Gossamer by Lois Lowry

feel them again now as she gathered them closer and closer to her surface: Flying! Beginning! She leaned down and bestowed those feelings upon the boy.
    Then, just the tiniest bit of the seashell; she had given it to him often before, so she needed only a reminder of it. And the donkey, silly old Hee-Haw. She was tempted to leave the donkey out, but then it seemed important: the patchedness of it, the lumpy comfort.
    She bestowed those, and with them went the last of her energy. She was very shaky now.

    But she knew he needed the words. And so she summoned them and breathed them into his ear:
    Laughter.
    Courage.
    But they took everything she had left, and she could not sustain her hover or flutter away. She heard the Horde stampede coming through the wall as she fell. Her strength completely gone, she curled into a ball, into the smallest she could make herself, and rolled under the boy's bed, just out of the way of the stomping, flailing hooves.
    ***
    The little boy had not heard the pawing at the exterior wall of the house, or the snorting of dilated nostrils as the huge creatures breathed themselves through, sweaty sides heaving and rippled with power. His sleep was undisturbed by the hot whoooosh and hisssss as they transferred the horrors they carried into his small being.
    Across the hall, in the bedroom with pink rosebuds and ribbon garlands on its wallpaper, the woman, too, slept unaware, as did her dog. Thin Elderly had bestowed on her every fragment of contentment he could muster before he fluttered back down, slid, exhausted, under the door to the attic stairs, and made his way up to the place he and Littlest had agreed to meet. Behind him he heard the Horde enter, and he thought he must hug Littlest tightly so that she would not be terrified by such a horrible sound: Hundreds of hooves! The snorting and whinnying! And the smell, too, was awful. Tired though he was, he hurried up the attic stairs to find her and reassure her that they had done all they could.

    She was so brave, he thought, for such a tiny thing. So diligent! For all of her playing and dancing and merriment and curiosity, she was a hardworking little dream-giver, devoted to the job. He decided that he would suggest to Most Ancient, when they returned, that Littlest One be given a special commendation for tonight's work. No other dream-giver for decades had had to face a Horde, and none as small as Littlest had ever done so. She should be honored in some special way.
    Pleased with his idea (but he wouldn't mention it to her, he decided; it would be a surprise; he could picture her look of surprise and her delighted laughter), he reached the top of the stairs and called into the attic, hoping she could hear him above the terrible Horde sounds below.
    "Littlest?"

    But the attic was empty. Frantically, Thin Elderly searched. When he realized that she had not made it, that she had been trampled and scorched by the creatures below, that she had been crushed and kicked aside as they went about their evil work, Thin Elderly huddled, grief-stricken, in the corner of the attic. Head in his arms, he wept.

26
    The little boy was someplace strange: a field of some sort, and he was wearing a cap. Yes: a baseball field, that's what it was. There was a scoreboard that said 00, and he held a bat and squinted from under his cap, hoping to hit the pitched ball that came toward him. There were crowds watching. He hoped they would cheer.

    But he fell. Someone had pushed him from behind, and now his face was in the dirt. When he tried to get up, the person behind him held him there so he became paralyzed; he couldn't move at all, and the man rubbed his face in the dirt. Hard. There were pebbles in the dirt, sharp bits of rocks, and his face was bleeding, and the man kept laughing and laughing and the boy couldn't understand why, or what he had done to make this happen.
    ***
    The room was quiet now, for the beasts had gone, their work completed. Silently Littlest One