LITMIR.BIZ

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and still others bent down their heavy branches laden with ripe fruits. The fruits were of unusual kinds: round, diamond-shaped, flat like a wheel, pear-shaped, and even some that looked like big striped doughnuts.

      The garden was filled with such fragrant aromas that Allie felt a little dizzy. She went to the opposite window and stopped, stupefied: it was the land’s end. That is, she could see an empty grassy area with some shrubbery here and there. It ended about two hundred feet away, and there was nothing else beyond it, only a strangely-colored sky.

      Just then Allie realized that she’d been hearing the familiar rhythmic breathing she’d first heard the night before. Only now it sounded like the breathing of some big, good-natured creature. The girl was struck by a sudden epiphany. She ran out of the room, down the porch and toward the land’s end. The breathing sounded louder, and the sky came nearer. Then Allie stopped – she couldn’t run any further. Entranced, she was looking at the thing in front of her. Here it was, alive and breathing, huge as the sky. The sea!

      “The sea!” Allie yelled in delight and waved her arms to greet it.

      She had been at the sea before. Her parents had taken her there twice to treat her ear infections, but she was too little then and didn’t remember much. Most of her knowledge of the sea came from books and movies. And now she was looking at it, up close.

      The cliff she was standing on was quite tall, about a hundred feet above the sea level, but its slope was gradual enough to go down without breaking one’s neck. Allie saw a path that went down to the wide beach that stretched along the sea from left to right. The sand of the beach was bright yellow, almost orange. Here and there rusty-red smooth stones peeked out of the sand.

      Yellows and oranges dominated the landscape. Th sky was blue only in the west; straight overhead it was yellowish green and turned bright yellow toward the east around the large sun. Right at the horizon it melted into rosy caramel.

      Taking a good look, Allie realized something: the sun wasn’t as bright as always, so she could easily gaze directly at it. But it was clearly larger than normal. There was something uncanny, even unearthly about it all.

      Nevertheless, the view that stretched before Allie was indeed splendid. The most marvelous thing of all was, naturally, the sea. It was dark navy in the distance, turned delicately azure towards the shore, and right at the shoreline blended together many hues of green, from bright grassy green to an almost transparent bottle-glass green. Gentle waves rolled lazily towards the shore. The golden-orange sun was playing on their glossy backs. They curled up with foamy pinkish white-caps near the beach, then spilled onto the sand with a quiet hissing sound and left wisps of foam all over. It didn’t have time to melt as the new wave brought more foam. This went on contunuously.

      Allie couldn’t help herself any longer. She ran down the path and toward the sea, her feet sinking in the sand. The sun, albeit not very bright, was hot, and, although it was still morning, the sand had already heated through. It looked like it was high summer season.

      Throwing off her clothes, Allie carefully touched the waves with her toes. The water was warm, and the girl threw her doubts aside and dove into the sea. She played in the pink foamy waves, forgetting about everything else in the world, even about the fact that she only had eight more days to save her Mom and Dad.

      When she had played in the water to her heart’s content, Allie found herself a spot on a warm rock. The girl basked in the sun, soaking up its gentle warmth. The waves broke against the rock, and Allie could feel their pleasantly cool spray on her hot skin and taste the salt on her lips. A light breeze was playing with her already dry hair. The sea sparkled in the sun. Allie was taking in the sight of this shimmering emerald-colored marvel and couldn’t get enough of it. It mesmerized her; she forgot about time and felt like she could sit there forever.

      Looking at this peaceful sea, Allie had a hard time believing that just a few hours before that awful storm was raging. The very thought of it made Allie shudder. There was only one reminder now: far away at the horizon, where the sky met the sea, she could see a ridge of black stormclouds. They didn’t look scary but rather picturesque at this distance, especially that one spot where the biggest stormclouds towered high above the rest of them. There was a rosy golden halo of sunlight around the clouds, so this stormy mass looked almost dreamlike, and the green and orange lightnings that lit up the clouds from time to time only added to the impression. In the light of one especially bright flash Allie noticed a swarm of black dots in the sky.

      “Must be seagulls,” she thought.

      Engrossed in this fabulous view, Allie didn’t pay attention to her surroundings. That’s why she didn’t notice when a stranger approached the rock she was sitting on. It was a short stout man dressed in a light-colored loose tunic and matching short trousers. His gray hair hadn’t been cut in a long time and stuck out in wisps. A shaggy curly beard framed his round smiley face. He looked old at first sight, but his smooth tan skin and merry blue eyes under the bushy eyebrows belied the impression.

      “Aha, I thought I’d find you here,” he said in a pleasant low voice.

      Allie started and looked at the stranger, feeling uneasy. But his open good-natured look soon put her at ease, and she smiled back.

      “Good morning, sir. You must live in that house over there?”

      “That’s right,” said the bearded man and sat down beside her. “Call me Uncle Zand. And what might your name be? And how did you get here, little traveler?”

      “My name is Allie, sir. I’ll tell you everything, but first tell me, how did you find me? And did you see anyone else? The thing is, my companions were a cat and a monkey.”

      “That’s right, a cat!” exclaimed Uncle Zand, slapping his forehead. “Of course, it was a cat! Why didn’t I realize that? Well, it’s one thing to see a picture, and quite another – to see a live one. Well, it was that cat who woke me up last night and brought me to the spot where you’d decided to take a nap. But there was no monkey.”

      “My dear Lemonade,” whispered Allie, moved. “It was you who saved me.”

      She suddenly felt ashamed that she’d completely forgotten her friends as she played on the beach.

      “Uncle Zand, where is the cat now?”

      “Early in the morning, while you were still asleep, he got up, had breakfast and left. But you promised you’d tell me your story.”

      “Yes, of course.” Allie gathered her thoughts. She decided to tell him everything, or almost everything that had happened over the last few days. She didn’t seem to have much choice. Also, she felt she could be candid with her new friend.

      “Well, it all began with a fish,” Allie sighed and began her story.

      As she talked, Uncle Zand listened with attention and looked her straight in the eye. At the very beginning of the story he began to seem concerned. His good-natured serene face suddenly showed signs of surprise. Then he got up and started pacing restlessly around the rock. Finally he raised his arms in the air and stopped the girl:

      “Hold on, little girl! Wait. Where did you live before you got here?”

      Allie told him his address.

      “No, no. Not that. I mean, which sphere is your home?”

      Seeing her puzzled face, Zand added impatiently:

      “Well, what is your planet?”

      “Earth,” Allie said in a dismal voice.

      Zand looked at her intently, then nodded and sat down again, suddenly regaining his composure.

      “You can continue.”

      Allie continued her sad and fantastic story. Any minute she was expecting him to laugh at her words, but Uncle Zand was listening with great seriousness and never interrupted her. Allie finished her story with her falling down in a faint in the middle of a storm-torn forest the night before.

      “That’s

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