Amber Trips the Light Fantastic
By Robin Jenkins
CHAPTER 1
The Spider and the Fly
A beam of sunshine raced through the windowpane and Amber watched the particles bounce and float. She shut her eyes and thought, “Nap, nap, nap,” as she watched spots of yellow and red and blue change shapes against the blackness of her closed eyelids.
”Nap is almost over. Time to get up … in five minutes or seven or ten. Why do grown-ups make children take naps?” she wondered. “Are we supposed to be sleepy in the afternoon because we are small (which I am not)? Two minutes, three minutes, eight minutes. When will the nap be over so I can stop wasting time – get up, get up and live? If we were supposed to sleep in the afternoon, the Sun would go out for twenty minutes or forty minutes or whatever it is that is a nap.”
Trying to stay awake, Amber looked at the golden elephant clock on the wall. The time was exactly 2:37 in the afternoon.
