Penelopeblue's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Penelopeblue pressed her hands over her stomach and watched the blue light leak between her fingers. She was eight years old, and she glowed. No one else did. The glow had always burned steady, like a nightlight sewn under her skin. Tonight it stuttered. It dimmed, flared, and dimmed again, and each time it faded she felt colder inside. She had spent her whole life wanting one answer: where the light came from, and why she alone carried it. Now the light itself was dying, and it might take the answer with it. She lived in the old children's hospital, in a bottom-floor room with boarded windows and peeling pink paint. Rain dripped through a crack in the ceiling. She sat on a rusted cot and studied her own hands, waiting for the glow to steady. It didn't. Then she noticed something. When she turned toward the hallway door, the light flared brighter. When she turned away, it shrank. She stood and turned in a slow circle. The glow answered every direction. It was pulling her somewhere. "You want to go that way," she whispered. "Fine." But the pull was weak. When she stepped into the hall, the light flickered so low she nearly lost it. She couldn't tell left from right. The hospital swallowed her in gray dark. Paint chips crunched under her feet. Doors hung open on empty rooms. She held her breath and watched her stomach. The glow gave one faint tug, then guttered like a candle. She needed it brighter. She thought hard. The light always burned strongest when she was scared or running, when her heart pounded fast. So she ran. She sprinted down the black corridor, arms out, feet slapping the wet floor. Her heart slammed. The glow surged. It flooded the hall blue and bright, and now she could read it. The pull yanked her hard to the right, toward a stairwell she had never dared enter. Penelopeblue skidded to a stop at the top of the stairs. The light strained downward, into the basement dark. Her breath came fast. The glow was clear now, steady as an arrow, and it pointed straight down into a place she'd been told never to go. She gripped the cold rail. She had her answer to the first question. She knew which way. But the way led down, into the part of the hospital she feared most, and the pull would not let her turn back. Whatever made her glow was waiting below. She took the first step down.