A CHANCE

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky.

***

Six months ago, unexplained midnight sky changes over several countries radically impacted their agriculture, economy and the health of their citizens. Those few countries are now enjoying astounding prosperity and dramatic improvements in their lifestyle.

Recently, it has been determined the night clouds possess powerful, healing powers. Inhabitants of these countries have recovered from terminal illnesses and many types of disease, miraculously.

Now, the rest of the struggling world is about to learn of these healing powers.

***

"How is she," Brandon whispered.

"Worse," Jade whispered, "her breathing is raspy, she’s burning up, temperature's dangerously high. I’m sponging her head with the river water, and I don't know if it's helping.”

“We are almost there,” he whispered, trying to give her something positive to hold onto, “thirty minutes.”

The bushes and grass at the side of the stream hung across it, creating a type of tunnel which they had to duck under as they paddled through. When they had to push the grass aside, they did so gently to make only a whisper of sound, as if it was the wind brushing through the grass, not humans.

“Quiet,” hissed Myles from the front of the canoe.

They heard muffled gun shots in the far distances.

Maybe bandits, thought Brandon, or trackers.

They stopped paddling, didn’t lift the oars from the water as the dripping sounds might carry in the night, alerting whoever was nearby.

The sky was still dark and filled with stars. The moon was bright and spilled its cool light across the clouds and onto the face of the night’s forest.

They heard voices moving through the brush near them. Then, they saw narrow beams of light swinging across the darkness.

If captured, they could be locked in a prison somewhere, never to be heard from again.

They didn’t move, barely breathed.

Jade, Brandon’s wife, holding the baby Julie, sat motionless in the center of the canoe.

Please Julie, he thought, if there was a time to be quiet, now is that time.

For terrifying minutes, the voices and the lights wandered closer, and then they began drifting away, further into the darkness.

"Clear," Myles whispered over his shoulder to them, "how's the baby?”

“Breathing ragged, temperature horrible," Jade whispered, "how much longer?”

Brandon spoke quietly as he dipped his paddle lightly into the dark waters, quietly propelling the canoe, “the darkness makes it hard for me to recognize anything, but we should be to a good spot within thirty minutes.”

The stream widened and the moonlight caught in its dark surface, as a rippling silver light. The waters gurgled steadily, and the trees rose up high above them, partially blocking the stars, hiding the moon.

Brandon thought back to their conversation at the breakfast table just that morning.

***

The small table tucked into the corner of the kitchen held two plates, one, was full of eggs, and the other, potatoes. They were silent as their baby struggled to breathe.

“I spent our rent at the doctor’s," Jade said breaking the silence. "I had to know. He said unless there is dramatic improvement in a couple days, she probably won’t make it.”

For a few moments they were silent.

Then Myles spoke, and there was hope in his usually monotone voice when he said, “according to my friend in the government of our neighboring country, the proof of healing powers in the clouds has been overwhelming. Thirty days of hard evidence reveals that the sky phenomenon is producing astounding miracles of healing. It is too soon to tell if these healings are permanent, but the signs are good.”

He paused a moment, said, “this news will be leaking out through the media next week and when it does, the migrants already massed at the borders may become violent. Illegal entrance to the country will quadruple. Easily."

"Do you blame them?" Brandon said. "All they want is to feed their families. Many of them are starving. Because of the sky phenomenon, crops are so plentiful they can’t be harvested fast enough. That country desperately needs our help to pick the crops before they rot. There will be plenty of work. Even for illegals. We can disappear into the interior of the country.”

"That country has so much, why do they want us to starve? What are they afraid of?" Jade said. “The doctors here will not treat our daughter because we cannot pay cash. So, those clouds, whatever the hell they are, as crazy as it seems, are Julie’s best chance to survive.” She looked at Brandon, then Myles, and said, “the way I see it, we don’t have a choice. We must save our daughter. We must go.”

“The punishments for illegal entry to the country are getting severe,” Myles said.

