It Fell from the Sky As If from Heaven

“Wow—is that?”

“I think so.”

“Is it real?”

“Well, it looks real, I guess. Doncha think it looks real?”

“I dunno. I’ve never seen a real one—only pictures. Have you ever seen a real one?”

“I’d say we both have, now.”

“What’ll we do?”

“Maybe we should hide it.”

“Hide it? Hide it where—and how?”

“I don’t know. But I think we should.”

“What if it’s the last one?”

The boys looked at one another, thinking for a moment about the possibility that what they had seen fall from the sky might be the last of its kind, and then they looked down again at the multi-colored disk with a kind of reverent fear.

“If it’s the last one, we have to tell. If it’s the last one, things will begin to change.”

“But how do we know if it is or not?”

Looking at one another again, each boy privately judged the gravity of the situation. Less than a minute passed, but in that minute, the youth the boys had known when they awoke that morning evaporated into an unseen mist. In its place, the boys assumed the weight of the world, and in the part of a person that matters, the boys become young men.

“You know—there’s no way to know if it’s the last one or not. We need to tell someone.”

“Who should we tell?”

“Mike.”

“Crazy Mike—are you kidding?”

“He’s not crazy. People just say that because he knows so much stuff and because he lives in the woods.”

“If you say so. How we gonna get it there? I mean, we can’t touch it, can we?”

“I don’t think we should. Let’s look for something to carry it with.”

The two boys rummaged around the area and finally found an old rug in one of the nearby piles of debris. Not far away, they found a rusty golf club. The head of the club was missing, and the shaft was slightly bent, but it seemed like the kind of tool the boys could use to nudge the colored wheel onto the carpet for safe transportation.

Carefully, the two boys worked together to ease the colored wheel gently onto the carpet. Once it was safely on top of the rug, they headed back the way they had come, but at the fork in the trail, instead of heading back into town, they headed out father—to Crazy Mike’s camp.

Normally, Crazy Mike’s was a five-minute detour, but the weight of the colored wheel slowed the boys considerably, and their trek took almost half an hour. Tired and a bit apprehensive, the two boys rounded a corner and found themselves face-to-face with Mike.

“Did you boys see it?”

Startled, the boys almost dropped the wheel to the ground.

Mike looked at the burden the boys carried and cried out, “You’ve found it!”

The boys eased the rug that supported the colored wheel down to the ground. Out of breath from their trek and a bit frightened, they just looked at Mike.

“Let me see it,” he said as he stepped closer. Mike peered down at the wheel, and then looked back up at the boys.

“You know what this is, right?”

The boys’ heads nodded vaguely.

“Anyone see you take it?”

The boys’ heads shook in a unified and firm no.

“We’re you followed? And one of you better actually speak up with an answer.”

“I—I don’t think we were. No one was around when we found it.”

“Is it the last one, Mike?”

The man eyed the smaller of the two boys before answering him.

“Well, there’s only one way to know now, isn’t there?”

The boys glanced at one another—then they shrugged their shoulders in response.

“So boys, you really don’t know what this is, then?”

Not knowing how to answer, the boys simply stood looking at Mike.

“I’ll tell you what this is, and what it might be. What you boys have here is a portal: you can tell because it has the colors of water, fire, and sun. Of course, it’s also got the color of new life, and that means it could be the last one. We won’t know until I test it, but I do know that the remaining portals have the four colors. Since some portals aren’t found when they fall, we won’t know which is the last until things begin to change.”

The boys had stopped looking at Mike: their focus was on the colored wheel. Each had listened with great care to what the man said, and while neither boy would have wanted to admit it, each knew that the wheel they’d found might mean survival for one of them—and each wanted to take the chance before what might be the very last opportunity was gone.

Mike sensed what was happening, but before he could warn the two boys, the smaller one lunged at the wheel. As he sailed through the air, the other boy took his shot. Mike watched helplessly as the two boys traveled at an impossibly slow speed toward the disk. They seemed to hit the object at the same moment: the smaller boy hitting fire’s red, and the larger boy hitting water’s blue. The reaction was instant: both boys evaporated into steam leaving only the echoes of their screams behind.

As soon as it ended, Mike felt the air beginning to thicken.

“My God, it is the last one.”

Hesitating for only a moment, Mike looked at the center of the colored wheel and with an agility that didn’t match his size and shape, he deftly danced the required dance putting in and taking out body parts until the colored wheel began to spin.

When Mike got to putting his whole self in, the center of the colored wheel had opened up, and with a rush of air, Crazy Mike was free.