THE LIGHT OF STARS

                             BY STELLA LEE

Prologue

"Doon!" screamed Ava, from inside the house. It was foggy out on the horizon, but she squinted and spotted dark clouds far away, coming closer. A big storm was brewing.

    Doon, Ava's brother, didn't seem to hear. He still gripped the frisbee they were playing with in his right hand. His eyes wandered this way and that, and he was moving closer towards the storm and farther from the small wooden shack they called home.

    Sighing, Ava slipped her feet into her big shoes. She was going to have to drag him inside the house. However, she saw a hard gust of wind blow across the 

ground, spitting up sand. She shouted, but Doon couldn't hear her over the commotion. When the sand finally cleared after a few minutes, Doon was gone. It was like the sand had carried him away.

Chapter One

Sadie looked around the classroom, fighting to stay awake. She was in math class, and the usual teacher wasn't there so she had the most boring sub ever. If she did fall asleep, the girls would tease her because they already didn't like Sadie. She had to get out of the classroom.

    Sadie raised her hand. "May I go to the bathroom?" she asked. The sub nodded, and she jogged down the corridor to the bathroom.

    The good thing was that nobody was there. She liked the peace, and if someone was there, it was most likely that they would bring other people and talk loudly.

    For a while, Sadie just stood in front of the mirror and leaned against the sink, checking her reflection. Then she heard a familiar bang. Someone was coming into the bathroom. Sadie dashed into the nearest stall and held up her feet, hoping nobody would check for shoes.

    The person's footfalls sounded light and quick, as if they were tip-toeing. Then the girl spoke. "Hello?" she asked, her voice brimming with curiosity. Sadie opened the stall door and walked out. "I'm Sadie," she said. She saw who the girl was. It was herself.

    "Why are you here?" asked Sadie 2. Sadie frowned. "Why are you here?" Sadie asked. She liked to turn a question on somebody else, and Sadie 2 got fooled by it.

    "I came here to warn you," Sadie 2 said. "You must always be on your guard; the universe is shifting quickly beneath your very own feet. Things mix up. Simple things can bring disasters." With that, she disappeared.

    Sadie was puzzled at what Sadie 2 said. She was speaking in riddles, Sadie decided. She looked all around the bathroom to make sure that Sadie 2 wasn't still there. The bathroom was empty.

    From the corner of her eye, Sadie spotted smoke. She followed the burning scent until she reached the mirror. It was dissolving! The smoke burned until there was none left of the mirror and there was an empty doorway waiting for Sadie to climb in.

Chapter Two

Sadie hesitated as her body bent in the direction of the mirror. She couldn't see where it leaded; it got foggier as the tunnel went on. She decided to go through the mirror, to see if she could find out what Sadie 2 meant.

    Sadie crawled through the tunnel for what seemed like hours. Finally, she came upon a land that was nothing like her home. The ground felt crumbled and rough under her open palm, and she smelled smoke once again. The sky was a dark gray and a storm looked like it was approaching. How can this be? Sadie wondered. It was morning when I left, and it was a sunny day.

    Suddenly, a deep voice rumbled. It felt as if it was 

coming from the core of Earth itself. But this wasn't Earth anymore.

    "You!" cried the deep voice. "I will warn you, only once, to stay off my land. Or there will be greater troubles to come. Some unimaginable. Do as I say, and you and others shall be safe."

    "Where am I?" shouted Sadie, because it seemed like a reasonable question to ask. The invisible voice responded, in a softer tone, "You are on Universe 132. Nothing special is here. You and I are the only ones left."

                                              ~~~~~

Sadie did a bit of wandering around the unfamiliar universe, hoping the voice would notice her there. In an

instant, the sky suddenly became bright and blue again. Then, another part of the sky became nighttime and another became gray.

    The invisible light pulsing from the three different skies burned into the side of her head. This is what Sadie 2 warned me about! Sadie's mind cried.

    Sadie screamed as the nighttime time part of the sky sucked her up.

Chapter Three

"All I can say is that they've got me overworking," Ge said, trying to massage the sides of her head. She was one of the few humans working for the Universe Council, whose job was supposed to fix little break-ups here and there and keep the peace. Ge was talking to a vampire, who she'd known her whole life and had been friends with. The vampire, Dak, also worked at the Council.

