The Time of the Fireflies

by Kimberley Griffiths Little

  Quickly, I cut off my screams and hyperventilated instead, trying to catch my breath. I swore I’d broken a couple of ribs this time, but when I got to my knees, I was breathing fine and nothing was sprained or bruised.

  What was going on? I was slipping and careening through time like I was riding a demented roller coaster. “I want to go home,” I whimpered from the floor.

  It took a minute to get my bearings, but I was back in the original plantation mansion. Fading roses bloomed in the fibers of the carpet, worn down by decades of footsteps. I tried to remember where I’d seen it before. It was the same old-fashioned carpet in the upstairs hallway when I was crawling around right after Daphne died giving birth to a baby girl named Kat.

  “So what time am I in now?” I said, my voice wobbly. “This carpet had to be newer in 1912 but it wasn’t nearly this threadbare during Daphne and Hank’s time.”

  Cold shivers ran down my neck. One of the bedroom doors was open just ahead. Late-afternoon sun spilled across the entrance in a shaft of pure gold.

  A murmur came through the opening, and I finally got to my feet to tiptoe closer. An elderly woman with hair as thin as a spider’s weave sat in a wheelchair facing the window. The sheer lacy drapes had been pulled open, showing off the lawns below. I could see the tops of the cypress swaying, and the murky bayou water just beyond.

  A young woman knelt next to the wheelchair, and she was holding the old woman’s hand. “Granny, you called me. You doing okay today? Can I get you something?”

  “I’m perfectly fine, Kat. Quit fussing over me. ’Course, one never knows when an old woman like me is going to suddenly flee this earth. I might not wake up tomorrow, and that is why I need to give you something now. Before the wedding. It belonged to your mamma before she died, and I gave it to her on her wedding day as a family keepsake. Your mother was wonderful and beautiful and so talented. She — she never got to raise you, but I know she’d want you to have it.” The elderly woman’s voice broke.

  “Dearest Granny, you’ve been like a mother to me. The best mother.”

  “You turning out so fine is all due to your daddy. I haven’t been much use in this wheelchair.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Pshaw,” the old woman said, but she quickly grew more serious. “We’ve only managed to keep body and soul together due to Hank’s hard work and tireless spirit. But that’s neither here nor there. So here she is. I’ve been saving her for you all these years.”

  My eyes bugged out when the old woman placed Anna Marie, the beautiful porcelain doll, in the young woman’s arms. The young woman named Kat. My own grandmother. I shook my head, trying to keep it all straight. Because I’d been time slipping all over the place. My grandmother wasn’t a thirty-five-year-old mother grieving over her drowned daughter Gwen any longer. She was young, probably not much more than twenty, with bright eyes. She was wearing a cute green sundress that showed off her slim, suntanned arms. A diamond ring sparkled on her left hand.

  “No more talk of leaving this world, Granny!” Kat chided, rising on her knees to kiss her grandmother’s wrinkled cheek.

  “I don’t plan on it, darling girl. I’m going to see you safely married to that nice beau of yours.”

  “And I can’t take your beautiful doll, either. You keep her — or give her to someone else in the family who can show her off. Where will I put her while Preston is finishing up college and we’re living in a tiny apartment?”

  “Well, who else am I going to give it to, unless my own granddaughter! I gave her to Daphne — your mother — on her wedding day, but she ended up back in my doll collection when she died. I need to give her to you before you take off and get married. To make sure Anna Marie stays in the family.”

  I tried to figure out what year it was. Miss Anna had to be at least eighty years old. I couldn’t remember when my Grandma Kat was born.

  Kat gave a warm laugh that filled the room. I recognized her laugh. The laugh of my very own grandmother. It hadn’t changed since she was young. “Didn’t your Uncle Edgar the adventurer bring you this doll from Africa or China or somewhere?”

  “It was the Caribbean, actually, although Uncle Edgar traveled all over the world. He said she came from the Island of the Dolls.”

  “Sounds spooky,” Kat said with a smile in her voice.

  I could see her stroking the doll’s silky hair and examining the beautiful clothing. She was perfect, in as fine a condition as when she was brand-new. But I also noticed that Miss Anna didn’t answer Kat’s question about the doll being a gift from Uncle Edgar. I knew why, and the knowledge gave me the creeps.

