Sofia shielded her eyes from the sparkling summer sun smiling down at her from the cloudless blue sky. She clutched her favorite journal and quickly wiped away the unexpected tears streaming from her eyes. Today, everything in her world was coming to an end.
“I know you don’t like change, Sofia, but LA is going to be great. It’s a new start for all of us.” Her mom clasped Sofia’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Even though this transfer is pretty sudden, I need you to trust me this one time, okay? This move is going to be good for you.”
Sofia refused to look at her mom. Another decision was made without her input. But Sofia still nodded as they stood outside the airport entrance, waiting for her father to grab their bags from the trunk of a taxi. Sofia opened her journal and shuffled through the pages before stopping at her favorite sketch of the old red maple tree behind the house.
Although she knew she was alone in the backyard, the tree’s welcoming aura comforted her. And whenever she had a bad day, Sofia would sit under the old maple and scream into the sky. The maple tree understood her frustration, and its presence offered her its support with an invisible hug. She would miss that old maple tree even more than hiking in the mountains of the Springs.
“Earth to Sofia! You’re blocking the way. Please move your big head out of the door.”
Sofia glanced up at Cara’s voice and smiled a little. She was equally surprised and grateful when Cara broke the news that she was also moving to LA with her. It turned out their moms worked for the same company.
“You okay, Sofe?" Cara smiled as she linked arms with her bestie. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.”
Sofia shook her head. “It’s nothing, Care Bear. Thanks.”
She stared at her mom and dad before greeting Cara’s mom and uncle as they stood on the sidewalk, shuffling papers around. The two girls waited for the grown-ups to finish before following them inside.
With each gate they passed, Sofia’s anxiety grew. She gripped Cara’s shoulder, dreading the idea of being thousands of feet in the air. Just thinking about it made her stomach twist. Cara’s yelp shook Sofia out of her thoughts and released her hold.
“Sorry.” She pulled her hoodie over her head and hunched to avoid the wide-eyed looks that her five-foot-eight-inch frame drew from strangers when she stood next to Cara.
Sofia pulled at the straps of her backpack as they began to board. Trudging toward her seat, she fidgeted with her ticket to calm her nerves. Sofia felt Cara tugging her sleeve as they sat in their seats, forcing her to bend down to listen to her tiny friend.
“Hey, Sofe. Don’t get mad at me when I lean over you to stare out the window during take-off, okay?” Cara bounced in her seat like an overactive puppy and stared out of the tiny glass. “I want to wave goodbye to Colorado and all the things we’re leaving behind!”
Sofia nodded and sank into her seat, trying to stay calm. Her legs wouldn’t stop shaking as the flight attendant droned on about safety procedures and emergency exits. The plane taxied down the runway, and Sofia felt her heart jump out of her chest with every bump. Her lungs tightened, and she struggled to breathe, convinced the smell of burning rubber was swarming her nose. With her eyes firmly shut, Sofia barely felt it when Cara squeezed her hand to reassure her that all was well.
“Hey, Sofe. What’s the first thing you want to see in California?” Cara asked her friend to take Sofia’s mind off the steady climb.
“Um...uh,” Sofia cracked one eye at Cara and ignored the plane’s trembling. “I...don’t...really know. You?”
“The beach! Duh!” Cara answered with a grin. “I can’t wait to walk on the sand and dip my toes into the water. I just love the ocean, even though we’ve never actually been to one.” She thought for a moment. “I know it’s not your thing, though.”
“True, but I love all things in nature. Maybe we’ll find some cool hiking trails along the beach.” Sofia began to relax and braved a peek out of the window.
Cara bent over to look, too.
“You know, Sofe,” Cara began. “I think this move is gonna be awesome. Maybe we’ll find our next ultimate adventure in California. Something wild and extraordinary!”
Sofia nodded in agreement, hoping Cara was right. The two had a few months to prepare for eighth grade, and Sofia knew she wouldn’t miss her old classmates, that’s for sure.
They watched the runway and distant mountains of Colorado shrink beneath them, and the girls yawned to pop their ears from the elevation change. As they gazed at the endless sky, now hazy with clouds, a flash of silver caught their eye.
