Hurry. Soon.
A couple of the telepaths must have picked up the urgency if not the words. They ran to get cars and help.
Piet nodded to Mac, the fire captain, who called out to Uncle Henry. They both sent signals out to all their men and women. Matt said he’d meet us at the salt marsh after taking care of Little Red. No one argued with him. Susan brought me a carton to lay the brownie tray in, to make it safer for the beetles that couldn’t fly. I sent her home to check on the house and Grandma Eve, who’d left with Lou before the auction.
Everyone else piled on the fire trucks parked outside or got in the cop cars and unneeded ambulances. Piet and I and the beetles rode in Mac’s SUV.
I wasn’t sure M’ma would like all the tumult and the crowd, but the Hurry. Soon. kept getting more intense. The beetles in the box started to stir and show agitation. A couple of the strongest ones flew out the car window, headed in the same direction we were.
“Tell him we’re coming,” I called after them.
Heaven knew what we’d find.
Hurry. Now.
Now?
“Put on the sirens, Mac.”
CHAPTER 37
THE HEADACHE THEY SAID I might get? I got it. The flashing lights, the piercing sirens, the speed, the bumpy roads, the urgency. And I think one of the beetles died on the way. The color faded, and it blinked out of sight. Or I was concussed and hallucinating.
Mac jounced the chief’s car through the gate and right down that widened path to a few hundred feet from M’ma’s glow. The others had to leave the big rigs up by the parking area and carry equipment and floodlights down the path or wait for the ATVs to arrive.
Mac, Piet, and I, still holding the carton as if it were a heart ready for transfer, walked closer. The glow went out.
Mac and Piet had flashlights, and the full moon was out. We had no trouble finding the mass that was M’ma. No maggots crawled over his smooth, sleek outline. A few faded-looking Coleoptera hovered over him. Several of the ones on my tray rose to join them. The others disappeared into the night or the ether.
I knelt by M’ma and put one hand on his skin. It felt warm, alive. Suddenly my headache disappeared, and the shivering, too. “Is it time?” I asked, picturing him in the sky, not stuck in the mud on earth.
The same picture came back to me, in colors I could never duplicate, with the sound Matt must have heard when he listened to a heartbeat. “What can we do to help?”
He smiled, in my head. It was such a strange feeling, but not threatening, not intrusive. Just a friend sharing a joke, as if we puny humans could hardly assist a being from Unity, but thanks for the offer.
As the others arrived, they must have asked the same question, and I wondered if M’ma answered or conversed with people far more attuned to communication across ordinary boundaries. No one said anything. They all filed past, each laying a reverent hand on his side, then they started to dig out the channel around him, using shovels or just their hands. Bill, from the hardware store, used his telekinesis to move the mud faster, but everyone helped. I stayed kneeling beside M’ma, waiting for a sign that he was ready, or growing annoyed at our silly efforts.
“Do you see the colors?” I asked Piet, who studied the large form.
“A little, I think, if I squint.”
“He’s beautiful. All technicolor with changing highlights.”
“Maybe you’re seeing stars after getting kicked in the head.”
“I don’t think so.”
They had the channel almost cleared all the way to the water, where the full moon tide nearly obliterated the narrow beach.
“Should we bring the water into the ditch?” a couple of the weather mavens asked. In tandem with the water wizards and Bill, they could move a current anywhere they needed. I asked M’ma. Those were easy pictures, water flowing around him, over him, so he floated.
You cannot breathe water. The picture I saw had people floundering, falling, maybe drowning.
“We can move back.”
Stay. Friends.
Okay, no water. I gave the order, and everyone stood around, waiting. I took the opportunity to ask where the missing fireflies were. “Did they die? I know some burned in Roy’s fires, but not all.” I had no mental picture except a beetle on its back, feet in the air, wings not moving.
Home.
Ah. His peaceful acceptance made me feel better, that and knowing my fiery friends weren’t as short-lived as ordinary, earthly insects. They lived on in their home world.
