Glow of the Fireflies

by Lindsey Duga

  Looking over his shoulder, I saw Mom lift her head next to Bruley’s big paws.

  “No, we did it.”

  In a minute, I wanted to go and meet my mother. The woman who had been a stranger to me, and then a disappointment, and then a mystery, and then a hero.

  But for just a few more seconds, I wanted to hold on to the nature god I had been in love with back before I even knew what love was.

  Back when we were just little kids, playing from dusk until dawn, catching fireflies in the foothills of the Smokies.

  Chapter Thirty

  With much difficulty, I pulled away from Alder and stepped up onto the island, my bare foot scraping against the side of…

  I paused, kneeling down and peering into the water, thinking maybe…

  Sure enough, the head of the water god was below the surface. He’d been willing, apparently, to provide transportation across the vast lake.

  Accepting Alder’s hand, I stepped up and walked through the grass of the island, which just so happened to be the shell of a giant turtle god.

  Mom sat, leaning against a tree, looking tired but otherwise healthy and very much alive. “There’s my girl,” she said weakly.

  I bent down next to her, and she lifted a hand to caress my cheek. “Look how big you’ve grown,” she murmured again, her eyes beginning to slowly close.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” I asked, squeezing her hand as she lowered it from my cheek.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice thick with exhaustion. “This is just a mother being in awe of her daughter.” Her eyes closed all the way and her breathing turned steady with sleep.

  “Will she be all right?” I asked Alder, brushing a piece of hair away from her cheek.

  “She’ll be fine,” Alder echoed. “The ethereal plane has preserved her body well. She just needs to return to the physical world. Back where she belongs.”

  “Well, then, let’s get her there.” I stood, turning back to Alder, all the worries that had vanished upon seeing him and my mother safe rushing back to me like rapids. “Do you think the fires are still going?”

  Alder sighed. “I’m not sure. When the barriers came back up, the worlds separated, and I wound up on this plane.”

  He had barely finished his sentence before three dark shapes shot toward the water god within the lake, and as they got nearer, I grinned. The otter spirits had come to see us. Climbing up onto the island, the otters began to prance around our shins, tittering excitedly.

  “Lord, lord, wet, wet, wet, Lord!”

  “Slow down, Tavi—”

  “Alder,” I said, grabbing his shirt sleeve. “She has something.”

  In the otter’s mouth was a shell fragment, a little smaller than the one we had taken from the water gate as its key. As the otter dropped the shell into Alder’s outstretched hand, I gasped, realizing the intentions of the river spirits.

  “You can use the shell again. Make it rain like it had when we opened the gate.”

  Alder ruffled Tavi’s head affectionately. “Well done, my friend.” Turning to me, he kissed me on the cheek and scooped Mom up in his arms. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Yes, go,” I said with a smile. Mom was finally going back home, and the fires were about to be fully put out with the help of the water god and three mischievous otter spirits.

  I felt like I could finally breathe.

  And yet…

  I stared down at the bracelet tied around my wrist, thinking of what now lay before me. The question that had been uncertain and terrifying and unimaginable since I found out what might happen if I removed Mom from the astral plane.

  If I removed the fire god’s anchor.

  I was so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed the island—the water god—swimming back to shore, and as we got closer, I could make out the shape of a large buck with branches for antlers standing on the pebbled shore, water lapping against their powerful hooves.

  “I see you succeeded.”

  I jumped down from the back of the water god and hit the lake water with a splash. “With your help, thank you.”

  “Perhaps it is I who should be thanking you. You have saved our worlds.”

  “I had never meant to put them in danger in the first place.” I hesitated, dreading the answer to my next question but needing to hear it anyway. “What will happen when the sun goes down and the fire gate no longer has an anchor? Will I need to go and take Mom’s place?”

  We’d prevented the worlds from fully merging by stopping the fire god from crossing over, and the only reason the barriers went back up was because we’d removed the anchor—Mom—who had bound the fire god to the valley. But now that Mom’s spirit was gone from the astral plane, the fire gate had only a day before it was locked with the sunset, and without an anchor, would it no longer be tied to the valley? What would happen then? Would the ethereal plane cease to exist?

  A rumbling began in the chest of the earth god, and it took me a moment to realize the deer was laughing at me.

  “What’s so funny?” I seethed. “Does the prospect of my century-long imprisonment within the astral plane amuse you?”

  “No, merely the idea that you think that boy will be content to have you to stay in there. I’m quite sure he had plans to take your place instead.”

  I thought about the look on Alder’s face when he unlocked the air gate. The determination. The earth god was probably right.

  I swallowed. “There’s no way that’s happening.”

  “How did you drive the fire god back?”

  “What?” I asked, surprised at the sudden change in topic.

  “He almost had you. I can smell his mana on you. You reek of woodsmoke. How did you escape?”

