Beyond the Firefly Field (21 page)

The tunnel was wide enough for only two abreast to enter the chamber at the same time. SeeLee and Penny were side by side, and Penny let out a short scream when something dropped onto SeeLee's shoulder.

“Cheela! You shouldn't scare Penny like that.”

“Nee,” Cheela agreed, and jumped over to Penny's shoulder.

The group separated. The archers filed past and flew to the door they had come in. MarJoReAn carried Kast in her arms as they said goodbye, then disappeared into the tunnel on the other side of the waterfall, taking Cheela with them.

“Follow me. My friends are waiting outside to take you back to the branch where the fireflies gather,” SeeLee said.

“Isn't there a tunnel to get there from inside the tree?” Karl asked.

“The Old Ones have insects working there. The insects are carrying sand into the tree for some reason,” SeeLee replied.

They crossed the chamber and were nearing the door at the end of the tunnel. The floor sank a bit, and the door swung open by itself.

“Why didn't it do that when we first came in and wanted to escape the attacking churla?” Paul asked.

“You were still standing on the floor plate, and it couldn't rise up to reset,” SeeLee answered.

“I'll have to make one of these for the tree house,” Karl mused.

Once on the branch outside, the fairy twins, along with AnDrin and NarVan, greeted them. The fairies swooshed them through the air to the branch where they had become small.

“I have something for you,” NarVan said to Clayton when they landed.

Clayton looked at NarVan's outstretched hand. “Awesome!” Clayton cheered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his pocket knife to trade for the wooden one in NarVan's hand. NarVan's knife was identical, except that it was made of wood. It even had the scissors, and a crest of lighter wood was set into the darker, reddish-wood side plate.

“That's so cool!” Karl said as Clayton pulled out the fire-blackened blade.

“It's as sharp as the steel blade,” Clayton admitted. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” NarVan replied.

“Here are your shoulder bags,” SeeLee said to Clayton and Penny as she handed the carry-alls to her friends. Clayton put the wooden knife into his pocket and took his bag from SeeLee. She also presented the others with their wooden boxes and knife-filled sashes. The gathering of fairies waved goodbye and flew off to another branch.

One by one the boys said goodbye to SeeLee before running down the branch and through the firefly gathering.

“We'll see you again soon,” Penny assured SeeLee with a hug. She took a deep breath, then ran down the branch to follow her friends. Before she knew it, she was standing in the firefly field in her normal, human size.

“Hey! Where did my bag go?” Penny demanded as she joined the others in the firefly field.

“And our boxes?”

“And our knife sashes?”

Everyone looked at their empty hands, then searched the ground, hoping to find their treasures in the long grass.

“I guess they stayed small,” Clayton remarked sadly. “I'll probably have to get a magnifying glass to find the tiny wooden knife that's lost somewhere in the bottom of my pocket.”

“If it's not in your hand, you're probably not going to find it,” Karl advised.

Clayton noticed a solid curtain of fireflies between them and the fairy tree. He wanted to say goodbye to whatever fairies he could see, but saw none.

Quickly recovering from the loss of her fairy-made items, Penny continued to talk nonstop as they headed for home. No one paid attention to the now mundane lightshow the fireflies put on every night. No one listened to Penny, as each relived what they had just experienced.

Penny once again described the sunlight-catching crystals, and the glowing village of the Old Ones. “Why were there archers in the tunnel, Clayton?” She had to shout to get his attention.

“What?”

“Weren't you listening?”

“I guess not.”

“Why were the archers in the tunnel?”

“SeeLee's mother had a strange, worried look on her face and called for them right before we went to look for you. I don't see how there could be anything dangerous in the tree, though,”

Clayton replied as a new worry about an overheard conversation between SanDroMonEnLor and SeeLee rose to the forefront of his mind. Their words hinted at a foreboding of changes to come. He dared not discuss it with the others until he talked with the Old One to find out more about it.

