Glow of the Fireflies

by Lindsey Duga

  And I wasn’t quite ready to face it.

  Hugging my arms, I muttered, “What do you expect? I don’t remember you and you haven’t exactly been helpful. All of yesterday you told me to get lost.”

  “That’s only because I don’t want to see you hurt again.”

  The void in my chest gave another groan of pain. I took a breath. “Well, this might be the one chance I have to actually… heal. Living with over half my life missing hasn’t exactly been easy.”

  Silence followed my confession, and he stared down at me. I could only return his intense look with one of my own.

  “Might I remind you both we have a gate to open? Or shall the two of you just keep gazing at each other?” Raysh’s voice floated up as he licked his paw nonchalantly.

  Both of us flinched and looked away. My cheeks were hot, and Alder’s neck was red. Dumb fox.

  Clearing his throat, Alder stepped through the tree line and was swallowed by the shadows of the thick canopy of leaves above. “Then let’s get going.”

  …

  Twenty minutes of walking later, we came to a grove of yellow birch trees. I could almost picture this place in the fall months when the trees would be a golden yellow. Leaves would shiver in the autumn wind, one gust away from floating to the forest floor, but right now, they were a soft lime-green and shaped like teardrops with strong veins running horizontally across.

  Raysh stopped in the middle of the grove, sitting down and swishing his wispy tail right through the grass. “Here is good.”

  I looked around, trying to find some mystical gate. For whatever reason, I almost expected a gate made of clouds. “Good for what? Is the first gate invisible or something?”

  “The gate is in the ethereal plane,” Alder explained. “Although, I don’t know where exactly. Luckily, the fox does.” If I wasn’t mistaken, I could trace a small amount of bitterness there.

  “There are many things you don’t know,” Raysh huffed. “Spirit though you might be, you have the heart of a human. And because of that, you will never be one of us.”

  Alder said nothing in reply to the odd comment, but I noticed the brief look of pain cross his face, and I found myself wondering what that had meant. He could look like a human, sure, but what parts of him specifically were spirit?

  “Whatever. Let’s just cross over,” Alder said, his tone short with irritation. He paused then held his hand out to me. “You’ll need to hang on.”

  I stared at his hand, remembering what I’d felt the last time I held it. The Smokies coursing through me like oxygen in my bloodstream. The effect had been addicting and intoxicating—thrilling. I hadn’t wanted to let go of him.

  It had also been slightly terrifying. Too intense.

  My gaze drifted to the friendship bracelet around his wrist.

  I’d trusted him once. Enough to go into the world with him when I’d been a little kid. I had to do it again.

  I reached for his hand and, like a magnet, I latched onto him. His fingers laced with mine.

  The autumn chill going through me. The smell of flowering mountain laurel and dogwood in my nose. A warm fluttering in my stomach.

  Before I could place the last sensation, Alder moved forward and I followed, my feet clumsy and heavy with awareness of my own physical body. It had never felt like a burden before, but it did now. I was like a weight falling to the bottom of a pool.

  I was about to open my mouth to ask Alder to slow down, when I felt the slipstream encase us once more. Wind rippled around me, like I was breaking through something—a net or a web—made of a substance lighter than air. Mist curled around our calves, reaching our hips, blowing up into my hair and painting my skin with the energy. It made my body buzz and my pulse race. It felt so alive.

  It whirled and curled around my limbs, and Alder tightened his hold on my hand.

  Then all of a sudden, he stopped—so quick and so fast that I fell against him. His arm curled around my shoulders and steadied me against his chest. His heart thudded under my ear and Raysh’s words came to mind: you have the heart of a human.

  Pushing the thought aside, I stepped forward, away from Alder’s chest.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I answered, blinking against the bright glow of the surrounding trees. Immediately I recognized that they were the same birch trees as the grove we’d been standing in a half minute before, but instead of green, they were now yellow. The color of their name.

  The entire grove glowed gold, the mana pulsing gently around tree bark and leaves.

  “They changed,” I breathed, watching as a mustard-yellow leaf trembled and fluttered to the ground.

  “In the ethereal plane, the trees take on their best form. For the yellow birch, it’s in the autumn, where the leaves stop photosynthesis and rest, and the trees can finally relax.”

  Instead of staring at the forest around us, I took in Alder’s appearance. He was back to being shades of copper, gold, and silver. His spirit form.

  “Is that what happens with you?”

  He glanced down at me, raising an eyebrow. “What?”

  I gestured to his silvery-white hair. “Is this your best form?”

  That earned me a tiny smile as he shook his head. “It’s my true form. I hide it during the day in case humans see me.”

  “Can you not control it at night?” I asked, thinking of the moment by the lakeshore when he had transformed before me as the sun went down.

  “I could, but it already takes a lot of concentration to hide the wisps.”

  I drew in a sharp breath, realization hitting me. “That’s why they’re disguised as fireflies—you hide them.”

  Alder nodded. “The wisps can easily be seen at night—so I hide them as fireflies. But in the daytime, it’s me who needs to be hidden.”

  “This way,” Raysh said, trotting up the path, not bothering to wait for us.

