Wildcat Fireflies (6 page)

Rumi sat on floor cushions and crossed his legs in an unnaturally limber configuration. “My apologies. You’re a starlet for me. Well, not in the current pop-culture sense
because they’re people, not even terribly glamorous anymore. I’ve created glasswork for their homes. This and that. But you? You’re amazing. A gift to all that is beautiful and right in the world. Honestly, I never thought it would come to fruition.” He started squinting again, drawing shapes in the air with his fingers like he was trying to capture a fly and outline my form at the same time.

“What would work?” Tens asked.

I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t feel threatened, like I might end up as a person-suit Rumi wore on special occasions. It felt more like I was watching a badly subtitled movie where I caught every other phrase but couldn’t manage to put them in any order.
What the hell does he keep rambling about?

“Sorry, sorry. I keep apologizing, don’t I? Please bear with me. You sure you don’t want anything?” He gracefully unbent, poured himself a huge mug of coffee, added more than half milk and what seemed like enough sugar cubes to build Giza’s pyramids. He sipped it and sat again. Mumbled to himself.

Finally, he nodded as if he’d figured out where to begin. “My grandparents, on Da’s side, came to this country from Wales. They came as children; their families were lifelong friends. They grew up together, married young, began having children. Thirteen.” He paused and smiled at my expression. “Only six survived to adulthood, my father being one of them.”

He shifted, sipped, continued. “My ma’s family came over from Ireland during the potato famine. Her mother
lost siblings, parents, and a husband. Started over here in the land of opportunity, in Chicago. My parents married at the turn of the last century.” He drank, and gazed past both of us for a moment, but when I opened my mouth to question he ignored me and continued. “We come from a people who knew story as an intangible power, a way of manipulating energy and reality. My ancestors measured time over generations, not in years. My people are intimate with death, not fearful of it, but accepting. My nain and taid, my grandparents, both loved a marvelous story.”

I seeped deeper into the chair, letting his words roll over me. He didn’t look nearly old enough for the dates he threw around, but my gut said he was friend, not foe. I felt Tens exhale tension behind me, not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough I knew he felt it too.

Rumi’s eyes teared up. “My da worked the mines; Ma raised us kids. Da died in his fifties from black lung, but Ma, she lived to be in her nineties. She told us stories as kids of the fey folk and mermaids and selkies, of battles of good and evil. She would have made a wonderful baird of the elden days. The doctors told us it was Alzheimer’s at the end.”

He shook his head. “I’m not so sure. She had what the medical establishment called hallucinations, delusions. She was never agitated or upset; her visions brought her joy and comfort. I started to act as a scribe; her words were something to hang on to in the years ahead without her. One day she woke up lucid, the common sense back in her
eyes. She was grounded in this world for a brief time, but she grabbed my hand and hung on with the strength of a young man and told me, ‘Open the windows, I need to let the light in.’ ”

Open windows? A shiver quivered up my spine and made goose bumps rise.

He continued. “When I raised the sash she began singing a lullaby I’d never heard before. For a week, the only words I could understand were requests to open the window. I did. I finally did and she settled.

“When she died I found scrolls, scraps of drawings and paintings, tucked into a box that must have come from Wales, and a little book written in ink, from Ireland. She must have put them together when Da passed. None of my brothers or sisters are what you’d call inclined toward difficult explanation. They like neat and tidy, technologically sound explanations for the world. I’ve always seen beyond; I’ve traveled and lived on every continent, experienced other realms with shamans and Buddhist monks. I’m an omnist. We don’t see much eye to eye. Ma said I was of the ‘home kind.’ ” He stopped, lost in thought.

After a few minutes of silence Tens asked, “What does this have to do with us?”

Rumi smiled but scolded, “Patience, my friend. I’m distilling generations into five minutes.”

I reached behind me for Tens’s hand, expecting him to react badly to the chastisement. Instead, he chuckled around an exhalation and pulled a second ivy chair next to mine. “Sorry.” He gave the word ungrudgingly.

