No one in our immediate vicinity stayed to listen, even though the emergency had passed. So Martin and Ellen and I carried buckets of water to put out fires, using the shovel to spread the coals and kindling. We filled our garbage bag and took our own trash, but that was all we could do in the dark.
Barry was still nursing his fingers, so Ellen and I carried the garbage to the nearest cleared path where cleanup crews could find it in the morning. Then we went back to lug the slightly less heavy cooler to the paved parking lot that was almost empty by now. Martin and his lantern led the way with the chairs. Barry carried my blanket.
I left them there to go get the car, still half a mile away. I had my little dog-walking flashlight clipped to my belt, so I didn’t mind. And I could swear I saw fireflies lighting my way.
When I got back with the car, Martin and Ellen were locked together on the cooler, heating it up like teenagers. Barry paced around, muttering about small-town bozos who shouldn’t be allowed near explosives, and how there’d be lawsuits in the morning.
“But didn’t you love the fireworks? I thought whoever they hired did an amazing job, and everyone else had a great time until you scared them.”
“Me? I was the one who got burned.”
“You got stung, or maybe you got an allergic reaction. No one else felt a spark.”
He muttered something I couldn’t hear, thankfully, or I might have stopped the car to throw him out. Instead I tried to lighten the mood for Ellen’s sake.
“Didn’t you adore those peace doves, and the flying fish?”
“What doves is she talking about?” Martin asked her.
Barry grumbled, “I never saw any fish, just those really annoying screaming meemies.”
“What about the flowers? They were incredible.”
No one said anything until Ellen laughed. “That’s why we teach science and you write books. You always did have the best imagination of anyone I ever knew. You’d look at a cloud and see a rhinoceros with a butterfly on its ear.”
No birds, no fish, no flowers? I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the ride home.
I dropped my passengers off at Martin’s house. He invited us all in for drinks and dessert, but I said I needed to check on the dogs. And my sanity. I’d print out the camera pictures to prove I wasn’t crazy or delusional. Martin could bring Ellen home later, unless she spent the night at his place. Her choice.
Ten minutes later I drove up Garland Drive, the dirt path that passed my mother’s and Aunt Jasmine’s houses on the way to Grandmother Eve’s house, fields, and farm stand. The road had no lights, but it was well lit by the moon tonight, I thought. Until I got to my own front yard.
Flowers were blooming. That was nothing unusual for late August, but these were incandescent roses seven feet off the ground, on the lawn, where no rosebushes were planted. They waved and bobbed, as if welcoming me home. Then they separated into individual flames that danced close enough for me to see they were the same oversized fireflies that stung Barry. I kept my hands at my sides. My heart was in my throat.
“Hello. You don’t really belong here, do you?”
They didn’t answer. They didn’t show up on my digital camera, either.
Uh-oh. I’d done it again.
CHAPTER 5
NO, NO, AND NO. I did not call up any kind of firefly. If—and I am only saying if—I could conjure up an enchanted being from another world, an airborne match wouldn’t be my first choice.
Yes, I’d been thinking of a hero who used fire in the fight of good versus evil. I did not wish for, pray for, or cast incantations for some bugs that could burn up Paumanok Harbor. I had a story in my head, not a gatecrashing insect invasion of Earth in my front yard. When I was fantasizing about a new story, I never, ever thought about another world that was supposedly a parallel universe, filled with magical, telepathic creatures and separated from us by spells and glamour. Last spring, I’d never heard of a world called Unity. Half the time I didn’t believe it existed, until one of its residents landed on my doorstep. But I never called them, I swear!
I went back outside, leaving the dogs indoors, to their displeasure. The sparks of light still twinkled here and there, just like on an ordinary summer night filled with the scent of honeysuckle and the sounds of peepers and crickets. Not so ordinarily, the brightest sparkles quickly flew into formation as a tree. No, a burning bush. Holy hell, had they read the Bible? Had they posed for the Bible?
