“Some years it rains all the time, and other years it doesn't rain at all,” Karl added stoically. “Hopefully, the rain will hold off until after we visit the fairies.”
They headed back along the new path after a final glance at their theatrical handiwork. They made sure the new path was the widest, with the most used and traveled appearance in the field. With the path complete, they made the trip home a quick one.
Brian and Ron stayed with Clayton and Karl for a while to help them complete their chores. The twins headed home, arguing about who would do which chore. Everyone agreed to meet at the tree house at four thirty, hopefully with Mike and his cousin close behind.
When Clayton and Karl's chores were almost finished, Brian and Ron went home. They both had a few minor chores to finish themselves and agreed to meet in the woods by the old two-track road at exactly four o'clock. They were also the two in charge of making sure Mike followed.
“You're late!” Clayton shouted as he saw Ron and Brian coming up the trail at four-thirty.
“Sorry,” Brian said. “Right when I was leaving, my mom asked me to overturn the flowerbed, so I was running late to begin with.”
“Are you being followed?” Clayton asked in a low voice when they joined the others at the base of the tree house.
“Well, we did what we were supposed to do,” Ron said. “Brian and I met up and walked past Mike's clubhouse. We talked loudly about where we were meeting, and even louder about the fairies. Hopefully, he overhead.”
“Good,” Clayton said. “Do you think they heard?”
They shrugged their shoulders as if to say “How should we know?”
Showing annoyance, Clayton picked up a backpack loaded with snacks, water, and a movie camera.
“Let's get going,” he ordered and headed for the trail.
“Hey, wait a minute! You know we have to wait for Penny,” Karl reminded him.
Clayton stopped, seemingly more annoyed, and turned to come back. He looked at the sky through the leaves and didn't see any blue. It looked like it would rain soon, and he worried the trip would be washed out. Wondering where Penny could possibly be, he walked back to the others and set the backpack on the ground. They sat on the tree house bench and the gnarly tree roots, waiting impatiently as anxiety grew with every passing minute. Finally, they spotted a tiny Penny starting her trip across the field.
“Are we ready to go?” Penny asked as she sauntered up to them. She noticed the annoyed look on their faces, especially her brother's.
“We are now,” Clayton said as he got up from the bench, grabbing the backpack, and flinging it over his shoulder. “What took you so long?”
“Mom was brushing my hair. I couldn't just get up and leave.”
The others stood, stretched, and headed for the trail. They figured Mike would probably keep to the lake road and hide somewhere along the trail, waiting for them to pass again. They walked along the trail, talking loudly about the fairies. At other times, they spoke in whispers, wondering if they were being followed, hoping it wasn't a wasted trip. By the time they arrived at the fake fairy field, they still couldn't tell if Mike was shadowing them. They fanned out as they crossed the field on the new path, widening it even more. Once on the other side, they stopped, stood motionless, and listened.
“Shouldn't we have heard them by now?” Brian asked impatiently.
“Why would we?” Clayton snapped back, equally impatient. “They're sneaking up on us, dummy,” he reminded him.
“Penny, go stand by the lowest branch. And Karl, crouch down under the branch near the trunk, since you have to make the fairy voices. The rest of us will stand around while Ron records our performance with the video cam.
“Okay, Penny, start asking the fairies questions, now.”Clayton played the part of movie director quite well, but since they hadn't rehearsed their opening act, it played awkwardly.
Penny uttered too many hesitant “ums” since she didn't know what to say, and Karl threw a squeaky, scratchy voice, very un-becoming a fairy. They were on the verge of a giggle fest and almost couldn't continue their show.
After Clayton reminded his friends they were doing this to save the fairies, they settled down and began recording. Penny asked questions she remembered actually asking SeeLee, and Karl's voice strained into a more acceptable imitation of fairy conversation. They played their roles for what seemed like a long time, but nothing happened. Just when they were about to give up, the action started.