  “Stick close. Do not wander and…try not to touch anything,” Alder instructed as we wove our way through the gold trees. Their mana brushed against my skin, and I could taste their fresh winter mint scent and feel the sun on their leaves. My whole body grew warm with it.

  From the grove emerged a path that curved this way and that, serpentining upward at a slight incline. Growth was absolutely everywhere, making the forest much darker than the yellow grove of birches. The trees seemed to get larger with each step I took, and as I peered farther into the woods, I could’ve sworn they were so thick and large that they felt closer to the size of California redwoods, rather than the slimmer sugar maple trees I knew them to be. Their unique leaf shape of five points, smaller than the normal Canadian maple leaf, was familiar to me, even though I knew I’d never really come across any sugar maples in Knoxville.

  It was then I realized why I was able to identify plants with just a glance. Maybe having the astral energy of a nature spirit made you a botanist without the fancy PhD. Go figure.

  Or maybe Alder had just taught them all to me and I’d retained them somehow.

  Either way, I was able to tell when the scenery became…unnatural.

  For the most part, the changes of the forest within the ethereal plane were subtle, besides the obvious increase in size. The moss climbing the trees wasn’t just green, but a rich aquamarine, a full-color spectrum from lime to violet. The flowers themselves were illuminated, glowing with a mystical aura.

  We passed bishop’s cap, tiny white flowers that grew up long green stems. They shined so bright white that it was like walking through a forest of Christmas lights. Several times I had to force my feet forward when all I wanted to do was stand and gawk at the resplendent world around me. More colorful flowers, like fire pinks, purple phacelias, and blue phloxes decorated the trail that Alder led us down. The colors were more saturated, more vibrant than what should’ve been real.

&nb
sp; I ached to touch one. To bend down and smell their petals and feel their mana. Surely each one was unique and special in their own right.

  As if Alder sensed my temptation, he kept glancing back at me.

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Okay, why can’t I touch anything?”

  “Because you’re a human.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t belong here.”

  “Raysh.” Alder glared at the fox then gave me a sheepish glance. “There are parts of this world that could harm you.”

  I glanced at the glowing flowers and sugar maple leaves surrounded by the soft green mist. They certainly didn’t look threatening.

  “Flowers are dangerous?”

  “Let’s just say you shouldn’t risk it.”

  “Huh. That’s comforting.”

  He chuckled. “Hey, you asked.” He paused ahead to lift a branch for me. As I made my way between the trees and under the canopy of branches, I found a rabbit sitting where I’d been just about to step. If it had been any other normal-looking rabbit, I might not have leaped a foot in the air, but as this one was covered in moss and had purple flowers where its tail should be, I couldn’t help it.

  With a yelp, I jumped back, the top of my head hitting Alder in the chin. Rubbing his jaw, he steadied me. “It’s just a sprite.”

  “Which is what exactly?” I planted a hand over my racing heart.

  The rabbit tilted its head. Did it know we were talking about it? Could it understand us?

  “It’s a nature spirit but doesn’t possess much mana,” Alder explained, then added, “It’s not, um, cognizant.”

  “You mean it’s not like Raysh. It can’t talk.”

  “It can’t talk to humans,” Raysh sniffed. “I can hear it talking just fine.”

  I started to kneel to get a closer look at the sprite, when the ground shook under my feet. At the tremor, the bunny sprite scampered off into the undergrowth.

  Alder and I froze while Raysh continued along as if nothing were amiss.

  “Was that…” I started as the earth once again trembled.

  “I’m guessing we’re close,” Alder said, reaching for my hand.

  When he took it, I didn’t feel anything this time—no Smoky Mountain senses running through me, or anything at all, actually. Merely his pressure and his hold.

  I glanced at him, confused as to why I couldn’t feel any of him. Not the texture or warmth of his skin. It was as if he cut off all sensation from me. Was that the only way to prevent him from giving any mana to me?

  The ground shook again, and I refocused. “What the hell is happening? Is this an earthquake?”

  Earthquakes were common in Tennessee, but barely noticeable—nothing like this.

  Geography class taught me that the Madrid Fault ran right through West Tennessee, and the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone was a hotbed of activity. Seismographs in the Tuckaleechee Caverns outside of Townsend often recorded quakes with a magnitude of two or smaller, but most people didn’t feel them at all.

  “Remember how I told you there were guardians?” Alder asked as we cleared the bend in the trees and came to the edge of a vast green meadow.

  I gasped, involuntarily squeezing Alder’s hand.

  A beautiful buck stood in the middle of the meadow, easily larger than any deer I’d ever seen. From this distance it looked more the size of a moose—big, powerful, imposing. A king of the forest.

  Other than the creature’s antlers, and its unnatural size, it appeared to be a normal white-tailed deer. The antlers, though…were not antlers at all. They were branches. Branches that extended outward at least two feet, decorated with leaves, vines, and budding flowers.

  The great buck reared back on its haunches and came down hard on its front hooves, and the earth…trembled.

  Chapter Ten

  I lost my balance as the ground shook with the force of an earthquake.