    The vampire chuckled. "They don't give me enough work here," Dak said. "Probably because they're afraid I'll suck the blood out of them!"

    They shared a laugh. It was a little inside joke between them: Dak was a vegetarian vampire. Just then, Maria,

an angel, said, "Come here! There's a problem!"

    Dak and Ge ran over to Maria's big computer. She jabbed a finger onto a big red spot. "That's the storm," she explained. "Big storms like that are supposed to stay on Universe 156, so someone might have ripped the shield that separates each universe. We have to be careful, because there might be even more mixups."

    Dak nodded carefully. He usually agreed with Maria; Ge suspected he had a crush on her. When she asked him that before, he turned pink, the color contrasting against his pale face.

    Ge elbowed him a bit and said to Maria, "Well, you should probably tell Andrew." Andrew was the head of

the Council. Nobody had the slightest idea what species he was because he looked like a human but he said he wasn't completely human.

   Suddenly, Maria looked to her right, her eyes black and haunting. "What is it?" Dak asked, and he and Ge turned towards the direction Maria looked at. There was a flash and a boom and a tall girl with brown hair appeared. "Who are you?" she asked. "My name is Sadie. I'm from Earth and I walked through a mirror in a bathroom to Universe 132. Then the sky split open and I got sucked up here. Pretty weird, right?"

Chapter Four

Sadie wasn't sure why she had to say she was from Earth, but it felt right because she now knew that there were different universes. The angel whispered something to the vampire and the vampire whispered something to the human. Finally, the human spoke. "I'm Ge," she said. "There's been an incredible mixup. Someone broke the shield that separates universes. I suspect that maybe Universe 132 has a connection to the mixup. Maria, please bring up the file for that universe."

    The angel, Maria, found the file. She said aloud, "Nobody lives on Universe 132."

    Sadie frowned, her eyebrow digging into her eyes.

"That can't be," she concluded finally. "When I was there, I heard an invisible voice. It told me that on Universe 132, only the voice and I were there."

    "That means that the voice came there recently," said the vampire. "We recorded these files only months ago. According to it, Universe 132 is the only universe in the whole space that is empty. So, it would be most reasonable to agree that the voice on Universe 132 caused it, because nobody was there to witness it. Maybe that's why out of all universes, you appeared there. But we need to find out who the voice belongs to."

    Sadie heard footsteps come closer, and a man with graying hair stepped into the room. The vampire drew a

sharp breath. "Andrew," he said. "There's a problem. We must go to Universe 132 immediately."

    Andrew nodded. "I know," he said. "I've heard of it. Sadie, thank you for telling us this. By the way, the vampire is Dak."

   "How do you know my name?" Sadie asked.

    "I see everything that goes on in this spaceship," Andrew said. "We're floating in the Milky Way right now."

    Sadie nodded. This was a lot of information, and she was beginning to get even more tired.

    "You can rest," Ge said, as if reading Sadie's mind. She gestured to a bed that wasn't there before. "I know you're tired. Tomorrow will be a long day."

Chapter Five

The first thing Sadie heard when she woke up was murmuring voices. She heard Andrew say, quietly, "We have a deadline."

    "When?" Ge asked.

    Dak sighed. "Haven't you heard of the Festival of Universes? In a week, that's going to happen. If we don't fix it by then, the person will cause trouble at the party, and who knows what damage they can do."

    Sadie got up, and Ge was the first to notice her. "Hi!" she said, her voice bright. "In an hour, we're going to be at Universe 132."

    Sadie nodded. "Can I explore the ship?" she asked. Ge

said yes, so Sadie wandered around.

    The ship was built like a maze. Sadie wandered farther and farther from the room until she found a big, dark room like a planetarium. She gazed up at the ever-changing stars for a while. It filled something empty in her heart.

    There was a bang and two men entered the room. Sadie quickly scrambled to the edge of the room, blending into the dark shadows. The first man spoke. "I hope my mother's safe," he said. "She lives back on Earth. Man, do I miss that place."

    The second man grunted in agreement. Then he asked, "Is anyone here?"