As Paul was complaining, “This isn't working,” a person backed out from a bush along the edge of the field where the first big tree stood. The reporter was speaking into a microphone and facing a cameraman. The sudden, bright light mounted on the camera caused the kids to squint, but not before they saw Mike and his friends, arms crossed with satisfied smiles smearing their faces.
Mike's cousin turned out to be a young woman of twenty-five. She had perfectly combed dark hair that looked like a helmet, and she was way overdressed for tramping in the woods. She wore a dark-blue business suit with matching high-heeled shoes. A pearl necklace completed her TV-reporter look.
She was talking to her electronic audience about an ancient secret about to be revealed. Without warning, the light on the camera extinguished, and the cameraman started laughing. Mike's cousin finally looked at the kids for the first time. A bewildered look filled her face until she saw the faux fairies in the tree. Her face quickly turned red, and she clenched her teeth in rage.
“Mike!” she screamed in a ragged voice, contorting her pretty face.
Mike ran from his hiding place in the back, and his smug look of satisfaction turned into one of confusion. She stormed up to him and thumped him on the nose with her microphone.
“You said they were real!” she screamed. “You promised this would be the biggest story of my career!” she screamed even louder. “You said you saw them,” she raged in a horribly loud voice full of reprimand and accusation.
“Well, I didn't actually see them, as in me see them,” Mike stammered. But I did see them seeing them,” he lied defensively, pointing at the group standing by the tree.
As the reporter whirled around and looked at the crew of movie-making kids, they shrugged in unison and pointed at the fairies on the branches. Karl's high-pitched fairy voice squealed, “Hi, people!” before he took a bow under the fairies bobbling in the wind.
She turned again to Mike and thumped him repeatedly with the microphone. Every time she connected, a roaring din blasted from the mic. Mike stumbled backward, warding off thumps until he tripped over a log, landing on the ground.
In her eagerness to continue attacking her cousin, the overdressed reporter tripped and sprawled on top of him. With renewed fury, she continued her assault. When she tried to stand, burrs and leaves ravaged her hair, and her suit ripped in several places. This made her even angrier, much to the cameraman's amusement.
They finally left the tree, with Mike receiving a constant thumping on the back of his head as they marched along. The trailing cameraman reported in a pompous voice, “That is Kimmy McAlister signing off, on special assignment in the land of the fairies, someplace just to the left of the middle of nowhere.”
As the yelling grew faint in the distance, the kids broke into uncontrollable laughter. “I had the camera rolling the whole time,” Ron proudly announced as soon as he could speak.
“I think the cameraman did, too. All he turned off was the light,” Brian added.
Again, they rolled in hysteria until they felt the first sprinkles of rain pattering their faces and arms.
“Oh, no! Bummer,” they all groaned.
“You guys have to take those dolls down before they get wet,” Penny demanded. “You promised,” she insisted as the boys groaned even louder.
“Let's knock them down with sticks,” Paul suggested, and every face lit up except Penny's. As they ran around looking for sticks long enough to do the job, Penny protested vigorously.
After a f
ew minutes of swinging and poking like they were going after a piñata, the boys banged most of the dolls down. Sprinkles quickly turned into light rain as the complaining boys climbed the wet branches to retrieve the remaining movie stars. It wasn't until all the dolls were in plastic bags that Penny stopped complaining about the abuse, even though only one doll head had come off in the process.
“Stop whining about it,” Clayton ordered as he popped the head back on.
“This rain won't make Mike's cousin any happier. She'll be slipping, sliding, and falling down in the mud all the way home,” Ron said in a gleeful voice.
“She's already far from happy,” Brian laughed. “She'll never listen to another word about fairies from Mike, and she'll certainly never come back here.”
“At least we'll have something good to tell the fairies when we see them,” Karl beamed.
Gazing at the dark, gloomy sky, the group realized they were in for a soaking that would last a few days, and they knew they wouldn't be visiting the fairies for some time. Though at first they were happy to take a break from seeing the fairies, an anxiety to see them was building again.
