On Shadowed Wings (An Ash Grove Short Story) Page 4

  “What’s that?” exclaimed Jim beside her.

  Tucked away well behind a building that Gail knew to be the dining hall, a faint circle of light glowed. It looked like hundreds of tiny stars clustered in a ring. Gail felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She thought of the Celtic legends of faery, of moonlit dances by the fair folk that left circles in the dew the next day.

  “Is that a construction site, down where all those fireflies are?” asked Jim, bringing her back to earth. “I think I see a bulldozer.”

  “That must be the old amphitheater that Dr. Sumner said they were tearing down.” Her heart thudded under her ribs. If they’d already started digging up the old stone structure, there might be pits where a child could fall and hurt herself. Could even be smothered by a cave-in.

  And what Jim had called fireflies didn’t look right. If they were lightning bugs, she’d never seen them act that way. They weren’t that organized. A shiver crept up her spine and made her shoulders tense.

  Jim had gotten his cell phone out. “Dr. Sumner?” he said. “It looks like something’s going on in the amphitheater. Gail and I can meet—Gail, wait up!”

  She was already running down the hill toward the lights. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew that if something happened to Joy and she could have prevented it, she’d never forgive herself. Rocks and twigs jabbed painfully at the soles of her feet, and her tulle skirt caught on branches and ripped, but she kept running. She pictured Joy’s sweet, serious little face, saying, Gail told me.

  When she emerged from the trees and onto the top level of the broad stone steps, what she saw brought her to a halt.

  Joy sat cross-legged in the grassy center of the old amphitheater, surrounded by tiny moving lights. Not fireflies, but butterflies, whose pale wings reflected the moonlight as they hovered around the little girl.

  Jim drew up beside her, and she silently pointed.

  The mass of butterflies grew denser until they seemed to form the shape of a woman, solid white like a ghost. It had to be an illusion, but Gail instantly recognized the long, curly hair, the oval face, even the smile. How could a bunch of butterflies possibly replicate Anna Sumner? Gooseflesh prickled her arms as, drawn in iridescence against the night, the white figure seemed to kneel next to Joy and put her arms around her.

  The illusion must have been visible to Joy too, for the little girl looked up at the phantom face and smiled. Gail’s breath caught, and any notion of rushing in to draw Joy away vanished. Vision or visitation, whatever it was, Joy looked happier than she’d been for a year now. The white woman seemed to kiss the little girl’s forehead.

  A gasp nearby made her head whip around.

  Dr. Sumner had caught up with them and stood breathing hard at the top tier of the amphitheater. “Joy!” he shouted. Then he plunged down the steps, and in seconds the illusion shattered as the cloud of butterflies dispersed, the tiny bright forms fluttering off in all directions. Alighting in the trees, on the ground, they starred the darkness like fairy lights.

  He dropped to his knees next to Joy and hugged her tight. “You scared me,” he said gently. “Going off alone like this. Why would you do such a thing?”

  The amphitheater’s perfect acoustics meant that the little girl’s soft voice came to Gail’s ears as if she were standing next to her. “I had to,” she said simply. “If I hadn’t, I would always have wondered.”

  Her father held her close and kissed the top of her head. “I should have been with you,” he said, half to himself. “Next time ask me first, kittycat. Why didn’t you just get me to bring you?”

  “You would have said you were busy.” Her voice was wistful. “You always do.”

  He shut his eyes briefly, in pain or guilt. “From now on I won’t,” he promised, with new purpose. “Things will be different from here on out. No matter how busy I get, I’ll never be too busy for you.”

  Joy’s freckled face beamed, and she threw her arms around his neck. The sight of father and daughter holding each other so tightly made Gail smile. But then something else caught her attention.

  Some of the butterflies had come to rest on the branches of trees at the edge of the wood, like ghostly dogwood blossoms. But others were on the wing, flying lazily off in all directions. Gail laughed in astonished delight as some of the lovely creatures came fluttering near her and Jim. She reached out to catch one in her cupped hands, feeling the delicate edges of its wings just grazing her palms, and carefully opened her hands so that she could see the beautiful bright creature.

  Its luminous white wings bore faint markings like the surface of the moon, but the light they cast was so brilliant it was like a tiny sun. It fluttered there in the shelter of her hands for a moment, as she scarcely dared to breathe, and then it was off again into the darkness.

  Beside her she heard a long intake of breath, and when she looked around she found Jim gazing at her with an expression that made her insides flutter. Butterflies in my stomach, she thought. Butterflies everywhere…

  She thought she heard him mutter, “I would always have wondered.” Then thinking stopped as Jim took her face between his hands and kissed her.

  Sensory fragments winged through her mind: warm, persuasive lips. The feeling of t-shirt fabric under her hands, and strong muscle beneath. The scent of spicy aftershave and rowan blossom and night air. A breathless feeling as if she were falling, with only his hands to hold her.

  And then a tugging at her skirt, and a fatherly voice saying, “Excuse me, kids.”

  She broke away from Jim, her heartbeat hammering at the base of her throat, her eyes opening to meet his. He looked as dazed and delighted as she felt. Almost reluctantly she dropped her hands from his chest and looked around to find Dr. Sumner and Joy standing there.