“Did you see that?” Sofia whispered. Cara nodded.
Larger than a bird, it moved quickly through the clouds and disappeared. Neither girl blinked, afraid they had lost sight of the silver flash. Instead, they saw a red flare shoot through the air and into the horizon.
Time stopped when the arrow hit its mark. An enormous wall of clouds swayed and shifted, moving like molasses as a golden-red light bled through the cloud wall. And then a rectangular, iridescent door appeared next to the plane. The mysterious silver light flashed by again, blinding the girls.
“Is that...is that a door? In the sky?” Sofia and Cara whispered simultaneously. They glanced at each other in awe, eyes wide and mouths open.
When they peered through the window, what looked like the face of a young boy stared back at them before disappearing behind the silvery, glimmering light. Whatever they saw in the clouds was not the sun simply reflecting off another plane. It was more real than that.
Suddenly, both girls felt breathless. A sharp spark in their hearts had pulsed through their bodies. A second pain flaring in their chest made their blood boil. Sofia scratched at her throat, and her head began throbbing violently. She shut her eyes from the pain, and a vision appeared in her mind.
An empty bunker stood at the center of a desert of clouds while a handsome teenage boy in leather armor flew around the perimeters of the vast land. His golden wings fluttered rapidly as an anxious expression graced his stern face, desperately seeking something in the distance. Satisfied with his survey, he turned to leave soon after but halted his flight to look over his shoulder. When no one appeared, he returned to the bunker and headed towards the large maple tree near it. There, he found a smaller, young boy with silver wings standing by the lone red door.
“Lek, taam arai? What are you doing?” the golden-winged soldier asked the younger one.
“Mai dai taam arai. I’m not doing anything, P’ Chai,” replied the silver-winged boy, startled at the appearance of his older brother.
“Did you just open the portal door?” He leaned in to search behind his younger brother.
“I’m not supposed to open it, so why would I do that? I mean, I always follow the rules, so I would never open the portal to catch a glimpse of the jao ying just because it’s the first time she’s been so close to us since we lost her!” The silver-winged boy’s mischievous smile betrayed his words.
“You didn’t!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I can’t believe you!”
“There’s nothing to believe because I didn’t do anything I wasn’t supposed to do.”
“Her Majesty will be furious! You are in so much trouble. What if the jao ying saw you? What if someone else did? She’d be in danger. You know we need special permission to open the portal. Even for a second. What were you thinking?”
A puff of cloud dust assaulted the older boy as the younger one flew away, taunting his senior with a laugh. The golden-winged boy waved away the debris to glance back at the maple tree, ensuring the portal door was unharmed and secured. A troubled look crossed his face as he thought he sensed an evil presence lurking nearby. As he flew away, chasing after his fleeing offender, a set of spying eyes left the protection of his cloud and crept out in the opposite direction.
The creature slithered away with a traitorous smirk that promised world-shattering consequences.
Sofia rubbed her eyes and held her hand to her chest to calm her racing heartbeat. She ignored the itchy, burning sensation on her skin as she glanced out the window again.
“Um, how weird. Did we really just see that?”
“I have no idea! Should we ask your mom? Isn’t she like an air-space science thingy? Maybe she could ex—” Cara couldn’t finish her sentence as Mrs. Luana interrupted her.
“Doing alright, girls?” she asked, standing next to Cara in the plane’s aisle. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, um, nothing really,” Sophia answered for Cara. She didn’t want her mom involved in everything if she could help it. “We’re just talking about this new show called, um...uh, Glimmer! Yeah! Glimmer!” She chuckled nervously, hoping her mom wouldn’t ask any more questions.
Her mom shrugged before leaning away. “Alrighty, then. I’m going to close this because it’s a bit too bright.”
When her mom sat back in her seat, Sofia pulled her journal from her backpack. She kept thinking about the mysterious door in the sky. What was hiding behind it, and how was a sky door even possible? Plus, she couldn’t make sense of the vision. She’d never experienced anything like that before, and the winged creatures were the strangest figments of her imagination. Yet the maple tree felt so familiar, almost like the one behind her old house in Colorado.
Sofia returned to her trusty journal and started sketching what she’d seen in the clouds.