Rumi shook off the apology and continued. “The sketches were of human beings entwined in windows, windows with scenery and watercolor miniatures of these balls. I’d heard of the English Witch Ball, of course.”

Or not
. “Which is what?” I asked.

“The lore says the bright colors attract mischievous evil spirits and then trap them within the sphere. Other stories say the colors and light refraction are repellent to the darkness, and evil can’t enter an establishment with these hanging as protection. Either way, they’re good to have around. Those who could afford them brought them when they came to the New World, or went on any significant journey.”

“Okay.” I nodded.

“But the fascinating part in Ma’s box happened when I started to find these bits of other traditions that said these balls weren’t about evil spirits at all, but signals to angels, and their kindred, that they were welcome to rest and find solace within the walls. My family’s writings said the Witch Balls attracted the angels of ‘Good Death’; they signaled to the light that darkness was repelled there. That the window between life and death was always open. And served as a warning of Bad Death by darkening before the demons arrived.”

He leapt and picked up a ball, and brought it over to me. He held it out, but I was almost afraid to touch it. Tens took it.

“See the bare winter tree in there?” Rumi traced the pattern along the outside of another ball.

“Sure,” Tens grunted. I nodded.

“That design is the Tree of Life. It’s an important differential. This is what gives it the power to signal.” He paused, staring into the ball. “I think. I’m making that part up, but it’s my best hypothesis. And mayhap something to do with the intent, the incantation said while creating the Stone.”

“Like calling Batman?” I snorted.

“Maybe. You tell me?” His expression was reverent.

I hated to disappoint him, but I said, “I don’t think so.”

His expression went from excited to crestfallen. “Well, I started trying it. Figuring out how to get exactly that design in each one. They don’t all take. And people love them. More so than any plain, ordinary glass ball I’ve ever made. Take fishing floats—I thought people liked those until I started blowing these. They gravitate to them. But you, you reflect the light, refract and radiate it; you glow. These balls luster in your presence.”

“It’s warm,” Tens whispered to me.

I reached out and cradled the ball in my palms. “Like a heartbeat.”

Tens nodded.

“Did you notice? It was like strings of Christmas lights being plugged in when you arrived outside the shop,” Rumi added.

“Is that how you knew?” I asked.

“Like an early warning system. That’s the first time. But I’ve been collecting anecdotes from other artists. There are multitudes of bits and pieces going back to Rome,
China, and further, to the beginning of the art form itself. So are you?”

“Are we what?”

“A Window Light? An angel? Good Death? And a Guardsman?”

M
y favorite bedroom at DG faced east, so it filled each dawn with early-morning sunlight. The walls, swathed in a pale green wallpaper, reminded me of a cross between photographs of the Caribbean Sea and mint chocolate chip ice cream. We called it the Green Room. All the rooms had names.

When I first arrived, before I knew any better, I thought the Green Room would be my bedroom. Then I learned the
truth. Kids slept in the old servants’ quarters in the attic, under the eaves. It was all very Grimm.

The bedroom furniture was slick glossy white, distressed shabby chic at first glance, simply shabby upon further inspection. Yellowing lace curtains hung on the floor-to-ceiling windows, and faded Degas ballerina prints, their edges curling, adorned the walls. The bed was a lovely double with four posts curved like balustrades. I slept in that bed for three nights years ago; Mr. Draper slept there for the moment. At least until he died.

A little desk for schoolwork and an enormous antique dollhouse were both pushed into a back corner. I dusted them, but no one played or did homework there. It was all for show.

My clothes were not stored in the armoire, nor folded in any of the bureau drawers. My stuff lived in the secondhand suitcase I arrived with.

The Train Room was decorated for little boys, with a twelve-car train that used to run around the ceiling, but now languished, gathering dust. The Horse Room’s wall mural of hilly pastures and colts frolicking with their mothers seemed particularly cruel to all of us without parents. The Blue Room was decked out in enchanted undersea decor. And the Woods Room was done up like a rain forest of flora and fauna.

