Glow of the Fireflies

by Lindsey Duga

  “Listen to me.” Her sharp tone brought my gaze downward, away from the smoky ceiling, and back to her face. “You’ve passed into the spirit world, Briony,” she said, her green eyes boring into mine.

  A horrible spark of terror ricocheted through me. “You mean I’m dead?”

  That fall had killed me. Oh my God, then that meant Mom was dead, too.

  “No, you’re not dead,” she said with an impatient sigh. “This valley holds an energy that only a few places in the world possess. It allows spirits to dwell here. Not spirits of the dead, spirits of nature.”

  The strange creature with green clovers growing out of its back came to mind.

  My brain just wanted to shut off.

  “What…how…?” I stammered.

  “There are places in the world that are special…” she began slowly, her gaze tracing my face, as if she were trying to memorize every detail. Her stare was intense, and somehow persuasive. I found myself desperate to hear more. “There are places that are so mystical and beautiful that the lines between what’s real and what’s not are blurred. It’s in those places where the boundary between the physical and astral plane becomes so thin…that spirits dwell.”

  Her words went off like a gong within the void in my chest. I’d heard them before. I didn’t remember them exactly, or who said them, but I remembered the cadence of them. The magic behind them.

  For a few long seconds, I couldn’t speak.

  “That’s not…that’s not possible.”

  “I’m trying to tell you, we are in a place where it is possible. You passed through the boundary of the physical world into the ethereal world somehow. Don’t you remember getting here?”

  I’d been following that strange boy, but I’d only been running after him in the woods, not like walking through a magical wardrobe or anything. The only thing that had been weird was the air trick—the slipstream.

  Could that have been me passing through something?

  A boundary of sorts? A portal?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mom said, her tone becoming more urgent. “We don’t have time. What I need you to understand is that you have crossed over into another plane of existence, a world not bound by matter but controlled by energy.”

  I thought of the way the special colorful aura extended over plants and trees, and that boy, like a layer of radiation.

  “It’s where the two combine and it’s where spirits—”

  “Dwell. Got it.” I was finally beginning to believe the unbelievable. “But, how did you get here?”

  Mom shook her head, her grip on my arms tightening uncomfortably. “I don’t have time to explain everything, but what I can tell you is that I can’t leave this world—he won’t let me. I need your help to escape.”

  A powerful shock, like sticking a fork in an outlet, ripped through me. “I… What?”

  “Briony,” she said, her voice growing stern, sharp, “right now, I need you to listen.” She gave me a little shake by the shoulders, and I swallowed, meeting her eyes again. This time, I noticed their shape—angled like that of a fox’s.

  Like mine.

  “Now that you’re here, you can save me.”

  Save her from what?

  I wanted to demand she tell me how she wound up here, and why she’d walked out that door six years ago in the first place. But if she really was in danger, which everything about her panicked expression told me was true, I had to put those questions aside for now.

  And if I managed to rescue her from this weird world, then I could finally get the answers I’d been asking my whole life. How did the fire start? What all had I forgotten? Did she leave because she couldn’t handle raising a kid with amnesia?

  “Okay, tell me how,” I answered, trying to keep my voice calm.

  A tiny smile tugged at her lips. “That’s my girl. Now, listen carefully, because we don’t have much time before he finds me.”

  “Before who finds you?”

  “There are spirit gates that need to be unlocked in order for me to pass through the planes of existence. An emissary from the spirit world will help you find the gates and teach you how to unlock them.”

  An emissary? Were there other spirits that were more capable than me and had…fancy nature powers to unlock the gates? “Well, why can’t the emissary just unlock them?”

  “No.” She squeezed my shoulders again, her eyes bulging. “It has to be you.”

  “I don’t understand. Why me?”

  “You’re special,” she said matter-of-factly. “You can pass through the boundary to the spiritual plane. Normal humans cannot.”

  As if that explains anything. Before I could tell her that, my attention was immediately drawn to her hands on my shoulders. They had begun to glow with a white light, and the radiance traveled up her arms and into her neck and chest.

  “What’s happening to you?” I whispered, breathless, as chills raced through me.

  She ignored the glow and kept her gaze locked on my face. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but watch the rest of her body be swallowed up by it.

  “You must listen, Briony.”

  I jerked my head up from staring at her glowing bare feet. “I am,” I said, though my voice cracked. This is so bizarre.

  “You must unlock the gates by the sunset of the summer solstice. It’s the time the barrier is thinnest and will allow a normal human like me to pass through. If you don’t—”

  A great roar overtook her voice.

  Not an animalistic roar but an elemental one. Fire erupted across the fields behind us, igniting the dry meadow grass as if the Human Torch had just sneezed. Orange, red, and gold flames uncurled and reached fiery fingers toward the canopy of mist.

  Mom turned back to me. Her eyes were wild, too white, and shining against the flickering light of the inferno. “He’s here,” she whispered.

  If I hadn’t been frozen stiff, I might have asked again who this mysterious “he” was she kept referring to. But the fire was hot, and the smoke was thick, and everything about it had me physically shaking from traumatic memories.

