by Angela Hunt
“I’m not sure,” I answered. “Dr. Wu didn’t say anything about glowing. Neither did Tomas.”
“How are we supposed to see ‘em if they don’t glow?”
“Look for the light,” I told him. “The moon is supposed to be full tonight.”
“Romantic,” Chad said. “I wuv it.”
“Not the time or place for such talk,” I said, scowling at Chad. “Besides, you’re manning the video camera, right?”
“Yep.” He patted the pouch hanging from his belt. “I got it covered.”
I felt the air move, then heard Tank hit the canvas floor next to me. “Thought I’d sit here to guard the door,” he said, moving so close that his arm brushed mine. “Wouldn’t want a bear or anything to come after our food.”
“I don’t think a bear is going to crash the place for a box of protein bars,” Brenda said, her voice as dry as the aforementioned bars. “And that reminds me—Chad, toss me one of those water bottles, will ya?”
I heard the crinkle of plastic behind me, then silence reigned as we settled into position and waited.
“You know,” Chad said after a few minutes, “Tank, maybe I should sit in the doorway. I’ve got the video camera, after all, and that’s the biggest opening. I might need all that space to get the shot.”
Tank thrust his arm toward Chad. “Hand it over. I can work the camera.”
Chad patted the lump on his belt. “No need, I studied the manual. This is going to require a low light setting, and it takes a bit of expertise to get a useable image.”
“So set the settings for me,” Tank insisted. “Just hand me the camera.”
“Naw—let me sit there to tape.”
“The taping isn’t as important as protection. What if someone or something comes through? Do you think your hundred and thirty pounds could stop a bear?”
“One hundred seventy,” Chad said, a thread of indignation in his voice. “And I don’t think there are any bears in Mexico.”
“How do you know there aren’t?”
“How do you know there are?”
“Good grief.” Exasperated beyond belief, I got up and moved to the far side of the tent, where I could sit by Daniel. He was paying more attention to his video game than his surroundings.
Brenda snorted.
Chad sank to the canvas, and he and Tank finally stopped bickering.
Time stretched itself thin as we watched and waited. A steady churring of insects rose from the weeds, rising in unison crescendos and diminuendos as if commanded by some invisible director. A sough of wind rustled the branches of the pines around us, sending pine needles spinning to earth. The full moon rose, silvering the landscape and allowing us to see without being seen. Ideal conditions, really. Almost as if our bosses had arranged this, too.
“Look at that.” Tank pointed toward the spot where we had been trying to light a fire. Something fluttered there, and once it struck the earth, we heard a high squeal and the soft flap of wings.
“Owl catching mouse,” Chad said. “Not fairy.”
Tank nodded. “Right.”
“That squeak?” Chad laughed. “Reminds me of . . . when I was a kid and my dad . . . used to look at me.”
Brenda turned her head. “Who squeaked, you or him?”
He released a hollow laugh. “You’d have squeaked, too, if you’d had William Jack Thorton as your daddy.”
The statement hung in the air, inviting questions.
All right, then. “Was your father stern?” I asked.
Chad exhaled in a rush. “Think of the worst father . . . you’ve ever seen on TV or in a movie, then multiply by two. That was my dad.”
“Oh.” I sent a sympathetic smile through the gloom. “I’m really sorry.”
“’Sokay,” Chad said, locking his hands around his bent knees as he stared out the window. The moonlight painted his face with the colors of iron and steel. “I suppose I wouldn’t be the stud I am if I . . . hadn’t had a terrible childhood. I learned to draw inside myself . . . whenever things got rough, and that’s how I . . . discovered my g-gift. I learned that I could leave and g-go places, you know?”
“I’m still sorry you had to suffer like that,” I told him. “No kid should survive childhood by the skin of their teeth. But I’m glad you survived.”
I studied Chad, wondering if he wanted to keep talking or let the matter rest. Though I suspected he wouldn’t have said any of those things if the medicine hadn’t made him dopey and emotional, his chin quivered, so I looked away. I had never met a man—sober or under the influence--who wanted to weep in front of friends, so time to keep quiet for a while.
