It was getting darker.  All the artificial lights were back down on the ground, so all they had was the moon and the stars.

“Do you think it’s leading us somewhere?” asked Anastasia.

Sandy was doubtful.  “Somewhere up in the air?”  The only thing she could think of was the giant’s castle from “Jack and the Beanstalk.”  Even as a little kid, she’d wondered how the castle stayed up on the cloud.  If anything, having giants there should have made that more difficult.

“Like, another dimension, or something,” explained Anastasia, “Not another planet, because then we’d have to walk through space and we can’t do that.  Another dimension, that you can reach through the sky.”

Sandy looked down.  They were definitely aeroplane-height now- the little they could actually see looked more like a patchwork of indistinct fields and towns than anything else.  She vaguely remembered that the air was supposed to be thin this far up, but so far they could breathe just fine.  Maybe Anastasia was onto something.  Maybe they were heading somewhere where the rules didn’t apply.

“What do you think it’d be like?” she asked, “In the other dimension?”

“Anywhere’s better than this place,” declared Anastasia.  She stopped in her tracks, then looked down and pointed at something.  “Hey, look at that!”

It was too small to be an aeroplane, but it was bigger than any bird Sandy had ever seen.  It was like a giant shadow passing under them, between the branch and the land below.  And in its wake was a cloud of yellow lights.

“They look like fireflies,” Anastasia murmured, “Do you think we could catch them?”

Don’t, thought Sandy, It’s too dangerous.  You don’t know what those lights are.  You don’t know what they’d do to you.  But Anastasia looked completely enraptured, so all she could say was, “Maybe, if they get close enough.”

They tried, but even with their arms stretched out full-length, they couldn’t get anywhere near the lights.  Instead, they just sat there for a while and watched the shadow pass by.

(To be continued)