  I thought back to the moment where I had offered up my mana. “I gave the god some of my mana, like I’d done for you.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I guess I just thought that he wanted to feel connected to the valley.” For so long I had wanted the same thing. To know my past, to feel like I belonged somewhere, and to fill this aching void deep inside me.

  “Then perhaps that is all the god needs.”

  As I was thinking on those words, Alder appeared, coming out of the mist a bit down the lakeshore. He was dripping wet—evidence of his success in using the shell fragment to cause a rainstorm.

  We’d saved the valley. Everyone would be safe, thank the gods—even all the people coming to the festival.

  The festival.

  I latched onto it, an idea beginning to form…

  The earth god turned to me and fixed me with an eerie, glowing stare. “I trust that you will do what is best for this valley. I leave you now, Briony Redwrell. But before I do…” The great stag dropped their head, giving me perfect access to the antlers full of leaves and small white and purple blossoms. “Take what you need to heal your world. As thanks.”

  …

  The damage done in the fires across the valley was widespread, but luckily no lives were lost. A few houses were burned, along with some old dilapidated sheds and barns that had long since been abandoned, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  The Firefly Festival had turned into a response and recovery center where locals joined together to help the firefighters and the police assess the damage and coordinate relief efforts.

  They all agreed that had it not been for a freak rainstorm that happened shortly after dawn, much of the valley and possibly half the Smokies would’ve been lost to the wildfires.

  I’d spent most of the morning at the Maryville hospital with Gran, Izzie, and Mom.

  Alder had been right. The ethereal plane had preserved her body well. The doctors had basically run a few tests, checked her vitals, and kept repeatedly asking, Why are you here again?

  We couldn’t tel
l them that she’d spent the last six years in a spiritual plane without food or water and simply surviving on astral energy.

  So she was discharged, and we took Mom back to Gran’s. Gran kept crying randomly, hugging her daughter and kissing her temple, while Mom didn’t seem to mind one bit. She would, occasionally, reach over and take my hand and squeeze it, but other than that, she seemed to respect this area of unknown between us.

  I was confident that in time Mom would feel like a mom to me, but she was still mostly a stranger. What I remembered of her was little, tainted by the trauma of the fire and dealing with the aftermath of amnesia. But what I knew of her now was that she was a remarkable woman, and what I wanted, more than anything, was to get to know her.

  Halfway through the day, Izzie and I agreed that we should both return to the town to check on the recovery efforts. Mrs. Farrafield had called twenty minutes ago to tell us that Ms. Tilly had opened her café to the families who’d lost their belongings in the fire, and we had decided to bring a carload of supplies, such as fresh towels, blankets, clothes, and some extra toiletries.

  Before I walked out the door, I noticed Mom curled up on the couch, staring at the slip of paper I’d given to her with Dad’s cell phone number on it.

  He was still on his business trip in Chicago, but I’d told her that if she called him, he’d come.

  “Mom?”

  She looked up, her eyes a little red from crying with Gran. “I don’t know if I can call him,” she confessed before I even had time to ask her what was wrong. “He’ll hate me. I left him with hardly any explanation. I thought I knew what was best and what I was doing. But I should’ve…I should’ve trusted him that we could’ve figured this out together.”

  Huh. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

  I took a seat next to her, setting aside the bag full of towels I’d been hauling to the car. “He won’t hate you. He’s never hated you. And while he didn’t believe the legend then, I think we can get him to believe it now.”

  Mom swept her finger across the number written on the paper, and her jaw clenched. As she got up to move toward the kitchen to call her husband, Izzie barreled into the living room, ripping open the screen door and letting it catch and close slowly behind her.

  “Brye, your not-boyfriend is here,” Izzie said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “Hurry up, or I’m leaving you behind with your not-fiancé.”

  I patted her on the shoulder with a laugh. “Thanks, Iz, I’ll just be a minute.”

  Alder sat on the porch steps, his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers loosely threaded together. They were covered in both soot and dirt, and as I sat down next to him, my heart sped up a little.

  We had so much to talk about, and yet all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him.

  “How did it go?” I asked, clearing my throat.

  “All of the earth god’s twigs have been planted in the worst spots of the fire. You can barely tell there even were fires anymore. It was amazing. Flowers and trees, and everything just sprang up. It would’ve taken me months to be able to heal the valley like that.”

  “That’s good. I can’t wait to see it all.”

  We fell into somewhat of an awkward silence and then we both began with…

  “Alder, look —”

  “Briony, listen—”

  It might’ve been funny if the subject matter wasn’t so terrifying. We had until sundown to decide how we were going to create an anchor for the fire god.

  Alder was shaking his head. “We have to find another way. I don’t want to lose you for a second time. I can’t do it again.”

  “About that, I’ve been thinking…” I said, tugging Alder’s bracelet on my wrist and twisting it, “and I might have an idea.”

  …

  By late evening, most of the firefighters, police cars, ambulances, film crews, and disaster relief teams from hospitals were gone and the locals were trying to salvage the last bit of their beloved festival they could.

