Glow of the Fireflies

by Lindsey Duga

  Had I really passed out? I’d gotten some weird flashbacks and the next thing I knew I was on the floor and this stranger was holding me.

  But just who the heck was this guy? A nice, upstanding citizen who happened to be passing by an old burned house…randomly…in the middle of the mountains. Without any shoes? Yeah, I wasn’t buying it.

  In fact, it felt borderline dangerous. Whoever he was, whatever he wanted, why he was here, I knew it wasn’t smart to be around him. Stranger danger and all that.

  “It’s fine, I’m fine, so thanks for your concern, but I’m good. You’re right. You should go. Or I should go—both of us. But not together!” I backed away, clearly rambling. But as terrible timing would have it, my right foot came down on a rotted floorboard and the charred wood scraped against my skin as my leg went straight through.

  The boy lunged, first catching my wrist, then grabbing my waist and hoisting me out of the newly made crater.

  The moment he touched me, the ever-present void in my chest seemed to expand, sucking in my breath like a black hole—a vortex. All the ache and loss and confusion increased exponentially. The feeling came so fast it was like someone had knocked the wind out of me.

  As he set me on safe ground and began to remove his hands from my waist, I latched on to them, hoping to cling to the lingering feeling, despite how intensely painful it was. Because it meant something. I wouldn’t have had this reaction touching just anyone. Maybe this boy was a clue. And maybe if I held on to him longer, something would return.

  When I looked up into the boy’s face, it was with a new set of eyes.

  “I did know you,” I whispered.

  I searched his face, watching his expression morph into panic. His eyes widened and his cheeks paled. When his mouth opened, nothing came out except the strange coolness of his breath, reminding me once again of an autumn breeze.

  “No,” he said at last, after long seconds had passed while I kept hold of his hands. “You didn’t.”

  “You’re lying,” I said. The sensation he’d incited was painful to breathe through now. It was like someone was standing on my chest.

  I didn’t recognize him, but I recognized the feeling. And it hadn’t left me since the second I’d stepped outside Izzie’s car at Gran’s. Nostalgia.

  But a hundredfold.

  I longed for this stranger like I longed for the taste of Mom’s special chocolate chip cookies with rock salt on top. I longed for this stranger like I longed to hear Dad read me my favorite picture book, or the way the crickets chirped outside in the twilight, or sticky fingers from watermelon juice.

  I don’t remember eating Mom’s rock-salt chocolate chip cookies, and I don’t remember which book was my favorite. But I longed for them.

  How could I long for something I couldn’t remember?

  “I have to go.” The boy ripped his hands from my gasp, and as he did, my fingers grazed thread on his wrist.

  I glanced down and my suspicions were confirmed. I’d known this boy once. No, not only known him, I’d cared about him. He’d been important to me.

  It wasn’t just the void inside me, longing for memories I no longer possessed. It was what was attached to his wrist that gave me rock-solid proof.

  Indisputable proof.

  Around the boy’s wrist was a very old, worn, blue-and-orange friendship bracelet.

  Chapter Five

  The first time I ever remember making a friendship bracelet was after moving to Knoxville. It was a fad that girls in my class had started doing during recess or study periods. When Izzie invited me to try knotting the multicolored threads, my fingers moved on their own, creating a pattern much different than any other girl’s bracelet.

  It was a unique pattern that I’d known how to make without ever having to learn it.

  And here it was, attached to the wrist of a boy whose mere touch evoked such a powerful sense of nostalgia that the black hole inside me roared with pain.

  Without thinking, I reached for his bracelet. He tucked his wrist behind his back and stepped to the side, his eyes wider with fear or shock—I couldn’t tell which.

  “Where did you get that?” I demanded.

  “None of your business,” he replied the second the words were out of my mouth, as if he’d anticipated my question before I’d even asked.

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing once in his throat, and then his expression shifted into a perfect mask of annoyance. It was the face you gave to someone when you were standing in the Starbucks line, talking with your friend, and the guy behind you interrupts you to put in his two cents about what had happened on Riverdale last night.

  “It is, actually, since I made it for you.” If he still wore this bracelet then it had to mean something to him. So had I meant something to him six years ago?

  His green eyes narrowed. “Do you remember doing it?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “You should leave,” he repeated.

  “Why do you want to get rid of me so badly?”

  A brief flash of pain rippled across his features and he took a step back. “Go, please.”

  He seemed to be at war with himself, or an actor trying to figure out two completely different roles. One minute he was aloof, feigning ignorance, and the next he was pleading with me to leave as if he cared about my safety, deeply. “Who are you?” I asked again.

  He turned to go, but I caught hold of his shirt.

  “I made that bracelet for you, didn’t I?”

  He tried to yank his shirt from my grasp. “You have to let go,” he said, voice gruff with frustration.

  “Not until you tell me who you are. Look, I lost my memories. From when I was a kid. I know you, I just don’t remember you. Please—” My voice went much too high on the last part, but the pain was back, and it was kicking me in the heart with steel-toed boots.

  His hand closed around mine on his shirt, slowly, gently, prying my fingers away from the fabric. “You shouldn’t be here, Briony,” he said. His voice had lost its edge. There was no angry undertone, just one of deep despair.