  “She’s beautiful, Grandmother. I’ll treasure her always and pass her on to my daughter.”

  “I took care of her,” Miss Anna said defensively. “Better than anybody else would.”

  Kat tilted her head. “That’s a funny thing to say.”

  Miss Anna’s gnarled fingers shook as she waved away her granddaughter’s comment. “Never mind me. I’m just an old woman. I’m also bequeathing this house to you, my girl. Even though we had bad times and had to sell off most of the acreage, we managed to keep the house. Run-down as it is now.” I wished I could see her face. It was hard to see the girl in black ringlets and a pinafore, digging up holes with Mister Lance, in this old woman now.

  “You’ve sure had your share of hard times, Granny,” Kat said quietly.

  The elderly woman gave a snort. “My family was the most wealthy and respected family in St. Martinville Parish before the war and after the war. And I’ve spent most of my life watching it all disappear.”

  Gently, Kat reached out to stroke the arthritic, brown-spotted fingers gripping the rails of the wheelchair. “Tell me more, Grandmother.”

  Miss Anna cleared her throat. “I was the belle of the parish back in the days before the First World War. Married Charles Prevost, the most handsome man around. He fought in the trenches, worked so hard keeping this plantation going, then died early of a heart attack. Been gone for thirty years. After I lost Daphne, your daddy and I barely hung on to this place. Now the younger generation is moving away. Tearing down all the older homes. Don’t care about history or family.”

  “Don’t worry, Grandmother, I care. Very much. This house, the island, will always remain in the family, I promise.”

  “Just want to see you happily married now,” Miss Anna said in a trembling voice. “And raise a family right here. I only hope I’ll stick around long enough to hold your babies one day.”

  “You will, you will,” Kat assured her, lifting her eyes. “Oh, my goodness! Who are you?”

  I jumped when I realized that my Grandma Kat was staring directly at me through the doorway. My heart gave a distinct thud, loud as thunder in my ears. The next second, I dashed down the main staircase.

  I ran and ran and ran, trying to get away, but for some queer reason I couldn’t seem to leave the house. Racing into room after room, I doubled back when I heard Kat’s footsteps behind me.

  The front door knobs wouldn’t turn, either, no matter how hard I twisted them. Next I ran to the back kitchen door, but I couldn’t budge the dead bolt locked in place. Retracing my footsteps, I ran back down the hall, darting underneath the staircase into a closet filled with coats and umbrellas and hatboxes and the strong smell of mothballs. I closed the door and gripped the handle, positive Kat was going to haul me out any second.

  Several long moments passed and nothing happened. Did I dare come out? Would Kat and the police be standing outside the closet waiting for me? What if I ended up in jail? I shuddered, holding in the tears and stroking the tender scar on my face, wishing the bizarre time slipping would stop.

  Leaning against a rack of heavy winter coats, I closed my eyes. When I got home I was going to sleep for a week. My eyes flew open with a sudden realization. I’d touched all the doors in the house and the doorknobs over and over again, and yet I hadn’t been ripped away. I hadn’t fallen through the ceiling or floor
s into a new time period. Maybe I was really stuck this time!

  Hours passed, but I didn’t dare move. The light changed, too, the sliver of yellow growing darker under the door. Finally, I turned the knob and cracked the door an inch, hoping to feel the familiar jolt of time rushing past my ears, but nothing happened.

  I said a quick prayer that once I crossed the closet threshold I’d be in the moldy, deserted house of my own time period once more. Tentatively, I pushed the door open a few more inches. It was early evening and the sun was setting. If I could escape the house and get back to the bayou, it would be the right time for the fireflies and then I could get out of here for good!

  Relieved, I stepped through the door — and heard music. Wedding music.

  I bit back a wave of emotion. The house appeared exactly the same as when I eavesdropped on Grandma Kat and the elderly Anna Normand Prevost. I hadn’t gone anywhere. Or had I?

  White wedding bells hung along the banister. The smell of rich food, lots of it, came from the direction of the kitchen. I heard the distinct notes of the Wedding March.

