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of blackness that had rolled across this false reality; but in the short amount of time it had taken for him to look away, it had disappeared. Still, something
felt
different. Almost as though the sun wasn’t shining quite as brightly as it had moments earlier. And the colors in the plants and sky seemed a little more muted, as if a bit of vibrancy had been leeched from them.
    But that was silly. He’d probably just imagined whatever it was that he thought he saw and was now looking for something,
anything
, to be different. That was the most logical explanation, the one that made the most sense; but at the same time, nervousness rippled through his stomach. His silver cord stretched out behind him, nebulous and ethereal in this seemingly solid world, and he traced it with his eyes, seeking its reassurance.
    Luckily, he was able to get his emotions under control before they escalated to the point intervention would be required. Not that intervention was necessarily a bad thing, but it would be notated in the trip log…and logs with fewer incidences of intervention were the ones that helped further careers.
    Returning his attention to the girl, he smiled again.
    “Okay, I’m going to tell you a series of facts, Abigail. And you have to really and truly believe that each thing I tell you is true. You have to
trust
me. And if you do, you’ll be with your parents, okay?”
    Darkness shimmered on the edges of his field of vision again, squeezing his gut in a cold grip; this time, however, he managed to keep his gaze steady as he took a slow breath through his nose. Whatever was happening wasn’t important. All that mattered was freeing this little girl and helping her move on to whatever lay on the other side of The Divide.
    “Fact one: None of this is real. The grass and flowers, the tree and this swing, all of it is just…”
    The air surrounding the field crackled and sparked as dark clouds devoured the sky, spreading so rapidly that within seconds the sun was nothing more than a hazy disk hidden behind their murky veil. Simultaneously, wind howled across the field, the gusts shredding daisies in its wake and scattering them in swirling vortexes of current. The multicolored petals burst into flames as they brushed against the flashes of electricity, disintegrating into ash as fine as dust but somehow releasing the stench of singed flesh.
    “Are you doing this?” Chuck cupped his hands and shouted over the sound of the wind, but he didn’t have to hear Abigail’s reply to know the answer. All color had drained from the girl’s face and her wide eyes were glazed with panic as shivers wracked her small body. Beads of sweat trickled from the child’s forehead and she ducked behind the tire swing as though it was a shield that could protect her from whatever force had invaded her realm.
    A shiver tingled Chuck’s spine and thoughts scrambled for dominance as he tried to make sense of what was happening. Things like this simply weren’t supposed to occur. Not on a routine assignment. This mission was so simple even a Level III Whisk should’ve been able to complete it. Children were easy. They were predisposed to believe in fantasy and magic, to accept the impossible as probable, to consider the possibility that things sometimes were more extraordinary than they first appeared…and yet this little girl’s world was dying around him, the grass shriveling into blades so brittle that they were reduced to powder with the slightest rustle.
    And through it all the wind continued howling, the sound like the roar of some dark and malevolent beast as it awakened from eons of slumber. Arcs of electricity jumped and sizzled and the tree the tire swing hung from contorted into a gnarled hand, the bark becoming strands of mummified muscle and the branches clawed fingers that raked at the sky.
    Abigail’s face glistened with tears and snot bubbled from her small nose as she covered her ears with her palms. Her eyes were