  It was Joy who had tugged at her skirt. Her other hand was clasped firmly in her father’s. “Dad and I are going home now,” she informed Gail, and Dr. Sumner smiled at his daughter’s self-important air.

  “Thank you both so much for finding her,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done without your help. I was at my wits’ end.”

  “You would have found her eventually,” said Gail, since Jim didn’t look as if he could form sentences yet.

  “Perhaps. The fact is, I haven’t been very present for Joy since… since her mother died. And that needs to change.” Joy was leaning against him now, her head starting to nod, and he freed his hand from hers and stooped to pick her up. She nestled into his arms sleepily, her eyes drifting closed as she snuggled her head onto his shoulder. “I’d better get her to bed now,” he said more softly. “We’ve both had an exhausting evening. Thank you again, Gail. Jim.”

  “I’m glad we could help,” said Gail. “Good night.”

  Jim finally came to life. “You’re welcome,” he said to the professor’s retreating back. But that seemed to be the limit of his conversation.

  Then something struck her. “Did you get any pictures?” she asked. “I hope you got the proof you needed of those butterflies. Moths. Whatever they were.”

  A stricken look came over Jim’s face, erasing the rapt daze of a moment before. “I forgot,” he said, staring at the camera suspended from his neck as if it were an alien technology. “Completely and totally forgot.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed. “And that was the one thing you really needed to do.”

  He looked up from his sad contemplation of the camera, and she felt that quick internal flutter again as his eyes locked onto hers. “Not the only thing,” he said slowly. “Maybe it wasn’t even that important after all.”

  She felt suddenly awkward, and busied herself smoothing down the rumpled layers of her tulle skirt so that she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “Well, there’s always next year. Now that you know that, you know, they’re here. But right now I think I’ll head home myself and get out of this dress.” Too late she realized how that might have sounded. Hastily, she added, “I mean, I’d like to chang
e into something more comfortable.” Crap! What was wrong with her? “I mean…”

  “So you’re not going back to the dance?” he asked, before she found a third way to embarrass herself.

  She shook her head. She had no desire to resume her fight with Darryl. The idea of having to explain what had happened this evening—the search for Joy, at least—was draining. And irritating. She suddenly realized how much justifying of herself she had to do with Darryl, and she was tired of it.

  “Darryl can fend for himself,” she said shortly. “I want to go home.” Where she could think. Which she found she was having difficulty doing so close to Jim, so aware of him now. His lips, which she still felt with dizzying vividness on her own. His hands with their deft blunt fingers, which she could still feel lightly cradling her face, as if she herself were some delicate butterfly that he wanted to hold without crushing.

  A cloud passed over the moon, and all around them the bright spots in the darkness began winking out. Their magical brightness must only have been temporary, something that only lasted when they were first hatched. Or a reflection of the bright moonlight. As one by one the glowing butterflies went dark, she sighed involuntarily at the loss of such loveliness.

  But it had served its purpose—hadn’t it? Bringing a lonely little girl the illusion that her mother was still present, still watching over her.

  If it had been an illusion.

  It was too much to process, especially with her mind still whirling and her lips still tingling from Jim’s kiss. Maybe in the morning, when the world would seem more logical, she could think about what had happened here. But not now.

  “Good night,” she said. “Oh, wait, your jacket—”

  “Keep it,” he said absently. “Gail, listen, I—”

  “I’ve got to go.” She would do something crazy if she didn’t get away now. Run wild, or turn cartwheels, or fling herself on him to kiss him again. “We’ll talk soon, okay? But later.” She scarcely knew what she was babbling, only that she had caught up her skirts and was darting away toward the parking lot, sensing that Jim watched her without once looking away. She felt like Cinderella fleeing the ball. But the magic had already ended for the night, and without midnight having struck.

  * * *

  It was afternoon when he found her the next day. She was sitting on one of the large rocks at the river’s edge, where the canopy of tree branches fended off the sun and cast a tranquil shade. The river chuckled by softly, foaming white around the rocks in its course. The rushing of the water was a soothing background for her thoughts.

  “Mind if I join you?” Jim asked. His eyes looked a little heavy-lidded, and she wondered if he’d had as little sleep as she had. But besides that he looked fantastic. He was wearing a blue chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and she thought she’d never seen sexier forearms in her life.

  But she couldn’t let herself start thinking that way—okay, keep thinking that way—until they got some things settled. She scooched over to make room for him next to her on the rock. “Dr. Sumner said he didn’t need me today,” she said, even though he hadn’t asked. “We had a standing arrangement for me to sit with Joy Sunday afternoon, but he’s taking her to the park himself. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot less babysitting this summer than I’d expected.”

  “So what happened last night really did get to him,” Jim reflected. “I’m glad for Joy’s sake—and for mine.”

  She wasn’t ready to pursue that angle just yet. “Do you think what we thought we saw was really there?” she asked instead. “That some kind of—of magic brought Anna back to Joy for a moment?”

  He plucked a blade of grass and turned it thoughtfully between his fingers. “Magic or something close to it,” he said. “Joy and her dad seemed to believe it, and that’s the important thing. You knew her mom—did it look like her, last night?”