Zzzzzt! At least the battery-powered bug zapper was working.
Time crawled by. I checked my phone and learned that what felt like a couple of hours was only forty minutes. I sighed, realizing that the best thing about sleep was that it made the nighttime hours pass quickly.
I was beginning to wish I had packed my earphones when I saw movement in the moonlight. I squinted through the screen mesh, then rose to my knees and moved closer. Two figures fluttered around the trunk of a pine tree, around and up, in and out in random movements.
“Psst.” I looked across the tent, where Brenda and Tank were heavy-lidded and fighting sleep. “Two figures, by that half-dead pine. Whaddya think?”
Tank rose to his knees and knelt behind the entrance screen as if daring the moonlight dancers to do us harm. Chad nudged Brenda and pointed to the creatures, then he moved closer to the window as well. Daniel put down his video game and stood, pressing his hands to the screen as he watched, mesmerized.
The dancing figures came closer. Composed of light and shadow, they circled a bush, teased a flower bud, and hovered over the logs of our unlit fire. Like hands on a clock they moved together, perfectly synchronized, a dance of practiced partners. Then one of them broke away and fluttered toward our tent.
Silence sifted over us, a silence of suspended breathing. We could see it now—this was no bat, no bird, but a creature with a human-like head, arms, legs, and torso. The fairy hovered about four feet from the door, and even from where I sat I could see details on the body—arms, legs, fingers, toes. The head with its downy pointed ears. The lips, closed now, hiding those jagged teeth. And the wings, fanning so quickly they were barely visible.
The creature tilted its head and regarded us, then flew across the front of the tent, peering in at us even as we stared out at—him? Her? Did female fairies wear little dresses made of flower petals?
“Okay,” Tank said, and before I could ask what he had in mind, I heard the metallic slide of the zipper. Tank leapt out, the butterfly net in his hand. He sprang forward, the net dipping and swooping and missing. The fairy did not flee, but floated up, out of range. Tank took another swipe, and another, but the fairy taunted him, dancing above his flailing arms.
“Tank, will you m-move?”
Chad stood outside, the video camera in his hand, his gaze intent on the small screen resting against his palm. He was trying to focus on the fairy, but the thing was elusive and fast, always remaining out of the frame, out of focus—
A bloodcurdling scream shattered the stillness. I turned, horrified by the sound, and saw Daniel arching his back, his mouth open in a paroxysm of terror, his eyes so wide they seemed about to fall out of his face. Somehow, the second fairy had entered the tent and was riding the collar of Daniel’s shirt. Not until I moved behind Daniel could I see that the fairy’s tail had embedded itself in his clothing, perhaps even into the boy’s flesh, because the kid was screaming as if someone had knifed him—
“Get. Away. From. My. Son!”
Brenda picked up the lantern and swung it at the fairy’s head, putting everything she had into the blow. The bottom edge of the lantern caught the fairy’s chin, knocking it backward, but it remained attached to Daniel’s upper back, the tail firmly embedded in his shirt. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed the creature around the middle, squeezing as I pu
lled it away from our boy. Something stabbed at my thumb, and I looked down in time to see the creature’s teeth at my skin, gnawing my flesh while I tried to pull it away from Daniel—
Brenda approached again, this time with an iPad in one hand and her flashlight in the other. Holding the iPad as a backboard, she slammed the head of the flashlight into the fairy’s skull, smashing it and sending a trail of black ooze over my hand and the tablet’s shattered screen.
I looked down at the canvas floor where Daniel lay on his tummy, a dark black stain marbling the back of his shirt.
“Is that—is that from that thing?” Brenda asked, her voice trembling. “Or—”
“Help me move him; I can’t see.”
Together we pulled/dragged an unconscious Daniel into the moonlight, then we pulled up the back of his shirt. I had yanked the fairy away, but the stinger remained—I could see it shining like a polished claw amid a puddle of blood. I tried grasping it with my fingers, but my fingers were slippery and the stinger too firmly embedded—in what? Daniel’s skin? His muscle?