  He’s here for me. Don’t let him take me.

  It took me a moment to realize that those words weren’t Mom’s… They were mine.

  From six years ago.

  I could only see the fire before me, with my mind blank and my limbs frozen, and feel the burns and taste the ash from that night. Mom was calling to me now, shaking me, the glow on her hands vibrant and unreal, but I couldn’t think or respond. I was trapped in my own world. In my own nightmare.

  I stared into the flames rippling across the meadow, watching them weave and churn into some sort of figure—but I couldn’t be sure if that’s what it was. Just like six years ago. Curled up on my couch, watching the flames eat the wood walls and rafters and form a distorted face.

  There was no escaping. The fire skipped from blade to blade, coming toward me.

  He’s going to get me this time.

  No sooner had I accepted this, when a gale-force wind blew across the meadow, flattening the grass. Our hair whipped about, clothes flapping and beating our skin. But the flames seemed to retreat, roaring upward instead of forward, taking the shape of a tidal wave.

  Mom and I looked up as the mist above us began to swirl counterclockwise, like the beginnings of a tornado. Sure enough, the faster it turned, it became just that. The mist descended toward the field in a funnel-like shape, coming closer and closer toward me.

  Meanwhile the fire and the flame-figure within retreated farther, leaving grass unburned and untouched, as if it had never been consumed by the fire in the first place.

  The farther away the fire moved, the easier I could breathe and hear my mother speaking to me again. “Listen to what the emissary says, trust him, and you’ll be able to do it, Briony,” Mom said, gripping my hands tightly
. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. The wind batted her hair against her cheeks.

  I squeezed her hands back, if only just to convince to myself that she was really here. “What was that just now?” I asked, my voice trembling so bad I could barely get the words out.

  “Unlock the gates, Briony.”

  The tornado was now right above my head, and I almost jumped out of my skin at the disembodied arm coming directly out of the eye of the mist-storm.

  The arm stretched toward me…a blue and orange bracelet tied to the wrist.

  The world around me blurred as his fingers wrapped around my upper arm. Still, I kept hold of Mom’s hand and she held strong onto mine as I was lifted from the spiritual meadow. Her whole body was glowing white now—her hand, the one I held, the brightest part of her.

  In one strong tug, the boy yanked at my arm and mist closed before me, buffeting my hair and clothes, strangling the air from my lungs. I could still somehow feel Mom’s hand in mine, and I didn’t let go.

  Then the mist was blown away, like the smoke from a bonfire, billowing and dispersing into the tops of the trees.

  Trees.

  I gasped, stumbling back as I registered the sights and sounds of the forest around me. I would’ve tripped and fallen if not for a solid body catching me from behind. The mystical aura that had once been everywhere was now gone and it was darker outside. The sun was just beginning its descent behind the mountains and the shadows of the trees stretched impossible lengths across the forest undergrowth.

  The hands supporting me drew away, but I ignored them altogether.

  Instead of turning to see him, I kept my eyes trained on my closed fist, where Mom’s hand had been seconds before. Slowly, I uncurled my fingers and a firefly hovered above my palm. Weird.

  It had been ages since I’d seen a firefly. In the city, they were few and far between.

  It pulsed bright yellow then zipped away into the shadows of the forest before I had time to give it another thought.

  “Briony?”

  I craned my neck to look over my shoulder.

  The boy stood there, tan, tall, and handsome, his navy shirt blending into the dark green of the forest. His face, half hidden in shadows, was all smooth lines and distinct angles, and it made him a little…intimidating. He reminded me of a thunderstorm that you saw off in the distance coming across the Appalachians—traveling over rolling peaks with lightning veining across the dark smearing of rain.

  A terrifying force of nature, yes, but beautiful.

  In opposition to his intense look, his hands were gentle. They came up to rest on my face, and his thumbs swept across my cheeks as his index finger lowered to check my pounding pulse.

  The ache of longing grew inside me, but this time I pushed it away and focused on the fact that I’d just seen my mother, and the fire. The fire.

  I swallowed back a fresh wave of terror and took a few steps away from the boy.

  His eyebrows knitted together as his jaw muscles worked against unspoken words.

  More questions sprang to mind, new ones. Did this boy know about my mother trapped in this spirit world? How had that fire suddenly ignited? What was his connection to this world?

  But first things first.

  “What are you?” I demanded.

  Not who this time. What. Because a normal human could not pull people out of a spiritual realm the way he’d just done.

  He stared down at me then lowered his gaze from my face to the ground. “You were never supposed to come back.”

  Even though I was dying to drill him with questions, I didn’t want him to run away again. He was skittish as a deer. No sudden movements.

  “I never expected to come back,” I admitted, “but my grandmother broke her leg, and I needed to take care of her.”

  The boy didn’t say anything. His fists clenched and unclenched.

  “Look, can I at least get your name?” I asked.

  He frowned, his gaze still directed at the ground. “You want my name?”