Cara plopped her chin on Sofia’s shoulder and reached over to point at her drawing.
“You forgot the boy’s face that popped out right here.”
Sofia’s pencil streaked across the page, forcing her to erase the accidental slash across her sketch of the sky door. Sofia pulled Cara closer and whispered in her ear.
“We can’t tell anyone what we saw up here. Especially my mom.”
Cara gave her a look that screamed, “Seriously? Would I do that? Really?”
“I don’t think my parents would ever believe me, and my mom will drone on with possible scientific explanations of what we saw,” Sofia explained.
Cara nodded in agreement and pinky-promised her friend that the glimmer would be their secret.
* * *
Several hours later, their van pulled into Village Estates, a gated community in Manhattan Beach. The houses were painted the same shade of beige with white accents, the lawns perfectly groomed inside their white picket fences, and a boxy porch light graced each red door that attempted to add a splash of color to the dreary neighborhood.
Sofia noticed how eerily empty the street was. No one worked their yard, no kids played outside, and not a single car parked on the street. A spooky silence loomed around their new neighborhood.
Cara’s family jumped out and waved goodbye as they crossed the street to their new home. Sofia and Cara planned to get together early tomorrow to explore the neighborhood.
Sofia stepped across the threshold of the new house. A heavy cloud of sadness filled her heart, making her forget all about the glimmering door from the sky. The inside of the house was as neat and impersonal as the outside. It felt cold and distant, like the way her parents acted sometimes. She missed the bright red of the maple tree in her old home.
Strolling into her new room, Sofia flopped onto the bed, thoroughly exhausted from the long trip. Her tiny, new room felt empty and cold, but an amazing glass skylight above her bed gave her the impression that she was sleeping under the stars, one of her favorite pastimes.
As she gazed up at the full moon through the glass, a peculiar crescent-shaped crack in the skylight caught her eye. It was roughly the size of a half dollar, but the shattered pattern that filled the crack intensified the moon's light, making it glow and waver on the floor like a giant net floating on the water’s surface. The ominous shape made a constant shifting shadow, like an otherworldly trap looming at the center of her room. Then, Sofia laughed at herself. It was silly to be afraid of a shadow.
She crawled to her pillow and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the soft white cushion. Sofia forgot about the frightful shadows in her new room and ignored the same itchy sensations that burned across her skin on the airplane. Instead, she dreamt of the handsome face of the golden-winged soldier she saw in her vision. Sofia envied his glorious wings and replayed his furious fluttering as he searched for the other boy. She felt a connection to them, though unable to explain in what way. Her dream showed them flying about before shifting towards a dark, mysterious mass beyond the bunker.
Sofia stared hard at the blob, uncertain of its importance, but froze as a pair of eyes revealed themselves. The floating eyes followed the flight of the two boys before creeping out of their hiding spot. It was too dark for Sofia to make out any of the creature’s features. Then, the shadow halted in its tracks. It looked around anxiously as if it could feel Sofia’s gaze. Without warning, the creature lunged in her direction, a shadow of stringy arms attempting to lasso her.
Sofia woke up in fright, panting heavily to calm her racing heart. Her dream felt so real, but she was too exhausted to make sense of the nightmare. As she lay back in her bed, Sofia’s gaze returned to the crescent-shaped crack in the skylight. It appeared to have grown larger. A bright beam of moonlight streamed down, magnifying the shattered pattern. With wide eyes, she watched the shadows dance through the room, crisscrossing together around her bed until they formed a net.
Sofia heard the twinkling sound of a khlui filling the air with a haunting, reedy melody. Darkness followed the music as Sofia found herself face-to-face with a silvery net ready to swallow her whole. She pinched herself, believing she was still asleep, but the painful nip of her nails revealed she was wide awake.
The lullaby grew louder and louder as the moonshadow grew larger and larger. Sofia backed away from the bed, but the net followed her, and the soothing melody from nowhere remained. In a panic, she managed to shout for her parents just as the mysterious shadow scooped her up and lifted her to the moon-shaped crack in her skylight. The crescent widened and sizzled with the smell of burnt popcorn, and Sofia disappeared in an electric shower of sparks and rain.