All six of the “kid” bedrooms were technically assigned to an inmate, but we weren’t allowed to settle into any of them. The decoration was purely for the sake of appearances: a stranger might think we were very well cared for and DG met all the requirements of the law. At night, though, the kids
piled on top of each other, in sleeping bags in the attic. In the winters, we used smuggled-in electric blankets and space heaters that broke house rule number four. Mistress never came up here, and freezing to death was appealing only to some of us. We’d learned long ago, and often the hard way, that appearances deceived.

When our social worker, Ms. Asura, came, we were not allowed to tell her about the rooms or much of anything. If we mentioned the sleeping situation, Mistress wove elaborate tales about an overflow of elderly patients, not lasting more than a day or so. Ms. Asura never asked to see the attic or the bedrooms. She might pull out an official-looking form and caution us to be certain we wanted to file a complaint. If anyone ever did, I didn’t know. Fear was stagnating, paralyzing, and we were trapped here.

Sometimes, when I sat by the bedside of the elderly, I wondered if any of the guests thought they were back in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at trains and stuffed animals and trappings of innocence. Most of the elderly who came here weren’t conscious; thanks to Mistress’s prevalent use of medication most spent their final days in a drugged stupor.

Of the kids currently at DG, I was the eldest. Nicole was closest to my age, a few years younger, and she’d arrived over a year ago. Her heart-shaped face had a clear, porcelain complexion, a strong chin, straight brows, and peach-blushed cheeks. Her eyes were caramel and matched her hair perfectly. She was tiny and much shorter than me, with a delicate, fragile-looking bone structure. She could lift twice my body weight and worked harder than anyone to make my life
as easy as possible. I counted my blessings every day she was still here, that she’d been assigned to DG.

Bodie had arrived on Halloween; at barely seven, he was the youngest. He tugged at my emotions as if he were my little brother, if not by blood, then by heart. I did my best not to let my feeling show; Mistress would punish both of us for any visible attachment.

Sema behaved like a shadow of a girl. She rarely spoke, wrapped herself in the curtains, and stared out the windows with her cheeks mashed against the glass. She wore the same outfit every day, a tunic with Disney princesses on it and leggings; I snuck it out to wash it as often as I could. Nicole promised to find a replacement in a larger size because Sema’s milk chocolate belly was beginning to ooze around the waistband. She was plump and sturdy and hated bathing. Just to get her wet daily, I’d finally taught her to swim in the creek last summer, which she actually enjoyed.

January usually brought a deluge of new kids and elderly. This year had been different, with a total of only ten inmates starting the New Year together. Mistress liked having all the beds full, all of the time, and the attic crammed with slave labor, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see our numbers swell three to four times the current occupancy by Valentine’s Day.

Kids might come for only a day or a week, maybe a few months, but if Mistress decided we were a good fit, then we stayed until our sixteenth birthday. Her decisions appeared arbitrary and illogical, designed to inflict the most upset and pain. She divided siblings and friends.

No one stayed until a legal age of eighteen. I couldn’t see
a pattern, a rhyme or reason, to why some kids qualified for the misery here while others were adopted out by unseen but wholly perfect families. Ms. Asura reassured me the few times I’d asked about placement elsewhere that this was exactly where I should be. She hinted that my history made me unworthy of finding refuge. She refused to give me too many details about the other kids because it might upset me. When I asked about Kirian, a boy I’d loved with all my soul, she told me I’d see him again soon.

“Come on, Juliet, another story. Please!” Bodie rubbed at his eyes, fighting sleep, while the other littlies dropped off one at a time into slumber.

I told happy tales. I weaved golden threads of harmony and love and warmth. No evil. No darkness. The good guys always won. The endings always told of wonderful new beginnings, and a real family usually played a central role. My neck stiff and aching, I arched my back to try to relieve the pain. I felt like bits of me were breaking off and dying each day; I had to find a way to ease up. “Okay, one more, but then lights out.” I racked my brain for more creativity, more imagination. I felt like I ran out of it too often, maybe because I had so little experience with the good and the happy.