Saving Them
The next day brought rain, as they knew it would, and the sound of the mid-afternoon downpour rapping on the tree house roof had its usual effect.
“Hey!” Clayton shouted in a reprimanding voice trying to wake everyone up. “We have to come up with a plan for stopping Farmer Hawkins!” Neither Brian nor Ron felt like walking to the tree house from their subdivision through the heavy rain, but everyone else was there. They stirred slowly from comfortable positions to sit upright at the table.
“Hey, what happened to you guys going to talk to him?” Paul asked.
“Yeah!” Phil echoed.
“I'm not sure I really want to go,” Clayton admitted.
“You big baby!” Penny scolded him. “I'll go talk to him myself,” she finished fiercely. She was not scared of some big, old man, even if he was the scary old farmer.
“Oh, I guess I could go with her,” Karl announced bravely.
“Okay, okay, the three of us will go talk to him,” Clayton said quickly, sensing the others would make him back up, if not eat, his earlier words. He did, however, get his friends to help come up with plans for approaching the old farmer and stopping the developer's bulldozer.
On nice days, they planned to hunt down the old farmer, wherever on his vast property he might be. Rainy days were to be spent at the library doing online research. There were many online materials to scroll through to find the right endangered species, including books, magazines, and newspapers. If the research had been a homework assignment, the kids would have considered it cruel and unusual punishment from an unfair teacher. But to save the fairies, they were eager and happy to do whatever it took. After their recent success with Mike, they were filled with excessive enthusiasm and energy to complete their project.
“We're not going to have much time to find Farmer Hawkins or hunt down any endangered species with all the homework we have to do,” Phil reminded them. A gloomy silence fell, and when the rain let up, they went home where chores and homework awaited them.
All the next week, they carried out their plan. They went to the library when it rained, but became discouraged when they could find little about native species. They even researched old local newspapers to see if others had tried to save anything over the years.
The boys mentioned the project to their biology teacher and asked about the dragonflies, but their teacher wasn't familiar with that particular species and asked the boys to supply a sample. The boys couldn't remember seeing any dragonflies the last few times they crossed streams on the way to the field, so they decided to search the streams further away.
They ventured to streams miles from the tree house in search of the elusive dragonflies, but found nothing. They started talking about other ways to stop the developer. They were also getting increasingly frustrated because they hadn't visited the fairies in over a week, and they were making no progress in solving their problems.
There were a few bright spots in the school week, though. The boys got tremendous satisfaction from teasing Mike and his friends. Taking the chance of a pummeling, Clayton bravely wired one of Penny's fairy-costumed dolls to Mike's locker. The doll carried a note that read, “Alert the media! Call your cousin immediately.” Everybody at school was talking about the fairy doll before Mike found it and whipped it down. All the kids soon heard how Clayton and his friends were filming a fairytale movie, but Mike thought they were real fairies. Mike wasn't taking all the pointing and laughing very well and wore an angry look on his face for days.
After school on the rainless days, the group's efforts proved to be equally fruitless. Penny and Clayton met Karl at the tree house, then wandered around the old man's land searching for him. Normally, the time spent looking for Farmer Hawkins would have been spent doing chores or homework, and in their free time, they would visit the fairy tree. But since chores and homework had to be done daily, trips to the fairy tree were sacrificed to search for the old man.
Saturday turned out to be sunny, warm, and windy. Very windy. Trees were costumed in their fall colors, and the wind swirled them around in fairy-like patterns. They watched the windsock on the tree house point straight as an arrow, and worried when they saw outer branches bending to the breaking point. The wind was growing stronger as the day went on.
The kids hurried along the trail to the firefly field to start their search for the farmer. From there, they would head back down the farmer's roads and fields to his barns, with the wind at their backs. It was less windy along the trail to the firefly field in the woods, but frightening, whooshing sounds of the swaying branches were often accompanied by loud cracks of falling limbs.
