The Lightning Stones

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Here she lay, in a tumbledown hotel on the edge of a jungle at the far end of the world. The knocks came soft and timid.

“Who is it?” she called, her voice husky with the sleep she so desperately craved.

“Miss Earhart?” a man asked tentatively.

Married to publishing magnate George Putnam for the last six years, she resigned herself to the fact that she would forever be known as Amelia Earhart, America’s flying darling.

“Yes?” From her tone, she was clearly irked.

“Bert Hoover sent you a telegram and said I need to see you. I’m Mike Dillman.”

It took her a few seconds to place the names. She’d received dozens of telegrams upon her arrival from Australia, mostly from George, but there were others as well, fans wishing her well. The cable the stranger just mentioned had taken her by surprise.

“Give me a moment,” Amelia said, and slid out of bed.

She grabbed up her robe, a thin, diaphanous garment that weighed but a few ounces and was one of her few feminine conceits during the circumnavigation. She slipped it over her shoulders and looked to see her reflection in a small mirror by the silvery moonlight filtering through the hotel room’s only window. She didn’t think she looked much like America’s flying darling just then, but there was little she could do about it.

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