Horror snaked down my backbone as I looked up and saw the same emotion reflected in Tank’s and Chad’s faces. And Brenda—
“My boy.” She knelt beside him, terrified to move him, yet aching to draw him into her arms. “What are we gonna do? Andi, we need help, we gotta help him—”
“We’re gonna get help.” I reached for my phone and pounded 911. Nothing.
“Quick.” I looked at Chad. “What’s the emergency number for Mexico?”
He looked like a man who had just been told he was dying. “Why s-should I know that?”
“It’s 66,” Brenda said, wringing her hands. “I looked it up before we left—just in case.”
I pressed six-six and waited. Nothing.
I stood and moved around, watching the bars on my phone. “I can’t get a signal,” I said, my panic increasing. “Tank, Chad—you guys got anything?”
As they pulled out their phones to check, I kept pounding the six and waiting for some response. “I had a signal at the Rodriguez house,” I said. “How could there be no signal here? We’re not that far away.”
“We could be in a valley,” Chad said, exasperatingly logical, even now. “Or the signal could be blocked by a mountain.”
Leaping up, Brenda was on me before I had time to react. “Andi,” she said, her fingers gathering up the fabric at the neckline of my shirt. “My boy needs help. I don’t know how you’re going to get it, but I know you are. Because you always come through. You see things the rest of us miss, so if you ever saw anything, I need you to see a way to help my boy. Now. Right now.”
I stared into the whites of her eyes and felt her breath on my face. “Okay,” I whispered, placing my hands over hers. “Go—go sit with Daniel. Watch over him.”
She obeyed, and I looked up at Tank, who had been watching the treeline for the fairy that got away. “Your gift,” I said simply. “Can you help him?”
Tank tilted his head, but immediately sank into the soft earth where Daniel lay. He closed his eyes for what seemed like moments woven of eternity, then he laid his hands on the boy.
We waited. Brenda kept feeling Daniel’s forehead and watching the wound on his back as if she expected the stinger to float out and disappear. But nothing happened.
“He’s hotter than ever,” she said, her voice breaking as she looked up at Tank. “Please.” Tears streamed over her cheeks. “Cowboy, you gotta do something for him.”
“I’m goin’ to.”
He looked at me, and in that instant I knew he meant to run. “Okay,” I said. “Take Chad—no, Chad needs to stay with Brenda. You and I are going to run to the Rodriguez place and wake them up. We’re going to get an ambulance out here.”
“Wait.” Chad held up his arm, blocking Tank. “You don’t need to run. All I hafta do is—you know, go into a trance. I can find someone around here and tell them to get us an ambulance. I’ll send firefighters—”
“Medics,” I said, grabbing his shirt. “It’s not a fire, it’s a medical emergency.”
Chad waved my hand away. “I can do it. I’ve done stuff like this my whole life, so I can handle it. You just hafta let me sit here—”
He pointed to the ground, then stumbled forward and fell. “Ya see? I’ll search and find someone. Just watch. You and Tank—you two don’t hafta go anywhere alone. That wouldn’t be good, no sir. Just sit here where I can keep an eye on ya, and wait while I save the day.”
He closed his eyes and I shifted my gaze to Tank. “He’s lost it.”
“Leave him,” Tank whispered. “Let him see if he can do something while we run to the farm.”
“He can’t help us,” I answered. “He doesn’t speak English; his brain is out of order—”
“Don’t feel sorry for him, Andi,” Tank said, his voice surprisingly firm. “We don’t have the time.”
He pulled his flashlight from his back pocket and shone the light on the road. “Brenda, be careful,” he said. “We know there’s still one fairy out there somewhere, but there may be others. Okay?”
Brenda nodded, but she didn’t seem to be thinking about the threat to herself or Chad. She was focused on Daniel.
“Okay,” Tank said, taking my arm. “Let’s go.”
I paused only long enough to squeeze Brenda’s shoulder. “Your boy is going to be okay.”
She answered with a heartrending sob.
