The Magic Factory. Морган Райс

to get them to fit back together. But it was useless. The whole thing had been destroyed. All his coils and wires were damaged beyond hope. He’d have to start all over again.

      He threw the pieces into his suitcase and slammed it shut. With both the locks now broken, the lid bounced up before falling back again and standing ajar. Oliver sighed heavily and slumped back against his mattress. He pulled the blanket all the way up over his head.

      It must only have been from sheer exhaustion that Oliver was even able to fall asleep that night. But sleep he did. And as he drifted off into his dreams, Oliver found himself standing at the window looking out at the spindly tree across the road. There stood the man and woman he’d seen just last night, holding hands.

      Oliver banged on the window.

      “Who are you?” he cried.

      The woman smiled knowingly. Her smile was kind; nicer, even, than Ms. Belfry’s.

      But neither of them spoke. They just stared at him, smiling.

      Oliver heaved the window open. “Who are you?” he shouted again, but this time his voice was drowned out by the wind.

      The man and woman just stood there, mute, their hands clasped, their smiles warm and inviting.

      Oliver began to crawl through the window. But as he did, the figures flickered and juddered, as if they were holograms and the lightbulbs were flickering out. They were starting to disappear.

      “Wait!” he cried. “Don’t go!”

      He fell through the window and hurried across the street. They faded more and more with every step he took.

      As he drew up ahead of them, they were barely visible. He reached forward for the woman’s hand, but his went straight through hers, like she was a ghost.

      “Please tell me who you are!” he pleaded.

      The man opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was drowned out by the roaring wind. Oliver grew desperate.

      “Who are you?” he asked again, shouting to be heard over the wind. “Why are you watching me?”

      The man and woman were rapidly fading. The man spoke again, and this time Oliver heard a small whisper.

      “You have a destiny…”

      “What?” Oliver stammered. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

      But before either of them had a chance to speak again, they faded out entirely. They’d gone.

      “Come back!” Oliver yelled into the emptiness.

      Then, as if speaking into his ear, he heard the wispy voice of the woman say, “You will save mankind.”

      Oliver’s eyes fluttered open. He was back in his alcove bed, bathed in the pale, blue light coming in through the window. It was morning. He could feel his heart thrumming.

      The dream had shaken him to the core. What had they meant about him having a destiny? About saving mankind? And who were the man and woman anyway? Figments of his imagination, or something else? It was all too much to fathom.

      As the initial shock of the dream began to wear off, Oliver felt a new sensation take over. Hope. Somewhere, deep inside of him, he felt that he was about to experience a momentous day, that everything was about to change.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Oliver’s good mood was elevated further when he realized his first class of the day was science, and that meant he’d get to see Ms. Belfry again. Even as he crossed the playground, ducking beneath basketballs that he suspected were deliberately being aimed at his head, Oliver’s sense of excitement only grew.

      He reached the staircase and succumbed to the force of the children, who pushed him like a surfer all the way up to the fourth floor. Then he pushed his way out onto the landing and headed for the classroom.

      He was first. Ms. Belfry was inside already, in a gray linen dress, setting up a row of small models across the front of her desk. Oliver saw there was a little biplane, a hot air balloon, a space rocket, and a modern airplane.

      “Is today’s lesson about flight?” he asked.

      Ms. Belfry startled, clearly not having realized one of her students had entered.

      “Oh, Oliver,” she said, beaming. “Good morning. Yes, it is. Now, I suspect you know a thing or two about these kinds of inventions.”

      Oliver nodded. His inventors book had a whole section on flight, from the first balloons invented by the French Montgolfier brothers, through to the Wright Brothers’ early airplane design, and all the way up to rocket science. Like the rest of the pages of the book, he’d read this section so many times he had most of it committed to memory.

      Ms. Belfry smiled like she’d already guessed Oliver would be a fountain of knowledge on this particular subject.

      “You might have to help me explain some of the physics to the others,” she told him.

      Oliver blushed as he took his seat. He hated speaking out loud in front of his classmates, especially since he was already a suspected nerd and confirming it felt like he was flaunting more than he really wanted to. But Ms. Belfry did have a very calming way about her, as though she thought Oliver’s knowledge was something to be celebrated rather than ridiculed.

      Oliver chose a seat near the front of the class. If he was going to be forced to speak aloud, he’d prefer not to have thirty pairs of eyes gawking at him over their shoulders as he did. At least this way he’d only be aware of the four other kids in the front row looking at him.

      Just then, Oliver’s classmates started filing in and taking their seats. The noise in the room began to swell. Oliver never understood how other people had so much to talk about. Though he could talk about inventors and inventions forever, there wasn’t much else he felt the need to chat about. It always baffled him how other people managed such easy conversation, and how they shared so many words on what, in his mind, sounded like next to nothing of importance.

      Ms. Belfry began her class, waving her arms in an attempt to get everyone to shut up. Oliver felt terrible for her. It always seemed like a battle just to get the kids to listen. And she was so gentle and soft-spoken that she never resorted to raising her voice or shouting, so her attempts to quiet everyone took ages to work. But eventually, the chatter began to die away.

      “Today, children,” Ms. Belfry began, “I have a problem that needs solving.” She held up a popsicle stick. “I wonder if anyone can tell me how to make this fly.”

      A ripple of hubbub went around the room. Someone shouted out.

      “Just throw it!”

      Ms. Belfry did as was suggested. The popsicle stick traveled less than two feet before falling to the ground.

      “Hmm, I don’t know about you guys,” Ms. Belfry said, “but to me that just looked like falling. I want it to fly. To soar through the air, not just plummet to the ground.”

      Paul, Oliver’s taunter from last class, called out the next suggestion. “Why don’t you just ping it on an elastic band? Like a slingshot.”

      “That’s a good idea,” Ms. Belfry said with a nod. “But I haven’t told you something. This stick is actually ten feet long.”

      “Then make a ten-foot-wide catapult!” someone shouted.

      “Or put rocket launchers on it!” another voice chimed in.

      The class started to laugh. Oliver shifted in his seat. He knew exactly how the popsicle stick could fly. It all came down to physics.

      Ms. Belfry managed to get the class to settle down again.

      “This was the exact problem facing the Wright brothers when they were trying to create the first airplane. How to mimic the flight of birds. How to turn this”—she held up the stick horizontally—“into wings that could sustain flight. So, does anyone know how they did it?”

      Her gaze flicked immediately to Oliver. He swallowed. As much