Excerpt: Pregnant Peace Walks

Ark

“Ok, Nate, this one'll be high.” I toss the ball at him, underhand, aiming for over his head. It goes a bit to the right, so he has to back up and go diagonal, but he catches it in his mitt. “Great!”

He takes it out, tosses it once. “You'll need to run for this one.” And he throws it- it starts to spiral down when it's less than halfway to me, and I have to run and dive to get it. “Oops. Sorry.”

“It's ok, you'll get better. I wasn't good 'til Mr. K- uh, Dad played with me all spring break.” I go back to my spot and toss him back the ball, a throw so good he doesn't even have to move anything but his glove- but he misses it anyway.

“This is more fun than hopscotch and jumprope, anyway.”

“Are you children ever supervised?”

I turn around, towards the woods- Nate and I aren't the only ones in this field playing catch, though it's all littles. Except now there's an Elf, the same one as yesterday, leaning against a tree at the edge of the forest.

Katie is the one who asks, “What do we need supervision for?”

“In case you get hurt.”

“If we get hurt, then we wash it off and put a band-aid over it and it's all better,” says Matt.

The Elf sighs and, his headband sparking into life, turns around and goes back into the woods. I shrug and turn back to Nate. “Weird.”

“Elves,” he says, rubbing some mud off the ball onto his shorts. “They're all weird.”

I nod and catch the ball.

“Children?”

I turn around. “Why are you here?”

And then I notice we're surrounded. There are Elves all around us. Ten, twenty- thirty. At least as many of them as there are kids in the clearing.

“We're here to take you somewhere you'll get proper supervision.”

I concentrate on my headband and phent Nate. ^I don't like this.^

^Me either. Let's run.^

^Yeah. You contact Alora, I'll call John-^

^Ark!^ Alora's voice fills my skull, and I let her in immediately. ^Elves are invading the jump-rope center! And they're drugging kids and putting them in cages! They got Brandy! Help!^

^They're here too!^ Nate breaks in on our conversation.

The Elves start moving forward. I back up. I try to call Shelly- and get nothing. It bounces off. She's already drugged.

I reach for John, and that's when the Elves run forward, and I dodge dive beneath them and roll and one grabs me and presses a cloth to my face.