  Kat, radiant in an ivory satin wedding dress, walked sedately down the main staircase, her hand clutched around an older man’s arm. The man was her father, Hank, wearing a dark blue suit and smiling down at his daughter. It occurred to me that he was my great-grandfather.

  A distant clamor came from the rear kitchen, but the music, the big rolling chords and melody of the Wedding March, drowned it out. The large front parlor was filled with guests, women dressed in summer frocks, the men in white shirts and ties and shiny black shoes.

  Peering from under the staircase, I saw that Miss Anna was sitting in her wheelchair at the top of the stairs to observe the ceremony. She had a corsage pinned to her dress, pearl earrings dangling from her earlobes, and the thin strands of snowy white hair piled on top of her head.

  I watched my Grandma Kat as a young woman smiling at a young man decked out in a fancy black wedding suit, a boutonniere in his lapel, standing next to a minister.

  The young man winked at his bride, and a strange surge of wonder and happiness filled me. A flower girl tossed pink and yellow rose petals from a basket as Kat reached out to take her future husband’s hand. Two gold rings sat on a red pillow waiting for the right moment.

  While I listened to the minister’s words as he married my grandparents, I wondered what I was doing here. Was I dreaming while I slept in the hall closet? And yet I could smell the heady scent of the flowers, the wedding food being prepared. My nose wrinkled. Something was burning in the kitchen. One of the caterers had likely spilled sauce on the stove’s burner.

  The minister pronounced Katherine Moret and Preston DuMonde husband and wife. The new bride and groom stepped toward each other, closed their eyes, and kissed. Seeing them made me squirm, but a peculiar lump formed in my throat.

  When they finished kissing and opened their eyes, there was laughter on their lips. Happiness in their eyes.

  My eyes burned again, but not from tears. Tendrils of smoke floated down the hall. Cooking oil was obviously burning. The reception menu must have contained pain perdu, and the chefs were frying bucket loads of dough.

  My stomach growled as I leaned dreamily against the corner wall. I didn’t know weddings could be so romantic and such fun. The next instant, a boy burst through the swinging doors of the kitchen and raced past the staircase. He nearly knocked me over as I crouched by the doorway for one final glimpse. It was time to find the fireflies. I’d stayed much too long. I’d get caught for sure as soon as the wedding music started up again and my grandparents walked down the aisle toward the doors.

  But the boy’s eyeballs were white, his face pale as a sheet as he raced into the main room. Gasping, he yelled, “Fire! Fire!”

  In slow motion the room turned to stare at him. Disbelief registered on everyone’s face. “Is this a joke?” someone murmured.

  Preston DuMonde, my grandfather, pulled my grandmother Kat close and whispered in her ear. She smiled up at him, happiness written deep into her eyes. Their joy turned to shock as smoke began to pour down the hallway and seep into the parlor.

  The wedding guests rose from their chairs as reality sank in. More shouting came from the kitchen. “Fire! Fire! Evacuate!” Behind me, there was the sound of pounding feet, doors opening and slamming.

  “This way!” someone called as the foyer and great room filled with black smoke.

  “No, out these doors!” another voice screamed.

  Confusion ensued as wedding guests scrambled in several directions at once, pushing through the French parlor doors to the outside lawns. I flew behind a large potted fern, not wanting anyone to touch me, to see me. Why didn’t I leave hours ago?

  Seconds later, the rooms of the house turned dark and acrid. A burning sensation scraped at my nose and eyes and throat. Which meant I wasn’t a ghost. I was really here, in the flesh.

  People began to shout and scream as they ran, falling over chairs and rugs. Flower stands toppled, spilling dirt, scattering rose petals and chrysanthemums. Wedding bells tore off the banister railings as people shoved and jostled to flee the house.

  The smoke grew thicker, and I couldn’t see clearly any longer, so I dropped to the floor and started crawling. I worried that if someone touched me I’d be zapped to a different time period all over again. I was so done with all the bizarre time slipping. I wanted to go home now. More than I ever had before in my life.

  My blood turned cold. Maybe I was supposed to save my grandmother? But that couldn’t be right. She had survived the fire. She was still alive in the future. My future.

