Kids Can Fly: Kids Can Fly

This had been the site of a hospital. The biggest hospital in the Southern Hemisphere. It used to be called the Noitroba Maternity Hospital, and women from nearly every country in the world came to give birth in this place. It had been an architectural marvel. Massive walls, stone paths, marble floors, huge pillars along the front, tall, wide windows with glass of many colours, ten stories of brickwork, sweeping lawns and gardens, archways, fountains, fully grown trees. It had been the place to come, almost a century ago. Babies born in the spacious, friendly rooms were nicknamed 'Noitroba babies'. There was prestige in the name.

But times had changed. Fewer and fewer women came to the hospital. They began to go elsewhere. Mothers began to do strange, thoughtless things. They had their babies killed instead of rejoicing in their birth. The Noitroba Maternity Hospital began to close down. Eventually, it was left to fall into ruin, and a smaller, box-like, three-roomed hospital was built, for those few mothers who still wanted to keep their children alive. It was called Little Noitroba Maternity Hospital.

About ten years ago, the last baby had been brought into the light at 'Big' Noitroba. A girl. She had been a fair child, with sparkling brown eyes and a face full of heaven. Her mother had dressed her in the whitest, cleanest clothes and brought her home, singing lullabies and showering love on her. And she had named her child Melanie.

All this Melanie remembered, because she had been told many times, though any of the true memory of that time was like a faint, wavering dream to her. But now she was returning, following the passage which her mother had once come along. And tonight Melanie was entering, not leaving, the ruins of the hospital, retracing her mother's steps back to where she had given birth.

"Are you sure you know where we're going?" whined Alex.

"Course I'm sure," said Melanie.

Logan fell back and walked beside Alex.

"Don't worry," he said, "We can't get lost. There's only one passageway. It's not like a maze or something. If we want to get out, all we have to do is go back the same way."

"I know that," said Alex, "I'm not dumb!"

"I never said you were !"

"Yes you did!"