Then Matt arrived with a flashlight and knelt beside me. I could feel the disapproval of those around me, but they didn’t dare comment or try to get rid of the un-psi vet. I didn’t care if he was a plain, ordinary man. He’d saved my dog. He’d stood by me to visit M’ma. “Red?”
“Red will be fine. He is sleeping off a sedative. I’ll check on him later and bring him home to you.”
I touched his hand. “Thank you. For everything.”
Embarrassed, he said, “The creature looks better.”
“Do you see colors?”
“Try squinting,” Piet suggested, from my other side.
Matt shone his flashlight directly at M’ma. “Just gray, but shinier.”
Piet seemed pleased that the interloper didn’t see as much as he had. Then Matt took out his stethoscope and listened. “The odd sounds are a lot stronger.”
He handed the stethoscope to me. I heard the surf breaking on the shore, a breeze through an aspen tree, snow falling, rocks tumbling, birds singing, a baby’s laughter, a rabbit’s heartbeat, a butterfly’s wings beating, rain, humpback whale songs, and a hundred, no a thousand more sounds. Stunned, I passed the instrument to Piet.
He didn’t say anything, but he let someone else take the stethoscope. Phyllis the clairvoyant listened, then whispered, “It’s the music of the spheres. Shakespeare wrote about it.” Her eyes glistened with tears.
Earth. Life.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Everyone took a turn. Some heard the music, some just random noises. They each said thank you. To M’ma? Me? Matt? I didn’t know, but I was grateful to have heard it, too.
Then we waited. Nothing happened, no movement, no words, no lights, no images. Some of the Harborites looked disappointed. A few walked back to the parking area. They’d seen enough and the night had grown cold.
I sat in the dirt and let my mind float, waiting for whatever was going to happen. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t speed it along, couldn’t understand it. That felt right, too.
Restless, Piet started pacing around. The others clustered in groups, talking quietly among themselves. Matt stayed by my side. After an hour of waiting with nothing changing, I asked why in the world he’d bid so much to name a character in my book.
He shrugged. “It was for a good cause.”
“So do you want to be the hero in the book?”
“Not really. I, ah, want to be a hero in your eyes.”
That had to be one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me. I started to reply, but M’ma shifted and raised his front half. People jumped farther away.
Now I could see he did resemble a huge dolphin, although not perfectly. His eyes were closed, but he opened a cavernous mouth. Thousands of glistening fireflies flew out, all 3,549 of them. They hovered an inch or so above their host. We all held our breaths.
An hour later, M’ma shook out those six appendages and brought two to his back, where wings might be positioned. Two more surely looked like fins at his sides, and the last two might have been legs, or a split tail.
Another hour went by before M’ma opened his eyes. I heard the gasps of wonder around me when people saw orbs as big as car tires, all swirling gold and blue and green, like the music of the heavens if a master artist tried to paint it.
“What?” Matt wanted to know. “Why is everyone’s mouth hanging open?”
He didn’t see it and I had no way to describe it. I should have br
ought my pad and charcoals, but I knew I’d never be able to duplicate eyes full of such coruscating colors, but also wisdom and benevolence. M’ma gazed around at all of us and liked what he saw. I knew that the same as I knew my name. A few others seemed to also. They smiled.
More time went by, but M’ma did not rise; the newborn beetles lost their sparkle.
Someone asked “What should we do?”
I remembered M’ma telling me that they got here, they could get out, but my neighbors went back to excavating the area around him, careful of the flying juveniles, but determined to help this amazing creature complete his journey.
I sensed M’ma’s appreciation for their efforts, tinged with amusement. Then his amusement turned to concern. Something wasn’t working.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded.
All I saw in my mind was a raging blaze. In his incredible knowing eyes I saw flames, orange and red and yellow, hot and reaching higher.
“He needs the fire.” I looked at Piet. “You have to go.”