  She nodded. “So you think Dr. Sumner saw Anna?” she wondered aloud. “Or do you think he just saw Joy surrounded by butterflies?”

  “Either way, it seems like it helped. If he’s going to be there for her now a lot more than he was. So whether it was or wasn’t magic may not really be important.”

  She envied him for being able to talk about the strangeness so matter-of-factly. She felt awkward and lame, but at the same time it was too important not to say. “I’d never experienced anything magic before,” she said. “But I think last night was some kind of supernatural thing. It felt… different. Not like everyday life, but like something really unusual and—and wonderful was going on. You know?”

  “I definitely felt like I was in the presence of something extraordinary,” he said gravely, but when she looked into his eyes she knew he meant something else.

  “It felt so unreal,” she said. He could interpret that any way he wanted to.

  But he didn’t take the out. “Kissing you felt real,” he said quietly. “Felt fantastic, if you want to know. Pretty much the highlight of my week, honestly.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe even the whole year.”

  The pleasure of hearing that warmed her cheeks, but she felt weirdly shy. She looked out over the river so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. Farther out where the water was calm, a heron stood gracefully on one slender leg. “I decided I’m not going to California,” she said finally. “I broke up with Darryl.” That had been an uncomfortable conversation, but at least it was over with.

  “So your wish was granted.”

  When he spoke quietly like that, his voice sounded like chocolate wrapped in velvet, and she had to resist the impulse to just close her eyes and let herself sink into it. “My wish?” she repeated, stalling.

  “You made a wish on the butterfly, didn’t you?”

  I wish I knew what to do, she had thought as the butterfly shed its reflected light on her sheltering hands. About the Sumners, about college. About Darryl. And about Jim. “Yeah,” she said reluctantly. “I kind of wanted some guidance about a few things.”

  “I think you knew already what you wanted to do,” he said. “About one thing, at least.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we first met, you were planting something in Dr. Sumner’s yard.” He paused meaningfully. “A butterfly bush.”

  She didn’t follow. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, there was that folklore Dr. Sumner was talking about. Maybe on some level you were thinking about breaking up with Darryl. And if a butterfly was attracted by the bush you were planting and landed on you… well, it might seem like a sign. If you thought you wanted one.”

  She stared at him. The crazy thing was, it actually made a kind of sense. Except that she wasn’t superstitious.

  But maybe she’d wanted to be. Sometimes it would be nice to think that all the tough decisions weren’t up to her, that something bigger than her—and less muddled—was looking out for her and sending her signals.

  And after last night, it sure seemed like there were a lot more forces in the world than she’d let herself acknowledge. The thought should have alarmed her, maybe, but here in the sunshine with Jim she found she couldn’t be scared.

  “I think you’re wasted in lepidoptery,” she said, impressed. “Psychology should be your major.”

  He shrugged modestly. “It was all there in your face. I just happened to be where I had a good view.”

  “And happened to be paying really close attention.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, that too.” He tossed away the blade of grass and faced her. She sensed that he had worked himself up to something important. “I’ve decided to stay in Hayesville over the break instead of going back to Atlanta,” he told her. “Since it sounds like you’re not going to California this summer, I’d like to spend more time with you. A lot more time.”

  “I’d like that,” she said, though that was an understatement.

  “And after the summer too, if you’ll still be around.” He was trying to sound casual, bless his heart, but she could see
from his face that her answer meant a lot to him. That was one of the nice things about Jim: he wasn’t able to control his expression like Darryl.

  He’d been totally up-front with her, and she owed him the same. “After the summer,” she said, “unless I’ve missed the deadline, I’ll be enrolling at Young Harris. If I end up having to go someplace else, though, we can work it out. UGA isn’t that bad a drive. Neither is Georgia Tech.” She reached up and brushed his sandy hair out of his eyes, letting her hand come to rest on his cheek. Her heart was beating a little faster than it should, and she took a deep breath for courage. “I’ll want to visit my swoonworthy boyfriend as often as possible,” she said.

  “Mmph,” was all he said in reply, because by then she was kissing him. Kissing him with so much determination that they overbalanced, and Jim oofed as his back hit the ground, knocking the breath out of him. But he never stopped kissing her. Or at least not until much, much later, when the angle of the sun had shifted and the mellow light of late afternoon was glowing on the canopy of leaves.

  “By the way,” he said presently, “in case you were in any doubt, I’m in love with you.”

  For a second or two she lost all ability to speak. Finally she managed to ask, “Did… did you realize that last night?”

  His gaze held steady on hers. She had taken his glasses off, since they kept getting in the way, and now she had an unimpeded view of his remarkable eyes—and the expression in them. “Yesterday brought some clarity to me,” he said. “Not just what we saw at Ash Grove, but you. I know now I shouldn’t give up so easily on being a teacher. And I know I want you in my life from here on out.”

  He was wrapping a strand of her hair around his finger, and it made her thought process a little hazy. Or maybe it was the euphoria fizzing through her veins that made her feel so lightheaded. “I guess I’d better introduce you to my parents,” she said inconsequentially.