“Fuck that,” Jade said, “we leave tonight. We cross the river and save Julie. Then we worry about eating.”

They sat quietly, listening to the wheezing breaths of the baby.

"Eat," Jade said, stabbing the pile of scrambled eggs with her fork, "this may be our last meal for quite a while."

***

The decision had been made that fast, Brandon thought.

The plan was to get past the border security, expose Julie to the night sky, healing her on our way to the country’s interior, and build a life in the new land.

As fragile as this plan was, it was their best chance and that is all they wanted. A chance.

So, this is what the fate of my family has come to, Brandon thought, wandering in the middle of the night through a forest crawling with bandits, trackers and migrants, hoping that the path ahead saves our daughter, and that it holds a shred of an opportunity for us.

At least now, he thought, we have hope.

They paddled the canoe for another fifteen minutes when Brandon guided it onto a slice of shore.

The canoe scraped into the sand, and Myles stepped out onto the damp bank. He listened to the sounds of the night, satisfied, he lifted the front end of the craft up further onto the sand.

He took Jade’s hand and helped her balance as she stepped to the front of the boat with the baby, now wrapped in a warm blanket. She stepped delicately onto the shore, moved out into the moonlight and sat on a low boulder.

Brandon made sure the canoe was secure. Myles was scouting the area, listening hard into the dark spaces, trying to detect sounds of danger. They found Jade and the baby Julie sitting on a wide flat rock at the edge of the meadow.

“Way worse," Jade said before Brandon could ask, "barely breathing."

“It's almost midnight,” Brandon said, “things should be changing soon.”

Right at midnight, the dark sky began to lighten, and the clouds gradually seemed to melt from blue tones to a shimmering, rich, purple color. On the light backdrop of sky, we watched the clouds shift into different shapes, as if they were engaged in a slow-motion dance. It was subtle, but the clouds, in their gentle movements seemed to be responding to each other.

The richness and depth of the purple clouds showed against the lightness of the blush sky with a sharpness and clarity they’d never seen in nature before.

A soft light filled the night and covered the land. This light had the texture and depth of dusk, only the color wasn’t grey, it was blueish, soft and pleasant, falling onto the land like a fine mist or a gentle rain.

They were stunned to silence by the overwhelming transformation of colors, a wondrous display they had never experienced.

“Honey,” Brandon said, his voice was soft, “how is she?”

“Still fighting.”

Brandon watched a flock of birds take flight. They looked black against that blush-colored sky, cut a couple wide circles above the meadow in the soft blue light, and then disappeared past the trees fringing the meadow.

They watched the moon for a while, and the shadows on its face, now more light blue than grey, began to glow. A raft of purple cloud sailed across the lower half of what the moon had become; a silver, gleaming jewel embedded in the fabric of a soft sky.

They had never seen or experienced anything like the beauty of that night.

But the most impactful feeling they experienced was a pervasive, gentle healing they felt moving deep within their spirits. This soothing tranquility drifted out through their bodies, creating an overwhelming sensation of peace, and well-being.

“Brandon,” Jade whispered urgently, “something is happening.”

Brandon ran over to where jade was sitting and knelt beside her. He touched Julie’s forehead. He wasn't sure but he thought the fever was lower.

He looked up and saw cones of light moving at the far side of the meadow.

“Jade,” he whispered.

When she looked over at him, he motioned for her to get low behind the boulder. He pressed his mouth to her ear and whispered, “trackers, at the far side of the meadow. Stay low and move along those bushes.”

She rolled off the rock to her feet and clutching Julie to her chest, ran half bent over to the row of bushes.

Brandon followed close behind.

Myles had also seen the trackers and was already hidden somewhere nearby.

They hid behind the wall of bushes, watched the narrow beams of the flashlights move within the shifting, blue shadows of the forest.

“Brandon,” Jade said, her voice an urgent whisper, “she's breathing. She's going to live."

Thank you, God, he thought. He pulled Jade to him, a long, intimate embrace.

They looked up into the night sky and watched the clouds, with their soft and gentle movements, dancing.