“What, not see something no man has ever seen? After all this? Not on your life.”
“Then control your fire-damping. Turn it off.”
“Damn it, you know it doesn’t work that way.”
Damn it, all right. I dragged him by his shirt a little bit away from the others. Then I shrugged off my sweater, grabbed the hem of my black lace-trimmed camisole top, and pulled it up. For king and country and all that.
His eyes opened wider, and the night grew brighter behind me. People murmured, at the sudden lights or my flashing Piet. Unfortunately, the glow grabbed his attention far more than my less-than-lush bra-less boobs could. That ship had sailed. The lights went out again.
I told him to go back to the highway. He’d be able to see the fireworks I expected from there. He nodded. I started weeping again. Both of us knew he would not be coming back.
He brushed a tear off my cheek. “I almost loved you, Willow Tate.”
“Me, too, almost.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“No, no matter what the people at Royce thought.”
He held me close. “We are too different. Our lives are too different.”
I wrapped my arms around him. “And we’re not puppets, with them pulling the strings.”
“We showed them, didn’t we?”
“Yup. Our lives can’t be foreordained, right?”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe in it.”
“You do believe we did something good here, though?” I waved one hand back toward M’ma and the villagers.
“I believe in you, Willow. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“You, too, Piet Doorn.”
He stepped back, leaving my arms empty and my heart sore. “Me? All I’m looking for is the next fire.”
“Be careful.”
“And you stay out of trouble.”
“I’ll try,” I said to his back as he strode away, back up the path. With every step he took, the lights grew brighter until he was out of sight and the whole sky filled with three thousand plus lightning bugs, each a living, dancing, joyous flame. They made circles and waterfalls and bursting chrysanthemums. They made bouquets and hearts and leaping fish and flying birds.
Grucci, eat your heart out.
Then M’ma rose. No one made a sound. The fireflies landed on him, so he was an entire wall of fire, somewhat dolphin shaped, but in the sky, with wide wings ablaze.
Farewell, my friend.
“Wait! Can you tell me why you came?”
To meet you, of course.
Now I hoped no one else heard him. “Me?”
I caught images of the elf king and the stallion. You see.
“But others saw H’ro and J’omree.”
Now the images pictured the halfling Nicky and his troll half brother, and the little lost colt, H’tah. You see with your heart.
Ah. While he was answering questions, I tried to think of everything I wanted to know. “How often must you do this . . . this metamorphosis?”
Centuries by your time.
“But why come here? Surely your own world would be a better birthplace for the beetles, a better locale for your transformation.”
It is a time of grave danger and vulnerability, for us all. An old enemy rises.
“For us, too? Did you come to warn us? Help us?” But he was high overhead now.
Matt stood beside me, looking up. “Where did the creature go, Willy? Did it blow up in the fireworks?”
I wished Matt could see M’ma, that he could be part of the magic.
For an instant M’ma seemed to change into a winged human form, outlined in fire. His laughter rumbled across the sky. Love is the only magic that matters.
I heard Matt’s ooh of awe.
“You can see it!”
“Great gods, I cannot believe what I am looking at.”
“Believe it. He’s only a minor god, though, I believe.”
“And I am not going crazy?”
I laughed. “No, but you are going to be a bigger part of Paumanok Harbor, though.”
“You did that, for me.”
I laughed. “No, M’ma did it. In gratitude.”
Matt took my hand while we watched the flaming god turn back into a sea creature and dive with his brilliant companions into the bay water. The starburst disappeared beneath the waves.
I knew right then that’s how I was going to tell my next story, with the sea god changing forms to look after his people, his children. He’d keep them safe against every danger, dragon, and ancient evil. He’d sing the music of the world as their lullaby until they were grown, then let them fly away in a blaze of joy. I’ll call it LIFE GUARDS IN THE HAMPTONS.
Matt Spenser’d make a good hero.
Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) Page 27