I shook my head, and the bush dissolved into a ball of fire at the level of my head. I didn’t feel threatened, not when the ball bounced and swayed playfully. The bugs seemed to be dancing to a merry tune only they could hear. I couldn’t hear their voices, out loud or in my head, but I sensed the hundreds of flies packed close together were happy to see me.
I was not happy to see them. “Shoo,” I said. “Go home.” I was careful to keep my voice low and my hands at my sides, mindful of the blister—a tiny one, for all his complaining—on Barry’s finger. It wouldn’t do to antagonize small visitors with big powers.
Gentle verbal commands didn’t work, so I visualized a different place, one with big red trolls and snow-white horses where the language was half vocal, half mental. “Go home,” I said, and thought it as hard as I could.
Either my mind’s pictures didn’t look like their home or my telepathic powers were zilch or insects didn’t understand English, but they bounced around into a cloud of softly glowing lights, a swath like a comet’s tail. They weren’t going away.
I slowly raised both hands, palms up, in a show of nonaggression. Two of the creatures separated from the swarm and flew close, then landed on my hands, nearly filling them. If the fireflies had been spiders, I’d have fainted. Bees, I’d be screaming and running. Mosquitoes, I might have slammed my hands together. Instead I felt no fear or repulsion, no scorching pain. There was only a slight tingle and a warmth in my hands, almost a lover’s caress. “That’s right, I’m a friend.”
Maybe they were inspecting me the way I was studying them, because the two advance envoys took off and flew around my head, my hair, down to my feet, then back to their buddies as if they were reporting in. I still couldn’t hear or sense what they were saying, so communication wasn’t working. Hell, they were bugs; I was an accidental esper.
They looked like a lot of earthly insects to me, whose usual contact with the bugs was to panic at anything with a lot of legs. Long Island lightning bugs weren’t a tenth the size of these green gossamer-winged wildlife, and didn’t have coruscating blue eyes that appeared to reflect intelligence. If I recalled right, our fireflies glowed at mating season to find each other. They glowed from a chemical reaction, not from internal combustion in their abdomens.
“Please go away. People here will not understand. They’ll be afraid. They might try to hurt you, like Barry did.”
People—especially nonpsychics—wouldn’t see the aliens the way they actually looked. They’d see lasting sparks, or they’d see larger than usual night fliers out courting, almost-familiar things their minds could accept. Only I, by some weird stroke of luck, could see whatever got across the gates between worlds. Luck? Why couldn’t I win the lottery if I was so lucky? No, I was stuck with the kind of good fortune that let me be rare, misunderstood, and helplessly ill-equipped. I have no idea why I was chosen to be a link between the two worlds, a Visualizer, unless it was the ancient amulet I wore around my neck, made from my mother’s wedding band. The linguists from the Department of Unexplained Events had translated it as: One life. One heart. I and thou. One forever. Maybe the bugs recognized it as something from their world. Maybe it spoke to them. It sure as hell didn’t speak to me. I hadn’t found my one true love, only beings that couldn’t, shouldn’t, exist on Earth. I saw the troll while others saw only the chaos he caused.
“Listen, guys, nothing from Unity is supposed to come here,” I explained to the fireflies in case they didn’t know. I felt like an absolute fool for talking to them, but what els
e could I do? “No one here is supposed to see you, not ever. Not even as an image on a camera lens. Those are the rules.”
Without knowing how, why, or when, I kept breaking those interdictions. For a minute I was filled with pride and wonder at the shimmering blessing I’d been given. Then I wondered what I was supposed to do with flying cockroaches with incendiary instincts.
Who could I ask for help, when no one else saw the fireflies for what they were, only the trouble they left behind?
I did not cause the trouble!
“Go. They’ll blame me. Or make me find a way to get rid of you. That’s not my job. I’m an author, not an exterminator.”
I shouldn’t have said the word, or thought it. The bugs’ behinds burst into flame.
“No, I won’t let anyone harm you.” I hoped. They must have understood something, maybe the hope part, for they went back to glowing. “But you have to leave, really. You won’t like the dirty air or the polluted water. Or the people. They’re not like the ones you’re used to.” Who might speak Insect the way my city neighbor Mrs. Abbottini spoke Italian.