  At the sound of my name, which I’d never said to him, my fingers loosened, and he slipped away. While I stood there, shocked, he fled from the house, through the scorched, cracked doorway. I didn’t snap out of it until he jumped from the slanting porch.

  I went after him. “Wait!”

  His warning burned through me like the fire that had destroyed this house. He knows my name and I never told him.

  He was the clue. He was the piece that I didn’t know I’d been searching for.

  And I wouldn’t let him get away.

  His feet pounded against the ground as he headed into the surrounding woods, and I jumped from the porch and followed. There was no clear path through the trees, but the boy didn’t seem to care. It was as if he made his own, weaving his way between the basswood trees and cutting through the sweetshrub, wild hydrangea, and tall deerberry bushes.

  I ran as fast as I could, ignoring the bushes and undergrowth as well, my steps mirroring his and following the path he crafted. His speed felt almost inhuman, or like that of an Olympic gold medalist. But the strangest thing was that I somehow kept up. I gained on him and felt the air shift around me, as if I’d just entered into a sort of slipstream.

  I’d learned the term in a science class—it was the area behind a moving object in which the state of matter around it sped at the same velocity. The very air around him was moving as fast as he was. And I was caught inside—inside the slipstream—with the air bending around us.

  Wind rippled through my shirt and shorts, while branches whacked and scraped at my bare arms and legs. Going at this speed was impossible—should have been impossible.

  The minute I’d realized it, my body seemed to reject the physics of the slipstream and my own momentum. My feet slowed
and the boy disappeared ahead of me. I could no longer keep up. Like a deer escaping a mountain lion, he moved too fast and too gracefully. He disappeared into the forest in a matter of seconds, and I came to a dead stop, my pulse going wild.

  “Oh, c’mon!” I shouted into the trees, bending over and placing my palms on my knees.

  Swearing under my breath, I waited for my asthma to punish me for sprinting, but it never did. The mountain air that filled my lungs was sweet, and clean. Every breath I took, I waited for it to turn against me, but it didn’t.

  Smoothing my hair away from my forehead and sweaty cheeks, I stared in the direction he disappeared and then noticed something odd.

  The trees looked different.

  The whole forest did.

  It…glowed.

  Rotating slowly in place, I took in the sight of a forest that looked otherworldly.

  Every tree and plant seemed to be alive with a sort of energy that pulsed around it in a wide spectrum of color. No, radiating was more accurate. The woods radiated a hued glow—neither liquid nor gas. In fact, this energy seemed to be a different state of matter entirely.

  “What the hell?” I breathed, stumbling back on trembling legs.

  Hugging my arms, I rubbed them, and goose bumps peppered my skin. I slowly lowered myself to the forest floor and took deep, steady breaths. Grass prickled my thighs and crunched under my sneakers. Wind whistled through the leaves above me, and when the leaves moved, the green energy moved with them, smearing the sky and air in a sort of watercolor effect.

  It was beautiful, but unreal.

  Unreal.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. I was queasy, despite the fact that physically, I’d never felt stronger.

  My eyes had been closed for no more than a few seconds when a soft chirping sound reached my ears. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. It was a bird, surely, even though it sounded like a very strange bird call.

  Then it got closer.

  And closer.

  Chiiirrrppp.

  I opened one eye. And screamed.

  Crouched by the toe of my right sneaker was a creature that was not of this world.

  It would be one thing if it was, like, a weird-looking squirrel, but it was much more than that. It was chipmunk-sized with a face, underbelly, and limbs covered in rich auburn fur, but then…green clover petals sprouted from its back, covering it like the shell of a turtle.

  Clovers literally growing from its back.

  It nipped the air with a tiny mouth, sniffing my sneaker, and then chirruped again.

  Chiirrrrpp.

  Letting out a squeak myself—of terror—I scrambled to my feet and began running again. It didn’t matter to where, just as long as I put as much distance between myself and the strange creature.

  As I glanced behind my shoulder to check if it was following me, I ran into something. No, someone.

  Hands grabbed me and, heart pounding, I looked up.

  It was the boy.

  He looked as scared as I felt.

  “What are you… How did you…” He gasped, his eyes huge and wide. “Did you follow me?”

  “There was this thing,” I cried, trying to twist from side to side to see if the tiny alien was around my feet.

  “How did you follow me?” he asked, raising his own voice to meet my panic level.

  Satisfied that the little green gremlin was nowhere to be seen, I looked back at the boy. “What do you mean how? I just did.”

  “That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “I mean, I ran after you as fast as I could, but then I lost you—”

  I stopped mid-sentence as what I was seeing caught up with what I was processing. The forest wasn’t the only thing that was glowing. The boy was, too.

  Energy pulsed and moved around him like an extension of his body. Like an aura.

  The gold mist-like energy around him seemed to be bleeding into my skin as his fingers pressed into my arms. As the energy swirled against my skin and seeped underneath, my senses exploded.

  Sweet and sour juice of wild blackberries. Pounding mountain rain against wet skin. Whistling leaves in the trees. Heavenly wildflower scent.