  Still crawling on my hands and knees, I finally saw the front doors open and a dab of blue sky up ahead. Smoke roared out of the open doors as it sucked up oxygen. I heard the crackle of flames right behind me. The hallway was engulfed.

  The fire department in Bayou Bridge was on Main Street far across the river. Were there fireboats and enough hose to reach the plantation house on the island? The house was more than a hundred years old, a pile of dry timber.

  My grandmother’s wedding day was ruined. She’d never mentioned that before. Then it occurred to me that she had never shown me a single wedding picture.

  Wedding guests poured out the front door, stumbling, coughing, crying, and yelling. I kept crawling toward the door myself as black ash rained down. I was just about to reach the doorway when I heard Kat let out a scream.

  “Grandmother!” she yelled. “My grandmother! She’s upstairs on the landing! We need to get her!” The scene was so chaotic and confusing, nobody seemed to hear her, and nobody stopped to help.

  I stumbled over a person lying in the hall. “Help me,” the woman whispered in her pink suit and pearls. “I’m pretty sure I’ve broken my ankle and I can’t walk.”

  “I’ll help you,” I told her, even though I was terrified to touch her. I didn’t want to accidentally hurt her or take her through a time warp. As I reached out to push her across the slick floor toward safety, Preston DuMonde, my grandfather, scooped the woman up in his arms and carried her out to the front porch. As he heaved himself outside, he yelled, “Kat! Follow me! The door’s right here!”

  Horrified, I watched my grandmother ignore him. Instead, she clawed her way through the ash-drowned wedding guests and piles of wedding debris in the haze of smoke, heading in the opposite direction. My grandmother crouched on the first step of the wide staircase, holding an arm across her face against the billowing smoke. Orange flames licked the wooden banister. Ugly tendrils of fire reached for Kat’s arms and legs as she crawled one step at a time upstairs to where the smoke was climbing, black and thick and blazing hot.

  I staggered upward, staring through the banister railings. At the top of the stairs, Miss Anna sat slumped in her wheelchair. Was she already dead? It was crazy and stupid, but I couldn’t stand by as they both burned to death. Leaping around a burning flower stand, I seized the banister to haul myself up.

  The world tur
ned black as I dropped through the floor, tumbling through time. My arms flailed like pinwheels. I wasn’t going to survive the fall this time. It was going to kill me, knock me out forever. Tears seared my face as I screamed my head off, tumbling head over heels as I seemed to fall forever.

  The descent to the bottom of the time chasm was slow and terrible. What if I never stopped? I screamed one last time for the only person who could help me. If I survived, I had to call my grandmother Kat in Baton Rouge.

  She was the only person who could help me figure this out.

  After I slammed into the floor, my right hip hurt like crazy, as well as my ribs and elbows. I was going to be black and blue tomorrow, but I didn’t think anything was broken. I squinted, bracing myself for blindness, but the world was still — the house utterly quiet.

  The threadbare carpets were gone. The wedding bells had vanished, along with the old crystal chandelier that hung from the parlor ceiling with its pretty molded medallion.

  The smoke was gone, too, as well as the black ash and hysterical wedding guests.

  I was pretty sure this was what it felt like to be thrown from a roller coaster and dumped onto the asphalt at a state fair.

  But I was alive. I hadn’t burned to death. Wiping my hand across my nose, I swallowed and tasted smoke. Even though I’d time slipped again, I’d carried some of the past with me.

  Rolling over onto my stomach, I jerked up into a sitting position. “Eww!”

  Not only were the carpets gone, but there was no carpet at all. Just raw concrete. The floor was filthy. Dirt and dead bugs. Mildew grew in the corners of the empty living room — or what used to be the pretty parlor.

  I narrowed my eyes. The staircase was in the wrong spot, and the main room was smaller. Light came through a doorway with rusty hinges, the door itself long gone.

  A smaller room lay beyond. A window so dusty it let in little light. Empty spaces where the refrigerator and stove used to be. Gritty, peeling linoleum flooring. Black grease on the wall and a broken bulb hanging from a dirty yellowing ceiling.