storm from the Northeast. She jumped and reached with her good arm for the string that brought down the broken attic ladder, thinking only that she had to go where nothing else could follow.
On the second try she snagged the cord and brought down the tired ladder. Scrambling up with her feet and right hand she heard some sounds making their way through the cracks of her panic. There were two sliding wisps on wood: the footsteps of something light, taking its time, and crossing the distance to where she climbed. Finally, in agony, she pulled herself into the pitch-black attic. Just as she took her own weight off the top step she felt something else put his weight on the bottom. The ladder bent, but did not break. She looked back and saw nothing but the swinging wood. Then she felt a grip on her left foot.
“Your leg’s wet. Did you have an accident?” something called up to her. Gwylan kicked back hard and caught something on a pointy bit of cartilage. Her foot crunched it to the left and something hot and thick that she could not see gushed onto her toes. Something fell back and landed on the hallway floor with light thud, hissing as he went.
“Oh, you bitch! I’m going to hold you up to a mirror so you can watch while I choke you!” came a scalding voice from below, but Gwylan was already halfway through the attic and pushing down between a pair of boxes filled with old clothes. She lay in the dark, listening for more. The ladder was silent, and no light was coming from the downstairs hallway. Then she heard a single, polite clink, much the same as the sound a finger would make tapping on the globe of an old lamp.
How did it get up here? thought Gwylan. It must weigh nothing.
“I’m sorry about your wrist and the threat of choking, Gwylan. Rest assured it’s all in your best interest. Where in this low-roofed, narrow-middled room can you be?” came the voice again, and Gwylan resolved to stop breathing until it was safe to do so.
“I wonder,” he continued, “whether I can shed a little light on the situation.” The clink disappeared, only to be replaced by the znick of Gwylan’s favorite lamp’s brass cord being pulled down against its will.
The lamp burned gorgeous waxy light for a moment, then fluttered and burst, cracking the glass and sending off four sparks. One died in midair, almost as soon as it was born. The second fell almost all the way to the floor before extinguishing. The third found the room’s hardwood bottom and branded a tiny, black circle into a plank as a reminder of its existence. The fourth is the one that mattered, for it had a purpose. The fourth spark went directly into Gwylan’s mouth and she sucked in before she could help it. That fourth grain of heat went like an arrow to the back of her throat and she coughed.
The air moved in the room as though the something had snapped his head towards the sound of Gwylan bringing the spark violently out of her throat. Gwylan knew enough to move immediately and break for the circular window that led to the roof, still suffering under the downpour. Gwylan pushed it open and fell into the rain as she felt something touch her hair and graze down her neck. He felt like dirty fog and moss. She was immediately glad for the rain hitting her, for the thing’s touch required a bath afterwards. She sprinted to the edge of the roof and turned, a little sickened at the drop that faced her. She stared down to catch her breath and saw her paintbrushes, soaked and forgotten.
She turned, trying to judge if she could make it to a neighbor’s house by jumping, but Sofia’s home was thin and kept to itself. As she tried to plan she saw the rain parting and coming slowly towards her from the house. It dripped and chased down the figure of what was now clearly a young man, but one who had gone beyond regular sight. He moved, he had a face and a grown body, but he was wrong. He was something fast and cold and cruel. He walked towards Gwylan without hurrying. There was no need for him to hurry.
“Do you know me, Gwylan?” he screamed through the rain. “Do you remember how much fun we used to have?”
Gwylan knew it meant her harm so there was no reason to be polite.
“I do NOT know you. I do not WANT to know you. You have no right to be here!” Gwylan’s voice broke from her frozen throat and she felt anger returning, sweet and fine like warm honey. This thing had come into her home. This thing had hurt Sofia and snapped her writing wrist. This thing meant to do worse.
And, thought Gwylan, that is unacceptable. She picked up her metal paintbrush, the only possible weapon within reach, and held it in front of her, blinking. She was glad her hair was short; it was better to see what was coming.
“Gwylan,” he said, laughing, “Did Sofia ever tell you about mom and dad?”
And now her anger wrapped her in its arms and whispered to her to stop the thing’s mouth. Her black eyes caught the sky and reflected the storm’s fury in purple and grey.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “Tell me so I know.”
He started laughing a high, wild shriek.
“She didn’t! She never told you! Oh, fantastic!” he kept laughing, but took a breath to say, “I’ll tell you my name. I’ll whisper it to you.” She backed up a step to the very edge.
“Careful,” she heard him call, closer than before. “Don’t fall on account of poor, pale Howell. Give me your hand.” It reached out and caught the rain on its arm. She thought, Howell.
“You don’t get to touch me again, Howell!” she yelled above the storm.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Gwylan!” he yelled back, and started to run towards her.
Gwylan raised her paintbrush, the better to bring it down with force and stab through the thing’s body, but then there was a symphony of thunder, and a piece of lightning ran down to grab the rod in her hand. There was a brutal flash of fiery green. Howell bent his head and jumped back for a moment, then stared at the point where Gwylan had stood. She was gone. He ran to the edge of the roof and peered over. Gwylan was not on the roof and she was not on the ground. He sighed.
He said nothing, and walked back to the window. The rain parted for the something, called Howell, and then resumed its even, heavy fall.
And the music goes on.
“Poor Min, poor Min…”