By Dawn's Early Light

Lucy Cunningham-Schultz is hunting for John Whittaker when Curt Stevens jumps out and startles her, and the morning turns into an argument neither of them expects to matter. Lucy has been handed an assignment for the school paper: an article about a group of protesters who burned the flag. Her teacher wants the story, her father thinks the protesters are weirdos, and Lucy, to be honest, does not see what all the fuss is about. A flag, she tells Curt, is just a piece of cloth, and the First Amendment guarantees free expression. That is exactly why she wants to talk to Mr. Whittaker. He is not upstairs, though. What is upstairs is the Imagination Station, and neither of them has ever been inside.

The readout says American history, early 1800s. Curt, who cannot leave a knob alone, finds the button that shuts the doors and then reaches for the red one.

Lucy opens her eyes in a grand house filled with British soldiers, staring down two officers who introduce themselves as Major General Robert Ross, commander of the British army, and Rear Admiral George Cockburn of His Majesty's Royal Navy. They have just captured her city, they say. Lucy works out where and when she is: not Odyssey, but Washington City, in the War of 1812, and the fine house she is standing in is the president's mansion. The president and his wife have already fled, leaving a feast behind them. A sergeant reports that everything is set, torches are called for, and Lucy watches, begging them to stop, as the mansion goes up in flames along with the capitol building, the treasury and the navy yard. It is only a building, Ross tells her. Since the British army does not lock up young girls, the officers decide to leave her with a doctor they lodged with on the way in, a local gentleman named William Beans.

Curt lands somewhere far less grand: a Maryland forest at night, up a tree, with dogs barking underneath. The man who calls them off is Benjamin, and Benjamin is convinced he has caught a British straggler. Dr. Beans arrives, sees only a boy, and takes Curt home for warm food and a mug of milk. A straggler, the doctor explains, is a soldier who has run away from his army, and there have been plenty of them about since the British marched through on their way to Washington City. When Curt says he is searching for a girl named Lucy, Dr. Beans offers to send word to a friend at Fort McHenry, John Skinner, who deals in prisoner exchanges.

The word never gets sent. Ross and Cockburn ride up that same night with Lucy on horseback, delivering her to the doctor as a gift. Dr. Beans keeps Curt hidden, because the British are perfectly willing to seize boys and press them into servitude. Then the doctor offers a gift of his own: several British stragglers he and his neighbors have caught looting farms and thrown in jail. Ross is furious. Dr. Beans gave his solemn pledge not to raise a hand against the army, and now he is clapped in irons and carried off to the fleet to stand trial, with Lucy taken along too.

Curt remembers the name Skinner and makes his way to Fort McHenry, where Skinner promises to bring a lawyer friend and win the prisoners' release. Curt is ordered to stay behind, safe, in the care of Major George Armistead.

Aboard the British ship, Lucy carries food to the imprisoned doctor and finds that watching those buildings burn has changed her. They are not just blocks of stone, she says, any more than a flag is just a piece of cloth. They are symbols of what people believe, and seeing them burned felt like having part of herself burned. Then it seems, says Dr. Beans, that she has learned something on this voyage.

Skinner does arrive, with sworn statements from British prisoners describing how kindly they were treated and with his silver-tongued lawyer friend, Francis Scott Key. Ross and Cockburn agree to the release, and then change the terms: the three of them now know the fleet's next target, so they will be held on board until Baltimore falls. To take Baltimore, Skinner realizes aloud, the British must first destroy Fort McHenry - and Fort McHenry is exactly where he left Curt.

The shelling begins before dawn. Inside the fort, the guns cannot reach ships anchored so far out, and Major Armistead swears they will never surrender. Curt points out that nobody out there can hear him. The major answers that he knows another way to get the message across. From the deck of the ship, Lucy watches through the glass as the flag comes down, and her heart sinks - until a second flag goes up in its place, bigger and more beautiful than the first. There is your answer, Key tells the admiral. Cockburn orders the barrage increased.

For twenty-four hours the bombardment goes on. When it finally stops, the sky is still too dark to see, Cockburn has slipped away to the forward ships, and Skinner fears the worst. Lucy looks again in the growing light and finds the flag tattered and torn, but still there. The fleet weighs anchor. Fort McHenry stands. All night Key has been writing by the glare of the bursting shells, and when Lucy asks what it is, he hands her the poem and asks her to read it aloud: Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light.

Back at Whit's End, Curt tumbles out of the Imagination Station begging Mr. Whittaker never to get rid of it. Mr. Whittaker turns to Lucy and asks about that article she wanted help with, the one about flag burning. Lucy does not need the help anymore. Now she knows exactly what she wants to say.