I tried not to think about flyswatters, electric bug zappers, insect repellents. My God, the health department might still be doing vector control to kill mosquitoes. “You could get soaked with poisons. You have to find your way back. I know there’s a gate in Paumanok Harbor.”
That’s why everything weird showed up here. Well, not everything if you count yetis and the Loch Ness monster and UFOs. But enough bizarre stuff happened in the tiny Hampton’s stepchild that we were getting our own branch of England’s Royce Institute, with its Department of Unexplained Events.
Paumanok Harbor still had tourists. It did not need any more hassles. I didn’t need them either, not if I wanted to get back to my uneventful life in Manhattan.
“Scram. I’m leaving here soon, so you’ll be on your own. No one will appreciate how pretty you are, no one will be your friend.” Maybe I was projecting enough of my own angst to get through to them. I didn’t know if they had hive mentality—or no rationality whatsoever—but the swarm dissipated, tiny sparks separating to look like low stars scattered across the night.
I went in and did what any mostly nondrinking person would do under the circumstances. I ate the rest of the bag of Oreos.
Ellen never came home; I never went to sleep. As early as polite in the morning, I phoned my father.
“Hi, Dad. I’m calling to see how you’re doing, and if you’ve sensed any bugs.”
“You’ve got the flu, baby? Should I send your mother home?”
Sure, if he wanted to kill me. “Not that kind of bug, Dad.”
“What, Bugs Bunny? A Volkswagen? You know I don’t like foreign cars. That’s why your mother went out and bought a Subaru, just to spite me.”
“The Outback is a good car. I meant—”
He lowered his voice to a whisper: “You think someone is tapping your phone? That’s what happens when you mess with those secret initialed organizations.”
“No, Dad, I’m talking about real bugs. Insects. Big flying things.”
“You should see the size of the bugs we’ve got here in Florida. And fire ants! The exterminators are as busy as the EMTs. But no, I’ve got no worries about real bugs, Willy, so I’d guess whatever’s around is no danger to you.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Just . . . maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“I’m not sure. You know how it is, I just get feelings. Words, images, bad dreams.”
My father’s presentiments seldom made sense at first; they often came true later. “So what are you sensing now?”
“Maybe. A scary maybe. I’m sorry, baby, I can’t tell you any more. It’s turning and hazy.”
Or crazy. “Thanks for trying. Forewarned is forearmed, right? That’s what you always say.”
“Right. Remember the old tables. I get shivers thinking about them.”
The eel on the boat table was bad enough. I put that and maybe from my mind and took the dogs for a walk. I searched bushes and flowers, trees and high grasses, but saw no blue-eyed firebombers.
No one who’d gone to the fireworks show mentioned any trouble, according to Kelvin, nothing but the usual traffic jams and fender benders. This being Labor Day Monday, I called him at home to check on Barry’s car.
“I think you should get him out of here as soon as possible. He might have seen something he shouldn’t have.”
“Shit, Willy. What did you do now?”
“I didn’t do it! Why does everyone always blame me? Besides, maybe they’re gone now.”
“Who? What?”
“Nothing to worry about. But maybe you could have the mayor nearby when Barry comes to get the Mercedes. You know, to help him forget how a spark fell and burned his finger.”
“I can try, but His Honor the Mayor never remembers his appointments. And so what if some jackass sues East Hampton? It’s got nothing to do with us, does it?”
“Uh, not exactly. That is, no. Not at all.”
I heard him curse again, away from the phone. “If that’s the truth, Willow Tate, then why does my toe itch?”
Ellen came home before I had to answer, thank goodness. She told me she was going to pack up and take the late train—but she was coming back next weekend.
“I’d hoped to be back in the city by then. I’m not sure—”
“Martin invited me to stay at his house to work on the new honors program.”
“Oh.” That was all I could think of to say. “Oh.”
“I know he’s not your type, but we have a lot in common and get along great. You could try to be happy for me.”
“I am. Sure. If that’s what you want.”
