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kitchen. Then I hear sounds outside the house, and my breath starts to come in gasps. Mom and David reach the basement stairs and disappear down them. When Gramps and I are inside the stairwell, he turns and locks the door behind us.
    We hear something that sounds like angry growls outside our kitchen, and a thumping against the back door. I freeze in my tracks. Gramps scoops me up under one arm and carries me down the rest of the way. His workshop is enclosed within the full basement. Once inside this inner room, he sets me down and locks that door behind us.
    And standing there before us is the Carriage. Shaped like a child’s paper airplane, it has standing room of around seven feet, and an approximate width of eight feet at the base. The Carriage is also transparent, so that I can see Mom at the control panel and David on the floor behind her, against the wall. I step inside and crouch beside my brother.
    Gramps follows and quickly secures the door of the Carriage. Mom points to a small computer screen and reads aloud to Gramps in our native tongue. Gramps looks at the screen, then begins working the controls.
    The commotion I heard outside is now tumbling down the basement stairs, now pushing against the inner door. Terrified and fascinated at the same time, I watch that door while Gramps and Mom concentrate on the controls. Finally a little swoosh tells us the Carriage is in operation.
    When the workshop door bursts open, I cry out. Ican’t help myself. David clutches me to him, and I hold on.
    Through the transparent walls, we can see clearly the faces of the townspeople surrounding the Carriage, and they can see us as well. Among others, we see Mrs. Raskin, Mr. Alvarez, Kitty’s grandpa, the Romano sisters, Mr. O’Reilley—people we have grown to care about. But they have become a mob of strangers, and there is so much fear and anger and hate in their eyes that I hardly recognize them. Furiously they begin beating on the sides of the Carriage with sticks and stones and bare fists.
    Then someone—Mr. O’Reilley, I think—grabs a hammer from Gramps’s workbench and begins beating on the sides of the Carriage. Others take up heavy tools and do the same. Though the Carriage is soundproof, we still can hear muffled noises. The screams and curses get louder and louder and more ferocious as the people hammer the sides.
    Gramps is frantic as he strikes the palm of his hand against a wide bar, which reads in English: OPEN THE GATE .
    Instantly the Carriage is enveloped in a white vapor. The Gate has opened for us, and like a spear cutting through water, we move swiftly through it, to safety on the other side.

• 5 •
David Speaks
    A ccording to legend, at the dawn of time, in the distant world of Chroma, when the life-forms there were not highly evolved, much of the planet was shrouded in darkness. During those dark periods, luminescent streaks began to appear, as if by magic, in the hair of the planet’s inhabitants, who were my ancestors.
    For females the color was a whimsical periwinkle, and for males a deep royal blue. The streaks were attractive, and both shades glowed in the dark, though they could appear in daylight as well. Subsequently, our race, for eons, was known by a Chroma word meaning “blue.”
    That’s the reason my mother chose the name Blue for herself, and for me and my sister, Meggie, when we traveled from our homeland of Chroma to Earth.
    In a more enlightened age, Chromian anthropologists studied the phenomenon of the blue hair and declaredthat, in the beginning, its main purpose was to help the people identify one another in the dark, but it was also apparent that a person did not begin to glow until he or she had come to a certain degree of maturity in body, mind, and spirit. Most Chromians were proud to reach this plateau around the age of twelve, give or take a year, but some rare individuals, sadly, never arrived. I achieved blue at