  The Smokies invaded my whole body.

  From this boy’s mere touch, I could feel the mountains themselves.

  I ripped away from his grasp, violent shivers climbing up and down my body.

  Even more scared of him and his touch than the strange clover creature, I ran. Again, the where didn’t matter, I just had to get away.

  The irony that I had been following him five minutes ago and was now running away from him was not lost on me. But I could still feel the remnants of his strange aura on my skin, lingering there like the moisture in the air after an afternoon summer rain. It was too much. Too much to understand. Too much to feel.

  I couldn’t hear him coming after me, but I knew he was somehow. The way he’d moved through the forest before… He could travel through the woods like some sort of ghost. His presence wove through the giant elms that glowed copper, mixing with the gold of the sun.

  As I rounded a bend in the path, he shouted my name. “Briony!”

  That only made me run faster. My leg muscles burned as they carried me out of the forest full of elms and to a cliff face.

  White-and-pink mountain laurel climbed skyward, threading through cracks in a rust-colored mountain wall directly before me.

  I tried to stop, but I was running too fast and skidded through the brambles of the path, a cloud of dirt erupting around my ankles. In just a brief glance, I could see how far up I was—and yet, I didn’t remember hiking up to this elevation.

  The tops of trees stretched out before me, and a lake glittered with reflected sunlight. Emerald colliding with sapphire.

  Unfortunately my stop wasn’t hard or graceful. My shoulder collided with the sharp rock of the mountainside, and my left foot wobbled. I teetered. A small cry escaped my throat as my fingers scrambled for purchase against the orange and gray stone-face, but there was none. I came away with dust and air, and the mysterious orange energy coating my fingertips, as my ankle folded and I fell off the edge.

  The fall was epic. Blue, blue sky filled my vision as my body became level with the earth and the wind screamed and roared.

  The boy was suddenly above me, sliding down the cliff in a storm of dust and leaves. He jumped off the side of the ledge and reached for me.

  The same second, a gust of mist buffeted me from behind.

  The quintessential “smoke” of the Smoky Mountains uncurled beneath me, the wispy clouds forming a blanket of fog that hid the world below.

  The last thing I saw before I fell through was desperation in the boy’s face, his braceleted hand stretching for me, strained muscles pulled tight under his skin.

  Chapter Six

  Falling through the mist, I expected to feel wet, or at the very least, damp, but I stayed dry.

  I also expected to die.

  That I didn’t was a surprise, too.

  Opening my eyes, I stared up at the blanket of white, silvery “smoke” above me. Pushing myself up onto my elbows, I wondered why my crash had never come. Somehow I had been falling from a height of a hundred feet and then I just…hadn’t.

  It was more like I’d just appeared on the ground. One second, I’d been about to crash into branches and the next, I was lying in a field of…

  A field?

  I leaped to my feet and spun in a circle. I was in a field with not a tree, a mountain, or a lake in sight.

  Where had the lake gone? Hadn’t one been right under me?

  Side note: I also didn’t feel any pain. Not a single ache or bruise.

  Glancing down, I inspected the tall grass poking up between my sneakers. It was varying shades of emerald to amber to gold as fine and as b
rilliant as real gemstones. The blades brushed against my shins lighter than a whisper.

  The mysterious aura was still there but diluted somehow. Not as alive and pulsing, but merely a soft radiance, like the haze around the flame of a candle.

  How was this all possible? Where…was I?

  Before more panic could set in, I spotted a figure in the distance. The silhouette grew into sharper focus as it—as she came toward me, fast.

  Dark-brown hair flew behind her as she ran through the meadow. She wore light-washed jeans and a shirt that was a soft yellow with sunflowers decorating its hem.

  She was still too far away to make out that detail, but I was sure that’s what it was. Because that was what my mother had been wearing the day before she’d left.

  At about five feet away, she slowed, the breeze rippling across the grass and blowing her hair around her face, making wisps of it catch against her lips and hide her green eyes.

  “You…you’re,” I breathed, too stunned to move.

  “Briony,” she said.

  In a few short steps, she closed the distance between us, her arms wrapping around to squeeze me close. Her scent was how I remembered it—citrus, from the hand lotion she used, and a hint of hay. She’d worked with horses at a ranch down the road, and she would come home smelling like their stables.

  These small details, like what she smelled like to the blouse she’d been wearing when she’d left, meant that her leaving had been a deeper scar than I’d ever acknowledged. She was my fifth scar—the one that wasn’t on my back.

  Maybe I didn’t remember distinct childhood memories of her before the fire, but she was ingrained in my existence. A piece of the gaping hole inside me.

  Her breathing as she held me was slow and rhythmic, and she was warm.

  “I’ve missed you so much, Briony,” she said, her voice right next to my ear. I could feel the vibrations in her throat and chest.

  Slowly, my trembling hands rose and gently pushed away her arms. I stepped back. No matter how good that hug had felt, this was still the woman who’d left me. Abandoned her husband and child. “You… I remember you leaving,” I said, my voice hoarse, unable to work right. “Where did you go? Here?” I glanced up at the veil of mist that still hung above our heads. “And where is here?”