STORY SO FAR: It’s 1972. Goddard, having caught Gillian with the money bag, insists she lead him to Mansfield. Secretly, Gillian leaves a message indicating where they’re going. Jamie, unaware of all of this, is still searching for the man from the sky

CHAPTER TEN

Jamie and the Message

Jamie sat down to rest. Maybe I didn’t see anything, he told himself. Frustrated, he got to his feet and began heading slowly home. His grandmother, he knew, would listen to his story, smile, and be interested. She wouldn’t believe him. No one would. But it was true!

Plodding to the top of the next hill, Jamie stopped and looked about one last time. He started. There was Gillian, down below, sitting in a gully with her back against a rock. Standing next to her was a man. He was busy with something on the ground, a sort of bundle. Jamie was about to call out when the man stood up, a stick in hand. Jamie gasped. It was so much like the TV images of the Vietnam War! Was the man holding a rifle?

Shocked, his heart pounding, Jamie dropped to his knees. Even so, if the man or Gillian had turned, they would have seen him. Instead, the man poked Gillian with the stickor rifleand said something. Gillian got up quickly, as if frightened.

Is that the man I saw drop from the sky? Jamie suddenly thought. What’s he doing with Gillian? Jamie stared, almost not believing what he was seeing, but trying to make sense of it.

He watched until the two disappeared from view, then looked at the spot where he had last seen them. There were so many questions: What were they doing? Where were they going? Did that man really have a rifle? What should he do? Jamie supposed he could run back home and tell his grandparents that he had seen a man threatening Gillian. But it would be much better if he could tell them more. Otherwise they might not believe me, he told himself.

Jamie ran down the hill and into the gully. He looked in the direction the two had gone. I’ll follow them, he thought, then leaned over to tie his shoelaceonly to discover Gillian’s marks. Curious, he bent down to take a better look.

M A N S

It’s letters, Jamie told himself. Writing. Gillian was at this spot. She must have written it. Could it be a message?

As always, when Jamie saw writing and tried to make sense of it, his head began to pound.

M A N S

He stared at the marks. He knew he had seen them before, many times. But as always, when he looked at them they seemed to twist like live trapped snakes. He tried to keep them still by concentrating. They refused. He stuck out his hand and held it over the first letter. Then he traced its shape in the air, the way he’d been taught in school. It didn’t help. He moved to the second letter, the third, the last. No luck.

Back to the second letter. The most familiar one. Pointy with a line. With his hand, Jamie retraced the lines on the ground.

A

“Ah! A! A!” he cried out loud.

Jamie knew he was right, because knowing made the letter stay still, almost as if he had tamed it. I know the second letter, he told himself, his heart racing with the excitement of discovery.

But the first and third letterssimilar, yet differentstill escaped him.

M N

Jamie traced the first letter, M, below the one Gillian had written. He glanced up at the sky. Make them clouds! Jamie told himself, so tense he felt like screaming. Closing his eyes, he tried to see the letter shapes in his mind, then looked at the clouds and tried to imagine them in the sky. Just looking at the sky made Jamie a little calmer.

Mmmmmmmmm.

The answer came suddenly. “M!” he shouted.

He tried to put the first two letters together. “MAMmmmmmahhh.“

Nothing happened.

He shifted to the third letter. It was so much like the first that looking at it made his head throb again. What other letter was like M? “W!” he said out loud.

The letters shook. W wasn’t right. He stared at the sky again, sweating. If it were in the clouds, I could see it, he told himself.

“N,” he whispered, knowing he was right. “N! Nnnnnnn.“

Thumping the ground with his fist, Jamie tried to put the three sounds together: “Mmmmmahhhnnnn.“ He repeated the sounds over and over again, closed his eyes tightly, and listened to his own noise.

“Man. Man. Man!” he shouted.

But there was one more letter.

S

Somehow Jamie could see this last letter better, more clearly. It was different from the others . . . the wiggly one, the snakelike one. “Ssss . . .”

“S! Mans!”

Mans? After all that effort, there was nothing. The word meant nothing.

Jamie stared at the arrow, at the letters. He read them over and over again: “Mans, mans, mans, mans . . .” What was the arrow pointing to?

Going toward the letters, he told himself. Going toward . . . Mans . . . Going mans . . . one meaning . . . Going mans . . . What’s in that direction? Mansfield! Yes! Going to Mansfield!

Leaping to his feet, Jamie shouted up to the sky, “They’re going to Mansfield!” He raced toward home.

(To be continued.)