For an eternity, Jonathan fell head over heels, through a boundless black space. He couldn't tell whether his eyes were open or closed; whenever he consciously opened them, he still saw nothing. Everything was pitch black. He was terrified, because he had always associated the sensation of falling with landing hard, sooner or later. It seemed that he had fallen thousands of feet, and the anticipation of smacking against the ground paralyzed him, leaving him powerless to control his motion.

Gradually, he realized that the final bone-crunching smack might be a while off yet. He was still tumbling and twirling, but he had no sensation of being any closer to the ground than he had a moment earlier. He opened his eyes again and strained to see something — anything! — but found only darkness. Gradually, his mind began to take over, befuddled as it was, to begin the long, tortuous path back to consciousness.

He realized, while surrounded by blackness, how odd it was that he should feel a sensation of turning end over end, when he couldn't see anything. If there's no reference point, he thought, how can I tell that I'm spinning head over heels? The more he pondered it, the more it seemed like a leisurely, lazy tumble; it was rather peaceful.

Nothing happened for such a prolonged period that Jonathan decided to close his eyes. His mind was serene, and he fell asleep. When he finally awoke, he was lying on his back. He sensed that he was in a hospital: it felt like a hospital, it smelled like a hospital, it sounded like a hospital. There was an ancient smell — formaldehyde? — so antiseptic and pungent that it immediately identified a hospital, even though he hadn't been near one in years and even though his eyes were closed.

Now he opened them, just a bit, and looked around. He was in a bed, with sheets up to his chin, tucked in so tightly on both sides that he couldn't move at all. He could turn his head from side to side, which he did slowly, in case it was injured. It was dark; there was nothing to see except faint outlines, blurred edges. A door, closed, on the far side of the room. Vague contours and bumps in the darkness. But most of all, an impression of hugeness. And yet something was different. Is it the room? The bed? he wondered. He couldn't tell, and while he was thinking about it, focusing on it, trying to unscramble the sensations, he gradually drifted back to sleep.

He awoke some time later to see an enormous face hovering over him. Ruddy cheeks and mud-brown eyes slowly came into focus. It took him a moment to realize it was a woman, her hair was cropped so short. Before he could react, she pulled back and grunted, "Hrumpph! Back to the land of the living." She surveyed him a moment longer, then wheeled around and marched out the door that he had seen before in the gloom.

He still couldn't move, which annoyed him. And he couldn't tell what felt so different. Then it occurred to him, I'm not wearing my glasses, just as a doctor strode briskly into the room.

"Well, now, young man, how are you this morning?" the doctor said briskly, in a voice suggesting he didn't expect any answers. He bent over the bed, placed a cool palm against Jonathan's forehead and paused for a heartbeat. "Hmmmm ... " He seemed young, in his mid-20s. Maybe he's an intern, Jonathan thought.

Then something else dawned on him, something he had noticed only subconsciously when the nurse appeared earlier: the doctor was huge. Everything was huge. His face was that of a giant, his eyes and nose enormous. The nurse stood behind him; she, too, seemed enormous by any reasonable standards.

Jonathan frowned as he considered this revelation. The doctor frowned, too, and he said softly, in a soothing voice, "Now, now, young man, don't worry. Everything is going to be all right." He pulled the sheet down and grasped Jonathan's left hand, pulled it up. He was feeling for a pulse, and Jonathan watched his huge thumb move across his wrist, when it suddenly struck him like a thunderbolt: it's not that he's so huge — it's that I'm so small! His arm was short and slender — not the veined, hairy arm of a grown man, but the smooth, creamy arm of a young boy.

He let out a yelp, and began to sit up. The doctor put a mammoth hand against Jonathan's chest and pushed him back. "Slow down there, young man," he murmured, "your heart is pounding like a trip hammer. Calm down. You've had quite a scare, but everything is okay. You're fine. Don't worry."

"Where am I?"

"In the hospital," said the doctor. "You've given us quite a start, but you're going to be fine now."

"Well, that's great," Jonathan said. "But which hospital? What am I doing here?"

The doctor retreated and straightened up, towering over Jonathan. "Southampton Hospital," he smiled. "You're here because you were hit by lightning yesterday evening. We were rather worried about you, but it looks like you came through splendidly."

"But what is this?" Jonathan asked, his voice quavering. "Look at me! What's happened?"

The doctor smiled, turned to the nurse. "Be sure to keep him restrained," he said. "He's disoriented, and I don't want him bouncing off the walls." Then, walking out of the room, he turned his head back to Jonathan, and said, "Just be calm now. We've called your parents and they'll be here to pick you up shortly."

Parents? thought Jonathan, dumbstruck by the notion. My parents are in Ireland for the summer. I have no idea where they're staying, or how to reach them. How did the hospital find them? How did they get back so quickly? What the hell is going on?

The nurse returned, pulled the sheet up over his left hand, secured it tightly under the mattress. She smiled at Jonathan. "You're a pretty brave young fella," she said, in a sympathetic voice. "You must have been pretty scared."

She patted his cheek. "How old are you?"

"Forty-one," Jonathan growled, indignant that he was being patted like a baby.

With that, she threw back her head and guffawed. Her sides shook, the starched uniform heaved from side to side. "Forty-one? That's a good one! I'm forty-one, young fella. You can't be more than six or seven."