They debated the matter of possible danger, but Clayton remained silent as they walked the trail back home. The rest of the walk was filled with talk of how strange it was being in the air or wondering how small they were inside the fairy tree. Once again, it would be hard to fall asleep that night.

Getch would also have a hard time falling asleep. His mind raced with the possibilities this tree-root escape tunnel represented. He slowly climbed down to the caves that now seemed even more annoying to live in. He must decide how his escape root would benefit him the most before telling Bruck, the grimling leader and overlord of all the creatures. Bruck would be overjoyed to be able to attack the dark, fairy guards from the front and back. Getch would certainly become Warlord, and lead the thousands of grimlings, ogres, orcs, trolls, goblins, and gargoyles in the fairy slaughter. It would be a just revenge for those unfairly imprisoned. No, Getch would not be sleeping anytime soon.

The False Ones

A
t the end of a second day of rain, everyone met at the tree house. They had gone to school in the rain. They had come home from school in the rain. They had done chores in the rain. They ate supper and did homework while it rained. Finally, they walked to the tree house in the rain.

Several flickering candles gave the tree house a welcoming glow as Clayton and Penny walked into the small room and saw everybody already settled in.

“Did I hear you guys talking about falling in your dreams?” Clayton asked, adding his and Penny's ponchos to the wet pile growing in the corner.

“Yes, you did. We all woke up several times during the last two nights after levitating dreams, feeling like we were falling. This is all starting to get annoying. Fairies are taking over our lives,” Ron said, summarizing the group's feelings.

“My dreams are always about SeeLee leading me high in the air, then dropping me because she had to catch Kast,” Penny agreed tiredly.

"Maybe we shouldn't go to the fairy tree for a while,” Clayton suggested. “We have to spend more time in our real-world life. I can hardly pay attention in school, and I'm falling behind with my homework.”

“Me too,” the others chorused.

“Well, half the time I can't pay attention because I'm thinking about Wendy,” Clayton admitted. If he only knew what Wendy was thinking, his worries would be over and he'd be feeling pretty good about himself.

“Are you ever going to ask Wendy to come out here? I'll ask her for you,” Penny offered.

“I'll handle it myself, thanks.”

“Here's some of that real world stuff,” Karl proclaimed as he unrolled a drawing on the table. It was a sketch of a wood burner. The burner consisted of a small, steel oil drum the twins had in the back of their barn. It balanced on a short, steel table Karl located behind his garage, and was topped with a stovepipe from an old wood burner discarded by Clayton's parents.

“That looks like something the fairies would make if they were human,” Brian commented.

After some discussion, the group decided only to make use of the old, discarded wood burner if they could find a way to get the heavy thing up into the tree house. Of course, the spiral stairway would have to be built first.

“Yes!” Clayton proclaimed. “This is exactly the kind of real world stuff that we have to do to get our lives back from the fairies.”

“You make it sound like a horror movie,” Penny complained.

“Hey! Maybe it really is,” Brian asserted with enthusiasm. “The fairies start out being real nice to us. They get us to go to the bottom of the tree where we're really small. Then they trick us into going into a jail cell and lock the door behind us. That's when we become food for a horrible monster.”

“Cool movie!” Paul agreed.

“Get real,” Clayton admonished.

“I can't. The fairies have control of my life,” Brian sarcastically lamented.

They fell silent after that, each trying to figure out how much control the fairies really had over them. Rain hitting the roof had its usual soothing, lulling effect, and they listened to its patter before anyone spoke again.

“What do you think the Old Ones will do about the warnings we gave them?” Brian finally asked.

“Whatever they do, I hope they don't take a hundred years to decide,” Clayton answered with a bite of sarcasm. “They don't seem to grasp the concept of running out of time, or even of time itself.”

“Except for right now,” Karl reminded him. “Living for six thousand years could do that to you, I guess.”

“Speaking of time, it's too bad you forgot the watches,” Phil said.

“I can probably figure out how long we were at the fairy tree. We got home at quarter after ten,” Karl began. “It took us about forty-five minutes to walk the trail. So, we probably left the tree at nine thirty. We probably got there around seven thirty. I figure we were actually in the tree for about two hours.”