  Alder caught me easily, wrapping his arm around my waist, his gaze concentrated on the buck in front of us. “Welcome to the source of all the seismic activity in South Appalachia, Brye.”

  “Otherwise known as the earth gate,” Raysh said, moving around my calves.

  “That’s…incredible,” I breathed, reeling over the fact that the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone was all the work of a single nature spirit. As much as I was dying to find out more about that, the monstrous buck was a tad more pressing. “Please don’t tell me we have to beat this guy to get this so-called key you mentioned?” Now it really felt like a video game. A big boss battle to claim the key to escaping the dungeon.

  The buck reared and slammed its hooves onto the ground, causing a larger, angrier tremor to run under our feet. This time, the force was enough to cause leaves to shower down on us, and I reflexively squeezed Alder’s arm around my waist. How could he be so unaffected? He was like a tree, standing solid and strong.

  Well, he was a nature spirit. I was still getting used to that fact.

  “The key is part of the guardian itself and that of its element. Something that can be removed. Stolen.”

  “Part of the…” I scanned the great buck, from his powerful onyx hooves to the sharp prongs of his wood-antlers, realizing it could only be one thing. “Oh, no freaking way. I have to take its freaking antler?”

  “Technically it’s a branch.”

  “How in the three-planes-of-existence am I supposed to take an antler?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Raysh replied. “Unless you don’t.”

  Great, this fox was both sarcastic and condescending.

  “Yeah? Well, right now I’m thinking you’d make a nice fur coat,” I snapped.

  “They see us,” Alder murmured by my ear, voice tense but still calm.

  With a chill, I lifted my gaze to the large nature spirit in the middle of the meadow. Sure enough, the buck was glaring right at us, and its breath came out in angry puffs through its wet black nose. But the breath wasn’t just air—it looked like clouds of shimmering energy, blowing out like a snorting bull in a cartoon.

  I needed to figure out a way to get the key, but my mind was drawing a blank. Should we have waited till it slept? Did guardians sleep? I could loop around through the forest and find a way to come up behind it. Or climb a tree and somehow jump onto its back.

  Before I could really think through either one of these plans, the buck charged.

  Alder set me aside, stepping forward then crouching to place his hands on the ground. “Go!”

  From his hands a shimmery mist rushed out like water from a faucet, pouring mana into the earth. The trees and flowers vibrated with a different kind of energy—Alder’s energy.

  Raysh nipped at my ankles, and I snapped out of my trance. Heart pounding, I backed into the nearest tree, my hands scrabbling to find purchase against the bark.

  “What’s the worst that thing could do? It’s just a really large deer,” I muttered to myself.

  “You’re right. It’s completely harmless with its earth-shaking hooves and sharpened wooden stakes attached to its head.”

  And those wooden stakes were racing right toward Alder at an unnatural speed.

  The instinct to run to him propelled my legs forward, but Raysh tugged on my shorts with his teeth, stopping me. “Don’t you dare,” he growled.

  I was about to swat the fox away when Alder’s mana rippled throughout the meadow like a wave swelling across an ocean.

  And like an ocean, a tsunami followed.

  The ground moved under Alder’s command. Not just a tremor like an earthquake, but an entire layer of earth shifted and rose upward, as if being pushed by some sort of creature underneath. The churning mound of dirt, grass, roots, rocks, and all rushed toward the guardian, but it didn’t stop its charge. Didn’t even blink. It rammed head-on into the mo
und of earth.

  For a split second, I was worried the attack might’ve harmed the stag, but the next second the ground exploded from the collision of the buck’s branches and the pack of hard earth. Dirt, pebbles, flecks of grass, and even the wildflowers on top flew apart like bomb fragments. And it felt like a bomb explosion. A blast of force—magical or physical—seemed to shake the trees and rumble the meadow. It even made my ears ring. But the guardian merely shook its head in irritation, a few flowers, leaves, and twigs falling from its branches.

  The moment the twig-antlers fell to the earth, grass grew, flowers sprouted, tree saplings broke through the ground.

  Chills raced through me. The stag’s antlers held mana, probably specific to the earth gate, and whenever it made contact with its element—in this case, the meadow—there was growth. That couldn’t be normal—even in the spirit world.

  Raysh was right. It really was the key. But… I had to wonder: if a single twig could hold that much power then maybe that was all I needed.

  My gaze darted from the new growth to the buck snorting and blinking in confusion, huffing great puffs of iridescent mana. It stamped its hooves in irritation, sending more tremors. I wobbled but managed to stay upright.

  Alder, on the other hand, was on his hands and knees, his head bent down and his shoulders rising and falling with exertion. Just how much energy had that little stunt cost him?

  “You said I needed a branch, right?” I asked Raysh. “But you never said how big.”

  “If you’re thinking what I think you are, it won’t work. As soon as a piece of the antler touches the ground, it is transformed into growth. Absorbed into the earth gate. You must get it from the guardian directly.”

  “Or right before it falls.”

  The buck trotted back, green eyes narrowing at Alder, and a spike of fear surged through me.