Six? Jonathan thought. What kind of idiot is this woman? He opened his mouth to object, but the nurse laid a meaty finger across his lips, and whispered, "Shhh, now! Don't talk any more. You should be calm and quiet until your parents arrive. They'll be taking you home this morning, and you can get back to normal. Meanwhile, just rest — try to sleep."

She backed away on silent feet, out the door, down a hallway that he couldn't see. Jonathan sighed and looked around the room, which was painted a pale lemon yellow; there were no other beds, just a dresser against the wall, a smaller dresser next to his bed, and a tiny watercolor painting on the far wall. It must be a rich man's hospital, he thought. Maybe it's the looney bin. One of the windows was open, and a warm breeze fluttered against some remarkably lacy curtains. He wiggled his toes again and looked down to see where his toes made an impression on the stiff white sheets. Instead of six feet away, his toes were only three feet away. Something is definitely wrong, he thought.

He remembered that he wasn't wearing his glasses. That wasn't so strange by itself, he realized: he never wore glasses to bed. But the fact that he could see his toes, as well as the door, was strange. He was woefully near-sighted, and had worn glasses since he was 13. Anything more than a foot away was a dull blur; he smiled as he recalled Ann's joke that he couldn't even see who he was in bed with. Yet now he could see everything in the room crisply, sharply. He could see the dust motes in the sunlight streaming in the window. He could see the cracks in the ceiling, where a leak had been patched, where the new plaster ended and the old ceiling began. Great, he thought. So lightning cures near-sightedness. I'll get a Nobel Prize if I ever get out of this place.

In the silence, he heard the tap tap tap of high-heeled shoes faintly, growing louder, coming down the hallway, approaching his room. A woman turned the corner and came quickly into the room. She looked oddly familiar — but she definitely wasn't a nurse, for she wore no uniform. Instead, she wore an old dress, ruffled and green, patterned with large flowers, which reached her ankles. That dress is a relic from the 1940s, Jonathan thought, and she looks like a woman from World War II. It struck him that she looked like one of the pictures of his mother when she was a young woman; he remembered once sneaking a look at the family scrapbook, and marveling at how exuberant his mother looked when she was young. But he had also been amazed by how distinct the hair style was from today's. He couldn't describe it, though he knew women would have a word for it right away. It was hard to put into words; he simply knew that he could look at a woman, and just know that she was wearing the clothes, the look, of an earlier generation.

And that's what this woman looked like. She strode up to him, a frown creasing her forehead. She stared at him, and then reached down, wrapped her arms around his neck and put her cheek against his. "Oh, my god, AJ! You had us so worried!"

Jonathan had no idea what she was talking about: he was trying to comprehend the feelings, the emotions, the memories brought back by the smell of her perfume, the texture of her skin, the feel of her shoulder-length hair against his face. She is just like ... he thought ... this is just like the times my mother hugged me when I was a small child.

The memory startled him out of his reverie. "Would you tell me what's going on here?" he asked. He was annoyed that his voice didn't sound as gruff as he had intended: it was small, squeaky.

The stranger sat at the edge of the bed, put her hands on his shoulders, and smiled at him. "What's going on, piglet, is that you're recovering from an awful, awful accident. You were playing in the yard last night, and you were hit by lightning. We were very worried, and we brought you to the hospital."

"But who are you?" he asked.

The woman smiled again, looked more closely at him. "What do you mean, who am I? I'm your mother, you little rascal!"

Jonathan closed his eyes, and the same picture came back to him, from all the long-forgotten photographs in the family scrapbook. She was his mother: the same jade-green eyes, the same high forehead, the same long, blond hair with curls and tresses that he so associated with a vanished era. He opened his eyes, and she was still there. "This is very strange," he muttered, and shut his eyes again.

She patted his cheek. "You really did get a knock on your little head, didn't you, pumpkin? There was a time — a few years ago — when you used to draw pictures of stars all the time. Now I think you're seeing stars. Well, not to worry: the doctor said you might have some trouble remembering things for a while."

The sunlight from the window fell across her shoulders, and thought: It's as if time stood still. This is a woman I haven't seen in over thirty years. Then she leaned over and drew her face close to his, staring at him intently. He could smell peppermint on her breath as she opened her mouth to ask, "You didn't do this on purpose, did you?"

"What?"

"The lightning. You've been very sad lately ... I wondered ... "

"What?"

She shrugged, and then smiled and tousled his hair. "You wait here just a second," she said, looking toward the door. "I'm going to find the doctor and tell him we're ready to go home."

Wait here? Where could I possibly go? Jonathan thought. The restraining sheets still kept him from doing anything more than wiggling his toes. Then he felt something in his right hand, something small and hard that he'd been holding without even realizing it. He slid his hand and his arm up under the sheet, across his stomach, and did the same with his left hand. Both hands played with the small object, while he looked at the bumps and wiggles it created on the top of the sheet. It was three inches long, shaped like a small doll, with arms and legs.

Darth Vader! It was the small wooden Action Figure that Daniel had given him to keep while he was at bat. Somehow he had held onto it, even when the lightning bolt flung him up and away. It felt smooth and unscarred; the wood had survived the journey.

Maybe it's not a strange new world, he whispered to himself. Maybe it's just a dream. Whatever it was, it gave him enormous relief to know that there was one small piece of reality to grasp. Darth Vader would be an anchor, reminding him of who he really was, and where he really belonged. It will keep me rational, he thought, while I try to deal with this strange woman who claims to be my mother.

Continue to Chapter 3 . . .