Chapter 7
Tank and I jogged about twenty yards before we stopped. “Ya know,” Tank said, “we are wastin’ a lot of time running south, then west, and then north. Wouldn’t it be faster if we just cut through the woods and ran west?”
“But running through the woods—that could be risky. We can’t see much in the dark, there could be water or bogs to slog through, or we might run into wild animals or even cliffs—”
“I’m just trying to be smart, Andi.”
“I know.” I looked into his eyes, so soft and concerned. “But it’s still risky.”
“I would never want to leave you,” he said. “But if we split up here, one of us might be able to reach the farm faster . . . and every second might count for my little buddy.”
I understood his reasoning. Tank was an athlete, a faster and stronger runner than I was. Even going through the woods, he was likely to reach the Rodriguez house before me, because I was not an athlete. In college, I took bowling and archery for physical education because I wouldn’t have to run anywhere.
“You’ll be safe on the road,” he said. “I doubt you’ll see any cars at this hour, but be careful anyway. I’m going to take off through the woods.”
“Just—” My words died away. I was about to tell him to be careful, but this wasn’t the time to be overly cautious. Daniel’s life was hanging in the balance, so this wasn’t a time to take care, but to take risks.
Somehow I managed a rueful smile. “Sure wish we had those comm units. I’d feel better hearing your voice in my ear.”
“Roger that.” He grinned. “Okay—I’ll meet you at the farm. See ya soon.”
I waited, taking a moment to catch my breath as I watched him disappear into the brush. I stood on the dirt road and listened until I could no longer hear twigs snapping and branches rustling, then I took off toward the highway, walking as fast as I could.
I had gone maybe a quarter of a mile when I saw something that halted me in my steps. Several of the creatures were fluttering in a group just off the road ahead. Knowing that they were anything but harmless, I moved to the other side of the road and kept moving. But when my shoe kicked a pebble, the creatures scattered into the woods.
Curious, I walked to the spot where they had congregated. I thought the fairies had been flying around a hole in a fallen tree, but no tree lay on the ground at that spot. Instead, behind a bush I saw a tall rock with a vertical cleft in it—I suppose fissure would be a better word. I wanted to find a stick and probe the opening to see if the creatures had come from a c
ave, but I couldn’t take the time to explore.
I kept walking. The distance from the highway to the campsite had felt short when we were in the car, but on foot, the distance seemed like miles. I walked until a felt a stitch in my side, then I drew deep breaths and tried jogging. When I was certain I couldn’t take another step, I bent over, held my knees, and took deep breaths while thinking about Daniel and Brenda. I had to keep going for them.
Finally, I reached the highway. Pavement! I would have done a little happy dance, but I had to keep going. I swung my arms like a power walker and kept going.
I nearly missed the dirt road that led to the Rodriguez house, but I got my second wind when I turned down their driveway and headed for the house. When I saw the blue house glowing in the moonlight, I looked around for Tank—either I had beaten him, or he had already called an ambulance and was inside the house.
But no lights burned in the house. I pounded on the door, knowing that Tank hadn’t yet arrived. He would have been outside waiting for me.
No one answered, so I pounded the door again. When a light bloomed in the window and the door opened a crack, I explained as quickly as I could: “Señor Rodriguez, it’s me, Andi, and we have a medical emergency. Can you please call an ambulance? Medico? Our little boy is hurt.”
The door opened, and in the lamplight I saw Señor Rodriguez in a tee shirt and boxer shorts, his shotgun in his hand. He nodded and opened the door, and in the background I saw his wife on the phone, already calling for help.
I collapsed in a chair and wiped sweat from my dripping forehead. I closed my eyes for a moment to catch my breath, and when I looked up, Tomas sat on the couch in front of me. “Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “But Daniel—the little boy with us—he was stung. He’s very sick.”
Tomas shook his head and pointed to my hand. I turned and gasped when I saw that my right hand was caked in blood, the side of my thumb raw and ravaged from where the creature had exercised its incisors. “Ouch,” I said, feeling suddenly woozy. “I guess I could use a Band-Aid, if you have one.”