Season of Passage

ONE "Don't touch me!" Lauren Wagner screamed. Still caught in the web of her nightmare, she shoved at the small hand that held her arm. Jennifer, her younger sister, fell to the ground atop a scattering of pine needles. But Jennifer quickly sprang to her feet and reached out once more. "Jenny," Lauren said, disgusted when she saw what she had done. Her T-shirt was drenched with sweat and her heart was pounding. She gave Jennifer a quick hug. "Are you OK? I didn't mean to push you. I was having a nightmare." "I'm fine," Jennifer said, more serious than startled. "I'm sorry." Lauren busied her hands over her sister's clothes. She realized she was trembling, and had to make a conscious effort to stop. Jennifer watched her closely, her clear blue eyes alert. "You called someone, Lauren," she said. "Whose name did you call?" Lauren hugged her thirteen-year-old sister again, tighter this time, and buried her face in Jennifer's brilliant hair. The chair she had dozed off in rocked forward on the forest floor. "Was I talking in my sleep?" she asked. "I had the strangest dream." Jennifer undid Lauren's hands and took a step back. Behind her, the orange light of the evening sun shone on the tops of the surrounding pine trees. Wash Lake, a hundred yards off to their left, was a deep blue, calm and clear in the quiet of the forest. The fragrance of wild dandelions and blooming sunflowers was in the air. Yet in that moment it seemed to Lauren that Jennifer was not standing in the beautiful mountains of Wyoming, but in another place, a place where there was little beauty, and no sweet smells. Jennifer's gaze was far away and troubled. "Whose name did you call?" Jennifer repeated. Lauren forced a laugh and squeezed Jennifer's shoulders. "You just startled me, is all. That's why I jumped. My dreamwhy, I can't even remember it. It was nothing. It was only a nightmare." Jennifer looked doubtful. She gestured to stump near Terry's cabin. "I was reading a book. Then you called me." Lauren wanted to change the subject. "What book are you reading?" She started to run her fingers through Jennifer's long blond hair, but Jennifer shook her head and stepped away. "Just a story," she said. "It's nothing." Turning, she walked over to the stump and picked up her book. She sat down and began to read, without looking back up. Lauren frowned. Jennifer was a paradox, she thought, full of joy one moment, troubled and serious the next. Sometimes she wondered if Jennifer spent too much time with her nose in books. It was not unusual for Jennifer to go through five novels a week, all kinds of novels: science fiction, fantasy, adventure books, and westerns. Lauren never censored them. She didn't understand why Jennifer hadn't answered her question. But that reminded Lauren. She still had to read Terry's article. Terry Hayes was her fiance, a newspaper reporter for theHouston Herald. Lauren picked up the paper from where it had fallen when she jumped up out of her nightmare. The front page was dominated by a color picture that Terry had taken of the crew members of America's first expedition to Mars. Lauren was in the middle, down in front. It was oddshe had been looking at the picture when she had fallen asleep. She knew her nightmare had had something to do with Mars. She called over to Jennifer. "Terry wanted me to critique the second part of his article, bPike, Christopher is the author of 'Season of Passage' with ISBN 9780812510485 and ISBN 0812510488.