  The bluegrass band was playing “Tennessee River and a Mountain Man” on the stage across the meadow, and tangy, smoky barbeque was being served on paper plates with large wedges of sweet corn and scalloped potatoes.

  Alder and I stood at the edge of the lake near the tower of wood for the bonfire that folks had brought in from all over the Smokies. I’d heard it was bigger this year than it had ever been. Apparently, the wildfires had not driven people away but brought them closer, wanting to show how much they loved the valley and how not even an act of god—a nature god, specifically—could crush their spirit.

  And their bonfire was evidence of that. It glowed bright white with their mana. All their spirits together in one offering.

  It wasn’t yet time to light the bonfire, but the sun was going down, and in order for my idea to work, it had to be now.

  “Are you ready?” Alder asked.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Kneeling to reach the bottom of the firewood pile, I threaded my hand through the grates to touch the dry wood. Mana flared under my fingertips, and I offered up my own mana like I’d done to the other gods. I wanted to touch every piece that had been hauled across the Smokies.

  This valley was ours, and we cherished it as much as these gods did. If we could give this same connection back to the fire god, then we could always anchor him here.

  White plumes of mana rose high on the pile of wood, almost like it was already burning with white fire instead of red. As I took a step back, Alder flicked his finger. A spark of flame skipped into the pile of wood and the fire took hold.

  And grew.

  The smoke of the bonfire was not thick and gray, but white and silvery, full of mana. Full of my own spirit and the spirit of everyone from these mountains.

  Shouts of surprise came from some of the festival goers, asking questions like, Was the bonfire supposed to have been started? Who lighted it?

  Alder and I just took a step back and watched the flames climb higher into the darkening sky. I held my breath as we waited for evidence my idea had worked to keep the ethereal plane tied to this valley.

  There were only a few at first, but soon the whole meadow was alight with wisps.

  Alder sighed with relief next to me, while his hand wrapped around mine.

  “So we ended up going to the festival after all,” Alder said quietly, just barely heard over the crackle of flames.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a nervous, happy laugh. “Yes, we sure did.”

  “Will you come next year?” he asked.

  I nodded to the bonfire. “Looks like I’ll have to.”

  Alder tugged my hand, enough to pull me around to face him. With the sun going down, his spirit form was beginning to show.

  “Alder, your hair—”

  “I’m not talking about for the valley. I mean for us. I need to know now, Brye. Watching you leave was the hardest thing I’d ever done. You weren’t just my best friend. You were a part of me.” He lowered his gaze then lifted it back up to hold mine. “But I understand if you want to leave, then—”

  Cutting him off, I wound my arms around his neck, lifting myself up on my tippy toes to match his height. “Are you kidding? For once, I found you. I’m not going anywhere.”

  From across the meadow I heard a few gleeful shouts of some local kids, calling in delight as they saw the first fireflies of the evening.

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  Acknowledgments

  First, thank you to Aunt May whose enchanting garden inspired this story. I miss you and Grandpa every day. Love to my brother and cousins with whom I caught fireflies on summer evenings in the mo
untains of West Virginia.

  Lydia, my stellar editor, you saw this book for what it could be, and I’m eternally grateful for it. Judi Lauren and the rest of the publishing team at Entangled Teen—Heather, Stacy, Curtis, and everyone else working behind the scenes—you’re all so wonderful in making these books come to life. And thank you to my agent, Frances Black of Literary Counsel.

  To my BR writers’ group who had to suffer through all the versions of this book, and to Melissa who read it first—y’all push me to be a better writer.

  Then, to my associate in Phandalin, thanks for all the matcha soy lattes.

  Thank you to Kourtney and Christa for friendships that last lifetimes.

  Finally, thank you to a family who gave me a childhood I’ll never forget and always treasure.

  About the Author

  Lindsey Duga is a middle grade and young adult writer with a passion for fantasy, science fiction, and basically any genre that takes you away from the real world. She wrote her first novel in college while she was getting her bachelor’s in Mass Communication from Louisiana State University.

  Other than writing and cuddling with her morkie puppy, Delphi, Lindsey loves catching up on the latest superhero TV show and practicing yoga.

  www.lindseyduga.com

  Turn the page to start reading the book Sarah Beth Durst calls “thrilling, hilarious, addictive, and awesome.”

  by SARA WOLF

  1

  The Starving

  Wolf and

  the Black Rose

  King Sref of Cavanos watches me with the deadened eyes of a raven circling a corpse—patient, waiting to devour me the second I let my guard down. I briefly debate telling him humans don’t taste all that good, until I remember normal girls don’t eat people. Or fake their way into royal courts.

  Normal, I think to myself. Completely and utterly normal. Bat your eyelashes. Laugh like you’ve got nothing in your head. Old God’s teeth, what in the flaming afterlife do normal girls do again?