Good thing Kelvin wasn’t around to hear the lies or he’d scratch his toe bloody. Martin Armbruster was dull as dust, pedantic and pompous, nitpicky and punctilious. And at least ten years older than Ellen and had more hair in his ears than he had on his head, except for the threadbare comb-over. To say nothing of the fact that she lived in Connecticut and he lived at the end of Long Island, and both worked five days a week at jobs they loved. Half their weekends would be spent traveling between the two places. “I hope it works out. Email me your plans and I’ll let you know if I’ll be around.”
“Great. Maybe we can do something together again. Barry’s staying, too.”
Damn. “I thought he hated the country, especially after he burned his finger.”
“Oh, Martin put some first aid cream on it and said it looked more like a bug bite to him. Isn’t he great?”
Barry or Martin? I wished them both to the devil.
Ellen wasn’t done. “He likes you, that’s why he’s staying. He thinks your town is fascinating the way everyone knows everyone. Give him a chance, Willy. You two have a lot in common, too. And you both work freelance, so there’s no problem with the schedules or distance. Martin’s renting him the room over his garage by the week. Isn’t he yummy?”
Barry or Martin?
My cousin gave me a suspicious look when she finally got out of bed after a long night at the restaurant.
I spoke before she could. “I didn’t do anything!” Somehow she always knew when I was in trouble. “All I did was tell a few polite lies to Ellen.”
Susan lowered one eyebrow, the one with the hoop back through it.
“Don’t bug me, all right?”
Bad choice of words.
The fires started that night.
CHAPTER 6
AT FIRST EVERYONE THOUGHT it was kids playing pranks before the first day of school, throwing matches into the metal trash cans on the street, setting newspapers on fire on people’s doorsteps, tossing firecrackers into mailboxes.
The police didn’t catch the kids. By the time they got to the scene, the adolescent arsonists were long gone. Big Eddie’s big nose didn’t sniff out any sulfur or gunpowder or telltale body odor. Neither did his K-9 partner’s nose.
The kids went back t
o school, the tourists went home, and the fires continued at night.
Now everyone blamed careless campers in the woods or sparks from the train brakes catching the weeds along the railbed. We’d had a mostly hot, dry summer, so brush fires weren’t unusual or unexpected. I heard some muttering at the deli about getting the weather mavens to bring on some rain clouds to help the exhausted volunteer firefighters. They’d had to call on neighboring departments to come help, there were so many fires over so many acres of undeveloped land.
Then people started to get hurt. And nervous. And angry. Maybe—there was Dad’s dream twitch—I shouldn’t have mentioned Barry’s burned finger to Kelvin, but the townsfolk were starting to put two and two together, and getting Willow Tate. They would have connected the bugs to the fires sooner or later, anyway, because swatting at the insects caused sparks; killing one meant you better have a fire extinguisher handy.
I couldn’t face the neighbors. I couldn’t leave, either. What I did was put up posters, telling people of a newly discovered species of beetle. Big letters said VALUABLE. DO NOT INJURE.
Then people started capturing the lightning bugs, carefully, and bringing them to me for a reward. I tried to explain they were valuable to science, not me personally, which only made the locals mad. So I started paying a five-dollar bounty on healthy, unharmed specimens. Which I released into my backyard as soon as the bug-nappers left.
The other thing I did was try to communicate with the flight squadron whenever I could. I sat on my back porch every night, getting eaten by mosquitoes because I couldn’t use the bug spray if I wanted the alien insects to come talk to me. My cousin worked late nights, thank God, or everyone in town would hear that I was crazy, again. No one else saw a swarm of blue-eyed bugs, only falling sparks or larger-than-normal fireflies. No one else thought an insect could be sentient.
Maybe I was crazy, talking to them, trying to send mental images their way. But they came. They sat on my shoulders or on the wicker rocker next to me, or flew in a loose cloud while I urged them to leave. When the cloud appeared smaller or thinner, I begged them to stay in my yard where they couldn’t get into trouble or draw attention to themselves or me.
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