  “Well, yeah…unless you want me to guess. Is it Chris? That’s a good guess. A lot of hot guys are named Chris.”

  He half laughed, half sighed and rubbed the heel of his palm against his hairline. “It’s Alder.”

  “Okay, Alder, tell me how I know you, and how I followed you into that…that spirit world.”

  “You know…that’s the—” His green eyes widened, all trace of any humor I’d earned from him gone as he glanced around at the darkening forest. “Go home, Brye, please.”

  If he thought using my nickname was going to convince me, his plan totally backfired. So few people called me that. So few people I let call me that.

  “No can do,” I said, my voice low but forceful. “I want answers, and I’m not leaving until I get them. What was that place? You led me there. Then you pulled me out of it. I know you know. Please, tell me.”

  Both of us, entreating each other. Both of us, desperate.

  I didn’t think either of us breathed in those seconds.

  Just when I thought we’d be there forever, a floating yellow light drifted between us, diverting both of our attentions. Another firefly.

  As soon as it appeared, a dozen more seemed to emerge out of nowhere. The firefly lights synchronized as the sun’s light vanished almost entirely beyond the mountain ridges. The bulbs flashed as one—as if they were part of one consciousness, or one song. I’d never seen so many in my life. I stared in awe, jaw slack as goose bumps erupted over my chilled skin.

  Alder twisted to the side, following the sun’s disappearance, his green eyes somehow lighter and brighter in the darkness. He cursed under his breath. Then he turned and wove his way through the rest of the forest. I followed, able to keep up this time, probably because he let me. We emerged into a clearing with a large lake stretching out beyond. It was so distant that a line formed at the collision of the water and the base of blue mountains stretching into the twilight sky.

  He cast me a worried glance then turned his face back to the dark-blue silhouette of the mountains against the thin gold line—the remnants of the sunset.

  I licked my lips, hoping I could convince him to talk to me. If he had allowed me to follow him, then he was willing to talk, right? “Please, just tell me what’s going on. I know we used to know each other. And I’m sorry I can’t remember you. Really, I am. But if you could just—”

  “I really hope I don’t regret this…”

  “Regret what?”

  He was staring at the lakeshore, as if the answers were written in pebbles. “No turning back now,” he whispered to himself. He closed his eyes, as if he was silently accepting some kind of fate.

  More fireflies drifted out of the forest, gathering around us in a swarm.

  “What…is happening?” I breathed.

  Alder turned to face me, hands back to fists at his sides, every visible muscle in his body strained.

  At first, I was confused. What was he trying to tell me? Or show me? But then I noticed the subtle transformation.

  His already tan skin grew darker, changing into a deep copper. His hair turned lighter and lighter until it looked like it had been dyed in silver moonlight. Then his eyes, once such a rich green, became brighter and yellower until they glowed like the fireflies that flitted around us.

  My forgotten childhood friend was a freaking nature spirit.

  Chapter Seven

  I raised a hand to my mouth, stifling a cry.

  Then my attention was stolen away from Alder’s strange transformation to the fireflies. At first, their pulsing light seemed normal, despite the sheer abundance of them, but their forms had flickered into something else. They weren’t just brief flashes of yellow light, but floating mist-like glowing spheres. Their bodies were translucent and shimmery in the moonlight reflected off the lake.


  “Oh…my…God…”

  Alder watched me, his gold eyes locked on my face, gauging my reaction.

  As if he knew I’d freak out.

  I did not disappoint, because at that moment reality came crashing down on me.

  Even though I’d just been in a whole other plane of existence, there was a part of me that had been clinging to everything I’d just seen as some crazy dream. In a dream, I could just accept that Izzie turned into Beyoncé with wings, and we went on her world tour with centaur Justin Timberlake as he serenaded “Can’t Stop the Feeling” to me on top of the Eiffel Tower—totally not a real example.

  Air caught in my chest, struggling to get out, but I couldn’t release it. I couldn’t do anything but stare at the scene before me.

  I needed my inhaler.

  “The fireflies…they…” I choked.

  The strange beings floated and pulsed with multi-colored ethereal light illuminating the lake and its shore and the trees around us.

  My chest heaved, but I wasn’t getting any air.

  It was too much. Running into a spirit realm, finding my mother, seeing the field of fire, meeting this boy, and now even the freaking fireflies were changing. They were no longer insects but literal balls of light that seemed to be made of the same strange aura from the world I’d just escaped.

  Alder’s silver brows furrowed in concern. He took a step forward and I took one back. “Briony, you need to breathe, all right?”

  “No…duh….” I wheezed.

  This doesn’t feel like my asthma. My lungs were clearer, better than they’d ever been. Superhuman lungs. But I still couldn’t get any air into them.

  In three steps, Alder crossed to me and wrapped his hands around my neck. Suddenly air stalled inside my chest. Like he was controlling it somehow.

  He held my breath. Literally.

  In those seemingly long seconds, the balls of ethereal light retreated into the background, and the mountains and sky caught up with me, slowing under my feet and coming to a stop.