“It felt more like four or five hours to me,” Ron said.

“So does two hours in a dentist's chair,” Brian argued. “I'm getting tired of time warp talk. Dealing with the size warp was hard enough.”

“It took forever to walk to the lake and back,” Penny added.

“We must have explored fifty pieces of furniture and spent five or ten minutes looking at each one,” Paul reminded everyone, slightly exaggerating.

“We spent a lot of time with the carved panels and SeeLee's history lesson,” Ron contributed.

“Then there were the stories that SanDroMonEnLor told,” Phil added.

“Together, with everything else we did on the branches,” Clayton joined in, “it must equal a time warp.”

Silence fell over the tree house. The beating rain and the getting-no-where-fast banter stopped at the same time. Everyone was lost in thought, trying to figure out whether they had spent only two hours as Karl claimed, or if it had been much longer.

Finally, Karl broke the quiet. “SanDroMonEnLor told me that the more attention put on something that's moving, the more it appears to slow down. Maybe the excitement of being with the fairies gave us the energy to pay more attention to everything, so even time slowed down. Or maybe we just paid four hours' worth of attention in two hours.”

“That almost makes sense,” Clayton mused before they all fell silent again to consider this latest theory.

Clayton knew what four hours of passing time felt like, and he knew he felt four hours' worth of panic in just a few minutes when he couldn't find Penny. He was sure they wouldn't get home until one in the morning, and he was really surprised to find that it was only a little after ten. He was almost convinced the time warp existed, and he definitely knew the fairies gave the passing of time little consideration. He also knew he and his friends must save the fairies from the modern-day dangers and threats of which the fairies knew little. Even as he tried to envision how many fairies it would take to levitate a bulldozer, he spoke up.

“We're going to have to save the fairies ourselves.” Clayton's voice sliced through the peaceful and contemplative silence filling the tree house. Everyone was lost in their own world, and his grating words jerked them back to reality.

“Oh, yeah?” Karl inquired. “Are we going to build a booby trap for a bulldozer?”

“If we have to,” Clayton shot back. “And we have to stop Mike and Farmer Hawkins, too,” he insisted.

“Hey! I know how we can stop Mike at least,” Penny said, her eyes lighting up.

“Okay,” Karl said hesitantly. “How?”

“We make a movie. We take all my dolls and put wings on them,” she started.

“Yeah!” Ron interrupted, his eyes catching the sparkle.

The others also figured it out in the next instant.

“We get him to follow us…” Clayton started.

“After he overhears us…” Paul interrupted.

“We bring a video camera…” Phil added for his brother.

“And let the news crew Mike hopefully brings…” Brian started.

“Catch us filming a movie about fairies!” they all finished together.

“We are
so
good!” Ron declared.

“Yeah!”
they all agreed with a cheer.

“What do you mean, we? It was my idea!” Penny blurted.

“Okay, okay!” Ron relented. “Oh wonderful Penny, Queen of the Universe,” he whispered with feigned awe while deeply bowing in her direction.

“If we're that good, how are we going to stop a developer?” Clayton asked, being less enthusiastic than the rest as he clearly recalled his bulldozer nightmare.

“We know what to do about developers,” Brian said confidently, then looked at Ron.

“Yeah, we do!” Ron quickly agreed. “In the city, there were on-going battles between developers and neighborhood groups that didn't want them changing the area. The neighborhood committee would get part of the land declared as a protected wetland. Or they would find an animal, bird, or plant on the endangered species list and get the land designated as a protected habitat. Sometimes they would boycott or picket the company, and things got really nasty.”

“Half the land this developer wants is already a wetland,” Karl said. “He's going to leave it as such or make it even wetter with a man-made bigger lake, so we can't stop him that way.”

“I guess we'll just have to find a species to save,” Clayton concluded.

“That sounds like another real-world, time-consuming project. We're going to have to comb the whole area day and night until we find one,” Karl proclaimed with little hope in his voice.

