Walking even faster, the girls hastened along the winding path. The air remained sultry and very still. The sky, Penny noted, had changed to a peculiar yellowish color.
Then, as she watched with increasing alarm, a writhing, twisting, funnel-shaped arm reached down from the boiling clouds, anchoring them to earth. For a moment the entire mass seemed to settle and flatten out.
“Listen!” commanded Penny.
Plainly they both could hear a sullen, deep-throated roar as the storm moved forward.
“A tornado!” gasped Louise. “It’s coming this way!”
“Run!” urged Penny, seizing her hand. “We still have a chance to make Fenestra’s place.”
In a clearing beyond a weed-grown field stood a white farmhouse, a red barn and a silo. One side of the property was bounded by the willow-rimmed river, the other by the road.
Crawling beneath a barbed-wire fence, the girls cut across the field. The sky was darker now, the roar of the wind ominous. They could see the tail of the funnel whipping along the ground, veering to the south, then coming toward them again.
“We’ll never make the house,” Louise cried fearfully.
“Yes, we will,” encouraged Penny.