Scott Westerfeld - The Secret Hour

This wasn’t working.

“How long before midnight ends?” she heard Jonathan ask.

“Not soon enough,” Dess said.

Jessica kept pounding away at the rock. A few more sparks flew, but the paper wouldn’t ignite.

“It’s not happening,” she said. “Maybe two stones?”

“Here.” Jonathan knelt next to her, handing her another rock. She struck them together.

Nothing.

She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes before the end of the hour. The flashes of lightning were fading visibly around them.

“Jessica.”

“I’m trying, Jonathan.”

“Your watch.”

“What?”

He pointed at the watch. “It’s working.”

Jessica looked at it uncomprehendingly. She realized that she hadn’t worn it in the midnight hour before. She always took it off before going to bed.

“It’s working,” Jonathan repeated, “and it’s electronic—it’s not a windup.”

“Here they come,” Dess whispered.

Jessica looked up. The circle of blue lightning around the snake pit had died, exposing the dark moon over their heads. The darkling overhead was descending warily. The wind from its wing beats stirred the dust around her.

“Jessica,” Rex said softly. “We need a fire now.”

She picked up the rocks again but paused.

She remembered the new building at Aerospace Oklahoma, where she and Jonathan had taken refuge the weekend before. When Jessica had seen it tonight, it had been ablaze with lights. They must be lighting it every night. All night.

“Jessica…”

A sound came from all around them, a rushing noise. The tarantulas were pouring into the snake pit from every direction.

“No,” Rex said softly.

Jessica pushed the little button on the side of her watch, and the tiny night-light glowed white in the blue light. It said 12:42.

Jonathan met her eyes, his jaw wide open.

“Forget these,” Jessica said, dropping the two rocks to the ground. She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and held it to her lips.

“Serendipitous,” she said.

She turned it toward the surging sea of tarantulas and switched it on.

A cone of white light leapt from the flashlight, and the spiders began to scream.

The white light swept across the crater floor, reducing the spiders to ash in its wake. Shrill, horrible cries rose up from the swarming army, like a thousand whistles blowing at once. The tide of hairy bodies turned away swiftly, pouring back up the snake pit’s sloped walls. Jessica pointed the flashlight into the air, and the slithers that crossed its path burst into flame, suddenly red against the dark sky. She shone the light straight up to search for the darkling over their heads, but the creature had disappeared into the distance, howling.

A last few spiders crawled witlessly around the smoking bodies of their fellows, and she burned them one by one with the flashlight.

The white light seemed unreal and uncanny in the blue time, revealing everything in its true colors. The beam drove the blue from the landscape, returned the reds and browns of the desert, and turned the charred bodies of slithers and spiders a dull gray.

Even the moon above them seemed gray now, pale and unthreatening, washed out and emptied of its menace.

As the attackers retreated from the snake pit, the night grew silent. The clicking calls of slithers and the shrieks of the spider army faded, until only the howls of a few darklings could be heard, screams of pain and defeat in the distance.

“Turn that thing off!” Dess complained.

Jessica started when she saw her friends’ eyes flashing angry purple in the light. Dess cowered behind her hands. Jonathan, Melissa, and Rex had all covered their eyes, their faces twisted in pain.

Only Jessica could stand the light.

She pointed the flashlight to the ground, then switched it off.

“Sorry.”

One by one, blinking painfully, they dropped their hands.

“That’s okay,” said Rex.

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it,” Jonathan said.

“Call it even.” Dess laughed, rubbing her eyes. “Not being spider food kind of makes up for the temporary blinding.”

“Speak for yourself,” Melissa said, rubbing her temples. “I had to taste your stupid pain along with mine.”

“You really can do it,” Rex said softly. “You brought technology into the secret hour.”

Jessica’s head spun. Her vision still danced with the colors revealed in the white light, the afterimages of burning spiders and slithers. The flashlight seemed to be tingling in her hand.

“Fire on tap,” Dess said. “You’re a darkling’s worst nightmare!”

Melissa nodded slowly, looking into the sky. “That’s true. They are not happy about this. Not happy at all.”

Jessica looked at her, then down at the flashlight in her hand. “Yeah, but what are they going to do about it?”

Dess laughed. “You said it.”

Jonathan put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s true. You’re the flame-bringer. This means you’re safe now, Jessica.”

She nodded. The flashlight in her hand seemed ordinary now, but when it had shone, something had surged through her, larger and more powerful than anything she had experienced before. She had felt like the conduit of something huge, as if the daylight world were flowing through her into midnight, changing everything.

“Safe,” she murmured. Not just safe, though. What she had become felt bigger than that, and scarier, too.

“You know, Jessica, it’s probably not just flashlights,” Dess said. “I wonder what your limits are. I mean, maybe you can use a camera in the blue time.”

Jessica shrugged, looking at Rex.

“There’s no way of knowing,” he said, “except to try. I mean, film is a chemical process, kind of like fire, I guess.”

“Hey, just a flash attachment would kick butt.”

“Or walkie-talkies!”

“What about a car engine?”

“No way.”

The group fell into silence. Rex shook his head, dazed and happy, then looked up at the setting moon.

“It’s late,” he said. “We can figure this out tomorrow night.”

Jonathan nodded. “I better get going. St. Claire’s boys are on the lookout for me these days. Do you want me to take you home?”

Jessica sighed. She wanted to fly, to leave the horrible things she’d seen tonight behind on the ground. But she shook her head.

“I have to get back to the party. Constanza will flip if I just disappear into thin air.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow?”

“Definitely.”

Jonathan bent forward to kiss her, and gravity left her body at the touch of his lips. As he pulled away, her feet settled back onto the ground, but her stomach still danced inside her.

“Tomorrow,” she said as Jonathan turned and jumped, soaring out of the snake pit. Another bound took him high into the air, then he disappeared into distance and darkness.

“We’d better get moving too,” Rex said.

“Sure,” Jessica answered. “I’ll be okay.”

“You look better than okay.” Dess laughed. “Wipe that smile off your face, Jessica Day.”

Jessica felt herself blushing and pulled her jacket tighter.

“Do you know the way back to the party?” Melissa asked quietly.

“Yeah.” She pointed. “Moon sets in the west, so back that way.”

“Not bad, Jessica,” Dess said. “You’re starting to get the hang of midnight.”

“Thanks.”

“Let’s clean up some of this stuff, guys,” Rex said. “We left a bigger mess than usual.” Dess and Melissa grudgingly agreed.

“I should get back to the party,” Jessica said. She hefted the flashlight in her hand. “I guess I’ll be safe.”