“What about those neon-bright, bluish-green dragonflies that make a heart shape with their bodies when they land next to each other?' Brian suggested. “You know, the ones we saw when we were building the trail.”

“Oh, I love those dragonflies. They're so pretty,” Penny gushed. “Let's protect the dragonflies. They're so cute when they make heart shapes with each other. Their bodies curl up to make half of the heart, and when they touch they make a complete heart.”

“I've never seen them downstate, on TV, or in a book,” Brian finished.

“I wonder why they do that,” Ron thought.

“It means they are boyfriend and girlfriend forever,” Penny decided confidently.

“Hey!” Phil piped up, “let's ask our biology teacher.”

“And go online at the city library,” Karl added. The library was one sure place the Internet worked in the area.

They all felt a sense of relief with an action plan developing and another problem practically solved. The kids began to feel smug about protecting the fairies and whatever else they could find that needed protecting.

“What are we going to do about Farmer Hawkins?” Ron queried, ending the smug-fest.

After a brief silence, Penny bravely offered the simplest solution, “Let's go talk to him.”

“You go talk to him,” Brian said quickly. “For all we know, he's part of the horror movie, and he's going to kill us all with his pitchfork or chainsaw.”

“Penny, Karl, and I will go talk to him,” Clayton said hesitantly after the kids considered being stabbed with a pitchfork in a PG13-rated horror movie. The expressions on Brian, Ron, and the twins' faces changed to relief.

“He can't be as mean as people say. We only see him when he's chasing us,” Clayton added halfheartedly.

Another silence filled the room. Knowing about fairies was indeed taking its toll on all of them.

“That was so weird how we were just standing on the air,” Karl mused after a few minutes of silence.

“It's even weirder in my dreams,” Clayton added. “At least when it was actually happening, there was no falling involved.”

“I wonder if I could jump up and down on the air,” Karl mused again.

“I almost jumped up and down laughing when I saw Mike's face in school today,” Ron said.

“Yeah,” Paul agreed. “Did you see the bump on his lip? There were two other lumps on his face. He must have gotten stung a half-dozen times. To make Mike's day worse, Wendy gave him a smack down in the hall, telling him to stop calling her his girlfriend. She insisted she never was and never would be.”

With this bit of news, an invisible burden seemed to lift from Clayton's shoulders. He would have to hurry and invite her to the tree house before some other guy moved in on her.

“I saw lumps on his friends, too, but at least nobody died,” Clayton added.

“Good. Maybe Mike won't go into the woods so much anymore,” Penny said hopefully.

“Well, we need him to make the trip at least one more time,” Clayton reminded her.

The kids kept busy the rest of the week with school, autumn chores, and creating the “movie star” fairies. Penny gathered thirty dolls to use as actors, many borrowed from friends. She even tried to convince her friend Rose to come to the tree house, but Rose wouldn't go. While Penny loved hanging out with the boys, it would be nice to have another girl around. So, by herself, she fashioned tunic costumes of green and yellow fabric for the dolls to wear. They were nothing more than ponchos tied at the waist, but she decorated them with beads and glitter to make the dolls resemble the Hollywood version of fairies.

It took Clayton, the twins, and Karl all their free time to make fairy wings. Pipe cleaners were used for the wing outline, with yellow paint and gold glitter added to make them look real. Fuzz was scraped from pipe cleaners, and the wires were used to attach the dolls to tree branches. Transparent and colored plastic pieces were glued to the wing frame to craft the wing membrane. The more wings they made, the better they got at gluing colors together in swirling patterns.

Each night the guys tied their creations to a tree branch close to Clayton's house to stage a rehearsal for the big show. They took turns shining a flashlight through the wings. From a distance, the manufactured wings were quite impressive and
almost
looked like the real fairy wings. But, while some were very pretty, they were nothing like the real fairies. By Friday, the doll actors were ready for their big movie debut. For the first time, the kids enjoyed their respite from visiting the fairy tree, as more normal activities filled their days.