“I wonder if the fairies have trouble staying in the air when it's so windy,” Karl said as they glanced at the overhead branches buffeted by the gale. Cyclones of leaves swirled madly at their feet, and they knew before long their trail would be completely covered.
“Hopefully we get to find out tonight. I want to see Kast again and go back to the lake,” Penny said, her voice expressing the anxiety they all felt.
“We'll all go with Kast to the lake. I'm not letting you out of my sight again, little sister.”
“Oh, you worry too much.”
“That's what SanDroMonEnLor said.”
They traveled the trail to the firefly field quickly. Meadows they crossed looked like oceans with wind-tossed grasses waving across the troubled pastures. They ran through the wind-exposed fields as fast as they could to return to the calmer trail in the woods. A few times they were startled by falling limbs, and their quick reflexes kept them jumping. As they marched along with the wind, they doubted the old man would even venture out on a day this wild.
Stepping into the firefly field, the kids were dismayed to find even more had been mowed down. The deep cuts were now only thirty yards from the fairy tree. As the tall grass rolled in windy waves, the missing grass seemed even “more missed.”
Immense sadness enveloped the small group as they thought about the changes that were about to destroy life as the fairies knew it. Mother Nature and human nature seemed to conspire against any more fairy visits, and this made the kids more resolute to stop the old farmer, if nothing else. As one, they walked along the field's edge to the farmer's new road.
Not a word was spoken until they were well on their way down the road. Clayton broke the silence. “It seems strange to run and hide from Farmer Hawkins our whole lives, and now we're trying to find him.”
“Well, it's not likely to happen today, not with this wind,” Karl said.
“We shouldn't even be out today,” Penny said.
As they walked, they kept their eyes on the treetops bending in the wind. The wind-rushed leaves created a dull roar, surrounding them like a symphony of kettle drums. In the distance, the sounds of branches snapping and smashing to the ground were frequent—and occasional
ly, too close.
After walking a few hundred yards, the left side of the protective woods gave way to a cornfield. The battered group stopped and looked at the wind-whipped cornstalks.
“Let's cut through the woods to our trail now,” Penny pleaded above the howl of corn leaves slicing through the air.
“The road curves to the right, toward our trail. Why don't we take it until it stops curving and runs straight?” Clayton suggested, pointing to where the road seemed to disappear. “Besides, it's downhill all the way, and we can run. Come on, Penny,” he encouraged as he started running without waiting for arguments. The others joined him, happy it was downhill. They had about a quarter mile to run, but the wind coming at a cross current made it difficult to make good speed.
After a hundred yards, Clayton stopped to check on Penny. Karl caught up to him, and the two huddled together with their backs to the wind trying to create shelter. Penny struggled to run against the wind until she collapsed into her brother's arms. She snuggled between the two boys, using their bodies as a windbreak, and tried to catch her breath.
“Let's enter the woods here!” she shouted into the huddle they created. It was so windy, she thought she'd blow away.
“We can't. It's all thorn bush and thickets here,” Clayton countered. “We'll just run slowly, and you can run beside us.”
When the curve ended and the bottom of the hill came into view, a large, bare patch of ground lay before them. No corn grew on the patch, and the wind blasted dust in all directions. This forced them to turn their backs to the cornfield and close their eyes to avoid the eye-battering assault. They stopped and hunched over, and Clayton wished they'd chosen the woods when Penny suggested that route.
Opening his eyes slightly, Clayton shouted, “Look for the easiest place to go into the woods.” His swaying arm indicated an area twenty yards on either side of them.
“Don't go in there. Are you crazy?” a gruff voice behind them bellowed.
Farmer Hawkins was standing in front of an old, hay-filled pickup truck on the road leading out of the cornfield. “Don't you dumb kids hear those branches falling? Get into my truck and I'll take you home.” A fierce snapping nearby froze them where they stood.
Beyond the Firefly Field Page 21